New Artist Member: Elena Pardo
Posted April 8th, 2021 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is delighted to welcome Mexico City-based filmmaker Elena Pardo to the collection!
Elena Pardo is a maker, explorer, and promoter of the moving image. She has developed her practice around experimental cinema, combining the making of documentaries, expanded cinema, and animation. Pardo is also the co-founder of the Laboratorio Experimental de Cine (LEC), a space dedicated to the education and production of experimental and expanded cinema. She collaborates with independent film education projects like Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI) and JEQO, and is currently a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores grant. elenapardo.com
Five of Elena’s films are now available to rent from Canyon. In addition, her collaboration with Manuel Trujillo, Desaparecer, will soon be available to stream on Canyon’s Kinoscope channel.
Churubusco Inventory (2019, 7 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
The historical Estudios Churubusco lab, where Golden Era Mexican films were processed in the 1950s, is still running, pretty much unchanged. This film is a desperate and loving attempt to preserve the memory of the people, knowledge, and objects coexisting in this space, that risks closing at any time. Lab workers participated in the shooting as animators, actors, and technical advisors.
On the nature of the bone (2018, 2 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
The concept of memory and image are mixed in this piece to reveal the continuity in the justifications that the Mexican Government issues to perpetrate violence.
Mexico was ruled for 80 years by the same political party, during which power passed
unchanged from one president to the next in what some people call a “soft dictature.” These were the years of bloody repressions. One of these terrible events was the massacre of students in 1968 at the Tlatelolco square.
* In Mexico we use the term “hueso” (bone) to refer to power. A politician fetches a bone, a slice of power.
Desaparecer (2017, 4 minutes, b&w, sound, digital file)
Co-direction: Manuel Trujillo
Desaparecer / Disappear: to stop being in sight or in a place, cease to exist.
In Mexico one person disappears every 1 hour and 50 minutes, that is, 13 people a day. Through the use of landscape and self portrait, we explore the ephemeral quality of image and physical presence.
CINEMA’A, o de cómo curar el mal de archivo (2016, 13 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
In the midst of the Mazatec mountains in Oaxaca, there is a place that preserves sounds and images from Huautla’s past. This movie starts, as every archive does, with a promise of a future. The Renato García Dorantes archive contains movies in both film and video, as well as photos, cinematographic technology and sound recordings of the Mazatec culture in Oaxaca. Some of them come from what was screened at the Huautla Cinema and others from research made by foreigners and Renato himself. Inti García (Renato’s son) and his family are tracing the routes to achieve this encounter with the community.
Mi Barrio (2009, 5 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
Portrait of an old Mexico City neighborhood in the verge of gentrification.
