TFI Latin Filmmaker Workshops Concludes In Mexico City
With the TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund Filmmaker Workshops having already taken place at the Santiago International Film Festival and in Sao Paulo, it will now close out strong in Mexico City.
The workshops are a two-day collaborative lab aimed at educating, assisting and aiding five emerging filmmakers and media artists with the development of their feature documentary or hybrid works.
The following projects were selected for the Mexico City workshop:
El Charro de Toluquilla - Directed by José Villalobos A mariachi singer is forced to live an anarchist lifestyle in order to survive AIDS. In this fantasy, he sees himself as a vintage Mexican movie star. This utopia abruptly ends when he becomes a father of a miraculous healthy girl who he has to raise as a single parent within Mexico's chauvinistic socioeconomic reality.
The Mermaid and the Myth of the Eternal Return - Directed by Luis Rincón; Produced by Cristina Velasco When industrial fishing began, employers took advantage of the skills of Miskito divers, and hired them to hunt lobster. The divers were equipped with tanks to descend deeper and deeper, but they came out of the sea with their bodies paralyzed. Healers indicated that the Mermaid in the sea was upset. Gradually losing the battle, soon no one believed in its powers, and divers were resigned to the punishment of the Mermaid.
The Dog in my Life - Directed by Oswaldo Toledano & Virginia Araujo A dog rescuer is determined to consolidate a project that rehabilitates mistreated-rescued dogs into becoming service companions. The obstacles prevail, but a rescue gives him new hope at a certain price.
No Dress Code - Directed by Cristina Herrera; Produced by Santiago Esteinou This story portrays the struggle of Victor and Fernando, a gay couple, through the legal process and public recognition of their relationship in the state of Baja California, México where same sex marriage is not legal. It’s part of a broader struggle, for the recognition of civil rights for the LGBT community, but also a personal love story of two people who want the viewers to recognize their right to live their love publicly.
Feral - Directed by Osvaldo Montano & Andrés Eichelmann Kaiser; Produced by Juan Hernandez & Nicole Maynard Buried, deep in the Oaxacan Mountain range in Mexico, lay the ruins of a shelter for "The Children of the Wilderness." In 1986, Juan Felipe de Jesús, a psychologist who once was a Benedict monk, video-documented his attempt to rehabilitate these feral children and reincorporate them into society. Shortly after, a tragic fire sealed the fate of the researcher and the children. To this day, silence and mystery darken the small rural town that saw it all happen, and the only answers may still lie in the tapes.
[Photo: El Charro de Toluquilla]
