'Hecho En Mexico': A Musical Film to Remember Alt.Latino
go to original May 15, 2013

Here's a cool trailer for "Hecho en Mexico" (Made in Mexico), a documentary that explores the rich cultural life of Mexico. (movieclipsTRAILERS)

Hecho en México (Made in Mexico) isn't the first time a foreigner has paid film tribute to the titular country. In the early 20th century, many avant-garde European intellectuals were enamored with Latin America, and Mexico and the Soviet Union had a cozy cultural relationship. In 1930, while socializing with artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein began filming his love poem to Mexico and its people.

But for all of Eisenstein's passionate intentions, the film failed to attract the interest of major American movie companies: It was suffocated by censorship on behalf of the post-revolutionary Mexican government and riddled with production inefficiency on Eisenstein's end. Several short versions containing the footage were released in the mid- and late '30s, and in 1979 director Grigori Alexandrov released the film with the title Que Viva Mexico.

While visiting Alt.Latino in November, British director Duncan Bridgeman joked that his film, Hecho en Mexico, has fared much better than Eisenstein's. Perhaps it's because of the freedom Bridgeman says he was granted by the film's producer — the controversial Emilio Azcarraga, owner of the widely reviled Mexican media giant Televisa — and, of course, it helps that Bridgeman doesn't have Joseph Stalin breathing down his neck. But as Lynn Fainchtein, the film's music producer, tells us, Hecho en Mexico comes at a time when Mexicans are in a particularly introspective, even bleak mood. The nation continues to grapple with waves of unspeakable violence, media manipulation, obsolete yet oppressive power hierarchies and socioeconomic upheaval.

Yet at the core of the movie — and the director's stated intent — is the desire to go beyond the well-publicized problems that afflict Mexico, and to align the concerns of Mexicans with more universal issues of death, spirituality, modernity and gender relations. The film has been criticized in the Mexican media for taking few stances during an extremely political time in that country.

Read the rest at NPR.org

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