Director Marcela Arteaga Attending!
Across an arid, windswept plain, a ragged doll rests uneasily beneath a scorching desert sun; a set of dinnerware that long-ago helped nourish a family lies half-buried beneath shifting sands; and a once shiny and new child’s tricycle is left to rust, a sentinel of sorts watching over the remnants of a now-depleted landscape that is Ciudad Juarez. Once a bustling border community along the U.S./Mexico border, directly across from Fabens, Texas, the early 2000s saw Juarez become synonymous with narco-violence, a borderland battleground for warring drug cartels whose ruthlessness knew no limits. But when the federal government sent in the army in 2008 in a supposed effort to quell the bloodshed, the people of Ciudad Juarez were about to learn what hell really was. With businesses forced to shutter, streets emptied and thousands of civilians threatened and/or disappeared, and all at the hands of the newly arrived “protectors,” a picture quickly emerged of a land- and resource-hungry government would do anything to clear border communities in the name of bi-national business interests: cartels and corporations becoming one and the same. Direct from its rapturous Mexican premiere at the Morelia Film Festival, and using powerful testimonials against the stunningly poetic visuals of DP Axel Pedraza, acclaimed writer/director Marcela Arteaga (Remembrance) has crafted a moving, unforgettable testimonial to the resilience of a people and of memory itself.
Sinopsis
A lo largo de una llanura árida y barrida por vientos descansa de forma inquieta una muñeca bajo el abrasador sol del desierto; un juego de vajilla que mucho tiempo atrás ayudó a alimentar a una familia se encuentra medio enterrada bajo arenas cambiantes; y el alguna vez brillante triciclo de un niño ha quedado abandonado para oxidarse, como si fuera un centinela que vigila los restos del ahora agotado paisaje que es Ciudad Juárez. La que era una bulliciosa comunidad fronteriza, entre Estados Unidos y México, justo al otro lado de Fabens, Texas, en los años 2000s vio a Juárez convertirse en sinónimo de la narco-violencia, un campo de batalla fronterizo para los carteles de la droga, cuya crueldad no conocía límites. Pero cuando el gobierno federal envió el ejército en 2008 en un supuesto esfuerzo por calmar el derramamiento de sangre, la gente de Ciudad Juárez estaba apunto de descubrir lo que es realmente el infierno. Con negocios obligados a cerrar sus puertas, calles vacías y miles de civiles amenazados y/o desaparecidos, y todo en manos de los recién llegados “protectores”, pronto emergió la imagen de un gobierno hambriento de tierras y recursos que no se detendría ante nada para “limpiar” a las comunidades de la frontera en nombre de los intereses de negocios bi-nacionales: los carteles y las corporaciones se convirtieron en la misma cosa. Directamente después de su exitosa premier mexicana en el Festival de Cine de Morelia, y usando poderosos testimonios que tienen como trasfondo imágenes sorprendentemente poéticas creadas por Director de Fotografía Axel Pedraza, la aclamada escritora y directora Marcela Arteaga (Remembrance) ha creado un conmovedor e inolvidable testimonio de la resiliencia de las personas y de la memoria misma.
November 2 Panel Discussion: How to make a film and live to tell the story
Visiting women filmmakers talk about approaching their documentary projects, the challenges of securing funding, the winding journey of production and the hurdles to reaching the audience. Join us for a fresh and candid talk about the art of filmmaking following the screening of The Guardian of Memory on Saturday, November 2.
Moderator: Hebe Tabachnik - Artistic Director Cine Latino
Participants:
Marcela Arteaga – Director and Writer of The Guardian of Memory - (Mexico)
Mexican writer and director. Her 2003 documentary Remembrance was screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Festival des Films du Monde, and Hot Docs, among others. It received the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2003 Guadalajara International Film Festival as well as the Jury’s Special Award at the Guanajuato International Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Documentary Film at the Ariel (Mexican Academy) Awards. The Guardian of Memory had its World Premiere at the 2019 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and its Mexican premiere at the Morelia Film Festival.
Linda Goldstein Knowlton - Director and Producer of We are the Radical Monarchs - (USA)
Linda Goldstein Knowlton is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, working in both documentary and scripted feature films, as well as in television. For her most recent film, Goldstein Knowlton directed and produced Women and Hollywood, one of the six, one-hour documentaries for the Emmy-nominated PBS MAKERS: Women Who Make America series. Prior to that, she produced Code Black, Best Documentary winner at LA Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival, and the basis for the new CBS one-hour drama of the same name. Previously she directed and produced Somewhere Between, which won the Sundance Channel Audience Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival, and was released theatrically in over 80 cities across the US. For her directorial debut, Linda co-directed The World According to Sesame Street, which debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in completion and aired nationally on PBS. Linda started her career producing feature films, including the award-winning Whale Rider and The Shipping News. We Are The Radical Monarchs premiered at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival. The film received the Audience Award at the 2019 Seattle International Film Festival.
Veronica Haro – Director and Producer of When They Left – (Ecuador)
Verónica Haro Abril was born in Ecuador (1984). She obtained a cum laude degree in film and television at the University of San Francisco in Quito. She received a scholarship for the film production workshop CECAN, in collaboration with the University of San Antonio de los Baños. When They Left (2019) is her debut film and has been premiered at Visions du Reel 2019.
Ruth Zachs – Co-Director, Writer and Producer of Lives with Flavor - (Mexico)
Ruth Zachs Babani studied philosophy at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. She has worked as a director, producer, writer, and cinematographer for the documentary series Lives With Flavor and The Secret Ingredient.
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Cine Latino, the region’s only showcase of Latin American and Ibero cinema, features a rich tapestry of narrative and documentary films from across the globe from some of the world’s most acclaimed and up-and-coming Spanish- and Portuguese-language filmmakers.
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