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Sep
16
El Grito de Independencia
Grinning seminary boys hang from monkey bars. DPs: Salvador Gijón, Rubén Gámez & Segismundo Pérez de Pedro 'Segis'.
El Grito de Independencia: ¡Viva México!
“¡Mexicanos!
¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria!
¡Viva Hidalgo!
¡Viva Morelos!
¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!
¡Viva Allende!
¡Vivan Aldama y Matamoros!
¡Viva la independencia nacional!
¡Viva México! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México!”
Accompanied by Juan Rulfo's poem, Gámez explores Mexico's identity, and loss thereof. Crying out for the Mexican with Coca-Cola in the blood.
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El año de la peste [The Year of the Plague] (Felipe Cazals, 1979)
Jan
12
Armed police wearing gas masks in front of the Palacio Nacional, Mexico City. DP: Xavier Cruz.
“It has been a good day for everyone, even for God. No sign of rain. No evidence of disease or blood.”
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Yanco (Servando González + Mohy Quandour, 1961)
Apr
21
Fiddlers Frolic
Juanito (Ricardo Ancona), seen in silhouette, playing his violin in the chinampas. DP: Álex Phillips Jr..
In Mayan worldview, mortals move along the horizontal, gods along the vertical plane. A boy travels both worlds, united by music and wonder.
Juanito, a #Mixquic boy with hypersensitive hearing, finds solace from the hustle of #MexicoCity in the silence of the chinampas – the pre-Hispanic man-made agricultural plots in lake #Xochimilco. There he plays his cardboard fiddle for the nature around him, until the sound from a real violin reaches him. The violinist, an old hermit who lives on one of the chinampas, takes the boy in and teaches him how to master Yanco, his hand-built instrument. When the man dies, the boy goes out at night to be able to play Yanco. In a changing world where the living and the dead used to naturally cross paths, the strings stir different to some.
The #Nahuatl film Yanco is a small cinematic miracle that begs for a beautiful restoration akin to how Govindan Aravindan's കുമ്മാട്ടി [Kummatty] (1979) opened up the world to indigenous filmmaking.