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Based on a play by the same name and inspired by the eponymous popular flamenco song, María de la O was one of the first films to celebrate flamenco dance and music. Shot on location in Andalusia, this Spanish classic features a breakout performance by the captivating Romani flamenco dancer and actor, Carmen Amaya. María (played by Amaya), whose mother was killed when she was a girl, grows up without her father, a painter who fled after avenging his beloved’s death, abandoning his daughter. Under the care of an adoptive mother, María comes to perfect the art of flamenco dance and, as she grows up, becomes a source of local pride. When her father returns under a false identity and unwittingly becomes a caretaker of María, she is torn between her Romani lover and a wealthy payo (non-Roma person) to whom she has been promised. (Francisco Alias, 1939, 35mm, original Spanish, 109 minutes)