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HIDDEN GODS(LOS DIOSES OCULTOS)

ADONAY MIGUEL ANGEL GUERRERO CORTS

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TOTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTSFOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF FINE ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN FILMYORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, ONTARIO

May, 2013

Adonay Miguel Angel Guerrero Corts, May 2013


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Abstract

Hidden Gods (Los Dioses Ocultos) is a fictional short film that focuses on

the life of a family within an indigenous Mexican community, hiding an image of

their deity from the Spanish colonizers. Set in the 16th century, against

backdrop of the aftermath of the Spanish conquest and subsequent fall of the

Aztec empire, the film addresses the concurrent process of evangelizationprocess and the systematic removal and destruction of indigenous religious

imagery.

Two boys, brothers, are torn between devotion to their own deity and

the new Christian one. The choice made by one of them leads to disaster,

however Hidden Gods (Los Dioses Ocultos) argues that there were and continue

to be small but significant acts of resistance.


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Dedication

A Argelia, mi compaera de batallas, de sta y las que faltan.

A mis paps, San Juana y Miguel ngel, que siempre siguen apoyando.

A mi familia que es cmplice en este proyecto.

A mis ancestros que siguen aqu


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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank to Ali Kazimi for all his support and commitment.

Our conversations and his sense of storytelling helped me to clarify the

approach of this project and to the theme that I was pursuing. Thank you to

John Greyson for all his detailed critical comments were tremendously helpful

and revelatory. Colleen Wagner was always warm and supportive and gave mekey questions to make to myself and to the film. Phil Hoffman as experimental

filmmaker and professor showed me that there are other ways to tell a story.

Without them this thesis project would not be what it is.

Thank you to Kuowei Lee for his help and for releasing me from the paperwork

nightmare. Marcos Arriaga as well, was always great and supportive.

The making of this film was a huge challenge since it had to be

coordinated from Canada, and it would have been a nightmare without the help

of my producers Argelia Gonzlez and San Juana Corts. Also invaluable was the

help of friends and family from Torren, San Luis Potos and Monterrey who

participated in this Project; As well, the support of the people of the San Marcos

Carmona Community was key to the completion of the project. To all of them

thank you for bearing with me and with this story that I feel it is worth telling.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract.. Dedication.... Acknowledgments..i Table of Contents.....

Introduction

Historic Background.5

Pre-production: Visualization of the Ancient Gods..9Writing the Screenplay (or not?)....13

A Link to the Land: Locations..13Roots and Casting.....15Impressions of the Past: Art Design inHidden Gods ..15Mise en Scne: The Search for a Vivid Gaze....17

Production: Letting the Moment Happen20To Act or To Do? The Actor-Director Relationship....20

Post production: Exploring New Territories...24Detecting Tensions.....26Sound: the Hidden Poetics.....28Aquatic Echoes..30

The Epilogue: A Final Call...31Conclusions.....33Filmography35Bibliography.37


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Introduction

Hidden Gods represents a turning point in the way I see films and my own

artistic work as a filmmaker. This can be explained by a brief review of my past

films. Most of my works are fictional stories with linear structures that talk about

marginal characters in an urban context, facing situations of injustice,

abandonment and poverty (El blues del buen samaritano, El hijo del Santo, The

Last deaths of Joe ). Also, I have made documentaries about topics related to

popular culture and migration (I Live Here: Windows, Making Sones and

Memories ), following mainly the style of John Grierson.

With Hidden Gods I push my usual narrative style and focus on creating

emotional moments, and in re-creating/re-inventing historical moments through

the deliberate manipulation of sound and image. Even though I say that I am

breaking with my style of filmmaking I continue to drawn upon some of my past

creative elements. For instance, I have always had a tendency to make my films

more visuals than histrionic, that is to say, to tell the story through images

instead of acting and dialogue; I attempt to push the limit of this aspect inHidden

Gods by creating a purely visual and aural experiential film, with little diegetic

sound and no sync dialogue or voice over. As well, my films, as with this one, have


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been about victims of some kind of oppression and who have resisted in one way

or another.

My thesis project arises from a series of curious circumstances: my

passion for Mexican history, research done by my wife Dr. Argelia Gonzlez, the

work of indigenous filmmakers, (name a few here) and of course my arrival to

York University. The main idea ofHidden Gods emerged during a casual

bibliographic review of my wifes thesis project that talks about the films madeby Indigenous filmmakers from Mexico. What struck me the most was: firstly, to

see the history of the image created about the figure of the Mexican Indigenous

since colonial times until today; secondly, repeated references to the

evangelization process where the imposition of a Catholicism resulted in the

massive destruction of the sacred figures of the Indigenous peoples.

One of the most influential books in my thesis proposal isImages at War:

Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (2001) by the French historian Serge

Gruzinski. In this book Gruzinski reinterprets the Spanish colonisation of Mexico

by focusing on the political meaning of the image and its function within its

multicultural society. In this study Gruzinski outlines the efforts made by the

Spanish colonizers to control, contain, subvert and redefine indigenous deities as

a central aspect of their processes of conquest, colonization, and the recreation of

power in Mexico over time.Specifically in the second chapter titled War, the


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author talks about two aspects that strongly resonated in me; in the first one the

author narrates removal of the sacred figures by indigenous people from temples

in order to save them from destruction:

Nonetheless, whether allies or adversaries of the Spanish, the native leaders

took precautions. In Tlaxcala the high priest had the temple of Camaxtli guarded

to prevent the Spanish from taking it. In Mexico City, the Mexica Sovereign

devoted himself to dispersing the principal idols of the capital by giving them toguardians chosen from within the sacerdotal ranks for safekeeping. Voluminous

and heavy bundles, conveyed by small boat over the lagoon and carried by men

through mountains, the gods followed complicated and secrets itineraries before

disappearing into the depths of the ground or into the bowels of the mountains.

(52:2001)

After this, Gruzinski addresses the profound impact on the indigenous peoples by

the mass removal of their sacred images and relentless evangelization process,

which changed their view of the world and about themselves:

Forevermore separated from their temples and the ceremonial cycles giving

them life, as cumbersome as they were compromising, the gods became

witnesses to a shattered, wandering heritage and were at the whim of sporadic

worship. The conquistadors idoloclasty, at times, brought the Indians onto the

ground the invaders had chosen and imposed to them. Having listened to so many


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sermons against idols, and having been so often reproached with idolatry, the

Indians became familiar with the stereotypes the Spanish and the clergy had of

them. Denounced and arrested, they admitted under fear of torture that they

were idolaters and that they worshipped idols. (56:2001)

It was not only the story of resistance and protection of their heritage by the

indigenous peoples that attracted me to this particular historic event, but the

dramatic potential of this situation. It is always hard to see how far people arewilling to go when they are faced with a threat to their personal and religious

beliefs. As well, discovering how some of the indigenous people betrayed their

own people to the Spaniards in the name of the new god intrigued me. With all

these things in mind, I conceived the narrative ofHidden Gods : a family, within a

community that is hiding their god from the Spaniard finds its children torn

between the two belief systems, the original native and the one brought by the

colonizers, the Catholicism.

As I said before, originally I sketched in my mind the story ofHidden Gods

as a fiction story using all the conventions from the hegemonic cinema. It was

until my arrival to York University that I really started to glimpse not only the

possibility but also the necessity to seek other forms to tell this story, apart from

the narrative conventions of dominant cinema, using instead others that can be

more truthful to the spirit of the story and to my original motivation to tell it.


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Historic Background

The Spanish Conquest of the Aztec empire led to the introduction of

Spanish religion, economic and political systems, language, and culture while

erasing the values, culture and language of the Amerindian peoples. Catholic

friars did the evangelization of the indigenous peoples, mainly the Franciscan

order, backed by the threat of military punishment and reprisal. The friars taughtCatholic values and beliefs to the indigenous people, forcing them to change and

to throw away their pagan beliefs and gods. Despite this, s ome indigenous

priests and nobles started a process of syncretism1 where they adapted aspects of

their culture to other aspects imposed by the conquerors. Other indigenous

nobles were able to send their idols and images in a secret exodus to more secure

locations to keep the survival of their beliefs and of their culture; there they

continued clandestine rituals and religious indigenous ceremonies.

Although this was a very decisive moment in Mexican history and in the

shaping of the Mexican identity, it is worth highlighting that the films that

undertake this topic are mainly big epic films, documentaries or melodramas.

As a Mexican filmmaker and as a devoted reader of the history of my

country, this project is something very close to me, and this one in particular,

1 This process is key to understand Mexican culture and it is a way how many indigenous culturessurvived while adopting and embracing a bug part of the new Spanish culture.


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evangelization methods. These elements altogether were the point of reference to

create the story of this project.

Hidden Gods is set some years after the fall of the Aztec empire. The

Franciscan order is busy evangelizing the indigenous people, while the Spaniards

control the new-born towns and communities. The indigenous families are trying

to adapt to the new ways imposed and taught by the conquerors. One family in

particular is the guard of one of the hidden images, the one whose symbolsresemble the deity Huitzilopochtli3 and to whom they perform clandestine

rituals. The children in the family, along with others in the community are

initiated into Catholicism, where the friars demonstrate to them the folly and

consequences of praying to their gods rather than their one god and only true

religion.

The way the children accept these two different paradigms will affect their

vision of their own rituals and realities. The Catholic values will dictate to these

children that in order to save all of the souls in the kingdom of the lord one has

to denounce anypagan rituals that are being performed, otherwise the sinners

will be punished and imprisoned. As well the idol (and hence the god itself) must

be destroyed, as it is the devil.

3 Huitzilopochtli is one of the key deities of the Aztec Mythology. He was the deity of war, sun,human sacrifice and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. His iconography includes elementssuch as the sun, the snake, the hummingbird, a mirror and feathers.


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In such a colonization context like the one after the Mexican conquest,

some of the indigenous cultures were almost erased, while some other were

domesticated and blended with the dominant culture. Nevertheless, it is

undeniable that some indigenous peoples and their culture continue to exist in

Mexico, and their influence is evident in contemporary Mexican culture. From the

very beginning I was interested in presenting a more intimate view of this story

where I explore the possibilities of visually representing the subjectivities of thecolonized ones counterpoised to the one from the colonizer who dominates its

reality and the way the life has to be lived and, hence, how stories are to be told.

In this sense, I realized that I needed to follow a path that walks in an

opposite direction to the structure and language of the hegemonic cinema. I felt in

this way, I would practice a resistance against all the dominant schemes in my

artistic field in the same way the characters of the story do. This is the way I

found to formally approach the position of the characters from my artistic

platform.


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Pre-production: Visualization of the Ancient Gods

It was during the pre-production process where I decided to change my

formal approach and to look for a way to tell the story that is different from the

one I have already used so far. As I mentioned before my first idea was to tell

Hidden Gods as a conventional fiction complete with dialogue, but after my

arrival to York University and having taken the Selected Topics of Production

course with professor Phil Hoffman this changed. In that course I had theopportunity to watch some experimental films that used alternative ways of

narration and expressive resources such as hand-processed film or the use and

reinterpretation of archive footage. Along with this I watched some interesting

films with alternatives ways not only to tell but also to see, with films such as

Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1989) , The Smell of Burning Ants (Jay Rosenblatt, 1994),

including the works of Professor HoffmanOn the Pond (1978) and What these

Ashes Wanted (2001).

I had the opportunity to link the new forms I got to know at York with the

ones I already saw in other films like Elias MerhigesBegotten (1990) and the

disquieting works of Maya Deren. There were also some of the elements used by

Guy Maddin that I wanted to bring as a reference for the possibilities of film,

thinking about his use of the expressiveness of the silent film and his stylization


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of the film image as an emotional vehicle, talking particularly of films such asThe

Saddest Music in the World (2003) and My Winnipeg (2007).

One non-cinematographic reference that was really important for me was

the book Genesis ( 1985 ) by Eduardo Galeano, recommended by professor Colleen

Wagner. In this text Galeano tells the story of the colonization of Latin America in

a fragmentary way, showing only meaningful moments isolated in time and space

through all this period of time. This was the notion upon which I base thestructure of Hidden Gods .

In this search of different ways to gaze, it was imperative for this project to

explore the films made by indigenous filmmakers, especially the ones from

Mexico.La vida de una familia Ikood or Life of an Ikood Family (1987) by Tefila

Palafox became a key discovery for this project because it revealed a particular

way of seeing which became the visual directive ofHidden Gods , I will explain this

in more depth. sentence fragment. Id cut I will explain or make it a separate

sentence.

Along these lines, my supervisor, professor Ali Kazimi suggested I revisit

the filmRichard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Mtis Child (1986) of the Abenaki

filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin in order to review the intimate approach to the

subjectivity of the main character. As well, professor Kazimi s advise of including

the filmography of Terrence Malik was also seminal for the conceptualization of


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this project. Maliks most influential film wasThe Tree of Life (2011), where the

director uses visual elements such as the sun, light, trees, water and other

elemental forces as metaphysical symbols irradiating a divine aura; through this

expressive device Malik reveals the inner world of his characters and suggests

the existence of a deeper meaning throughout all the world.

Simultaneously, during the course Selected Topics of Production I had the

opportunity to apply this new audio-visual conception in the making of a haiku.From this exercise I learned how to make a visual poem that transmits feelings

and sensations by using montage, images and abstracted sounds.

Hidden Gods references not only the clash of two cultures but also their

particular visions and cosmogonies. On the one hand the Spanish culture not only

brings the Catholic religion, but is also part of the hegemonic Western point of

view, directly linked to the traditional ways of representation in film (renaissance

style composition,mis en scene, Hollywood like production values, linear

narrative, among others). On the other hand are indigenous cultures with a

different point of views based on their cosmogony and polytheist religion; in my

opinion this different way to look at the world could arguably be linked with

alternative audio-visual grammars and marginal forms, such as the experimental

films. These forms I believe are linked to the means to transfer knowledge used

by these native cultures, orality, songs, tribal and performative dances. My


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interest is to deal with the different subjectivities that come from this story by

using different colour and tonal palettes , overlaying in combination with sound

design, songs and corporal performances (dance, theater, among others).

I believe that introducing a more lyrical and experimental approach is

more appropriate in my attempt to represent an indigenous gaze that is a familiar

gaze, and yet to some extent unknown for me. Even though the indigenous

heritage is part of a common background for all Mexicans, the indigenous gaze isstill an others gaze for me since I am already integrated into the urban modern

context of Mexico. By following the lyrical approach I chose to find a different and

alternative way to tell the story, a prioritization of expressiveness over narration,

where I needed to allow myself a higher level of abstractionism. In this sense, the

making of the script for this project required a different approach and a new

challenge for me.

At the end of this stage I concluded that inHidden Gods my main objective

is not to make an historically accurate reconstruction of the colonial times, but to

represent my impression of it through a particular story, while making a re-

interpretation of the origins of the Mexican culture in which I was born, and

which defines a big part of my own identity.


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hometown. I find that the landscapes of Mexico are not only a geographic context

in the story but a key element for the visual imagery ofHidden Gods . It is here that

one finds the cornfields, the river, the mesquite trees, the magueys, the cactuses,

the desert, the dry hills, which are my raw materials to transmit the way the

indigenous subjects of the past perceived the divine in their surroundings, as a

vivid? space of communion. At a personal level, I felt that it was important to

shoot this project in San Luis Potosi because I have a strong link with this land; itis my point of origin from which I conceive the world. This makes sense since I

am trying to tell a story about the origins of Mexican cultural from a very

personal and subjective point of view. This inquiry in the past that I make in this

project is also a spatial inquiry about the place I come from at the same time.

Since one of the main aspects of these projects was the reinvention of the

past, I had to search for locations that werevisually authentic. The natural

settings were easy to find to some extent, and I was able to find the ideal ones in

the surroundings out of the city, close to a small community called San Marcos

Carmona; there I found the cave, the cornfields, the hills and some desert

landscapes. Finding the river was harder, a really harsh drought had dried most

of the dams and rivers around the city, so it took a while to find this location. I

finally had to go fairly far from the city to theEl peaje dam. It was worth it. The


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church the Santuario del Desierto de nuestra Seora de Guadalupe, is one I

visited as a child, and one to which many Catholics make a pilgrimage to this day.

Roots and Casting

Following the alternative approach of this project I chose to work with

non-actors. In addition to their physical attributes of the Spaniard or Native

characters, I felt they needed to be emotionally linked and physically close to thespaces where the film was being shot. I also wanted people who are linked to

indigenous traditions, like the dancers. A key subjective filter for this work was a

symbolic reconnection to my roots and to the cultural family from which I come.

Impressions of the Past: Art Design inHidden Gods

I knew I was not making a historically accurate reconstruction of the

colonial times, but more an impressionistic representation of it. At the same time

for this fictional narrative, it was necessary to produce different costumes and

props that set the appropriate iconic references for the era. I researched the way

people used to dress, the tools and weapons used, but ultimately this was also

filtered through the way I imagine those elements look. In this sense, I

amalgamated imagery from a diversity of sources from academic text books to

the popular films about this era (Cabeza de Vaca [1991], La noche de los mayas


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[1939], La otra conquista [1998], Kino:la leyenda del padre negro [1993], El jardn

de la Ta Isabel [1971] ), as well as representations of this period made in cultural

festivals and other Mexican celebrations. Hence, the design of these elements was

more an exercise where I was able to draw upon the visual legacy of what is the

Indigenous and the Spanish in Mexico transmitted by the official history and the

hegemonic culture, pulled together with a cocktail of the visions of Sergei

Eisenstein, Emilio Fernndez and evenDora the explorer .The costumes ofHidden Gods are impressionistic. They give a sense of the

way the indigenous people, the children, thefriars look, but this is also in a sense

how I look at them, how I conceive them, which is somehow theatrical.

The three-dimensional recreation of the indigenous god that appears on

the film is not a true representation, but I did use information given by historians.

The design of the deity used inHidden Gods is mostly based in the figure of

Huitzilopochtli, the most important deity of the Aztecs, and one of the most

representative in Mexican culture. Curiously, a three dimensional representation

of this god has never been found yet, therefore I had to create it using the images

from the codices by adding some general symbols of Mexican culture. In the

image is possible to see symbols referring to corn, water, a maguey and the sun.

There is also a couple of hearts which makes reference to the way Aztec people

used to offer the heart of sacrificed people, and as well is a hint of the two hearts


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in conflict in this story. Finally, the figure shows the icons of an eagle and a snake,

which are very emblematic beasts in the Aztec culture, but as well, it makes

reference to the origin of Mexican nation, since it is possible to see these two

animals in the Mexican flag, telling the legend of Mexico foundation. This is a pre-

Columbian legend from the Aztec people, who were a nomadic people, and they

state that their god Huitzilopochtli told them to go out and wander looking for an

eagle eating a snake, and in the place where they find it, they shall build theirsacred city. The legend states that they found it in the middle of a lake, where

they built the great city of Tenochtitln.

Since many representations of the indigenous deities were destroyed in

the mass removal process that the story refers, I felt it would be appropriate to

imagine how one of this figures would look, and in that sense it would not refer

only to one culture in particular, but could symbolically represent all of the

indigenous cultures that suffered this destruction.

Mise en Scne : The Search for a Vivid Gaze

The visual approach to this project is based, as mentioned before, on the

documentary La vida de una familia Ikood by the Ikood filmmaker Tefila Palafox,

which is an exploration of the daily life of her family and her hometown, the

community San Mateo del Mar, in Oaxaca, Mexico. In this film, using a hand-held


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camera Palafoxs gaze avidly explores the space and the subjects that populate

this town, without paying attention to any mainstream production values or

narrative conventions; and occasionally one see the shadow of the filmmaker

while carrying the camera behind her subjects. There is an urgency to reveal life

in the town and this becomes a vital force that leads the gaze, and takes it to see

women cooking, fishermen out at sea, or people wandering around the streets.

She does this in order to preserve her culture, which she regards as being indanger of extinction due to the invading modernity. In the same way, I wanted to

transmit this urgency to reveal moments and actions, as the energy that guides

my gaze through all the moments that the indigenous characters, especially the

children in the story. I am the one desperately trying to catch these moments as if

I am witnessing the story; at least that was the feeling I had at the moment I was

shooting all the film.

It is undeniable that I followed the visual style ofcinma vrit

documentaries, using a handheld camera that walks around its subjects and

follows them wherever they go. It is a visual style that claims a freedom from the

very static framing of other documentary styles, and it gives the impression that

it is exploring the space and people around them in a proactive way. These were

the features that compelled me to use this aesthetic from the beginning, but

particularly I wanted to take advantage of the effect of reality that this style


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imprints in the image, in order to involve the spectator as much as possible in the

images, as if he/she were witnesses in the moments that are being shown to

them. As well, thecinma vrit approach fit this project because it emerged as an

alternative to the hegemonic model of storytelling, which is one of the main

motivations for this project.

It was also a personal choice that all of the lighting ofHidden Gods comes

from natural sources. The main reason is that I wanted to give more importanceto the lyrical approach of the making of the film during the shooting, prioritizing

intuition of what I had to shoot over the search for the best-lit composition; with

this decision I got rid of all the technical aspect that sometimes stops this lyrical

search for the cinematographic moment. As well, one of the challenges that I

imposed on myself was to get light nuances by using natural sources, and the

manipulation of the camera solely.


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Production: Letting the Moment Happen

To Act or To Do? The Actor-Director Relationship

The process of directing actors required a different level of involvement

with them according to their role, which brought some challenges. As I

mentioned, for this project non-actors (I will refer to them as actors) play the

characters, and the main directive I gave them was not to act but to do, to executea simple action and live through it, actions such as reaping, running, playing,

cleaning corn, etc. This was made for all the characters, especially the ones that

played the indigenous community and the Spanish soldiers. I discovered this was

no problem for the actors who lost any visible insecurity in front of the camera

when focusing more in their action; this gave me the flexibility to work and move

around them with the camera more confidently, thinking more in visualization

aspects than in acting direction at the moment; their only concern at times were

the way to make these actions, slower, faster, stronger, and so on.

I was anxious about how I would have to deal with one scene in particular;

the arrest of the parents of the indigenous family that is hiding the indigenous

god. I wanted the arrest to be brutal, in the line of todays police arrests, with the

indigenous resisting to the very end and the Spanish soldiers acting with

harshness. I was concerned how the actors would enact the violence. Luckily for


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me there were pre-existing friendship bonds between the actors, so they took a

playful approach to the scene, but still very committed in showing the harshness I

was looking for.

From the beginning,I deployed a specific strategy; the indigenous cast

were allowed to interact and come to know each other, not so with the actors

playing the Catholic priests. I kept them isolated from the rest of the cast,

because I wanted to set a different mood in them. The actor playing the friar whopreaches to the people, in front of the didactic theatre, was allowed to have more

interaction with the rest of the cast, to give a little extra connection.

My relationship with the children who play the main characters was as

close and friendly as I was able to make it; I started bonding with them even

before interacting with the rest of the cast. One of them, Alex, is a close relative,

however before the shooting we were quite distant from each other; Daniel, who

plays the conflicted brother, was present during the scouting of the locations and

helped me to explore the territory, the hills and the surroundings of his

community. This process was a great bonding exercise, and it was a start. I still

had to work hard with him to help him deliver the conflicted nature of his

character. This extra-bonding with the kids and between them gave me the

opportunity to find some genuine moments in front of the camera, and

spontaneous scenes, like the one in the cornfield.


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Alex, my relative, was the only actor who had to deliver some dramatic

moments. In the end, it was simple to just give him some generic emotions to

follow, such as fear, anguish or pain, and to ask him to express them physically

and by gestures; again, the elimination of dialog as a means to express this made

this task easier for the young Alex.

Dealing with the dancers posed a different kind of challenge, since they

had this view about the dances and rituals they perform as something sacred andceremonial and ones that shouldnt be corrupted or made in vain. They believe

that their dances have to honour their pre-Columbian ancestries by making the

dance in the way it was transmitted to them by the elders, always thanking the

elemental forces surrounding us, but as well, offering them to god, the catholic

one. As well, each dance has to be dedicated to Mother Mary, in the figure of the

many of the different catholic Virgins such as Guadalupe or Asuncin, offering

them their sacrifice and performance, with dances that can last up to 10 hours.

They were not keen to break away from the traditional nature and purpose of the

dances. I had to explain to them that I was asking them to perform as a means to

explore our roots and cultural identity, as a way to honour our ancestries and in

no way I meant to be disrespectful towards this tradition, one that I personally

admire. Finally, they agreed to perform for the camera and outside a particular

religious festivity, but we all had say a prayer and make an offering to the four


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Post production: Exploring New Territories

The editing process has been an adventure in the sense that I started in a

known and familiar territory that I was nervous to abandon, the one of the

conventional fiction, but I chose to follow the call and try new paths unexplored

and unknown to me. Therefore, I started making the cut following fiction films

conventions; mainly with the objective of making sure that the story was therewith the footage I had available.

Once I saw that the story existed inside the images I had, with its main

dramatic moments, my next attempt was to re-configure the structure and the

images in order to communicate the concepts of transculturation, colonialism,

exploitation, history omission and cultural resistance; the result was a confusing,

distancing and cold montage, that suppressed the drama of the sequences I had

captured, without even communicating the desired concepts.

The only option I found was to go back to a structured narrative upon

which I would build key moments of the story prioritizing the lyrical and

emotional aspect of the montage rather than a rational, conceptual and

theoretical approach. Thus, by making sequences based on emotion I was able to

deal with the underlying concepts I had in mind, such as oppression, colonialism,

freedom and resistance, in a deeper and more effective way.


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One of the key realisations that I had is that in this editing process, even

when I was communicating a story, the plot and characterswerent totally

defined. The film is not about them as character but rather as ideas, as symbols.

Thus, the indigenous children and characters that appear on the film represent all

the oppressed peoples while we still follow their story. The moments around

them are more focused on the veil of subjectivity around them than in a sharp

development of the plot and of characters.Having all this in mind, I got rid of the overly descriptive moments that I

wanted to use to give specific information about the conquest of Mexico, the

colonization and the evangelization process. I felt the images I had were in many

ways archetypes of these processes that are universally understood by everyone.

I realized that all this information was not necessary and making it so would only

be condescending to the viewer.

Then, I worked on highlighting the relationship between the brothers and

sharpening their point of view, their closeness and then the gradual separation

between them. As well, I got rid of an expository scene that gave information on

how the story of the colonisers ended with them exploiting Latin American

countries and supressing some of their native cultures, since the images already

told this story in a more symbolic and universal way.


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In the search of the right path for the story it was essential to find a

structure that connects with the viewer, facilitating the assimilation of the ideas

and emotions transmitted with the sequences. Hence, the more suitable structure

was a linear one, but not linear about the events of the story, but about history

itself. That is to say, people understand the way history has happened, a territory

and native customs that are untouched until the coloniser comes; then there is

resistance, but it is finally defeated. This is an underlying structure upon which allthe moments are developed even when they dont explicitly tell these facts. This

underlying structure allows me to show moments and aspects not known by the

viewer about stories such as this focusing on giving a more intimate and lyrical

approach, showing aspects such as the way these people lived through this

process, their fears, or the extremes of their loyalty to their beliefs, among others.

Detecting Tensions

One of my main guidelines in the editing process was to show the tensions

caused by the imposition of new beliefs by the colonizers and the actions of

resistance taken by the indigenous peoples. These tensions emerge at different

levels. As mentioned earlier, I decided to use the perspective of the children as a

reference to reveal the tension between their beliefs; on the one hand they live

inside the customs and traditions of their family and ancestries (native children


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playing, indigenous people surrounded by nature working, the rituals to honour

the indigenous deities), and on the other, the very effective and intimidating

methods of the colonisers (catechism, catholic visions of suffering and

punishment of hell, the whipping of a native). Aurally, the strongest way this

tension is shown is through chants, like the native lullaby sung by their mother

opposed to the Catholic chants and the liturgy. This precipitates a big inner

conflict in one of the children who accepts the moral catholic values as the trueones, bringing as well the final betrayal to his family and beliefs

I also added to this visual subtext by the choice of my colour palette. The

Spanish domination sequences are desaturated and cool, while those that deal

with the indigenous people are warm and saturated. The cold blue tones express

the rationality that Spaniards meant to bring. On the opposite side the palette

assigned for the indigenous people is warmer, with yellows, greens, white and

earth reddish tones, in an effort to transmit the vitality of their environment, as

well as their skin tone, an aspect that plays a very strong role in Mexican culture

even today.

Another level of tension is built through sound, where the sounds of

nature, drumming and native musical instruments such as sea shells and snail

shells, struggle to be heard against the increasingly loud and dominant catholic


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chants, the preaching of the catholic liturgy in Latin, and the ominous metallic

textures that speak to the iron weapons brought by the Spanish soldiers.

One more reason why I want to bring the different formats and forms into

the integration of this story is because in my view it reflects syncretism.

Syncretism involves the fusion of two epistemic paradigms into one, where one is

the one that dominates and the other is the dominated one, and it is important to

see how both paradigms are internalized by the characters. This polyphony inimages is mirrored in the sound design.

Sound: the Hidden Poetics

Throughout the editing process I realized that it was imperative to modify

my initial proposal, to get rid of one of the main ideas I had at the beginning, the

existence of an omniscient narrator, and other inner voices that would collide

through the whole story. This happened for a couple of reasons, mainly the

realization that the images were rich and spoke for themselves. Secondly the

sound exercise I had during the course Selected Topics of Production, gave me

the opportunity to go beyond narrative and make a more abstract sound design,

which left me with desire to explore this.

The first step in this process was the design of an aural palette following

the same idea and concepts I had with color, one for the colonizers and one for


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the native people. The sounds assigned with the Spanish colonisers include

metallic textures, discordant atmospheres, catholic chants and liturgical

ceremonies filtered though a machine. For the sounds dedicated to indigenous

themes the palette is wider; sounds of nature, native music and chants, drumming

and ancient indigenous music instruments. The drumming identifies the

moments of cultural resistance. According to historians this drumming was used

in ceremonies and dances to honour their gods, as well as a rallying battle callamong the indigenous peoples. Manuel Aguilar-Moreno4 explains how this

drumming was used during battle when he saysLeaders called out line

movements by using drums and shells. Once formation was ready, a group of

archers and slingers launched a storm of projectiles against the enemy line (120 :

2006). The objective of the wars and ceremonies was to appease the gods of these

peoples, thus maintaining the life and balance of the whole world. In both of them

the objective was the sacrifice and offering of the blood of prisoners to their gods

to ensure the survival of the world as they knew it, as Aguilar-Moreno points out:

It is safe to say that the Aztec practiced human sacrifice as a way to maintain the

Earths stasis, that is, to maintain the flow of life in the universe, to ensure

afterlife to the sacrificed subjects, and to control and appease an uncertain and

unstable environmental via their gods. (156:2006)

4 The drums used by the Aztec people were calledhuehutl or Teponaztli .


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I attempted to aurally refer to the growing conflict of beliefs that was

happening inside the children, and their possible transition to the new Western

values through the use of sound textures that simulate subjective noise. One

justification for this is that the switch to a new moral perspective implies a space

of distortion, in this case it happens as an aural short-circuit between what is

familiar and what is new, and at the end the prevailing sound would be of the

new domination. That is one of the reasons why after we witness the embracingof the new values by one of the kids, the Hallelujah chant dominates the auditory

space. There is one final attempt of the other kid to save his heritage from

destruction, and that is the reason why the drums vibrate and call to the

indigenous resistance.

The final clash happens at the moment when the brother who fought for

his beliefs is drowning along with the sculpture of the deity. He is drowned,

literally and aurally, by the ominous metallic noises and the Christian Hallelujah.

The Christian chant emerges victorious while the indigenous beliefs appear to be

lost in the dark silence.

Aquatic Echoes

One decision that I kept from the very beginning was the use of

underwater shots as a leitmot i f I wanted to emulate a subjective and somehow


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oneiric space through aquatic shots that provide a metallic liquid atmosphere,

this would be the expressive device to reveal the memory of a lost past.

As mentioned above I conceptually, wanted to link a cold blue space to the

colonisers who came from the other side of the blue, bringing the Western

reasoning to the indigenous peoples; that is why the leitmoti f appears after the

segment about evangelization, since they are enlightening the natives and

assimilating them into the new doctrine, but this attempt is still broken by theintrusion of the childrens feet, still resisting the noise of the reason.

Narratively, the underwater view is clearly a drama element, because it

represents the death of the character that is trying to save his beliefs and his own

god. We witness how the child dies in the water while the god is forever lost

under the water.

The Epilogue: A Final Call

The epilogue represents a personal position about the Spanish conquest,

the Western colonisation and the indigenous resistance; it is also my way to link

to the present this conflict that started at the origin of the Mexican nation. As

well, I intend to desacralize the European dominion and the apparent eradication

of indigenous culturesaccording to hegemonic culture by literally changing the

station to new ways of cultural expression that coexist in the Latin American


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space that are still alive through the many strategies used by the indigenous

peoples. We hear one example of the product of the cultural syncretism between

European and American culture in the form of a Cumbia song in the radio, which

is one of the many strategies followed by the indigenous peoples to preserve their

heritage. As well, we observe how many ancient traditions are still preserved

clandestinely and in other interstitial spaces where other ways to see the world

are still alive. Up in the sky, among the cables and the trees the conch shelltrumpet 5 makes a call to the resistance, to survival while aurally the lullaby fills

the screen as a the chant of the original beliefs of Mexicans that are still out there.

5 Also calledquiquiztli , it was used along with the drums as a call to combat, and in differentreligious dances


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Conclusions

I would like to make a balance of what the filmHidden Gods is compared to

what I wanted to get, having in mind that this is a comparison based in purely

subjective judgments since I am aware that many factors, technical, personal,

artistic and circumstantial would affect the process. Firstly, I believe that the film

presents an alternative to the conventional storytelling of the fiction mainstreamfilms by relying solely on images and sound to tell the story, but it was hard to

achieve. I believe the reason is that the hegemonic model of storytelling of films is

deeply rooted in me, and it has already become a part of my way of conceiving

filmmaking. For example, while I was shootingHidden Gods , my mind was still

using a narrative filter, which was dictating the way I had to be shooting the

image at that moment, especially in the scenes involving a particular action, like

the arrest or the escape.

However, I found that I achieved also a lyrical approach, which allowed

some genuine moments to come alive in front of the camera, like the moments of

the children playing or the indigenous people working. I think that these vivid

moments are the true achievements of this project -- the possibility to use them

to build a fiction story. This experience showed me that there are other ways to


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enrich this tradition, and that it is possible to take inspiration in other cultures

and their alternative ways of see.

One of the main lessons is that even when taking a lyrical approach, there

still should be creative directives traced from the very beginning. These

directives can be followed in different ways, but they should be there as a

reference of how to conceive, shoot, edit and make sound for the film. If these

directives are not in there, there will not be a clear way or goal about what is theintended achievement. The path that I believe should be taken in this creative

process is the conscious eradication of the already known forms of storytelling

and the formulation of new approaches. This is a search already made by many

filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Lars Von Trier, Glauber Rocha, etc. In this

search it is key to always have something to say, and not fall under empty

exercises of form. I believe that the content and the ideological posture of the

author or authors should go together in this search for new forms of telling.

To stay true to the values of the story and the ideas that I am telling was

one of the most important aspects that guided me through all the decision-

making processes. This became more important for me as I moved forward into

the project. This is the first fiction project in which I am aware of assuming a

personal ethic towards the film and its values. it is one of the lessons that will

surely stay with me in future projects.


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Filmography

Begotten. Screenplay by E. Elias Merhige. Dir. E. Elias Merhige. Prod. E. Elias

Merhige. Perf. Brian Salzberg, Donna Dempsey, Stephen Charles Berry.

1990. World Artists. Film.

Deus e o diabo na terra do sol. Screenplay by Glauber Rocha. Dir. Glauber Rocha.

Prod. Luiz Augusto Mendes, Luiz Paulino dos Santos. Perf. Geraldo Del Rey,Othon Bastos. 1964. Koch-Lorber-Films 1990. Film.

La otra conquista. Screenplay by Salvador Carrasco. Dir. Salvador Carrasco. Prod.

Manuel Arango, Alvaro Domingo, Plcido Domingo, Enrique Gonzlez

Torres, Rosala Salazar. Perf. Damin Delgado, Jos Carlos Rodrguez,

Elpidia Carrillo, Iaki Aierra and Diana Bracho. 1998. Anchor Bay. 2007.

Film.

La vida de una familia Ikood. Screenplay by collective. Dir. by Tefila Palafox.

1987. Film

My Winnipeg. Screenplay by Guy Maddin. Dir. Guy Maddin. Prod. Phyllis Laing,

Jody Shapiro. Perf. Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage, Amy Stewart. 2007. IFC Films.

2009. Film

On the Pond. Screenplay by Phil Hoffman. Dir. by Phil Hoffman. 1978. Film


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Richard Cardinal: Cry from the Diary of a Mtis Child. Screenplay by Alanis

Obomsawin. Dir. Alanis Obomsawin. Prod. Andy Thompson and Robert

Verrall. 2010, National Film Board, 1986. Film

The Smell of Burning Ants. Screenplay by Jay Rosenblatt. Dir. Jay Rosenblatt.

1994. Film.

The Tree of Life. Screenplay by Terrence Malik. Dir. by Terrence Malik. 2011. Fox

Searchlight Pictures. 2011. FilmThe Saddest Music in the World. Screenplay by Guy Maddin and George Toles. Dir.

Guy Maddin. Prod. Niv Fichman, Daniel Iron, Jody Shapiro. Perf. Isabella

Rossellini, Marc McKinney, Maria de Medeiros. 2003. IFC Films. Film

What These Ashes Wanted. Screenplay by Phil Hoffman. Dir. by Phil Hoffman.

2001. Film


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Bibliography

Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel. Handbook to the Life in the Aztec World. Los Angeles:

California State University, 2006. Print

Brenner, Anita. Idols Behind Altars. Mineola: Dover Publications Inc, 1929. Print.

Caso, Alfonso. The Aztecs, People of the Sun. Dunham: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1958. Print.Galeano, Eduardo. Genesis. Memory of Fire Volume I. New York: Nation Books,

1985. Print.

Gonzlez Hurtado, Argelia. Trazando al indio audiovisual: representacin, auto-

representacin y persistencia. Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2013.

Gruzinski, Serge. Images at war: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492-

2019). Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Print.

Len-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of

Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. Print.

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