To Put Together a Helicopter

Para armar un helicóptero is a story about ingenuity, which is a basic human quality, but also it is a fundamental characteristic of the third world. When I was living a few months in a calm, organized and economically stable city, soon I began to feel as though something was missing, but I didn't know exactly what. I tried to identify what I missed so much. And little by little, I began to realize that it was a kind of chaos that was lacking in life. I missed the improvisation and the constant feeling of surprise inherent in everyday life. This is what life is like in Mexico City, a 1,000-year-old city with constant deficiencies. A city that is impossible to embrace, unpredictable, that sometimes seems to have a life of its own. But if you approach it to have a closer look, you see its residents are making decisions, changing their directions, resolving their lives minute by minute. I realized that what I was feeling and beginning to understand about the cities in which I grew up and lived, is what I wanted to talk about. So I wrote the script for this short film, which afterwards became my thesis for school.

The first ones to come on board were the photographer, José Stempa, and the editor and sound director, León Felipe González. Both were interlocutors from the first synopsis of the script. Then, art director Marcos Vargas joined in much before we started to shoot the film, visiting places like the big "cháchara" (junk) markets in Mexico City together to find the general idea of what we were looking for. Then Ana Hernández, the producer (juggler) of the project, and Urzula Barba, the director's assistant, joined in. One of the last ones to come on board was the musician, Galo Durán, who contributed incredible things, using objects like a bicycle and other elements that we can seen on the screen. This is just to mention some of the members of the team, but it was a very large crew and everyone joined in contributing things to the project. The house where we were working for two weeks looked like a house filled with crazy people.

Portraying daily life in a chaotic city. Shooting the traffic during rush hour, often made more difficult because of the rain. The short circuits and power outages, that are common all the time, the "cháchara" markets that are not easy to film in. All of these logistics are complicated. But the most difficult thing was to look at and interpret the present. We've assimilated the past more and we imagine the future however we like, but the present is difficult to see, and that was the great challenge.

Films associated with the world of emotions and the imaginary things in our societies. I'd like to experiment to find the necessary language for each occasion.

I'm very happy about it. I like this festival a lot because it tends to present new ideas.