SERGEI EISENSTEIN'S MEXICAN FOOTAGE
Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe, 1930 (camera roll excerpts)

by Sergueï EISENSTEIN
1930 / b&w / silent / 1S / 6' 04

"Filmed mid-December 1930, Eisenstein and his crew of Grigory Alexandrov and Eduard Tissé had just arrived in Mexico and first filmed events at the annual Fiesta Guadalupe. He had no plan or scenario in mind when he encountered and recorded the Indian pilgrims attending the religious festival. What we see are brief fragmentary views exquisitely captured by cameraman Tissé and shown in the sequence order as photographed. Eisenstein’s representations sculpt a stark and stoic record of a Mexican people, an unnamed tribe, frozen in the realistic natural passage of time and unencumbered by Eisenstein’s signature montage style. Even so, we can see the roots of his montage method to shoot multiple views and poses to break up visual space with perspectives void of horizontal spatial orientations. The faces and bodies form a unique gestalt geography within the 35mm film frame. Each face profiles monumental graphic gestures composed of small inadvertent movements, expressive as such as furtive glances, hair blown in breeze and the nearly frozen facial expressions exuded by the subjects captured for eternity." — Bruce Posner

"Eisenstein intended to make a film symphony, a film serape or Diego Rivera Mural of the seventh art. 'I wanted to show a timeless Mexico where the past was merged with the present'; but the shooting stopped abruptly because the funding was cut, and although they promised to send the material, never received it and he died without being able to conclude with his own hands one of his great works." — Oswaldo Betancourt

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound silent
rental fee 37,00 €