Films Offer Fresh Take on Mexico
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After fantasizing during my teen years about visiting Mexico—an idealized country that originated several of my favorite TV shows growing up in South America—I visited for the first time in 2008. After roughly a week in Mexico City, I didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this marvelous land encompasses. Years of watching “El Chavo del Ocho” and countless telenovelas, and reading a range of guidebooks could not prepare me to face the overwhelming scale of the D.F.
But Mexico is a lot more than its cosmopolitan metropolis. To get a sense of a bit more, I would have done well to watch two new documentaries, Circo by Aaron Schock, and El Velador by Natalia Almada. The former follows a family circus in which a clan rears future generations of acrobats and beast tamers amidst the larger background of a way of life that cannot sustain itself for much longer. In the latter, Almada adds camera and sound duties to her directorial ones, acting as a one-person crew to capture a community in which mass death is a daily occurrence. Punctuated simply by news broadcasts spilling out of roaming truck radios, Almada’s observational style is reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman’s, with long static takes that follow action beyond what is expected. Because of this, the film can feel monotonous; at the same time, during the filmmaker Q&A following her New Directors/New Series screening, Almada explained her aim to have the film be open-ended and not prescriptive. Schock’s film, using stunning cinematography that is simultaneously lush and earthy, is also mourning. In this case, it grieves for the imminent demise of a family tradition in order to allow that same family’s new generations to thrive.
Circo is currently playing theaters nationwide. El Velador is scheduled for release later this year, and will also be broadcast on P.O.V. in 2012.
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| Posted on April 14, 2011
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