MEXICOINFOCUS
Interviews with directors
These directors, both with their camera and their words, would have understand that there are issues in the world that cannot remain the same.
Carlos Armella, director of Land and Bread (Tierra y Pan, 2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
I was interested in telling a private family tragedy that reflected the consequences of hunger and misery in a poor region and, in the end, I was interested in showing that these tragedies are an insignificant dust particle in the whole world, and that the misfortune of some means the salvation of others. I wanted to tell a story that flows smoothly, a tragedy taken by the wind, without leaving a footprint because, again, these characters are but a grain of sand in the middle of a massive desert and without them, the world continues to move regardless.
The element of the land was always very present in this story; I imagined a family with roots in an enormous tract of land but that land was infertile. This infertility caused hunger, hunger caused death, and when death comes to those who are not even born, this constitutes another type of infertility.
My intention was to provoke in the viewer the sensation of being present at the scene of a terrible tragedy but without seeing its reality. The way of stimulating the emotions of the spectator should be implicit but never explicit.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
In the case of Land and Bread (Tierra y pan, 2008), the land in question is not definite because in my opinion it was not important to establish. The story does not require giving any additional information to the action, for this reason there is no dialogue. This allows the story to achieve its universality.
Land and Bread (Tierra y pan, 2008) is set in a third world region, in an environment of hunger and misery, a place reminiscent of some places in Mexico. But the themes in question are universal: pain, loss, and the instinct of survival. These themes are identifiable for people from every culture and place in the world.
The backwaters of Mexico appeal to me as places to film. Each time it is more difficult to surprise the audience but if I portray these places properly, they can also have an impact on the audience and this will help the film to be more memorable.
Carlos Muñoz, director of The Immaculate (La Purísima, 2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
In The Immaculate (La Purísima, 2008) I found a fascinating story that reveals the deep Mexico in which lies fanaticism, ignorance, and latent violence.
Besides, in my filmography there is a constant thematic element, and this is the abuse of power. This phenomenon takes the form of imposition, subjugation of the different, the extraneous. This phenomenon is still present and has materialized itself in the most brutal forms of violence and repression. This is a part of our national identity that we must continue to denounce.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
As a writer, of course I believe that our environment largely determines our work. Mexican film is imbued with national problems and our idiosyncrasy. And of course these difficult times, plagued with problems, are reflected in a cinema that reflects primarily concerns and adverse scenarios.
On some occasions I had the opportunity to interact with filmmakers from Switzerland, and those experience were very revealing because, when we exchanged our shorts, I realized that cinema is definitely a mirror of our immediate reality, and the topics that interested me were totally out of context in a first world nation. On that occasion I, as a Mexican, and the Swiss filmmakers experienced a profound phenomenon of mutual recognition, where both sides yearned for to share the vision of the others and, of course, understand.
Ramón Orozco, director of Victory Electrique (La curiosa conquista del ampere, 2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
This story was the product of a long period of consideration and thought using different experiences that I had over a five-year period. Everything began with a real occurrence about a worker in the electricity company who suffered an electric shock. Using this fact, I began developing and giving form to the story. I was very interested in doing something fantastic but at the same time profound. My idea was to communicate the reality of the country but not in a very serious manner; I mean I did not want to tell the story in a realistic way.
Basically, I wanted to talk about abuse. There are many abuses of many types: domestic abuse, abuse of power, abuse of natural resources. It is here that the anecdote about the electricity company worker worked perfectly and I added a fantastical element; that the worker remains fully charged instead of dying and the family use him for their own benefit.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
This was easy. Actually at this moment, our society lives in a constant state of abuse. Here there is an abuse at every level, since a lot of parents use their children for every purpose and we have a government that allows and actively participates in the abuse of natural resources.
Pepe Ávila del Pino, director of Short tale about the spontaneous sprout of an imaginary tree (Breve cuento sobre la aparición espontánea de un árbol imaginario, 2007)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
The idea came from a very specific image that intrigued me without knowing the reason: a child seeing a small plant with curiosity, wonder and excitement. From this frame that kept repeating in my head, the story began to unfold.
Once the script was finished, I decided to film it because I found many elements in it that attracted me as a director: filial relationship and responsibility that might take the form of an older brother, despite being himself a helpless child. The force of imagination; the construction of a child-like world without the trial of the adult perspective, that is, something that to children may seem terribly important not only appears to be important, but is. And finally the fragility of those dreams, that however great they may be, they may crushed and destroyed from the adult world with ease.
But also, and very personally, I had a specific interest as a director by developing a story in which the core elements remain on the sidelines of the story, implied, referenced. Telling the story of a tree that reaches to heaven without ever seeing the tree.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
It is true that there are inevitable connections that could not be more evident in the film. I never was conscious of most of them and I discovered them after the completion of film by seeing its trajectory by audiences around the country. I could mention the mother figure: devoted, loving, submissive, terrified; the idea that poverty and misery are perennial conditions; immutable and, therefore, resulting in acceptance and resignation to the condition. And along this line, the concept that in the Mexican countryside, wherever and whatever happens, in fact nothing ever happens.
I should also mention that much attention has been paid to the issue of domestic violence – a huge problem in Mexico and throughout Latin America. This, however, wasn’t evident to me until later, when thanks to a documentary in which I had the opportunity to collaborate, I witnessed the violence that is really a terrible problem in Mexico, difficult to eradicate and is still worse when, as often happens, it is domestic violence. There is not only violence from husbands to their wives and children, but also mothers with their children, older brothers with little brothers, and even the little ones with animals. And when that happens, when there is widespread acceptance of the use of violence, when the insulting or the crying becomes a daily routine, this becomes a cancer in the social cell that is the family.
René Guerra, director of No Support (Sin Sostén, 1998)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
We didn’t want to make a short film only to tell a joke. We wanted to tell a story with fantasy and humour, but that also with a critical point of view of our society. No support (Sin sostén, 1998) is a story that expresses a criticism of advertising, particularly of the advertising in a society that shows us how the ideal man and the perfect woman should be. But what happens if you are not like this? What happens if you live in a country where nobody looks like Wonder Bra woman or Marlboro man? In this story a sad character decides to commit suicide and when he reaches the roof of the building a cowboy who advertises cigarettes and a slutty woman who advertises bras reminds him why he is a loser. The character gains courage and we live with him his last thoughts before he dies.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
Advertising shows us an unattainable ideal world and tries to persuade us by way of exploiting our self-esteem: “You feel bad, but if you take this, you won’t”, “You are useless, but if you use this, people will think the opposite”. Of course everything is untrue but if they repeat it enough times many people will end up believing it. In Mexico, 40% of the population lives in extreme poverty so I don’t hesitate to state that many of suicides in my country are because of the feeling of hopelessness, motivated by poverty and the lack of opportunities in a society of consumerism.
Ironically, after making my short films No support (Sin sostén, 1998) and Down to the bone (Hasta los Huesos, 2001), I established my animation studio and most of the time we make commercials. It goes without saying that one day I hope to dedicate myself entirely to making my films.
Rubén Rojo Aura, director of Northern Highway (Carretera del Norte, 2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
I believe the place where we live obviously influences the telling of stories. I have never lived in the countryside or the desert but I have seen for my whole life the poverty and inequality that exists in my country. I wanted to tell this story because this is a side of Mexico that people living here are always trying to avoid and I believe that the best way to do something about it is to remind ourselves that this exists.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
Northern Highway (Carretera del Norte, 2008) is a fiction film, however, people selling animals on the side of the road is even worse in reality. In Matehuala they don’t only sell what they hunt but many women prostitute themselves with the truck drivers passing by and people walk kilometres to fill a bottle of water, not to mention that there are hardly any men in the region because most of them have crossed the border to the United States. This desolate outlook is one of the realities of this large heterogeneous country with an absurd system that has some of the richest people in the world and at the same time more than forty million in extreme poverty.
Jean Marc Rousseau, director of Beyond the Mexique Bay (2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
I had been living in France for eleven years and I had been looking for a theme for my short film that allowed me to connect France, Mexico and the Mexican desert, the place where I was born and the place I always tried to go when I went back to Mexico.
Personally, the desert has always fascinated me because, as there is nothing else to distract you, staying there allows you a level of introspection that would be impossible to achieve in other places. I believe that in developed societies there is not only a lack of space but also a lack of time to stop and simply appreciate at things.
In one of my travels to Mexico, I met an artisan who sold necklaces and sometimes she took people to the desert to try peyote. I became aware that she had a soon of about ten years old and shortly after it occurred to me to invent the French character who has nothing in common with the people she usually takes to the desert.
I believe that in this story my principal interest was to show the humanity that everyone has, no matter where you come from; life, love, loneliness, hopelessness, death. I don’t know if my principal interest in the story is successful because every viewer appreciates the film in a different way. In order to give you an example, when I presented the short film in Brazil, I was surprised by the reaction of several people who asked me how I could show something so horrible in such a poetic way. That was not my intention, but many people think it was.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
I believe above all else, that it is spontaneity. I mean, when we were finishing the script, the French producer couldn’t understand how the girl accepted so easily the proposition of taking a stranger to the desert. Nor could she understand how the girl, upon discovering that the stranger was carrying a gun, did not react more strongly and attempted to leave. I tried to explain to her that if she didn’t scream when she saw the gun it is because it is very common to carry a gun in Mexico and the girl accepted to go with a stranger because the guy was paying for a service.
There is something incredible about Mexico that at the same time can be vertiginous: the fact that the society lives from day to day because it is very difficult to make long-term plans in a country with corruption, crises, violence, devaluations, such disparity of wealth, where you cannot trust the institutions. At the same time it is incredible how many people smile when they have absolutely nothing and simply carry on with their lives. I believe that this life without plans reveals strong emotions that can be good and bad.
Sofía Carrillo, director of Out of Control (Fuera de Control, 2008)
1. Why did you choose your story and what did you want to convey with it?
A long time ago I realised that I can only tell stories that come from inside me and that I desperately need to express, and it was with a feeling like this when I made Out of Control (Fuera de control, 2008).
I was looking to express this feeling of being at peace after an emotional crisis. I wasn’t that interested in telling a story, rather I wanted to bring to life an anguished and hopeless atmosphere like the one we build around us when we lose a beloved one. I wanted to make a narrative with an emotive logic, with dolls representing humans because dolls can reflect the defects, lacks and longings of humans as soon as you remove a part of their body. The dolls would be the ones introducing the narrative and taking it to its end. I don’t know if I succeeded in communicating this: if anyone saw their sadness represented and found relief in that; but I was obsessed with loneliness and the desire to avoid anguish.
2. What is the connection between your story and Mexican society?
There is something illogical in Mexican society, a lot of contrasts, a lot of drama, surrealism.
I would like to think that, without planning it too much, this short film is surrealistic. Obviously I wasn’t looking to create a nationalistic film but in my film it is reflected the anguish and loneliness of a mestiza and mystical society, emerged from the tragedy and lost in a dessert.
