From afar it seems like Baghdad: car bombs, beheadings and corrupt politicians.
Up close, Mexico remains magical and picturesque in parts, feeling oddly safe even in the hardest-fought territories of the drug war.
The 8th annual International Film Festival opened Saturday in the drug-plagued state of Michoacan to its largest turnout ever, drawing the contrast that defines Mexico today.
Only blocks from the site where a 2008 grenade attack killed eight people, hundreds lined the red carpet to squeal at one of Hollywood’s leading men, Oscar-winning Spanish actor Javier Bardem. Unlike the Jonas Brothers in the drug-war-ravaged city of Monterrey, no one canceled – organizers say – for a festival that also features Hollywood blockbuster director Robert Rodriguez and Monty Python funnyman-turned-director Terry Gilliam.
“I’m waiting to see the bad side of Morelia,” Gilliam told reporters Sunday. “Since I’ve been in More lia, I’ve been blown away by the architecture. It’s such a beautiful place.”
Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose film “Biutiful” starring Bardem opened the festival, acknowledged to a full auditorium in cocktail attire that his homeland is seeing a difficult time.
He said on Sunday that violence in Mexico appears to be out control. But culture and education are very powerful weapons in the war against it.
“These are very powerful acts of resistance. I think the seed or the root of what we’re experiencing is a lack of education … the lack of opportunity for millions of Mexicans,” the director of “Babel” and “Amores Perros” said.
“So to talk about movies, the festival of Morelia and to support filmmakers and Mexican cinema as way to understand ourselves is a very important weapon … to have places where people can speak, think about the important things we have lost perspective on in the desperation we all confron t.”
The home state of President Felipe Calderon, Michoacan is the first place he sent troops after taking office and announcing a crackdown on organized crime. It’s a state largely controlled by the vicious yet devout La Familia (the Family) cartel, which made its debut by tossing heads onto a disco floor in 2006 in Uruapan, a city just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the state capital, Morelia.
Politicians are under attack, on the take or both as the Calderon government arrested 35 state public officials last year on charges of ties to La Familia, only to suffer the embarrassment of seeing a judge release all but one for lack of evidence. Michoacan’s sitting congressman, under indictment for aiding La Familia, sneaked into his swearing-in to gain immunity awarded to elected officials in Mexico.
Last week a radio station aired a recorded telephone call allegedly between the lawmaker and the leader of La Familia, Servando Gomez, known as “La Tuta.”
Mean while, people linger in Morelia’s sidewalk cafes and stroll the sandstone archways and cobblestone streets doused in temperature-perfect sunshine. The festival was heavily patrolled by soldiers in 2008 and 2009 after the grenade attack, but none are visible this year.
“Our life is normal,” said resident Salvador Diaz, 32, who took a spin with his motorcycle club Saturday afternoon before escorting his wife to the festival opening. “The people of Michoacan are very hardworking. No, our political and security situation are not adequate, but we’re moving forward.”
The festival has been a chance to show another face of Mexico and another family of Michoacan: Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, grandson of beloved, iron-fisted President Lazaro Cardenas, is vice president of the festival. He inaugurated the renovated Teatro Emperador Caltzontzin in nearby Patzcuaro on Friday night with a showing of the 1948 Mexican classic, “Maclovia,” starring Maria Felix in a story about the virtue s of the indigenous people of Michoacan.
Cardenas called it a special place because on the same date 72 years ago, his grandfather, who was president from 1936 to 1940, opened the theater for the first time.
His father, former presidential candidate and Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, also attended the opening events.
“In some small towns, daily life is ruled by organized crime,” he said. “But that’s not the case in cities like Morelia. With cultural events like this, the atmosphere is calm and comfortable.”
The festival continues to climb the ladder of prestige as it seeks to sit beside Sundance, Toronto and Cannes with 270 entries this year and 500 invited guests, including about 100 foreignors – more than in the past.
Starting three years ago, its prizewinning short films have been eligible to compete for Oscars.
“I think with Telluride in the U.S., this is the best festival in the world,” said Hollywood producer Michael Fitzgera ld, who has been a juror and shown films at the festival, such as “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” starring Tommy Lee Jones.
He called Mexico’s drug violence “a parallel universe that none of us ever see.”
“I’ve had to convince people in the U.S. who have heard all this nonsense to come here,” Fitzgerald said, “and now they come every year.”
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More