Mexico

Welcome to Tejalpa, Mexico in the year 2000. It's one weird and dislocated place! This ancient Indian town has kept many of its traditions alive, including the fiesta celebrated each year on October 18th. On this day the very best of the year's agricultural harvest is offered to the spirits of the town's main spring and aquifier. The annual tradition survives despite a rapid process of suburban sprawl and less-than-responsible development, which pollutes the same water that is worshipped every year! Using a mish mosh of aesthetics as diverse as the present day population of Tejalpa, the film demonstrates the clashes of modernity, tradition, communal stability, land disputes and ecological crisis that exist in the town of Tejalpa.

And the March Continues! combines documentary and narrative forms to present a history of the lesbian movement in Mexico from its origins to the present. Testimonies from Mexican lesbians and movement leaders give impressions of daily life in their country.

Near the city of Muzquiz, Coahuila, lives a small population of black people, El Nacimiento de los Negros, descendants of the ones called black Seminoles in the United States. The black Seminoles were of African origin who assimilated with many North American indigenous groups from the Florida region. Together these people formed the Seminole confederation, (the word Seminole has its origin on the Spanish word “cimarrón”).

Prepare for the journey as an unknown, a nothing, no one. Prepare to leave everything from South and Central America behind and travel alone with a vague sense of direction and the echo of your family left in your ears. Prepare to face the same intimidation and corruptive danger in Mexico as you will eventually find 1,300 miles north, when you cross into the United States–if you live through it. As rich nations sharpen their borders and differences, the poorest peoples continue to blur them in the search for liberties too universally held to be claimed by any flag. Through this burning hunger, we are drawn into DeNADIE, and through its intimate lens and enduring crew, we find ourselves confronted with a story of immigration we only thought we understood.

Southern Mexico. It's hot. An inferno. Here, like everywhere else, people are suffering and dying. In their homes, on the street. A young girl kills herself with a shotgun. An old man has a heart attack as he lies with a prostitute. A cock-fighter is accused of assaulting a bus. A man finds a dead body in the river. What do they have in common? They all appeared in La Nota Roja (The Red Page): the crime section of the local newspaper.

El Inmigrante is a documentary film that examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. The film presents a distinct humanitarian focus in which story and character take precedent over policy and empiricism.  Towards this end “El Inmigrante” examines the perspectives of a diverse cast of players in this border narrative. A cast which includes the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas–where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the United States.

ERENDIRA IKIKUNARI is a beautifully shot action film that recreates the 16th century legend of Eréndira, a young Purépecha woman who became an icon of bravery during the destruction of indigenous Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors. This feature length film was shot entirely in the original Purépecha language.

In this brilliant and hilarious parody, filmmaker Greg Berger takes on the theme of Mexican perspectives of the United States, its citizens, and its imperial project by turning them on their ear. During the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a misplaced gringo in Mexico City helplessly watches the atrocities through the lens of Mexican television news. His despair turns to hope when he observes some of the millions of Mexico City street vendors who fight their own daily “war” for survival on the streets.

The harbor of Veracruz, and the harbors of Pánuco and Campeche were the main channels through which African slaves were introduced to Mexico. From there, they were taken to practically all parts of the country to work in mining, cattle raising and other activities. On the shores of Gulf of Mexico, Africans descendents held positions from mine and plantation workers, to servants and even landowners. As a result, important African settlements developed in this region.

Details the evolution of the town's struggle into a national, and eventually international movement. After a resounding victory, residents reflect on the meaning of their victory for themselves and for the world.

Among the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, boy babies who are born in a certain position, or little boys who prefer to play with girls, are raised as women, and are known as Muxes (pronounced "Mooshays"). In the town of Juchitán, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Muxes have an important role to play in the life of the community. Because they are raised as women, the Muxes prefer to enter into relations with "straight" men. Since female virginity is important for marriage in Juchitán, unmarried boys have their first experiences with Muxes, but usually move on to a heterosexual marriage.

After forty years living in Mexico City, Antonia longs to go back to her home town, a Mazahua village in the state of Mexico. When she finally decides to do that, she encounters a lot of things that she didn’t expect, like the scarcity of water that threatens life in her community.

To be poor in Mexico is hard. To be poor in a small town in Mexico is harder. If you're a gay man living in those circumstances, things can get downright tricky. This collectively-produced documentary introduces us to four gay men in Mazatepec, Morelos, who recount their life passions and their everyday complaints. They describe their occasional relationships with men in town who consider themselves “straight,” and give free reign to their creative impulses at the town’s yearly festival, the Mojiganga, where sexual identities are publicly, playfully transgressed.

Matriarchy. That is what explorers and other outsiders have simplistically labeled the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Oaxaca, Mexico. The Isthmus is a place where women run the economy, where cultural identity is of utmost importance, where being fat is regarded as an ideal of beauty and where female ancestors displayed ingenuity and spunk in times of war and political resistance.

These modern-day Super Heroes are a group of Lucha Libre wrestlers who have taken their fight out of the ring and into the streets of the Mexican Capital. Super Barrio, Super Gay, Ecologista Universal, Super Animal and Fray Tormenta are real life masked Super Heroes who fight against evil slumlords, corrupt politicians, homophobia, pollution, animal rights abusers, and poverty.

In January of 2004, the Zapatistas of Chiapas celebrated the 10th anniversary of their uprising. However, a thousand miles away in Emiliano Zapata's home state of Morelos, a darker chapter in the indigenous democracy movement was unfolding...

"Los Voladores" (the Flyers) is a 1500 year-old rite sacred to Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star. From its origins on the Gulf coast of Mexico, the ritual spread throughout Mesoamerica: a special square was reserved for it in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and a variant is still known among the Quiche' Maya in Guatemala. Today "Los Voladores" is best known in its original home in the Huasteca region, especially among the Totonac, who have lived in the area for millenia. The version shown in the film is from Huehuetla, in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Also includes The Tree of Knowledge and Democracia Indigena.

When the people of Oaxaca decided they’d had enough of bad government,
they didn’t take their story to the media...they TOOK the media. In the summer of 2006, a broad-based, non-violent, popular uprising exploded in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Some compared it to the Paris Commune, while others called it the first Latin American revolution of the 21st century.