THE MOVIE TELLER

María Margarita a young woman who lives in a mining town in the heart of the Chilean Atacama desert in the 1960s has had the gift of telling movies since she was a child.When a film starring Marilyn Monroe Gary Cooper or Charlton Heston or a Mexican feature packed with songs arrives in the local village cinema the exact change for a ticket is collected at María's house and she is sent to watch it. When María returns from the cinema she tells the movie to her father confined to a wheelchair and to her four siblings and soon she is telling the movie to a large and impatient public. Through this tender story Hernán Rivera Letelier gives us the magical tale of village cinemas in their times of splendor - and of decadence.Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa