EL VELADOR (THE NIGHT WATCHMAN) A FILM BY NATALIA ALMADA

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "EL VELADOR (THE NIGHT WATCHMAN) A FILM BY NATALIA ALMADA"

Scot Andrews
6 years ago
Views:

1 EL VELADOR (THE NIGHT WATCHMAN) A FILM BY NATALIA ALMADA

EL VELADOR A FILM BY NATALIA ALMADA SYNOPSIS From dusk to dawn EL VELADOR accompanies Martin, the guardian angel who, night after night, watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico's most

In the labyrinth of the narco-cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us how, in the turmoil of Mexico's bloodiest conflict since the Revolution, ordinary life persists and

2 EL VELADOR A FILM BY NATALIA ALMADA SYNOPSIS From dusk to dawn EL VELADOR accompanies Martin, the guardian angel who, night after night, watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico's most notorious Drug Lords. In the labyrinth of the narco-cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us how, in the turmoil of Mexico's bloodiest conflict since the Revolution, ordinary life persists and quietly defies the dead. 72 / 52 minutes - HD Mexico / USA INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT, CANNES 2011 Théâtre Croisette (50, La Croisette) Mardi 17 mai / Tues. May 17 14h00 Cinéma Les Arcades (77, rue Félix Faure) Mardi 17 mai / Tues. May 17 22h30 Projection marché: Lerins 1 Mercredi 18 mai / Wed. May 18 11h30 BROADCAST Upcoming national broadcast in 2012 on PBS award-winning program POV. To download press kit/high resolution stills please go to

3 CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR EL VELADOR EL VELADOR is an unsettlingly quiet, even lyrical film about a world made and unmade by violence" -AO Scott, The New York Times "Mesmerizing!" -Time Out "An exquisite study of a rapidly expanding cemetery" -Variety "(An) hypnotically detailed feature documentary depiction of life and death" -The Wall Street Journal "Two documentaries, El Velador and The Black Power Mixtape, provide chilling accounts of their subjects that are matched by a refreshing vitality." -New York Press - "El Velador is deliberate, repetitive, and deceptively peaceful. Watching it feels at first as if you're eavesdropping on someone else's daydream. -Slant Magazine

4 CREDITS Director/Producer/DP/Editor: Natalia Almada Associate Producers: Laurence Ansquer, Tita Productions Charlotte Uzu, Les Films d'ici Sound Designer: Alejandro de Icaza Co-editor: Julien Devaux Production Assistant: Ramiro Rodriguez EL VELADOR is a co-production of Altamura Films and American Documentary POV in association with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Associate Produced by Les Films D'Ici and Tita Production. Additional funding provided by the Jan Vrijman Fund, The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, Charles Schultz, NYSCA and Chicken and Egg Pictures. Fiscal sponsor: Women Make Movies CONTACT Natalia Almada Altamura Films natalia@altamurafilms.com Laurence Ansquer Tita Productions l.ansquer@titaprod.com Daniela Elstner (Sales Agent) Doc & Film International Phone : +33(0) Fax : +33(0) daniela.elstner@gmail.com Charlotte Uzu Les Films d Ici charlotte.uzu@lesfilmsdici.fr Cynthia Lopez POV clopez@pov.org

5 FILM DESCRIPTION Martin, the night watchman, arrives with the setting sun in his rumbling blue Chevrolet. The cemetery mascots, EI Negro y La Negra, chase his truck down the road and greet him with wagging tails. The sound of construction fades away as the daytime workers leave and Martin is left alone, looking out over the skyline of mausoleums where Mexico's most notorious drug lords lie at rest. Crosses and steel construction bars pierce the purple and pink sky. As night descends luxurious cars fill the dirt roads. Mercedes, a sexy young widow, arrives with her little girl in a pristine white Audi. A portrait of her husband, a corrupt policeman holding a machine gun, watches over them as they sweep and mop the shiny marble floors. The coconut vendor's radio blasts a gory list of the day's murders: "Culiacán has become a war zone." The buzz of cicadas fills the air with anticipation. Through Martin's vigilant eyes we watch time pass in this place where time stands still. A portrait of the daily life of the cemetery allows us to see the intersection between those who make a living there and those who rest there innocent or guilty. A construction worker hovers over the grave plastering the inside of the cupola while a young widow lights a candle to her recently killed husband. Eventually mourning too becomes a kind of work as the widows return day after day to tend to their husbands mausoleums, a perversely gaudy reminder

of the violence that is wounding Mexico, and of the socio-economic conditions in which this violence flourishes. A worker covets the luxuries his wages will never afford him as he hangs a chandelier.

The word "narco' is forbidden. The teetering scaffolding, the rotting wooden ladder, the photograph of a man who died at 23: life is precarious for everyone with business here.

6 of the violence that is wounding Mexico, and of the socio-economic conditions in which this violence flourishes. A worker covets the luxuries his wages will never afford him as he hangs a chandelier. The women look too young to be widows; the children play hop scotch on tombs the way others play in sandboxes and on jungle gyms. The code of silence makes conversation dangerous. The word "narco' is forbidden. The teetering scaffolding, the rotting wooden ladder, the photograph of a man who died at 23: life is precarious for everyone with business here. EL VELADOR lingers at the threshold of violence. By refusing to show the graphic images that the press feverishly disseminates Almada asks us to dwell in the moment when violence has just left its mark and when violence is imminent. Her camera enters into the intimate and ordinary routines of this world with patience, restraint and tenderness. EL VELADOR is a film about violence without violence.

7 BACKGROUND EL VELADOR is set in a cemetery in Culiacan, capital of northern Sinaloa state and drug heartland of Mexico. Since the war on drugs began, the number of graves in the cemetery has exploded and the extravagance of the mausoleums has exceeded the imaginable. Ranging in design from minimalist modernism to fanciful imitations of magazine mosques, these opulent constructions are narco-tombs, costing as much as 100,000 dollars. In Mexico's depressed economy, who else can afford such luxuries, and who else dies so young, so often? The cemetery is a private enterprise, not exclusively for drug traffickers, but it is the most expensive in Culiacan. It requires dispensable income that very few have. Shortly after taking office President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels and put the military to the task of fighting the drug trade in Mexico. The blood bath that has ensued has affected possibly every sector of our society and invaded our daily lives. In 2009 over 8000 people died in violent incidents related to drug trafficking. That same year the civilian death toll in Iraq was approximately The illegal drug trade is a multi-billion dollar industry and it has no borders. Drugs are produced, trafficked and consumed across the globe, and billions circulate in the global economy. But it is Mexico that has become the central battlefield of this worldwide problem. "There aren't enough living to bury the dead" says the cemetery's director, who is losing the race to keep up with the dying. It is estimated that approximately 35,000 people have been killed since December 2006.

8 FILMMAKER STATEMENT I come from a ranching family and spent a lot of time growing up in Sinaloa, which is now Mexico s most productive agricultural state, and which - stories about the constant run-ins with the narcos that was part of daily life in Sinaloa are countless, and all had a Godfather quality about them. But when the cowboy I d known my whole life told us his son had disappeared and the remains of his seven buddies where found burned alive, the violence of the drug trade stopped having that Hollywood flare. The ranch caretaker was tortured and beaten so badly he couldn t tell the story of what had happened to him without wetting his pants and so he never told the authorities. Reality no longer felt like a movie and I felt the need to make a film. In the past few years when I travel outside of Mexico, people often ask me, why is there so much violence in Mexico? What is the solution to the violence? I noticed however that they usually ask as they are getting up from the table, not as they are sitting down to engage in a meaningful conversation about the matter. It is the issue that puts Mexico on the cover of the NY Times and yet it seems to always remain beyond our grasp, perhaps as violence most often does. We look at a photo in the paper and wonder, how could someone do that and feel a sense of relief that it happens over there, far from here. It seems impossible to imagine that someone's normal life continues in the midst of such atrocities. In the question of how to look at violence I believe lies some necessary insight to understand violence. When I am shooting I often think of a Baudelaire quote that I read in Barthes Camera Lucida: The emphatic truth of gesture in the great circumstances of life. If film has any relationship to truth (which I m not convinced it does) it must lie in its ability to film gestures. I thought that filming at the cemetery I might be able to understand the violence that is pointlessly destroying our country. Over the course of a year shooting there, I realized that it is not only understanding that I seek through the lens but to rescue the sense of humanity that violence kills. Or, as Serge Daney so beautifully wrote, to touch with the gaze that distance between myself and where the other exists.

PAUPERS CEMETERY, ARIZONA CEMETERY, CULIACAN When I went to the cemetery in July 2009, I immediately recalled the paupers' cemetery where I shot part of AI Otro Lado, a few miles north

Their "American Dream" came to fruition in a desolate empty lot of dirt, under a brick inscribed with their new American names, Jane and John Doe.

9 PAUPERS CEMETERY, ARIZONA CEMETERY, CULIACAN When I went to the cemetery in July 2009, I immediately recalled the paupers' cemetery where I shot part of AI Otro Lado, a few miles north of the border in Arizona. That cemetery was full of unidentified illegal immigrants who had died crossing the desert. Their "American Dream" came to fruition in a desolate empty lot of dirt, under a brick inscribed with their new American names, Jane and John Doe. The rows of bricks were a site of utter anonymity and oblivion. I understood that the surreal skyline of mausoleums was its antithesis, a grand expression of remembrance, a refusal to be invisible, anonymous and forgotten. Yet both are products of the same social inequalities, and the same

that those with the ability to pay for mausoleums have made themselves economically indispensable, with a multi-billion dollar industry that makes the news through violence, and marks its memory with

10 that those with the ability to pay for mausoleums have made themselves economically indispensable, with a multi-billion dollar industry that makes the news through violence, and marks its memory with rich tombs. When I began filming, four massive mausoleums were in mid construction and a new hole had been excavated for 300 more graves. By the time I finished shooting that hole had been filled with young bodies and a tractor was digging out a new hole. The continuing growth of the cemetery reflects the continuing failure to end the violence that has already claimed over 35,000 lives. In December 2009, after the assassination of Beltran Leyva, "EI Jefe de Jefes," a decapitated head was left on his tomb. I thought it was a threat. Later it was explained to me that it was in fact an offering. Hence, the red gerbera daisy placed behind the left ear of the bloodied head: the detail stood out brilliantly against the write marble in the photograph that inevitably circulated in the "nota roja" and on the web. What are we to make of these images? Are they like the Abu Ghraib photographs? Like trophies of war? The lynching photographs of slaves in southern United States? Or the photographs of the religious hung along the

11 train tracks in Mexico's Cristiada war? In her essay about the Abu Ghraib photographs, "Regarding the Torture of Others," Susan Sontag writes, "The horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken." Perhaps the person who left the head on the tomb was not the one to take the photograph, but when he placed the gerbera behind the left ear, he most certainly knew a photograph would be taken; and knew, moreover, the more shocking the sight, the more likely it would be to circulate far and wide. He undoubtedly took pleasure in posing the head just so. We have taken the bait, and have stared with fascination at the grotesqueness of it all. Then we were afraid. And then we walked away. After a year of filming at the cemetery, I arrived one morning unannounced at 7:00 AM, as usual, to catch the sun rising behind the mausoleums and the arrival of the construction workers. Shortly after setting up my tripod in front of the first burial in the new hole, I was informed that I had to leave, and it was very clear to me it was to be taken seriously. I have always been able to talk my way out of or into situations, but this time there was nothing to say, because there was no one to say it to, only the messenger. That early July morning I felt an invisible and therefore omnipresent power over me. The media had shown me again and again in minute detail what El Narco is capable of doing. This time, the threat implied, to me. It is this perfect combination of invisibility and visibility that makes the rest of us powerless. And once the morbid sensationalism of the photos of the decapitated, burned and executed fades away, all we are left with is fear and a desperate feeling of impotence and numbness. By refusing to show these graphic images, I propose that we take an unflinching look at violence.

12 NATALIA ALMADA BIO Recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film El General, Almada s most recent film El Velador is a haunting look at violence through the eyes of the night watchman of Mexico s most notorious narco-cemetery. Her previous credits include All Water Has a Perfect Memory, an experimental short film that received international recognition; Al Otro Lado, her award-winning debut feature documentary about immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music. Almada s films have screened at The Sundance Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Biennial. Her three feature documentaries broadcast on the award-winning series POV. Almada is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2010 USA Artist Fellow. She graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and shares her time between Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York.

Daughter s Memories of a Strongman Offer Unique View of Mexican Revolution And Its Legacy Today in POV s El General, Tuesday, July 20, 2010, on PBS

Daughter s Memories of a Strongman Offer Unique View of Mexican Revolution And Its Legacy Today in POV s El General, Tuesday, July 20, 2010, on PBS Contacts: POV Communications: 212-989-7425. Emergency contact: 646-729-4748 Cynthia López, clopez@pov.org, Cathy Fisher, cfisher@pov.org POV online pressroom: www.pbs.org/pov/pressroom Daughter s Memories