FILM | Angel of Fire: Kahlo, Mexico, and Film | El Puño de hierro (The Iron Fist)

El Puño de hierro (The Iron Fist)
Gabriel García Moreno, 1927, 77 min.
Thursday, August 7, 8 p.m.
This rare, remarkable silent adventure opens with a young man experiencing his first shot of morphine. To try to describe the rest of the breathless plot would be futile, but suffice to say that it involves hints of bestiality, homosexual orgies, a lecture on the horrors of drug addiction, documentary footage of strait-jacketed patients, and a pipe-smoking ten-year-old boy detective who helps save the day. A trail-blazing example of Surrealism in the country that fostered Frida Kahlo and Luis Buñuel, the film disappeared from public view after a few screenings in Veracruz in 1927, until a restored version premiered in Mexico City in 2001. Silent, with Spanish and English intertitles and live musical accompaniment.

Tickets are available at the museum (no surcharge) or through http://www.sfmoma.org/tickets (surcharge applies).

$5 general; free for SFMOMA members or with museum admission (requires a free ticket, which can be picked up in the Haas Atrium). Double features: films offered on the same date are included in one ticket.