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Cineteca Nacional screens FICM’ s winning documentaries

Araceli Calva translated by Cindy Hawes

Directors Marta Ferrer and Dalia Huerta presented their respective works, El Varal, Best Mexican Feature Documentary, and Carne que Recuerda (Flesh That Remembers), Best Mexican Short Documentary, in the Sala Salvador Toscano.

El Varal is about a town on the fertile plateau of Central Mexico that celebrates its patron saint day. When the fanfare ends, the town reverts back to its empty streets and the absence of families who have migrated to the United States. We see the nostalgia on the faces of the few agricultural workers who remain and the difficulties they face as they plow their land.

The young Spanish director, who came to Mexico to take a documentary film class at the CCC film school, said she found El Varal the ideal place to shoot her documentary about life in the Mexican countryside.

Carne que Recuerda tells the story of nine body parts of individuals who have suffered irrevocable changes during the year. Animations of body transformations – through growth, aesthetic or pathological changes – are illustrated with testimonies and images of some of the spaces that surrounded each character.

Speaking about her film, Dalia Huerta explained that she made the short to show the perfection of the human body. She said she was fascinated by the ease in which cells regenerate themselves and by the body’ s healing process.