Etnocidio: Notas sobre El Mezquital

Story

Documentary Around 300,000 members of the Otomí tribe live in the desert region of Mezquital, 100km north of Mexico City. Industrialisation and the government’s agenda of bringing the whole of Mexico to a unified, “civilised”, political, economic and cultural level has kept the indigenous population under pressure since the 1950s, robbing them of their land and identity. Many have left their homes and moved to the surrounding cities – as impoverished and uprooted emigrant workers. The film is based on a script by the Mexican sociologist Roger Bartra and combines ethnography with surreal elements. It is at the same time a political manifesto and a gripping aesthetic experiment.

Director

In his documentaries, Paul Leduc (*1942) has been heavily influenced by Jean Rouche and in the early 1970s belonged to a New Wave of Mexican cinema. One of his best-known films is Frida Still Life (1983) the first film biography of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Trailer