Alberto Álvarez

During the dictatorial regime of Juan Vicente Gómez, the bachelor Ibarra is imprisoned for political conspiracy. In prison, the inmates live together remembering the events that led to their imprisonment. Finally, a group, led by the bachelor Ibarra, manages to carry out a plan to escape from the prison.

In the Colombian-Venezuelan Andes, a peasant works the land under exploitative conditions to ensure the survival of his family. His son is ill, his wife is pregnant, and he himself reproduces the violence that surrounds him. With no money for medical treatment, one night he gets drunk and is arrested. In jail, in a burst of fury, he rebels against the town's political boss in the only way he can. La Paga was a pioneering work of social and political cinema in Latin America, released the same year as Barravento, Glauber Rocha’s debut feature, and anticipating movements such as Third Cinema. Influenced by Italian Neorealism and Soviet cinema in its aesthetics, forms, and ideological approach, the film uses the archetypal representation of characters and the social and economic forces they embody. Based on the director’s childhood observations in his hometown, La Paga denounces the exploitation of the rural peasantry.

An attractive songstress (Libertad Leblanc) lands herself a performing contract and leaves her home in Buenos Aires. She travels to Venezuela, and when arriving in Caracas, she soon discovers that her contract is a hoax made by a major drug baron. She finds that she is knee-deep in trouble herself and must be careful if she is to get out of her predicament in one piece. When imported to the U.S., the film was dubbed into English, new footage (shot in New York City) was added and it was given the memorably salacious title The Pink Pussy: Where Sin Lives.