Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Central America / Mexico / All Films

Cruces

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 18:06:15 GMT

Cruces is an experiential expedition into the geographies and stories of immigrants from Latin America as they journey to reach US soil. By weaving together oral histories and images of the landscape, the film highlights the constitutive elements of transit, such as trains and rivers, and the obstacles migrants face, such as forests, deserts, and border regimes.

Recorded in 2019 and early 2020, this multi-vocal ethnography conveys a collective view of the multiple stories of journey and arrival. Enhanced by an immersive soundtrack and an experimental narrative, Cruces offers a raw exploration of the terrain and testimonies constituting one of our age's most defining, challenging, and politicized phenomena.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS
The Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, UK, 2023

Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, Greece, 2022

Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, USA, 2022
Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, USA, 2022

Bogoshorts Film Festival,Colombia, 2021

Multimedia Anthropology Showcase in Madrid (MAAM), Spain, 2021

VI Mexican Congress of Anthropology and Ethnology Film Festival, Mexico, 2020
VI Latin American Anthropology Congress Film Festival, Uruguay, 2020

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The Living Maya

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 13:21:00 GMT

The Living Maya
Buy Now: $340.00

This series documents life in a Yucatan village, focusing on one family over the course of a year. The films explore the ancient agricultural and religious customs that ground contemporary Maya life in traditional values – even as modern Mexico comes to the village.

Part 1Introduces the village of Chican and the Colli-Colli family, and examines the structure of Maya agricultural and village life.

Part 2Hard-pressed by an illness in the family, the Colli-Colli face financial and emotional challenges using traditional solidarity to muster resources and comfort. Drought threatens the village's crucial corn crop.

Part 3As the Colli-Colli resolve their difficulties and the village harvests a mediocre corn crop, viewers are left with an understanding of the underlying rationales of Maya life and with questions about their own assumptions, priorities, and values.

Part 4The Colli-Colli's two youngest sons plead to be placed in school in Merida – the first of their family to reject traditional life.

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Down To Earth

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Down To Earth
Buy Now: $295.00

This fascinating multidisciplinary social history investigates the contributions of New Mexico's diverse cultures to the state's unique architectural heritage. Today adobe is often associated with wealth and the "Santa Fe Style." But adobe architecture also continues to play a vital role in Native American and Hispanic cultures in New Mexico. Adobe is not just a building material. Its formal and structural elements cannot be divorced from its social, cultural, and environmental functions. Down to Earth explores the increasing pressures of tourism and development and illustrates the relationship between the environment of New Mexico and the continuity of cultural tradition.

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The Dancing Chickens of Ventura Fabian

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

The Dancing Chickens of Ventura Fabian
Buy Now: $275.00

The Dancing Chickens of Ventura Fabian is a lively, bilingual musical video visit with master woodcarver Ventura Fabian and his family in their small rural village of San Martin Tilcajete, nestled in the hills outside the colonial city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Every member of this campesino/artesano family works together to create some of the country's most colorful and creative folk art -- the hand-carved, hand-painted wooden figures that have become one of Mexico's most popular contemporary crafts. Combining documentary footage of home and village life, interviews, and animated musical segments of Don Ventura's whimsical creations, the video opens a window onto the daily life and unique world of this artisan family. For more information about the film visit www.thedancingchickens.com.

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Gringolandia

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:26:00 GMT

Gringolandia
Buy Now: $320.00

Americans have been living the expat life in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for more than 50 years. Recently, though, their numbers have increased dramatically. Real estate has boomed. Some residents seek all the amenities they have at home, but at half the price. Why do Americans choose to live abroad? How do they impact this locale, which was once a sleepy provincial town in the mountains of Mexico? How do the Mexican residents view these 'visitors' from the north? How do the two cultures co-exist, for better and worse?

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Incidents of Travel In Chichen Itza

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

Incidents of Travel In Chichen Itza
Buy Now: $320.00

This original ethnographic video depicts how New Agers, the Mexican state, tourists, and 1920s archaeologists all contend to “clear” the site of the antique Maya city of Chichen Itza in order to produce their own idealized and unobstructed visions of “Maya” while the local Maya themselves struggle to occupy the site as vendors and artisans.

The setting is the spring Equinox, when a shadow said to represent the Maya serpent-god Kukulkan appears on one temple pyramid. As more than 40,000 New Age spiritualists and secular tourists from the United States and Mexico converge to witness this solar phenomenon, the video depicts the surrounding social event as a complicated entanglement of expected dualisms concerning tourism. Going beyond previous films that reduce tourism to neo-colonial and exoticizing social relations, this video portrays a Maya cultural site where US New Agers — rather than local Mayas — appear as exotic ritualists who are on display for other secular tourists and for local Mayas.

While the video does examine representations of Mayas by visiting New Agers as part of globalizing discourses on the exotic and evolution, it also shows how during the ongoing economic crisis, resident Mayas struggle against the Mexican state — rather than against tourists — that regularly “sweeps” them from the tourist zone in order to anchor the nation in an image of pure antiquity.

This video also asks what kind of fieldwork is possible as part of such a spectacle. It questions the status of ethnographic authority as people from the various groups converging on the event, ironically including the anthropologist-videomakers, trade positions and compete to speak about the Maya.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Award 1997

Margaret Mead Festival, 1997

Royal Anthropological Institute, Material Culture and Archaeology Prize, 1998

Latin American Studies Association Film Festival, Washington DC, 2001

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If It Doesn't Rain

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

If It Doesn't Rain
Buy Now: $320.00

Disc 1 - If It Doesn't Rain (28 min, 30 min extras, 2006)

What is poverty? This short documentary on households and communities in rural Southern Mexico reveals the complexities of this question and strategies people use to manage and minimize risk. Designed to provoke discussion, this disc includes three in-depth special features (Trout Farm, Oportunidades, The Tequio System) on community projects and government aid programs.

Disc 2 - If It Doesn't Rain: First Return (14 min, 35 min extras, 2008)

Revisiting the families and communities of the original If It Doesn't Rain, this short film highlights the continuing struggle to improve their lives, especially to manage and minimize risk. Enriched by eight features, the DVD provides insight into the the role of government programs, the impact of migration, and the power of community organization. An indexed menu of supplemental shorts facilitates classroom discussion.

Films in the Development Communications Workshop series

If It Doesn't Rain

If It Doesn't Rain: First Return

It's A Young Country: Turkey and Akbank

Lifecycles

Malawi's Green Revolution

Paths of Hope

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

New Filmmakers New York, 2008

Woods Hole Film Festival, 2007

Boston Latino International Film Festival, 2008 (If It Doesn't Rain) and 2009 (First Return)

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A Long Journey To Guadalupe

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:41:00 GMT

A Long Journey To Guadalupe
Buy Now: $320.00

The veneration for Tonantzin-Guadalupe has been an essential Mexican theme underlying Mexican cultural and political values since the 16th century. Guided by the testimonies of Indigenous people, Mexicans of mixed heritage, and Chicanos, we can understand why.

The film was shot in 16mm and produced between July 1987 and February 1996. Ten years after the 1521 Spanish conquest, young Indian Juan Diego was graced by the apparition of the Mother of God on Tepeyac Hill; a first Bishop of Mexico scoffed at this news, until a further miracle convinced the church to build a basilica in the deity's honor. While encouraging a Virgin Mary "cult" no doubt helped invaders impose Christianity on the populace, scholars point out that earth mother Tonantzin's role in indigenous creeds predate this development by 2,500 years. Thus the "new,"compound divinity represented a covert "act of conquest by the Indians over the invading religion," one that developed potent political symbolism during Mexico's various independence struggles.

The director, who is Mexican, states that "this is a testimony about the Mexican cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, where the pilgrims signify the Mexican of all times and the pilgrimages, our history. For me this film literally means a nine year long journey to the unfathomable heart of Mexico and a better world with more peace and social justice." While the filmmaker teaches documentary film at Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica in Mexico City where he is the head of the Academic Council, he always works together with his wife, social anthropologist Ana Pino Sandoval.

This film is of interest in Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Religion and general audiences.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

32nd Chicago International Film Festival, Gold Plaque Award, 1996

Ariel Award Nominee, Mexican Academy of Film Art and Sciences, 1996

Native America's International Exposition, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1996

Margaret Mead Film Festival, 1996

Society For Visual Anthropology, 1997

Cinequest Film Festival, 1997

and many other international festivals and awards

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Tarahumara

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:57:00 GMT

Tarahumara
Buy Now: $295.00

Shot in 1976, but never released, this film is a rare visual document of the Tarahumara - one of the most remote and isolated tribes of the North American continent. Filmed during a gathering at the mission village of Norogachic of northwest Mexico, the nomadic Tarahumara are observed celebrating their special interpretation of the Easter Festival. The week-long gathering uniquely explores both Christian and pre-Christian expressions of honoring the Easter Moon, the time when traditionally the Tarahumara dance, plant corn and drink Tesvino, the corn wine that blesses nearly every Tarahumara occasion from birth to death.

Coming from caves and rocky rancheros that range from the tropics to the northern Sierre Madre, the celebrants arrive on foot with giant tambours, flutes and the violins that the Spaniards introduced centuries ago, violins that the Tarahumara still carve from their native pine. Clay painted and dressed in flamboyantly colorful garments, the Tarahumaras make the celebration an epic of dance which concludes by preparing the shamans for the final dance in which the effigies of Judas and Judas's son are destroyed.

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Those With Voice

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:57:00 GMT

Those With Voice
Buy Now: $320.00

Those With Voice documents current efforts in the Southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas to produce what social scientists have dubbed "indigenous media."

A pacifist group of radio engineers travel days to man the transmitter cabin in the hills of Chiapas, providing the surrounding communities with information about current events, family health, and national politics. An archaeologist in Massachusetts explains how his field has changed throughout the twentieth century. And, an international film festival brings together visionaries from twenty-three countries including a girl from Finland searching for love and a Cree man working to keep his peoples' oral history alive.

These stories illustrate the complexities of the indigenous experience today while simultaneously promoting the universality of the human spirit. Through it all, we find the undeniable desire to speak and be heard.

This DVD also contains Voice Through Film (13 min), a short clip which further emphasizes the importance of media access and dissemination.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

"Ownership and Appropriation," Joint Conference of the ASA, the ASAANZ and the AAS, University of Auckland, 2008

International Festival of Ethnographic Film, Canada, 2009

Muestra de Cine Documental y Etnografico, Puerto Rico, 2009

Days of Ethnographic Film, Slovenia, 2009

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