:
Documenting Mexico
TIONAL SPOTLIGHT
INTERNA
Spotlight on
Thanks in large part to Ambulante,
a traveling documentary film festival, Mexican
documentaries have come into their own
recently. With the Los Angeles Film Festival’s
Documenting Mexico: Selections from the
Ambulan
Ambulante Film Festival, Los Angeles audiences
can now experience the storytelling passion and
Planet guide, but which again will reveal exactly how richly complex
imperative urgency of modern-day Mexico for themselves.
diversity really is. This is a country where 110 million people speak
In lieu of your typical film festival closing night ceremony,
languages; a federation of 20 states that sometimes seems as if it’s
Ambulante may very well instead wrap up its Oaxaca
by duct tape and futbol. But in Ambulante, Mexico finally has the fil
stop by taking everyone still on their feet to an indigenous
trip, rock tour, bar hop, and traveling medicine show—it deserves.
beauty pageant, wherein members of the largely
“We’ve always thought of ourselves more like a rock tour than a co
matriarchal Zapotec community choose their queen—from
festival,” says Elena Fortes, Ambulante’s director. Each spring, over a
a group of young men in what we post-Columbians might
Fortes and a skeleton guerilla crew descend on 15 or so different cit
call drag. (Apparently, Zapotec matrons sometimes choose
showing domestic and international documentaries in multiplexes, m
to raise their youngest sons in rather feminine ways, so
cafés, and, well, pretty much anywhere there’s a blank wall. They b
as to have some help around the house in their old age. I
there are impromptu parties and discussions and Q&As in parking lo
know—who knew?!) The entry fee includes a case of beer
quite know what’s going to happen next, but it’ll be something
per person, and the event takes place in a part of town no
you won’t find at many other film festivals.
Oaxaca tour group operator has ever thought to include
on its itinerary and which has never seen a red carpet. But
The brainchild of Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna,
Eduardo Thomas, who programs Ambulante’s experimental
Ambulante also counts Mexico’s Cinepolis theater chain and
Injerto section and seems to know his way around every
the Morelia Film Festival among its parental units, along with
noteworthy street food stall and mescal bar in all of Mexico,
García Bernal and Luna's production company, Canana Films.
is no ordinary tour guide—and Ambulante certainly is no
“When we started Ambulante, the term ‘documentary’ was,
ordinary film festival.
to most people in Mexico, basically synonymous with nature
programs on Discovery or Animal Planet,” Fortes continues.
An indigenous transgendered beauty pageant is the sort
“We believed there was an audience out there, but there was
of cultural phenomenon the occasional visitor or accidental
no infrastructure or proven market for independent film at all
tourist to Mexico won’t learn of from reading the Lonely
in Mexico. So in the first few years, we focused very much on
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