Mexican Ritual

2012 | Color | 53 min

A shaman´s mystical invocations, a protest of furious electricians on a hunger strike and a euphoric football crowd collide in the Zócalo of Mexico City, the country´s central square and ancient ceremonial heart of the Aztec empire. Mitote (Nahuatl for chaos or celebration) transforms the plaza into a wrestling ring, where national commemorations, postmodern rituals and the remains of pre-Hispanic culture clash to the beat of a country enraged.

Country: México
Direction: Polgovsky; Eugenio
Script: Polgovsky; Eugenio
Production: Polgovsky; Eugenio
Photography: Polgovsky; Eugenio
Sound: Polgovsky; Eugenio
Music: No Problem Studio Ba;
Participation year at FICM: 2012

Director Movies

Malintzin 17

Minimalist in resources and filmed from the unusual vantage point of a second-floor flat window, Malintzin 17 portrays two parallel expressions of parental care. For seven days and seven nights, filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky and his five-year-old daughter Milena watch a pigeon tending her chick in a dangerous tangle of electrical wires just outside their balcony.

Lightbyrinth

A work of video art inspired by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell; the piece is part of a special initiative to celebrate the opening of the Maxwell Centre. Using Maxwell’s original equipment, including his zoetrope (an animation device), Polgovsky explores the nature of light and perceptions of color in Lightbyrinth.

Trópico de Cáncer

At the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer in the desert of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, many families survive by hunting animals and selling them along the highway.