In the UNAM Film Library as in other archives around the world, we have our list of "The most wanted lost Mexican films". It is a list not adhering strictly to the criterion of a film's antiquity, but also taking into account such aspects as censorship, the fact that its viewing was at some point prohibited; factors which as time goes by, make a film more mythical and its viewing ever more interesting. For these reasons we include in our list the film made in 1937 by Fito Best called La Mancha de sangre (The Bloodstain). It is a film that ran into trouble right from the start. Fito Best, the film's director, was a well-known painter who until then had only made one short film. However, like the good intellectual that he was, in this film he included elements that were unusual for Mexican cinema in those days: he used a squalid night-club as his location, the local prostitutes were his extras, and the main characters were played by unprofessionals with no previous acting experience. Thus, the very aspect of the place and of its actors created an atmosphere, if not sordid, at least credible and anyway unsophisticated. As a finishing touch, the title: "The bloodstain", refers either to bloodshed caused by a rape, or to menstrual bleeding. Of course, the film was censored. Its debut occurred six years after its completion, and it was never heard of or seen again, at least publicly. The film became a myth, the forbidden fruit and therefore all the more appetising, the film all movie-lovers, film students and critics wanted to see.

Frankly, I never dreamed that these images would ever be seen again. I always thought that the nitrate negative must have been burned by inflexible ignorant, fundamentalist censors. The recent deterioration of national film production seems to have had the effect of making moving image archives grow disproportionately, a phenomenon which seems to repeat itself even in countries with a higher level of film production bringing with it the closing down of film theatres as well as of laboratories and distributors. As a result of this process, a goodly number of cellulose nitrate negatives have been delivered to our archives. Many of the film reels could be identified, but a lot were unidentifiable, or the name was mistaken or incomplete. On a list of titles of these negatives figured one mentioned only as La Mancha (The Stain). A hunch made me think of that most tantalising title in our list of lost films. We gave priority to its identification. And it did indeed turn out to be the negative of La Mancha de Sangre. Old battered, incomplete, it had finally reappeared after 50 years of oblivion. As usual, as we knew would happen, someone present at the new premiere of the film told us of the possible existence of a copy kept by an old collector of Mexican films in a city 600km from Mexico City. If this rumour turns out to be true, we will do our best to complete our master copy, although it is almost certain that the parts cut by the censor will not appear in this second copy. Meanwhile, we are showing our version with titles at the beginning indicating the missing segments of image and sound.

Francisco Gaytán