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Watkins Welcomes Director Natalia Almada to Screen 'El Velador'

Presented by Watkins College of Art, Design & Film at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film

January 26, 2012

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Director Natalia Almada, whose award-winning documentary films address the history and politics of Mexico from the perspective of ordinary people and everyday life, will speak at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film on Thursday, January 26, as part of the school’s Visiting Artists Series. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m., with a screening of her latest film, "El Velador" (“The Night Watchman”), at 6 p.m. in the Watkins Theater; a discussion and Q&A will immediately follow. The evening is free and the public is invited.

Almada’s work draws attention to overlooked narratives in such challenging concerns as immigration reform, border issues and human rights, while representing a significant contribution to the tradition of lyrical and personal documentary filmmaking. In films such as "El Velador" (2011) and "Al Otro Lado" (“To the Other Side,” 2005), a cemetery in Northwestern Mexico or the popular narcocorridos (“drug ballads”) become prisms for understanding the scope of the Mexican-American drug trade and the wars that it has spawned. In "El General" (“The General,” 2009), she uses her own family history—her great-grandfather was the revolutionary-era president Plutarco Calles—to address the history of nation that is, as she claims, living in the shadow of the past. These films not only achieve a remarkable gravity through their subject matter, but they also dramatize the effects of world-historical events on the lives of individuals far from the centers of power. While taking on controversial issues, these films manage to address their social and political content from a sympathetic and humanizing point of view.

“Natalia Almada’s films are among the best examples I know of ‘history from the standpoint of its victims’,” said Watkins assistant professor of art history Tom Williams, who met Almada during their time at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and will lead the post-screening conversation. “She consistently addresses some of the most important events of our era, but she does so with remarkable sensitivity and without ever losing sight of the people that they affect."

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film "El General," Natalia Almada is director/producer/DP/editor of "El Velador" (2011), which premiered at New Directors/New Films and the Cannes' Directors' Fortnight. Her previous credits include "All Water Has a Perfect Memory" (2001), an experimental short film that received international recognition, and "Al Otro Lado," her 2005 award-winning debut feature documentary about immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music. Almada’s films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Biennial, with all three feature documentaries broadcast on the award-winning series "POV." Almada is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2010 USA Artist Fellow. In 2011 she was named one of five annual recipients of the Alpert Award in the Arts, given to “creative experimenters who are challenging and transforming art, their respective disciplines, and society.” She graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, and shares her time between Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York.

SYNOPSIS OF EL VELADOR (72 min. – HD – 2011)
From dusk to dawn "El Velador" (“The Night Watchman”) accompanies Martin, the guardian angel who, night after night, watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico's most notorious Drug Lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us how, in the turmoil of Mexico's bloodiest conflict since the Revolution, ordinary life persists and quietly defies the dead.