Editor's Note:
This month the Latin American Video Archives' Featured Titles newsletter is proud to present "Thorn of the Mountain", an exhibition of recent Mexican video curated by Sally Burger and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC. The sale price for each title is listed below. However, if you would like to exhibit a number of the tapes, a package price can be arranged. To locate additional Mexican titles, visit our web site at http://www.lavavideo.org.

Punk Lifestyles

Punk Spirit   Get Details
Sarah Minter
fiction   57 minutes   1992
With English subtitles
Alma Punk is a fictionalized work that uses real teens to act out its story. Alma is an adolescent who lives alone in Mexico City. Her mother, who lives and works somewhere in California, writes to her from time to time and encourages Alma to move to California, where she will fit in there with other punk teenagers. The film traces Alma's many problems, financial and personal, in Mexico City. She eventually decides to follow her mother's advice, and embarks on a trip to the border.

Utopian Ideals and a Road Movie

Arrow, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Gregorio Rocha
Experimental   35 minutes   1996
With English subtitles
In a timeless landscape, the two protagonists set off North in search for Aztlan, the place of origin of the Aztec people. The journey becomes an inner one.*First Prize, Fiction. Primer Festival de Artes Electronicas Vidarte, Mexico, 1999.*Best experimental film. 22 Cinefest, San Antonio, TX. 1998.
Purchase Price: $ 200.00


Railroad to Utopia, A   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Gregorio Rocha
Documentary   30 minutes   1995
With English subtitles
Documentary about a utopian colony established in northwestern Mexico by American socialist pioneers in 1886. Time-lapse and animation techniques bring archival photographs and drawings to life.
Purchase Price: $ 200.00

Tequila and Politics

Tequila Effect, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Gloria Ribe/Jose Manuel Pintado
Documentary   40 minutes   1995
Dubbed into English
This is a panoply of news coverage, scenes of Mexico, and film footage from popular Mexican films, overlaid with a dual male and female voice-over narrative. The video was completed prior to the election of the 1997 that made Mexico a multi-party government. "The tequila effect created by the virtual images of Mexican neoliberalism, has provoked an unexpected drunkenness, as well as a huge political, economic, and social hangover...Pedro Infante, Marcos, Salinas, and Cantinflas are some of the characters of this spicy documentary that invites experienced viewers to taste the contradictory aspects of contemporary Mexico....Here is a video full with the harsh and delicate bouquet of Tequila itself"
Purchase Price: $ 99.95

Experimental Views From Mexico City

Bleeding Heart   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Music Video   3 minutes   1993
With English subtitles
A wonderfully colorful music video from Astrid Hadad, a singer of the independent music scene.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Paper Bodies   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Art   4 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
In her alluring video, Ximena Cuevas playfully draws from Mexican popular culture as well as from her own life to tell a sensual story of love, jealousy and breakup, against a backdrop of a popular romantic ballad.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Three Deaths of Lupe Velez, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Art   5 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
A contemplation on the flirtion with death.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Pantopone Rose   Get Details
Andrea di Castro
Art   7 minutes   1995
With English subtitles
The title of this video is a poem by William S. Burroughs. The video is part of a larger CD project on Burroughs's writings. Castro recorded the late author reading his poem at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, in May 1995; his voice was then electronically altered to create the musical soundtrack by Rosino Serrano.

Pilgrims and Saints

Long Journey to Guadalupe, A   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Juan Francisco Urrusti
Documentary   97 minutes   1996
With English subtitles
The veneration for Tonantzin-Guadalupe has been an essential Mexican theme underlying Mexican cultural and political values since the 16th century. Guided by the testimonies of Indigenous people, Mexicans of mixed heritage and Chicanos about this complex subject matter, we can understand why. The film was shot in 16mm and produced between July 1987 and February 1996. Ten years after the 1521 Spanish conquest, young Indian Juan Diego was graced by the apparition of the Mother of God on Tepeyac Hill; a first Bishop of Mexico scoffed at this news, until a further miracle convinced the church to build a basilica in the deity's honor. While encouraging a Virgin Mary "cult" no doubt helped invaders impose Christianity on the populace, scholars point out that earth mother Tonantzin's role in indigenous creeds predate this development by 2,500 years. Thus the "new" compound divinity represented a covert "act of conquest by the Indians over the invading religion," one that developed potent political symbolism during Mexico's various independence struggles. The director, who is Mexican, states that "this is a testimony about the Mexican cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, where the pilgrims signify the Mexican of all times and the pilgrimages, our history. For me this film literally means a nine year long journey to the unfathomable heart of Mexico and a better world with more peace and social justice." While the filmmaker teaches documentary film at Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica in Mexico City where he is the head of the Academic Council, he always works together with his wife, social anthropologist Ana Pino Sandoval. This film is of interest in Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Religion and general audiences.
Purchase Price: $ 195.00

The Mayan Communities of Chiapas

Dreams and Wise Words from the Tzotziles and Tzeltales   Get Details
Carlos Martinez Suarez
Documentary   60 minutes   1995
With English subtitles
Members of two Mayan communities from the jungle and the highland of Chiapas explain their origins and discuss their rights. The direct Spanish and English translations reflect the way in which the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Indians convey their ideas.

Indigenous Women of Oaxaca

Little Bit of Blood, A   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Julia Barco
Documentary   17 minutes   1996
With English subtitles
In this documentary, Barco, known for her feminist work, interviews Zapotec women from all over Oaxaca concerning the cultural emphasis on virginity. The video reveals a Tehuantepec prenupcial tradition meant to ascertain the "purity" of a bride-to-be while hinting at broader issues.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Skirt Full of Butterflies, A   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ellen Osborne and Maureen Gosling
Documentary   15 minutes   1993
With English subtitles
Matriarchy. That is what explorers and other outsiders have simplistically labeled the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Oaxaca, Mexico. The Isthmus is a place where women run the economy, where cultural identity is of utmost importance, where being fat is regarded as an ideal of beauty and where female ancestors displayed ingenuity and spunk in times of war and political resistance. Anthropologists call it a partnership society where one is first a human being, an individual and only second and incidentally a man or a woman. (It is a love poem to the Isthmus women.) We hear from five women whose stories are interlaced with scenes of work and the resplendent festivities, music, poetry and paintings of the region. They show how valuable economic independence, community, friendship, cultural pride and respect for "women's work" are in giving a woman self-esteem and a sense of purpose in life. They are also a testament to what that sense of dignity contributes to the well-being of society. "Knocks traditional machismo on its ear!" -Guillermos Medina, El Mensajero, San Francisco. "Colorful and sensual ... the women's voices are heard strong and clear." -Film Arts Foundation. Received Honorable Mention for Best Film at CineFestival, San Antonio, Texas.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95

Other Featured Titles

• Discounts on LAVA's Spring Titles (May 2004)
  
• The Latin American Cities Collection (May 2004)
  
• Asian Diaspora (April 2004)
  
• New Release (April 2004)
  
• Jewish Studies (April 2004)
  
• Classic Latin American Cinema (March 2004)
  
• Women's Studies (February 2004)
  
• Satire and Symbolism (February 2004)
  
• New Releases (January 2004)
  
• Discounts on LAVA's Fall Titles (December 2003)
  
• The Vision of Manuel Antin (November 2003)
  
• Now Available on DVD (November 2003)
  
• New Documentaries (October 2003)
  
• Recent Chilean Cinema (October 2003)
  
• The Work of Daniel Burman (September 2003)
  
• Fernando Birri's 'Los inundados' (September 2003)
  
• The Overthrow of Allende (September 2003)
  
• The Sixth Section (August 2003)
  
• Fall Tour: Dispatches from Rebel Mexico (August 2003)
  
• New Documentary (May 2003)
  
• A Tribute to Fernando Birri (May 2003)
  
• Documentaries on the Arts (May 2003)
  
• Documentaries on Music (May 2003)
  
• Crisis in Argentina (April 2003)
  
• Video in the Villages (April 2003)
  
• New Releases (March 2003)
  
• New Feature Films (March 2003)
  
• The Work of Rafael Rebollar (February 2003)
  
• Mexican Documentaries (February 2003)
  
• Landscapes of Memory (February 2003)
  
• New Documentaries-January 2003 (January 2003)
  
• New Films from Colombia (November 2002)
  
• New Chilean Documentaries (October 2002)
  
• New Mexican Documentaries (October 2002)
  
• Contemporary Cuba (October 2002)
  
• New Feature Films from Argentina (September 2002)
  
• The Pinochet Case (September 2002)
  
• Revisiting Central America (May 2002)
  
• Globalization and its Discontents (April 2002)
  
• New Documentaries (April 2002)
  
• Indigenous Video from Brazil (February 2002)
  
• Documentaries from LAVA (February 2002)
  
• New Feature Films from LAVA (November 2001)
  
• New Documentaries from LAVA (October 2001)
  
• Work from Colombia and Ecuador (October 2001)
  
• New Releases from LAVA, Fall 2001 (September 2001)
  
• New Releases (May 2001)
  
• Work from Peru (April 2001)
  
• New Releases from Brazil (March 2001)
  
• THE LATIN AMERICAN VIDEO ARCHIVES (February 2001)
  
• Cuba's Independent Video Movement (November 2000)
  
• This Month's Featured Artist (November 2000)
  
• New Tiles at LAVA October, 2000 (October 2000)
  
• Featured Titles at LAVA, Fall 2000 (September 2000)
  
• New Release of Mexican Feature Films (September 2000)
  
• New Titles at LAVA - April 2000 (April 2000)
  
• New Titles at LAVA (March 2000)
  
• New Titles At LAVA (February 2000)
  
• Puerto Rico (November 1999)
  
• Exclusive Release (November 1999)
  
• Two New Titles Directed Betty Kaplan (October 1999)
  
• Eva Peron Has Arrived (October 1999)
  
• LAVA's Featured Titles for September (September 1999)
  
• Latin American Civilization (September 1999)
  
• For Teachers By Teachers (January 1999)
  
• Brazilian Indigenous Community Video (November 1998)
  
• Welcome Back (September 1998)
  
• What's New (May 1998)
  
• Films Based on Books (February 1998)
  
• MoMA Presents Thorn of the Mountain (January 1998)
  
• CUBAN FEATURE FILMS AND DOCUMENTARIES (November 1997)
  
• VIDEO BY AND ABOUT INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (October 1997)