CHOLITA LIBRE: If you don't fight, you've already lost

Dir: Jana Richter, Rike Holtz
Documentary, HDV, 70 min, Germany
Website: http://www.richterproduction.de/CholitaLibre/index.html

Synopsis

What THEY want, THEY get. If THEY don’t do it, nobody does it. THEY can lose but that just means, that they will continue fighting. With their colourful, glittering skirts THEY are like flowers on the tarmac. And of course, THEY are stronger than all the men in the world. THEY are Cholitas and they are wrestlers. THEY fight on the stage to show us that this world can change. Their style of fighting, the Lucha Libre (the Latin-American way of Wrestling) is a mix of sport, theatre, athletics and choreography. Cholitas are the offspring of the Quechua or Aymara natives of Bolivia. Their hair is braided into two long plaits. They wear a bowler hat, a spectacular shawl and a skirt, which swings with its three layers of petticoats. We get to know Rosita the Heartbreaker, Carmen Rosa the Champion, Yolanda the Passionate and Claudina the Condemned. These four Cholitas are fighting at eye level with the men in the ring. They do not spare themselves; they support, improve and correct each other. They do not train “against each other”, but “with each other”. What they want, they get. If not in reality, then on stage – because the wrestle is just like real life – if you do not fight to stay in it, you have already lost.