Julio & Tenoch, Together Again, Touring Docs

Via Anthony Kaufman's blog, the LA Times reports that Y Tu Mama Tambien co-stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are organizing a traveling documentary film festival that will play in 15 Mexican cities and help fund more nonfiction work in Mexico.

The tour, titled "Ambulante" will screen 19 films, 12 of which were made by Mexican filmmakers.  According to the Times:

     Some of the films that will be shown in "Ambulante" were
     made several years ago, a sign of the relative paucity of
     Mexican documentary making. Among the Mexican titles
     in the festival are "Toro Negro" by Carlos Armella and
     Pedro González-Rubio, "Trópico de Cáncer" by Eugenio
     Polgovsky, "Niños de la Calle" by Eva Aridjis and "La
     Sierra" by Margarita Martinez and Scott Dalton. Several
     of these films deal unflinchingly with the hardships and
     inequities of contemporary Mexican life. Polgovsky's
     53-minute film looks at families who live in the desert
     regions of San Luis Potosí and survive by hunting and
     selling live and dead animals. "Niños de la Calle" offers
     a disturbing, intimate look at Mexico City's street
     children, many of them drug addicts, who face daily p
     erils in one of the world's most dangerous capitals.

     The foreign-made documentaries include "The
     Corporation" by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel
     Bakan and "Farmingville" by Catherine Tambini and
     Carlos Sandoval, the latter of which looks at the tensions
     generated between Mexican migrant workers and
     residents of the titular Long Island community.

     Several directors will be on hand for the film screenings,
     which will take place in the regional centers of Puebla,
     Veracruz, Metepec, Ciudad Juárez, Villahermosa, Cancún,
     Morelia and León, as well as the Mexican capital. Some
     screenings will be held in the regions where the films
     were made.

     The two actors said the idea for a touring documentary
     festival began with their decision to give support to
     Polgovsky's "Trópico de Cáncer" after it was shown at
     the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia in the state
     of Michoacán, which has promoted documentaries
     through its programming. All the documentaries in
     "Ambulante" have won prizes at Morelia's and other
     festivals.

     Daniela Michel, the Morelia festival's director, said at the
     press conference that "Ambulante" is "a platform for
     supporting documentary culture." "It has been said that
     there is no audience in Mexico for this genre, but clearly
     there is a public and an interest in documentaries," she
     said. "And with this genre, we want to show that it can
     succeed in other regions of the country, to promote
     discussion."

     Luna said that while he and García Bernal have "many
     plans to direct our own documentary," they won't be using
     any of the resources for "Ambulante" to do so.

OK, so this is probably the coolest thing I've heard all week.  Not just because it's such a great idea and it's being done by two young and very talented actors (which goes against the perceived notion that actors have a bias against documentaries because they, well, don't feature actors), but because it continues to challenge the notion that documentaries are for a particular audience, that they should somehow be marginalized.  Luna and Garcia Bernal argue that documentaries are for the masses, for people outside of Mexico City.  Well done.

Comments

[Sujewa]

" 'there is no audience in Mexico for this genre (docs)...' "

Anyone who believes that is out to lunch. That's like saying there is no market for chocolate in Mexico.

This traveling doc fest sounds very interesting. Maybe they'll bring it to the US.

Sujewa
*******