The Tlatelolco massacre, which Jorge Fons depicts in his film "Rojo Amanecer" (or "Red Dawn" in English), was the Mexican government's way of ridding the country of any possible threats of revolutionary action due to the Mexican Student Movement before the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico City. This is akin to the Russian's government killing of stray dogs and other animals prior to the winter Olympics in Sochi. In both cases, the government wanted their city to appear as clean and neat and orderly as possible. And more specifically with Mexico, it can be assumed that due to their financial ties with powerful countries such as the USA, they especially needed to make sure that their country looked like the kind of country you'd want to be in economic partnership with, not the kind depicted in "El Grito"; marching, disruptive, and revolutionary.
Whereas in "Rojo Amancer", the film is more claustrophobic than it's documentary brethren. By never leaving the apartment complex, and painting the police and military officials as even more violent and guerrilla-like (especially in the ending raid scene) than the revolutionaries, one can find it quite easy to side with Jorge and Sergio, especially since their family doesn't necessarily approve of their actions (e.g. "Before youth was different", said their grandfather Roque whose fighting in the Mexican Civil War, or Mexican Revolution, gives us some context on why he sees 68 as nonsensical student anger and violence and not a true revolution. And their revolutionary magazine found by their mother Alicia can also be viewed as the equivalent of a Playboy being found in the room of a suburban California teenage boy at the same time period). It's easy to see how - with their urging to their mother that it is their civic duty as students to be part of the revolution - Sergio and Jorgio might be the types of students to make satiric posters such as those found in Jacqueline Bixler's book and adhere to the guidelines set forth in the National Strike Committees pamphlet, especially "For our part, this is our answer, on one hand, to the angry threats of the government and, on the other hand, to the support people have given us, not only in this movement, but also by giving us the opportunity to study.
Through both "Rojo Amanecer" and "El Grito", we are shown a country in self-cleaning mode, through their "Olimpia Battalion", to satisfy the arrival of wealthy allies at any cost possible. So, just as the sad clown portrait on the wall of the apartment depicts, Mexico, on the surface, leading up to the Olympics, appears on the outside jovial and happy. Yet in the heart of it all, to those living and breathing the Mexican air, the marches and protests alike depicted in "El Grito" fall to their own tragic circumstances and show a country killing its own kind without any mercy whatsoever.
“Rojo Amanecer” left me shaken after the viewing tonight even though I knew what was going to happen. After discussing it with my Latin America group and reflecting on it for a while, I will try and put my thoughts into a coherent post.
Cinematically, the film is very claustrophobic as it takes places completely within the single apartment and we do not get any image of the outside world until a brief shot of two soldiers and a street sweeper appears before the end. The space inside is partially taken up during the first part by the family and then is completely and overwhelmingly filled by the family, the students, the tension from the arguments, and later the soldiers; “One apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (Bixler 193). Each shot is nearly filled with people, whether it’s the two brothers in the same frame or the father dominating a single shot, or a room filled with wounded students, there is hardly room to spare.
“El Grito,” on the other hand, is completely open in terms of space and politics. The images of protests supplement what is missed from “Rojo Amanecer,” we can see the actual revolution happening and the army that surrounded the masses; it is real footage shot by real students. The politics are uncensored and “the images speak for themselves” (Bixler 192). Having lost almost all of my Spanish comprehension that I learned in high school, I am unable to understand the narrator and speakers in the film, but the concrete images provide a sense of the movement that the brothers in “Rojo Amanecer” talk about. In fact specific features of the October 2nd protests are mentioned, such as the news report, “twenty dead and thirty-six wounded” (172), and the National Strike Committee’s list of demands.
Aside from the dramatic tensions that the film creates between the gunshots heard outside and silences along with the internal conflicts within the apartment walls, we have to remember that these events actually happened, as Oscar Menédez states, “Film makes it possible to observe historical events in images” (Bixler 195). Even today, students continue to disappear in violent shootings and opaque government activity, it’s clear that Mexico 1968 is still felt very deeply.
What really struck me while watching both films this week was how they managed to effectively communicate the tragic history of the student movement in Mexico despite the technical limitations inherent in making a film in the shadows of a repressive government. It’s a marvel that “El grito”, a film made relatively quickly after the massacre and subsequent Olympics, was even made considering how dangerous it was to try and capture footage during the events and how the police confiscated most of the footage on the night of the massacre (Bixler 192). While the lack of consistent footage of the massacre prevents the documentary from presenting a smooth narrative structure, it prompted the filmmakers to include other elements such as starkly contrasting still images that deliver an emotional punch while still continuing the timeline. Images of battered and bloodied students are intercut with pictures of the military and police formations, denoting the culpability of the authorities while also generating sympathy for the unarmed protestors who seem so much more pitiable when contrasted with armed soldiers silhouetted in front of blazing wreckage in the square. Although there isn’t any footage of student funerals or memorials, footage of a weeping woman and a graving being dug are juxtaposed with the Olympic opening ceremony with an intense emotional result, as the droning music and slowly marching athletes suggest a twisted funeral procession for the people killed by the government so that they wouldn’t “ruin” the games. Jorge Fons’ “Rojo amanecer” is similarly successful in the way it recaptures the brutality of the event despite several limitations. Because of inevitable censorship the film had to be made independently and, as Bixler notes, “Fons and his actors invested their own money and reconstructed a dilapidated storage area to serve as the Tlatelolco apartment” (193). Without funding to stage a reenactment of the massacre, the film is forced to use more cost effective and, ultimately, more jarring ways of demonstrating the violence of the authorities. While it is primarily the students that were the targets of the historical killings, the film, being monetarily restricted to one location, brings the killing into the household and has the military mercilessly kill each adult family member without the slightest regard for the wide spectrum of their political opinions. In having the soldiers gun down each person (and perspective) in what Bixler refers to as “a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (193), the film amplifies even further the horror of the event, widening its scope and transforming it into an affront against Mexico itself that spares no bloody details.
In class, Marco discussed Andre Bazin’s view of cinema and the fundamental role that photography plays in it. More specifically, he mentioned the physical reality that is shared in the creation of the photograph. Bazin describes it himself in his essay "The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” saying that "[t]he photograph as such and the object in itself share a common being, after the fashion of a fingerprint" (Film Theory Reader, 93). Therefore, in photography, the object being photographed and the camera are sharing light at any given moment in order to take a photograph, essentially sharing a common existence in reality at the time the representation is created. This shared existence is, at least for me, one of the most powerful aspects of “El Grito”.
The still images inserted between the varieties of documentary footage provide a more clear account of what is taking place than the footage does. Obviously, this is for a number of different reasons, such as lighting, timing, available technology, etc. Regardless, these images play an important role in the film as they share that common existence at the moment the photographs were taken, as Bazin discussed. Furthermore, the way the images are treated within the film-often intercut with the shaky, panning documentary footage- presents a pause in time that allows the audience to ponder the images for several seconds. This also suggests those specific moments as notable instances within the demonstrations as they give a closer, and clearer, look at what was taking place at those particular times. This is, again, where the idea of a shared existence becomes important. These images are a part of those events that took place back in 1968, but are more telling than the moving images, in my opinion, because of their clarity and the way they are edited together with that very footage. They present pauses within the film itself, but they also present pauses, moments, out of specific points in history. As Jacqueline Bixler states, “[i]n the absence of names, dates, and places, the images speak for themselves” (192).
In “Rojo Amanecer,” Jorge Fons displays the various perspectives regarding the student demonstrations of ’68 in Mexico through the dynamic of the family. Multiple generations (grandfather, mother and father, children) are shown living in the same apartment as the events of the film take place. As Jacqueline Bixler points out, the “[o]ne apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (193). Furthermore, each of their backgrounds holds significance, as the grandfather is a retired army general, the father works for the government in the State Department, and the two young men are students involved with the demonstrations against the government.
Throughout the film, the audience sees these differing stances clash with one another, with one of the most heated exchanges coming at the dinner table as the father, “…a small cog in the bureaucratic machinery of the PRI, tries to balance his political loyalties, his patriarchal control of the family, and the fact that his two oldest sons are active members of the student movement…” (Bixler 194). The audience is then presented with the chaotic nature of not just the demonstrations against the government, but how the family is consequently involved and tested, fighting with one another.
The scene that stuck with me the most, though, in regards to the differing views within the family, came later on in the film when the wounded student is on the bed in the two boys’ room. There is one point where the grandfather, the mother, and one of the older sons are lined up directly with one another. It is here that the son and the grandfather begin arguing about the events that have taken place, leaving the mother in the middle of them, playing the mediator. Positioning the characters in this way symbolizes their differing views, as well as their roles within the family (specifically with the mother as mediator, the one who does all of the work and keeps everything together). The son and grandfather are on different sides (and have different views), but, regardless, they are all still affected by what is going on, no matter how they view. Even though it is clear in the film, this scene drives home the point that the different family members all held different understandings of what was going on and what they should do about it.
On August 3, 1968, The Strike Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy concluded, “The masses, whose patience has been worn thin, will in all likelihood begin to express their opposition; if such opposition is not organized it risks being drowned in blood. We have seen that the bourgeoisie loses its head after a mere three days of student resistance; what will it not be willing to do when faced with a mass movement which directly threatens its economic interests?” (197). The Committee’s insinuation that the revolution could be “drowned in blood,” was of course correct, if not because of the disorganized nature of the movement, because of the sheer brutality of the government’s actions. “Rojo Amanacer” depicts the massacre at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco on October 2, 1968 almost exclusively in the apartment of a family that lived above the Plaza. By choosing this domestic setting, at its violent and bloody conclusion, the film explains why victims that had no direct ties to the ideology of the revolution before the massacre would continue to resist joining it for fear of the government. At the same time it exposes why the revolution against such an oppressive power was so necessary. Perhaps in part because of the domestic setting, the mother seems to be the most sympathetic character. She is portrayed as apolitical while her husband and father and her two sons represent the right and left respectively. While the four males are continuously arguing, their debates sometimes portrayed simplistic and naive, the mother is the character who holds the family together. Her main concern is everyone’s safety. This makes her murder, along with everyone else’s, particularly devastating and infuriating. By focusing on one family instead of the entire revolution, “Rojo Amanacer” humanizes the victims of the Mexican government by showing them to the audience on a personal level. “El Grito” uses the capabilities of the documentary feature to depict the more broad scope of the 1968 events. The final shots of the documentary reveal what was lingering behind the massacre depicted in both films – the 1968 Mexican Olympic Games. The juxtaposition of the propagandistic images and footage of a successful opening ceremony with the bloody images and footage of the governments attack on its own people make these final images of national pride even more disturbing. While it is easier for a fictional film to work with a small cast of characters instead of recreating the mass protests in a way which will inevitably look artificial, the documentary feature can edit existing footage together in order to make an argument. Despite separate means, both films achieve similar emotional responses from the audiences to depict the government’s “drowning of the revolution.”
The word “claustrophobic” drew my attention in a few other blogs. The interior shooting of “Rojo Amancer,” a budgetary limitation, also served a different angle in my eyes, as much of Mexican family life actually does happens indoors. The amount of urbanization of Mexico City doesn’t make it a particularly outdoors city, and the emphasis of family gatherings and familiar bonds permeates the culture. Along with this cultural difference, it is important to note a few more—specifically, patriotism and its role in the struggle. While other countries’ long 68’ was a time to become distanced from patriotism and one’s country, Mexico’s neocolonialist quality made this problematic within the population. On one hand, the people opposed the government and the repression. On the other hand, they didn’t have a communal internationality like the one Europe was claiming. As noted in Mexico 1968 and the Art(s) of Memory, “Mexicans are surrounded by history, obsessed with history, and fiercely nationalistic.” With fighters of the Revolution still alive, as the grandfather in “Rojo Amanecer,” the ideals “for which he fought shattered in a hail of bullets on the plaza below.” Those ideals, however, had been the focus of nationalism and unity of “el pueblo” against the oppression of dictatorship. Further back, the War for Independence against foreign influence began a long tradition of patriotism and national pride. This is perhaps most obvious during a sequence of “El Grito” when the student protesters begin singing the Mexican anthem. This struggle to fight the political structure without denying their nationality and patriotism shows an opposition. This is remarked by one of the student speeches, when she acknowledging what the government labels them: “comunistas,” “revoltosos,” y “antipatriotas.” This communist, troublemaker, antipatriotic student carries a struggle hundreds of years old. To say the movement of the 68’ had just a few causes is an understatement. The heavy influence of its Revolution, Latin America’s influence, the 1950’s worker oppression, the misbalanced resources, the Olympics, the fight for autonomy of universities, the protest against police violence, the longing for pacific demonstrations, the desire for trustworthy media, and the workers and parents anger of their impotence and their own issues and political struggles only begin to show the frame-work from which the movements derived. A few of this come through in both “Rojo Amanecer” and “El Grito.” Both of which denounce the lack of reliability in the mediums of radio and television, the lack of freedom to protest, the departure from Constitutional rights, and the situation of the students. Perhaps what is most significant of the complimentary quality of “El Grito” and “Rojo Amancer” is that despite having all the footage in one, and none in the other, both show the overall confusion, ignorance, and incomprehensibility of what happened. They show that whether back then, or now, documentary of historical fiction, interior or exterior, there is something lacking. There is still truth missing…
Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker (1971) beings with a quote by Mao Tse–tung, stating, “The revolution is not a social dinner, a literary event, a drawing or an embroidery; it cannot be done with…elegance and courtesy. The revolution is an act of violence.” The bottom line: regardless of whatever political outcome, who wins or who loses, people die. This quote seems unusual coming from a director of spaghetti westerns, a genre that remains notorious for its celebration of violence, but as the case may be, the film reflects the mind of a much older and wiser filmmaker who carries a sense of disenchantment to the world around him. Similarly, Rojo Amanecer (1989) shares this same sense of disillusionment and perceives individual or collective political activism as utterly useless against the hands of “the system.” For example, during the early dinner scene Humberto says when he was younger, “I went out to the street to defend the right to vote, even with a gun. What happened? The government usurped the power and bought Almazan to keep his mouth shut. That’s politics.” Aside from these overt political discussions, it seems unclear, at least to me, if the director Jorge Fons is concerned with violence as a political problem or if he is only concerned with violence in and of itself. By containing the film’s explicit and unflinching demonstration of violence until the climax, it literally overpowers the rest of the film and seemingly comes as a complete shock through breaking taboos, not just the elderly and women, but almost literally everyone in the room. This ending also seems bleaker when considering the complete lack of humor that pervades most of the film. Although Fons probably did not set out to make entertainment, this film would most likely be marketed as a violent “action” film, much like something like Abel Ferarra’s Ms. 45 (1981), in an attempt to profit from certain fringe audiences. Conversely, one could easily assume that El Grito (1968) works oppositely as an optimistic political film through its images of people marching in unity. As with most political documentaries, it would seem counter–revolutionary, rhetorically– speaking, to not provide a sense of optimism, no matter what the circumstances, or else no one would care to join the cause. El Grito seems to follow a traditional protest documentary where you first establish the activists as fun, peaceful people, then you set up the problem, and fallow with rising activism and obstacles. Wide angle lenses seem like an obvious choice in these films to make the protestors appear more expansive and empowering. Although I am not a native speaker, I can only assume the documentary discusses what, for example, the Strike Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Mexico state, “our participation in a national student movement should include two fundamental objectives: to encourage it to move leftward and to recruit the most advanced elements. The urgency of these tasks cannot be minimized.” (197). Although the For a Worker/Peasant/Student Alliances article alludes that political revolution remains an inclusive enterprise, given that “the government is not the government of all Mexicans,” it seems that protest documentaries speak from a privileged position to its audience as they attempt to educate the viewer on the certain actions and behaviors of political activists and this social transformation in a sense makes them part of a “special,” expansive club.
After the discussion of the events that inspired Rojo Amanecer, I really got an idea of the risked involved when trying to shed light on an incident that was covered up. If the film's conclusion is based in any real events, then frankly I'd be scared discussing the events as well. Most of the other films depict the events of protests and demonstrations like relics of the past adapted to the modern day. Rojo Amanecer feels like an eyewitness retelling the events to you. Their wounds may have healed, but they leave deep scars, and it really does show. Like the others have mentioned, the film is very claustrophobic as it all happens relatively in the same building block. The fact that you can't see outside really does make the characters feel cornered in their own home, not unlike the ending of United Red Army. Perhaps this is due to the public knowledge of the actual event. While the archive footage wasn't provided until the 2000s, everyone knew what the protests looked like from their point of view. Even if we weren't there in china, everyone knows what the view of Tiananmen Square. I believe this is the same case. One interesting detail I put together had to do with the student with the funds from the protestors. The can is full of change. I'm no authority on the Mexican Peso, but I assumed that it wasn't a whole lot, being mostly made up of coins. In the NPR interview, it was stated that the protestors threw heavy coins at the guards to defend themselves. Is there a connection? I can't make one, but I'd like to believe that this was intentional.
"As you know, we have a little hallway lounge at the top of the east stairs to the third floor, but it's a dark area. Somebody has set a floor lamp there to affect a hominess, but there's nowhere to plug in the lamp. So I suggest that an electrical outlet be added there.
And perhaps we ought to consider adding more outlets throughout the building so that students can recharge their laptops and other devices."
I would probably hesitate endorsing this. The events took place in '68 and were not broadcast. Most Mexicans did (and do) not love in Mexico City; and even of those, most were not at the event. RA is the first fiction film depicting/dealing with the events. 1990 is pre-internet; so it's unclear to me how many images people actually would have seen of '68. This is different with the events in China in '89: international TV broadcast those events to the world (but not in 68).
Although Marco only mentioned it in passing, I couldn’t help but think, while watching Rojo Amanecer, about what he said concerning the question: What is left? Are jeans left? Short skirts? The Beatles? Or, more importantly to the film, is long hair left? Throughout the film, characters question the meaning of a man with long hair. The father says that long hair is “homosexual.” Spoken by the father, the term “homosexual” is derogatory and seems to describe an extremely leftist quality. But Hidalgo, one of Mexico’s greatest heroes, had long hair as well. And the young child asks his grandfather if Hidalgo was a homosexual. The grandfather says of course not. Here, we see a plurality of opinions on what is left and what is good, within a single household. It seems that the youngest generation and the oldest have more in common with each other than with the middle generation. The grandfather’s rebellion won. The father’s rebellion was never able to get off the ground. The children’s generation is in the midst of their revolt. So, the grandfather looks at the youngest generation optimistically, while the father looks at it pessimistically. And here, is perhaps another great difference between the left and the right, which the film is trying to point out. The left looks at the future with optimism. They feel that the future is sure to change if they just will it to change. But when the right looks towards the future, all they see is their own destruction, and are terrified. They fear change. They fear it enough to kill those who want to implement it. But, after the massacre, and the family and the students are all together in the house, political ideologies appear to become impotent. The father, a man who works for the government, cares more about his family than about the government and leaves work to come home. When the special forces come into the apartment and examine the student children’s room, the picture of Che Guevara looks like a tragically false icon. When the interrogation leads to inquiring as to who is in the bathroom, one of the sons buckles, betrays the cause, and tells his “comrades” in the bathroom to come out, for fear that they will kill his father. It seems that in the face of death, the family stands paramount over politics. And this is what the right is trying to do: show the rebels the face of death. After the massacre, the protests stopped.
Also Herr Abel, I think you mentioned an essay concerning the question "what is left?" I was wondering if you could send me a link and give me the title and author's names. That would be very much appreciated.
I referred to a 4 part German TV documentary/essay, WAS WAR LINKS? (What was left?). You can watch it on Youtube (but it has not ENG subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bex21sP-rO4 (this is the 1st part; the others can be easily found).
Modern media is a major point of criticism in "Rojo Amanecer". Sometimes this criticism is clear and pointed, other times the media is critiqued in a subtle way. One of the subtle critiques happens 22 minutes into the film, when little Carlos comes home from school and wants to tell his grandfather about what he learned in history class. Fittingly, today’s lesson was based on Father Hidalgo, the figurehead of the Mexican War of Independence. Father Hidalgo was a revolutionary himself, and led a peasant army against the Spanish elite. This movement ultimately gained independence for the country, despite his execution. In this particular scene the grandfather is reading the newspaper, but stops to look at the page that little Carlos is trying to show him about Father Hidalgo. Little Carlos asks, “If he was gay?” which the grandfather replies with a stern, “No.” Carlos grabs his history book, along with the newspaper that the grandfather was just reading, and is about to put them in his backpack. The grandfather stops Carlos and takes the newspaper, saying, “Not the newspaper.” Maybe I am looking to deeply into this, but I see a statement being made. The newspaper is not history and vice versa. This is a lesson to read the news differently, more skeptically, than one would read a historical text.
Another more obvious scene that comments on modern media, is after the father has returned home and the massacre seems to be over. The father asks, “What time is it?” and is answered by “11:45”, to which he responds, “Time for the news.” Everybody, except for Luis who is laying in bed, plops down in front of the television. Unfortunately the news is inaccurate, and blames the students for the violence that occurred. They were all depending on the news for an unbiased explanation, but only received the disinformation that was filtered by the state before broadcast. This chapter of Mexican history remains unexplained to this day, and plays into what Mexican cultural historians refer to as the “politics of remembering,” (Bixler, 170). As Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead point out, it is important to “remain attentive to who is doing the remembering and forgetting.”
El Grito and Rojo Amanecer are two very different films, both in their visual style and dramatic representations. El Grito plays as a war-like film, while Rojo Amanecer plays like a family melodrama dealing with generational differences - and “pussy music”. In El Grito we see images of revolutionary violence where in Rojo Amanecer we have prolonged shots of dialogue and problems happening within the home. They are very much two different views from the revolution; one is from within the direct line of fire while the other is from the outside view, remaining on the outskirts of the war ground. El Grito is from the perspective of the students amidst their revolution and Rojo Amanecer from the perspective of the family - or the bystander. The threats are very much the same, but play out in contrasting ways. In Rojo Amanecer, we never leave the building in which the family leaves, not until the final moments of the film when the last remaining child - the innocent and uninvolved member - walks out after finding his whole family slaughtered. Even though we never leave the building, and never move into the zone of conflict, the violence and terror moves into the space of the home, eliminating the safety and sanctity of both the space and congregation of family. It greatly represents how the threat of violence extends far beyond the call of duty for students and others involved in the rioting and revolts.
The overall moods in both “El Grito” and “Rojo Amanecer” are starkly contrasted, but both give the viewer an idea of how the people of Mexico were affected by the Tlatelolco Massacre that took place prior to the summer Olympics in 1968. In “Rojo Amanecer” there is a stronger representation of Mexican Culture and Family dynamic, where in “El Grito” this incident is presented more as an historical artifact. The fact that “El grito” is black and white gives us the feeling that what is being presented are facts, stripped down to a sort of pragmatic reality. Through the honest depiction that “El grito” tries to give the viewer, despite the natural limitations placed by the government at the time, it is contrasted with elements of artistic expression. This expression is seen literally through footage of people cathartically creating art, but also the way in which some of the scenes are composed, by using a combination of unique framing and the standard rule of thirds, it makes this film seem like more of an art piece. This combination of historically depiction and artistic expression seen through “El Grito” is an interesting contrast to the overall mood of Rojo. Rojo tells that story of this massacre through a more accessible story, using family dynamic as an avenue to express opinions on the student movement through generations. In some ways it seems more lively or fruitful, not just because it is filmed in color, but intertwined into the theme of family and unity there is a presence of food that plays a role in this film that is presented right before and during a conflict occurs within the family. A Few times, when there were arguments among the generations, these took place in the kitchen where food was present, usually being prepared, giving the viewer a glimpse into the culture, something that “El grito” didn’t do.
Between the two films, El Grito and Rojo Amanecer, I find many other students sharing my own thoughts as to the large contrast from the space an apartment, to the actual streets in Mexico. The contrast of the two gives the audience a 360 view of the revolution, but also what comes of it, punishment and oppression leaving the people claustrophobic in terms of freedom. I was surprised at both films’ honesty, and in fact shocked from the actual footage in El Grito. This film of course has a sort of pure honesty being live footage, and showing events as they happen, as no film besides this kind can imitate such power.
However I was taken aback completely by Rojo Amanecer, and was also insanely impressed as to how such a budget can convey so much to the screen. As one of the students lay in bed, swaying in and out of sleep after losing blood, he suddenly wakes up and tells his comrades, his friends, that he had a dream. Instantly, the word ‘dream’ took me back to Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” and I was almost disgusted to associate this man’s dream with the dreams of the trio in the film. The three in “The Dreamers”, I believe, were labeled as such because all they did was dream, they did not do. In fact, while I do not believe this was discussed in class, I would say from their sleeping state in the last 10 minutes of the film, and Eva Green’s character’s attempt to kill the three of them together, the ending riot scene in its entirety was a dream; simply, I believe it is evident that the characters do not fight for their revolution with more than words.
Yet, the students in Rojo Amanecer were not just dreamers, but activists as well. Still, his haunting statement of having a dream, and coming to a dark realization of actual events reminded me that Bertolucci’s film was a sort of soft child’s play in comparison. These students did not dream of the things the Mexican military were capable of, and nothing could have prepared them for such as is shown in El Grito as well. This was a reality that was hard to swallow for me, and made me more interested than ever before to present on Latin and South America.
I think the evidence from within The Dreamers would suggest that the very end is no longer a "dream." Here close cinematic analysis would be important. For example, handling of point of view can tell us whether or not this is "meant" to be a dream or not (film history has conventions for marking a dream as a dream, as well as for marking that one has returned to the "real" world). Still, your larger point comparing the activism (or lack thereof) b/w the two films is well taken.
The role of women in the months leading up to and during the Tlatelolco Massacre as it is depicted in the films Rojo Amanecer (Red Dawn; Jorge Fons, 1990) & El Grito (The Scream; Leobardo López Aretche, 1968) is very interesting, especially in contrast to each other. In the latter, women are shown in much more varied roles and participating almost equally with their male counterparts in the revolution. Right from the opening, it is made clear that women are not relegated to the domestic sphere – as they are in Rojo Amanecer – because the omnipresent yet passionate narrator is a woman. While the ratio between male and female students is fairly skewed in the favor of the men, women are still shown doing many of the same activities as men; they both hand out pamphlets of protest, paint revolutionary murals, print handouts, and actively listen at the many, many rallies. Some issues arise when looking at the number of speakers, for example: out of the approximately 12 speakers, only 2 are women. But in those women’s speeches, interesting patterns arise, such as the focus on el pueblo and la familia in the first woman’s speech and the incredibly passionate delivery of the second woman, and the fact that both women give significantly more time for applause and affirmation. Outside of these speeches, the imagery of women is quite similar to that of the men, as they are shown in poses of revolution (which is exceptionally clear in the repetition [at least 4 times] of the very long-haired woman in the flowing dress with both hands raised in the air) and conflict (seen in the campesina woman in the government building [I think; my Spanish is so rusty it’s unsafe to consider without a tetanus shot] who is physically and verbally challenging to the men in suits, personifying the title)…although they do not get the same cumulative amount of screen-time.
On the other hand, in Rojo Amanecer, there are only four female characters – the mother Alicia, the daughter Graciela/Chelita, the female student, and the neighbor. As has been talked about in others’ blog posts, Alicia is very much a caregiver, both just within her family and to the students. Graciela is rather silly and selfish, focused more on her looks and being rich than being helpful in any way, even solely within her own family. The student is a little more complex, but it is incredibly telling that I can’t remember her name or even if we are given her name. Women in the later film are basically stereotypes, confined to the domestic sphere and in great danger whenever they leave it.
One last interesting note is the fact that all the photographers for El Grito are men. This points to the conclusion that the reality is that women were much more active and out-and-about in the revolution in Mexico in 1968, even though the more modern film by 22-ish years is more restrictive of women’s roles.
One of the first things I noticed when watching “Rojo amanacer” was the absence of the outside world. It struck me as odd that there were no scenes of protests or even any other locations than the apartment. However after reading Jacqueline Bixler’s article I now know why. This movie was shot independently, because it would be censored by the Mexican government. So making the film independently, Jorge Fons had little money to work with. Knowing this, Fons still did a very good job of portraying the horror of the Tlatelolco massacre, as well as the state of the country (revolution) without actually showing anything other than the apartment. According to Bixler: “Fons and his actors invested their own money and reconstructed a dilapidated storage area to serve as the Tlatelolco apartment”. It’s like the apartment is one small representation of Mexico as a whole, at this time. In the scene when the family is eating dinner, almost all views on the movement of 68 are being represented in the argument between the two boys, their father, their mother, and their grandfather. Jacqueline Bixler reiterates this point in her article: “One apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (Bixler, 193) One of my first thoughts after the viewing of Rojo Amanecer was “did the Mexican Army really force themselves in to homes and kill innocent people?” With the uncertain nature of the details of the Tlatelolco massacre, I am still unsure if this is historically correct. However, I examined the reason behind this scene. Since there was no possibility of spending resources on staging their own massacre, they had to stage a massacre in the “microcosm” of the apartment. Without this scene, the audience would feel detached from the violence of the massacre.
I wonder if this movie had been made 10 years later, after Vincente Fox was elected and made the footage of the massacre available, as well as other facts about the massacre that were previously a mystery, how would this movie have been made differently? For one, it wouldn’t have had to be an independent because of censorship, it could have been a big budget film with many reenactments of the massacre, as well as splicing in clips of the actual massacre. Fons also could have been even more historically accurate, given new information on the massacre.
“Rojo Amanecer” brings out the complex relationship in a family that does not share similar interest. A Patrilocal family is the main interest of the film. Rarely does the camera shy away from the apartment, with exceptions of a few wide shots of Mexico City, as well as the apartment complex of where the film is shot. The role of the family plays into the larger problem of the city. Beto, the father, is a government official that doesn’t has as much authority as his father-in-law, an ex military captain. The grandfather is always complaining about the youth, and Beto is adamant that his sons should not be standing up to the government. The students are fighting for a more democratic society and want to break free from the authoritarian style leadership that the political party in charge is displaying on its citizens. From the beginning of Rojo Amanecer when the oldest grandsons are complaining that what is being broadcasted on the radio is not free speech, you understand the depth of how the government is able to control and influence its citizens. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many Mexicans would have been illiterate (Bixler, 174). 1968 Mexico, you would see more illiterate people than that of free thinkers. I would consider this time period in Mexico close to the enlightenment period here in America and Europe. El Grito is an interesting perspective because it shows how massive the student movement really was. You never really got the feeling of how many people were really behind the movement from watching Rojo Amanecer. Unfortunately I could not find a version with subtitles so I don’t know how to interpret it. However, I find it interesting that much of the footage seems pretty rare, such as the militarization of police, and the violence that resulted in many of the youth’s deaths. Many students seem to be provoking police, by walking around with tape on their mouths, holding their hand up, displaying the peace sign and at other times chanting in the favor of public support. Ending El Grito with the Olympics and the use of banging drums to me really emphasis that government won its battle by using brute force against the students, which was completely uncalled for. The party in power simply refused to turn over any of its power over the public.
While I've studied this time period through the film lenses before and have worked hard to get a grasp on it, observing what happened in Latin America during this time period, specifically in Mexico, has made me consider it from a different point of view. Something I noticed in "Rojo Amenecer" (1990) is the status of the family which is presumably middle class. Some clues that point to their middle class status is the fact that the family has the ability to be supported contentedly with a single income, financially stable enough for a grandparent to live in and a comfortably sized apartment. Considering the people against whom the youth were rebelling during this time period, the students' middle class status is really interesting. Similarly, in The Dreamers, the siblings live in a very extravagant home where the parents are able to hand out money right and left. Look at the home Meinhoff lives in before she becomes a rebel. It, too, is a large house that reveals a middle class status. If I am reading the films correctly, these students then are fighting against the own places from which they came. Of course, this doesn't make the work the students unjustified, but it makes it more complicated and more interesting.
This is especially the case considering the soldiers against whom the students were fighting. In an article called, "'Presna, Presna': A Journalist's Reflections on Mexico '68," John Rodda writes about his experience in Mexico during the massacre. He writes, "When we reached the bottom of the staircase the surrounding area was full of troops who stood around shivering. If you examine the few photographs of soldiers involved in this operation and see the glaze of their eyes, this, together with their shivering, supports the suspicion that they were high on drugs" (15). I don't know how legitimate this is, but taken into consideration along with the fact that the soldiers were young and lower class and the probability that the first gunshot was fired at the soldiers by men working for the government makes the massacre in Mexico even more troubling. The level of corruption that is involved in the massacre is beyond disturbing, and I think the ending of the film does a brutal job of showing not only the violence of the masterminds of the massacre, but the complicated relationships among the gangs, police, students and the students parents.
I haven't fully developed my thoughts on all of the messy and complex connections dealing with family and with economic status, but it's something I think I'm going to start looking into further.
Memory is a tricky thing, because even though we try to remember as much as we can, there are always some details that slip through the cracks. Many individuals tend to use photography or film to capture a lost memory but there are also complication with that. First, filmstrips and photos are easily destroyed, and secondly, even though types of media do not even tell the whole picture. When you take a picture, you are highlighting the objects that are in the frame, and isolating the objects out of the picture. Both el Girto (1968) and Roco Amanecer (1990) are films that use the power of framing to their advantages.
El Grito show the viewer everything it sees, the violence that is becoming upon these people and the emotions it is trying to evoke. However, the main question we should be asking ourselves is can we trust what we are truly seeing or our we being block from something outside of the screen. Now, through guided research, one could probably find out, but the average viewer would not be able to look up this information and is just left with the fact handed to him/her.
Roco Amanecer, however, uses framing to hide the violence from the audience and focuses on the family inside. As Jacqueline E. Bixler notes “ Mexico’s intellectuals and artists have spent those years counteracting the politics of amnesia by creating a repertoire of collective memories” (171). This film stands out because within it’s framing it hiding a detail political message even when you think it is not. A lot of this may be production design and not enough space for action sequences, but nonetheless, this affect disguises who is at fault for the violence, the students or the military? We are left to wonder through the reactions of different characters like the Grandfather, mother or even the students themselves. For the majority of the film, Director Jorge Fons does not want to take a stand of who was at fault, until he pulls down the metaphorical curtain of the rouge army and kills everyone except for the boy.
Framing is a powerful tool, it gives the director power as too what story he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it. This can have a great affect on how history is perceived has we have already noted in class, and can affect how we remember certain events of our history.
“Rojo Amanecer” was difficult for me to maintain my attention a lot of the time. I thought the way the movie was filmed; the style and the effects accurately rooted the movie in the nineties. I have skimmed some other people’s blog posts and I agree that the movie is very claustrophobic, in the sense that the only environment is the apartment, excluding the small scene of the city street at the end of the movie. The feeling of tension is felt throughout the entire movie, through the lack of music, which can be used as a buffer between the silence of scene changes or pauses in dialogue. The other reason for the tension was through the relations of the characters and the way they spoke to each other. The opposing feelings of the mother, who just wanted her family safe and the soldiers and students or as Jeremi Suri stated, the “provocateurs,” in “The Mexican Student Movement: Its Meaning and Perspectives” wanted to fight back against the government with no regards towards external consequences. The obvious consequence is that almost everyone dies at the end; as does the massacre happen outside of their apartment building. The dynamics between the family members also have consequences. The members that were in support of the revolts, brought the problems home. They let the hostility into their home. But in wartime, no matter where you are or who you are, you will be effects. It wasn't just the youth who were effected; everyone who lived in Mexico was affected.
Like we talked about in class, analog photography (and, therefore, the cinema) tends to be trusted as sources of truth, for better for worse. This is because of the nature of film: it records an optical fact, staged or not, and one cannot manipulate images in the darkroom like you can in Photoshop. This discussion resonates well when viewing El Grito. The film itself is real footage shot by students. Though all the footage is inherently “edited” through bias and framing, everything that appears in the film did, in fact, happen at one point in time. As Jacqueline Bixler puts it, the images “speak for themselves.” This lends El Grito a real sense of authenticity that many of the other films we’ve seen in class seem to lack.
On the other hand we have Rojo Amanecer, which despite being a staged and scripted film, also maintains its own sense of authenticity. The film was shot in confined quarters and accommodates a large cast. This lends the film a sense of chaos; there is a lot of action and many characters to try to keep up with. But it brings the action to the viewer, up close, unafraid to show the violence and fear experienced by the student protestors and their loved ones.
I wonder, though, whether images actually "speak for themselves." Even if their documentary character--the "reality" of what's depicted--seems very strong, can we ever say that images, even such images, "speak for themselves"? Consider the possibility that "authenticity" might be an effect lie anything else.
In Bixler’s article, she mentions something that resonated with me because of a previous discussion that I had over a similar subject matter. The discussion I had was comparing historical fiction and fiction with a historical setting. What makes something Historical fiction as opposed to fiction with an historic setting? In her article Bixler brings up that, “the Spanish word historia refers both to fictional tales and to the purportedly factual narrative of past events…”(171). This was interesting to me in how it framed Rojo Amencer. When examining this film, one is forced to analyze whether it is entirely fictional with an historic setting, fictionalized but based off of true events, or if it is entirely real footage of the event. In this case, it’s an example of historical fiction as opposed to fiction with an historic setting. There are very specific instances in the film in which through dialogue or actions, the character are reminding viewers of the actual event. There is a close up of the grandfather removing the previous calendar day in order to reveal the day of the massacre, the father very specifically mentions that they live in the city of Tlatelolco, the mother goes through the months that her sons have been activists, and the older sons mention the school violence as being one of the reasons that they are protesting and in the streets.
This is unique to the other films that we have viewed in class so far because it focuses on a perspective of a very specific event. It is not a film about a movement or what the movement meant to people, rather what effect a tragic event had on those living it and the atrocities experienced. After watching the film, one not left with an impression of goals being right or wrong, but instead the audience is left in awe as they are left the image of a boy who’s entire family was murdered before him wandering the streets where officials are washing away blood and evidence of a massacre.
When contrasting Rojo Amencer(1990) with El Grito (1968) I am impressed with the incredible restraint Rojo Amencer exhibits. El Grito with its extensive documentation of the movements of both the army and the students, show perhaps the biggest scale we have yet seen on a film in this class. Meanwhile, Rojo Amencer never gives so much as a glimpse of the grand scale or extensive carnage. It has the confidence that its approach will leave the bigger impact with the audience, and I can't disagree with the choice, as I was left rather devastated by the film's brutal conclusion. Not even in its final moments does the film give us the satisfaction. Instead it pans backward to reveal the only the service workers swiftly erasing the evidence of the tragedy. Left to hunger we are for truth, but it never comes. It is denied in much in the same way the victims and their families had the truth denied to them. Hauntingly, it mirrors reality as even today, the sheer number of causalities is unknown.
Not even the similar film Dreamers(2003) chose to fully trap us in the apartment. Because for Dreamers, revolution comes as (quite literally) the life saving breath. Not only for the dreamers but for the audience as well. We too breach free of the suffocating apartment and are given the catharsis of action, passion, and movement. Continuing the analogy to Rojo Amencer we are left to suffocate until we are brutalized emotionally and denied our catharsis.
I can't help but feel from the readings (particularly the National Strike Committee manifesto) and the films we watched that Mexico was the most oppressive of all these revolutionary nations. Detailed in the National Strike Committee manifesto, it reveals the depths of the corruption. So much so that they rallied for the new organization of a union. So far was the corruption that they couldn't even trust the unions? In France we saw similar corruption in the unions, but the deals they made were at least good enough that it pacified a large portion of the workers. Then of course there is the brutality. When you compare this to the Japanese Lodge Siege, the juxtaposition daunting.
As many other people have noted, 'El grito' is remarkable in its simple yet radical presentation. Whether it is an easy or difficult film to consume isn't for me to say, really; even while paying close attention, even after having studied Spanish for four years, I was hardly able to get the gist of a scene before the images changed; when the man was sitting in a hospital bed, for example, I caught 'police' and 'forming my political ideology' before the filmmakers moved us back outside without an explanation. From the readings, though, I suspect that it was almost as chaotic for a native speaker. Film analyst Jorge Ayala Blanco, via the Bixler article, called El grito 'a mutilated, unanimous shout,' and while to his ears, it was presumably a shouted word or phrase, it didn't explicitly build or support an argument.
Instead, El grito's strength comes from its images. Specifically, the film gains a lot from its use of long shots of the protests in Mexico City. From cameras [presumably] in the apartment buildings around the square [an eerily similar angle to the government footage that Echeverria commissioned], the viewer can see the extent of the protests: thousands of people stretch into the background, overflowing out of the shot and into greater Mexico City. For a government claiming 'four deaths,' the image of thousands of people being marched on by uniformed soldiers and machine-gun-bearing tanks is in itself damning.
It's incredible, then, just how effective 'Rojo Amanecer' manages to be without any of those images. Like Dr Abel said on Tuesday, the films almost function perfectly as a shot-reverse shot; in the one, we see a wholly impersonal picture of the protests from a high window, and in the other, we see the effects and aftereffects of the protests on a single family in a single apartment. Although, I definitely found myself instinctively questioning 'Rojo Amanecer' more than I did 'El grito.' After viewing 'Rojo Amanecer,' I felt like I needed to go fact-check the statements Jorge and Sergio made about the protests; after 'El grito,' I had much weaker doubts. And, maybe this is something to be more careful about in the future.
The Tlatelolco massacre, which Jorge Fons depicts in his film "Rojo Amanecer" (or "Red Dawn" in English), was the Mexican government's way of ridding the country of any possible threats of revolutionary action due to the Mexican Student Movement before the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico City. This is akin to the Russian's government killing of stray dogs and other animals prior to the winter Olympics in Sochi. In both cases, the government wanted their city to appear as clean and neat and orderly as possible. And more specifically with Mexico, it can be assumed that due to their financial ties with powerful countries such as the USA, they especially needed to make sure that their country looked like the kind of country you'd want to be in economic partnership with, not the kind depicted in "El Grito"; marching, disruptive, and revolutionary.
ReplyDeleteWhereas in "Rojo Amancer", the film is more claustrophobic than it's documentary brethren. By never leaving the apartment complex, and painting the police and military officials as even more violent and guerrilla-like (especially in the ending raid scene) than the revolutionaries, one can find it quite easy to side with Jorge and Sergio, especially since their family doesn't necessarily approve of their actions (e.g. "Before youth was different", said their grandfather Roque whose fighting in the Mexican Civil War, or Mexican Revolution, gives us some context on why he sees 68 as nonsensical student anger and violence and not a true revolution. And their revolutionary magazine found by their mother Alicia can also be viewed as the equivalent of a Playboy being found in the room of a suburban California teenage boy at the same time period). It's easy to see how - with their urging to their mother that it is their civic duty as students to be part of the revolution - Sergio and Jorgio might be the types of students to make satiric posters such as those found in Jacqueline Bixler's book and adhere to the guidelines set forth in the National Strike Committees pamphlet, especially "For our part, this is our answer, on one hand, to the angry threats of the government and, on the other hand, to the support people have given us, not only in this movement, but also by giving us the opportunity to study.
Through both "Rojo Amanecer" and "El Grito", we are shown a country in self-cleaning mode, through their "Olimpia Battalion", to satisfy the arrival of wealthy allies at any cost possible. So, just as the sad clown portrait on the wall of the apartment depicts, Mexico, on the surface, leading up to the Olympics, appears on the outside jovial and happy. Yet in the heart of it all, to those living and breathing the Mexican air, the marches and protests alike depicted in "El Grito" fall to their own tragic circumstances and show a country killing its own kind without any mercy whatsoever.
“Rojo Amanecer” left me shaken after the viewing tonight even though I knew what was going to happen. After discussing it with my Latin America group and reflecting on it for a while, I will try and put my thoughts into a coherent post.
ReplyDeleteCinematically, the film is very claustrophobic as it takes places completely within the single apartment and we do not get any image of the outside world until a brief shot of two soldiers and a street sweeper appears before the end. The space inside is partially taken up during the first part by the family and then is completely and overwhelmingly filled by the family, the students, the tension from the arguments, and later the soldiers; “One apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (Bixler 193). Each shot is nearly filled with people, whether it’s the two brothers in the same frame or the father dominating a single shot, or a room filled with wounded students, there is hardly room to spare.
“El Grito,” on the other hand, is completely open in terms of space and politics. The images of protests supplement what is missed from “Rojo Amanecer,” we can see the actual revolution happening and the army that surrounded the masses; it is real footage shot by real students. The politics are uncensored and “the images speak for themselves” (Bixler 192). Having lost almost all of my Spanish comprehension that I learned in high school, I am unable to understand the narrator and speakers in the film, but the concrete images provide a sense of the movement that the brothers in “Rojo Amanecer” talk about. In fact specific features of the October 2nd protests are mentioned, such as the news report, “twenty dead and thirty-six wounded” (172), and the National Strike Committee’s list of demands.
Aside from the dramatic tensions that the film creates between the gunshots heard outside and silences along with the internal conflicts within the apartment walls, we have to remember that these events actually happened, as Oscar Menédez states, “Film makes it possible to observe historical events in images” (Bixler 195). Even today, students continue to disappear in violent shootings and opaque government activity, it’s clear that Mexico 1968 is still felt very deeply.
What really struck me while watching both films this week was how they managed to effectively communicate the tragic history of the student movement in Mexico despite the technical limitations inherent in making a film in the shadows of a repressive government. It’s a marvel that “El grito”, a film made relatively quickly after the massacre and subsequent Olympics, was even made considering how dangerous it was to try and capture footage during the events and how the police confiscated most of the footage on the night of the massacre (Bixler 192). While the lack of consistent footage of the massacre prevents the documentary from presenting a smooth narrative structure, it prompted the filmmakers to include other elements such as starkly contrasting still images that deliver an emotional punch while still continuing the timeline.
ReplyDeleteImages of battered and bloodied students are intercut with pictures of the military and police formations, denoting the culpability of the authorities while also generating sympathy for the unarmed protestors who seem so much more pitiable when contrasted with armed soldiers silhouetted in front of blazing wreckage in the square. Although there isn’t any footage of student funerals or memorials, footage of a weeping woman and a graving being dug are juxtaposed with the Olympic opening ceremony with an intense emotional result, as the droning music and slowly marching athletes suggest a twisted funeral procession for the people killed by the government so that they wouldn’t “ruin” the games.
Jorge Fons’ “Rojo amanecer” is similarly successful in the way it recaptures the brutality of the event despite several limitations. Because of inevitable censorship the film had to be made independently and, as Bixler notes, “Fons and his actors invested their own money and reconstructed a dilapidated storage area to serve as the Tlatelolco apartment” (193). Without funding to stage a reenactment of the massacre, the film is forced to use more cost effective and, ultimately, more jarring ways of demonstrating the violence of the authorities. While it is primarily the students that were the targets of the historical killings, the film, being monetarily restricted to one location, brings the killing into the household and has the military mercilessly kill each adult family member without the slightest regard for the wide spectrum of their political opinions. In having the soldiers gun down each person (and perspective) in what Bixler refers to as “a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (193), the film amplifies even further the horror of the event, widening its scope and transforming it into an affront against Mexico itself that spares no bloody details.
An NPR story on Mexico 1968:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687
And this story goes along with this, including a brief video of footage: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687
DeleteIn class, Marco discussed Andre Bazin’s view of cinema and the fundamental role that photography plays in it. More specifically, he mentioned the physical reality that is shared in the creation of the photograph. Bazin describes it himself in his essay "The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” saying that "[t]he photograph as such and the object in itself share a common being, after the fashion of a fingerprint" (Film Theory Reader, 93). Therefore, in photography, the object being photographed and the camera are sharing light at any given moment in order to take a photograph, essentially sharing a common existence in reality at the time the representation is created. This shared existence is, at least for me, one of the most powerful aspects of “El Grito”.
ReplyDeleteThe still images inserted between the varieties of documentary footage provide a more clear account of what is taking place than the footage does. Obviously, this is for a number of different reasons, such as lighting, timing, available technology, etc. Regardless, these images play an important role in the film as they share that common existence at the moment the photographs were taken, as Bazin discussed. Furthermore, the way the images are treated within the film-often intercut with the shaky, panning documentary footage- presents a pause in time that allows the audience to ponder the images for several seconds. This also suggests those specific moments as notable instances within the demonstrations as they give a closer, and clearer, look at what was taking place at those particular times. This is, again, where the idea of a shared existence becomes important. These images are a part of those events that took place back in 1968, but are more telling than the moving images, in my opinion, because of their clarity and the way they are edited together with that very footage. They present pauses within the film itself, but they also present pauses, moments, out of specific points in history. As Jacqueline Bixler states, “[i]n the absence of names, dates, and places, the images speak for themselves” (192).
In “Rojo Amanecer,” Jorge Fons displays the various perspectives regarding the student demonstrations of ’68 in Mexico through the dynamic of the family. Multiple generations (grandfather, mother and father, children) are shown living in the same apartment as the events of the film take place. As Jacqueline Bixler points out, the “[o]ne apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (193). Furthermore, each of their backgrounds holds significance, as the grandfather is a retired army general, the father works for the government in the State Department, and the two young men are students involved with the demonstrations against the government.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the film, the audience sees these differing stances clash with one another, with one of the most heated exchanges coming at the dinner table as the father, “…a small cog in the bureaucratic machinery of the PRI, tries to balance his political loyalties, his patriarchal control of the family, and the fact that his two oldest sons are active members of the student movement…” (Bixler 194). The audience is then presented with the chaotic nature of not just the demonstrations against the government, but how the family is consequently involved and tested, fighting with one another.
The scene that stuck with me the most, though, in regards to the differing views within the family, came later on in the film when the wounded student is on the bed in the two boys’ room. There is one point where the grandfather, the mother, and one of the older sons are lined up directly with one another. It is here that the son and the grandfather begin arguing about the events that have taken place, leaving the mother in the middle of them, playing the mediator. Positioning the characters in this way symbolizes their differing views, as well as their roles within the family (specifically with the mother as mediator, the one who does all of the work and keeps everything together). The son and grandfather are on different sides (and have different views), but, regardless, they are all still affected by what is going on, no matter how they view. Even though it is clear in the film, this scene drives home the point that the different family members all held different understandings of what was going on and what they should do about it.
On August 3, 1968, The Strike Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy concluded, “The masses, whose patience has been worn thin, will in all likelihood begin to express their opposition; if such opposition is not organized it risks being drowned in blood. We have seen that the bourgeoisie loses its head after a mere three days of student resistance; what will it not be willing to do when faced with a mass movement which directly threatens its economic interests?” (197). The Committee’s insinuation that the revolution could be “drowned in blood,” was of course correct, if not because of the disorganized nature of the movement, because of the sheer brutality of the government’s actions. “Rojo Amanacer” depicts the massacre at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco on October 2, 1968 almost exclusively in the apartment of a family that lived above the Plaza. By choosing this domestic setting, at its violent and bloody conclusion, the film explains why victims that had no direct ties to the ideology of the revolution before the massacre would continue to resist joining it for fear of the government. At the same time it exposes why the revolution against such an oppressive power was so necessary.
ReplyDeletePerhaps in part because of the domestic setting, the mother seems to be the most sympathetic character. She is portrayed as apolitical while her husband and father and her two sons represent the right and left respectively. While the four males are continuously arguing, their debates sometimes portrayed simplistic and naive, the mother is the character who holds the family together. Her main concern is everyone’s safety. This makes her murder, along with everyone else’s, particularly devastating and infuriating. By focusing on one family instead of the entire revolution, “Rojo Amanacer” humanizes the victims of the Mexican government by showing them to the audience on a personal level.
“El Grito” uses the capabilities of the documentary feature to depict the more broad scope of the 1968 events. The final shots of the documentary reveal what was lingering behind the massacre depicted in both films – the 1968 Mexican Olympic Games. The juxtaposition of the propagandistic images and footage of a successful opening ceremony with the bloody images and footage of the governments attack on its own people make these final images of national pride even more disturbing. While it is easier for a fictional film to work with a small cast of characters instead of recreating the mass protests in a way which will inevitably look artificial, the documentary feature can edit existing footage together in order to make an argument. Despite separate means, both films achieve similar emotional responses from the audiences to depict the government’s “drowning of the revolution.”
The word “claustrophobic” drew my attention in a few other blogs. The interior shooting of “Rojo Amancer,” a budgetary limitation, also served a different angle in my eyes, as much of Mexican family life actually does happens indoors. The amount of urbanization of Mexico City doesn’t make it a particularly outdoors city, and the emphasis of family gatherings and familiar bonds permeates the culture. Along with this cultural difference, it is important to note a few more—specifically, patriotism and its role in the struggle. While other countries’ long 68’ was a time to become distanced from patriotism and one’s country, Mexico’s neocolonialist quality made this problematic within the population. On one hand, the people opposed the government and the repression. On the other hand, they didn’t have a communal internationality like the one Europe was claiming.
ReplyDeleteAs noted in Mexico 1968 and the Art(s) of Memory, “Mexicans are surrounded by history, obsessed with history, and fiercely nationalistic.” With fighters of the Revolution still alive, as the grandfather in “Rojo Amanecer,” the ideals “for which he fought shattered in a hail of bullets on the plaza below.” Those ideals, however, had been the focus of nationalism and unity of “el pueblo” against the oppression of dictatorship. Further back, the War for Independence against foreign influence began a long tradition of patriotism and national pride. This is perhaps most obvious during a sequence of “El Grito” when the student protesters begin singing the Mexican anthem. This struggle to fight the political structure without denying their nationality and patriotism shows an opposition. This is remarked by one of the student speeches, when she acknowledging what the government labels them: “comunistas,” “revoltosos,” y “antipatriotas.”
This communist, troublemaker, antipatriotic student carries a struggle hundreds of years old. To say the movement of the 68’ had just a few causes is an understatement. The heavy influence of its Revolution, Latin America’s influence, the 1950’s worker oppression, the misbalanced resources, the Olympics, the fight for autonomy of universities, the protest against police violence, the longing for pacific demonstrations, the desire for trustworthy media, and the workers and parents anger of their impotence and their own issues and political struggles only begin to show the frame-work from which the movements derived. A few of this come through in both “Rojo Amanecer” and “El Grito.” Both of which denounce the lack of reliability in the mediums of radio and television, the lack of freedom to protest, the departure from Constitutional rights, and the situation of the students.
Perhaps what is most significant of the complimentary quality of “El Grito” and “Rojo Amancer” is that despite having all the footage in one, and none in the other, both show the overall confusion, ignorance, and incomprehensibility of what happened. They show that whether back then, or now, documentary of historical fiction, interior or exterior, there is something lacking. There is still truth missing…
Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker (1971) beings with a quote by Mao Tse–tung, stating, “The revolution is not a social dinner, a literary event, a drawing or an embroidery; it cannot be done with…elegance and courtesy. The revolution is an act of violence.” The bottom line: regardless of whatever political outcome, who wins or who loses, people die. This quote seems unusual coming from a director of spaghetti westerns, a genre that remains notorious for its celebration of violence, but as the case may be, the film reflects the mind of a much older and wiser filmmaker who carries a sense of disenchantment to the world around him. Similarly, Rojo Amanecer (1989) shares this same sense of disillusionment and perceives individual or collective political activism as utterly useless against the hands of “the system.” For example, during the early dinner scene Humberto says when he was younger, “I went out to the street to defend the right to vote, even with a gun. What happened? The government usurped the power and bought Almazan to keep his mouth shut. That’s politics.”
ReplyDeleteAside from these overt political discussions, it seems unclear, at least to me, if the director Jorge Fons is concerned with violence as a political problem or if he is only concerned with violence in and of itself. By containing the film’s explicit and unflinching demonstration of violence until the climax, it literally overpowers the rest of the film and seemingly comes as a complete shock through breaking taboos, not just the elderly and women, but almost literally everyone in the room. This ending also seems bleaker when considering the complete lack of humor that pervades most of the film. Although Fons probably did not set out to make entertainment, this film would most likely be marketed as a violent “action” film, much like something like Abel Ferarra’s Ms. 45 (1981), in an attempt to profit from certain fringe audiences.
Conversely, one could easily assume that El Grito (1968) works oppositely as an optimistic political film through its images of people marching in unity. As with most political documentaries, it would seem counter–revolutionary, rhetorically– speaking, to not provide a sense of optimism, no matter what the circumstances, or else no one would care to join the cause. El Grito seems to follow a traditional protest documentary where you first establish the activists as fun, peaceful people, then you set up the problem, and fallow with rising activism and obstacles. Wide angle lenses seem like an obvious choice in these films to make the protestors appear more expansive and empowering. Although I am not a native speaker, I can only assume the documentary discusses what, for example, the Strike Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Mexico state, “our participation in a national student movement should include two fundamental objectives: to encourage it to move leftward and to recruit the most advanced elements. The urgency of these tasks cannot be minimized.” (197). Although the For a Worker/Peasant/Student Alliances article alludes that political revolution remains an inclusive enterprise, given that “the government is not the government of all Mexicans,” it seems that protest documentaries speak from a privileged position to its audience as they attempt to educate the viewer on the certain actions and behaviors of political activists and this social transformation in a sense makes them part of a “special,” expansive club.
After the discussion of the events that inspired Rojo Amanecer, I really got an idea of the risked involved when trying to shed light on an incident that was covered up. If the film's conclusion is based in any real events, then frankly I'd be scared discussing the events as well. Most of the other films depict the events of protests and demonstrations like relics of the past adapted to the modern day. Rojo Amanecer feels like an eyewitness retelling the events to you. Their wounds may have healed, but they leave deep scars, and it really does show.
ReplyDeleteLike the others have mentioned, the film is very claustrophobic as it all happens relatively in the same building block. The fact that you can't see outside really does make the characters feel cornered in their own home, not unlike the ending of United Red Army. Perhaps this is due to the public knowledge of the actual event. While the archive footage wasn't provided until the 2000s, everyone knew what the protests looked like from their point of view. Even if we weren't there in china, everyone knows what the view of Tiananmen Square. I believe this is the same case.
One interesting detail I put together had to do with the student with the funds from the protestors. The can is full of change. I'm no authority on the Mexican Peso, but I assumed that it wasn't a whole lot, being mostly made up of coins. In the NPR interview, it was stated that the protestors threw heavy coins at the guards to defend themselves. Is there a connection? I can't make one, but I'd like to believe that this was intentional.
"As you know, we have a little hallway lounge at the top of the east stairs to the third floor, but it's a dark area. Somebody has set a floor lamp there to affect a hominess, but there's nowhere to plug in the lamp. So I suggest that an electrical outlet be added there.
DeleteAnd perhaps we ought to consider adding more outlets throughout the building so that students can recharge their laptops and other devices."
I would probably hesitate endorsing this. The events took place in '68 and were not broadcast. Most Mexicans did (and do) not love in Mexico City; and even of those, most were not at the event. RA is the first fiction film depicting/dealing with the events. 1990 is pre-internet; so it's unclear to me how many images people actually would have seen of '68. This is different with the events in China in '89: international TV broadcast those events to the world (but not in 68).
Although Marco only mentioned it in passing, I couldn’t help but think, while watching Rojo Amanecer, about what he said concerning the question: What is left? Are jeans left? Short skirts? The Beatles? Or, more importantly to the film, is long hair left? Throughout the film, characters question the meaning of a man with long hair. The father says that long hair is “homosexual.” Spoken by the father, the term “homosexual” is derogatory and seems to describe an extremely leftist quality. But Hidalgo, one of Mexico’s greatest heroes, had long hair as well. And the young child asks his grandfather if Hidalgo was a homosexual. The grandfather says of course not. Here, we see a plurality of opinions on what is left and what is good, within a single household. It seems that the youngest generation and the oldest have more in common with each other than with the middle generation. The grandfather’s rebellion won. The father’s rebellion was never able to get off the ground. The children’s generation is in the midst of their revolt. So, the grandfather looks at the youngest generation optimistically, while the father looks at it pessimistically. And here, is perhaps another great difference between the left and the right, which the film is trying to point out. The left looks at the future with optimism. They feel that the future is sure to change if they just will it to change. But when the right looks towards the future, all they see is their own destruction, and are terrified. They fear change. They fear it enough to kill those who want to implement it.
ReplyDeleteBut, after the massacre, and the family and the students are all together in the house, political ideologies appear to become impotent. The father, a man who works for the government, cares more about his family than about the government and leaves work to come home. When the special forces come into the apartment and examine the student children’s room, the picture of Che Guevara looks like a tragically false icon. When the interrogation leads to inquiring as to who is in the bathroom, one of the sons buckles, betrays the cause, and tells his “comrades” in the bathroom to come out, for fear that they will kill his father. It seems that in the face of death, the family stands paramount over politics. And this is what the right is trying to do: show the rebels the face of death.
After the massacre, the protests stopped.
Also Herr Abel, I think you mentioned an essay concerning the question "what is left?" I was wondering if you could send me a link and give me the title and author's names. That would be very much appreciated.
DeleteI referred to a 4 part German TV documentary/essay, WAS WAR LINKS? (What was left?). You can watch it on Youtube (but it has not ENG subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bex21sP-rO4 (this is the 1st part; the others can be easily found).
DeleteModern media is a major point of criticism in "Rojo Amanecer". Sometimes this criticism is clear and pointed, other times the media is critiqued in a subtle way. One of the subtle critiques happens 22 minutes into the film, when little Carlos comes home from school and wants to tell his grandfather about what he learned in history class. Fittingly, today’s lesson was based on Father Hidalgo, the figurehead of the Mexican War of Independence. Father Hidalgo was a revolutionary himself, and led a peasant army against the Spanish elite. This movement ultimately gained independence for the country, despite his execution. In this particular scene the grandfather is reading the newspaper, but stops to look at the page that little Carlos is trying to show him about Father Hidalgo. Little Carlos asks, “If he was gay?” which the grandfather replies with a stern, “No.” Carlos grabs his history book, along with the newspaper that the grandfather was just reading, and is about to put them in his backpack. The grandfather stops Carlos and takes the newspaper, saying, “Not the newspaper.” Maybe I am looking to deeply into this, but I see a statement being made. The newspaper is not history and vice versa. This is a lesson to read the news differently, more skeptically, than one would read a historical text.
ReplyDeleteAnother more obvious scene that comments on modern media, is after the father has returned home and the massacre seems to be over. The father asks, “What time is it?” and is answered by “11:45”, to which he responds, “Time for the news.” Everybody, except for Luis who is laying in bed, plops down in front of the television. Unfortunately the news is inaccurate, and blames the students for the violence that occurred. They were all depending on the news for an unbiased explanation, but only received the disinformation that was filtered by the state before broadcast. This chapter of Mexican history remains unexplained to this day, and plays into what Mexican cultural historians refer to as the “politics of remembering,” (Bixler, 170). As Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead point out, it is important to “remain attentive to who is doing the remembering and forgetting.”
El Grito and Rojo Amanecer are two very different films, both in their visual style and dramatic representations. El Grito plays as a war-like film, while Rojo Amanecer plays like a family melodrama dealing with generational differences - and “pussy music”. In El Grito we see images of revolutionary violence where in Rojo Amanecer we have prolonged shots of dialogue and problems happening within the home. They are very much two different views from the revolution; one is from within the direct line of fire while the other is from the outside view, remaining on the outskirts of the war ground. El Grito is from the perspective of the students amidst their revolution and Rojo Amanecer from the perspective of the family - or the bystander. The threats are very much the same, but play out in contrasting ways. In Rojo Amanecer, we never leave the building in which the family leaves, not until the final moments of the film when the last remaining child - the innocent and uninvolved member - walks out after finding his whole family slaughtered. Even though we never leave the building, and never move into the zone of conflict, the violence and terror moves into the space of the home, eliminating the safety and sanctity of both the space and congregation of family. It greatly represents how the threat of violence extends far beyond the call of duty for students and others involved in the rioting and revolts.
ReplyDeleteThe overall moods in both “El Grito” and “Rojo Amanecer” are starkly contrasted, but both give the viewer an idea of how the people of Mexico were affected by the Tlatelolco Massacre that took place prior to the summer Olympics in 1968. In “Rojo Amanecer” there is a stronger representation of Mexican Culture and Family dynamic, where in “El Grito” this incident is presented more as an historical artifact. The fact that “El grito” is black and white gives us the feeling that what is being presented are facts, stripped down to a sort of pragmatic reality. Through the honest depiction that “El grito” tries to give the viewer, despite the natural limitations placed by the government at the time, it is contrasted with elements of artistic expression. This expression is seen literally through footage of people cathartically creating art, but also the way in which some of the scenes are composed, by using a combination of unique framing and the standard rule of thirds, it makes this film seem like more of an art piece. This combination of historically depiction and artistic expression seen through “El Grito” is an interesting contrast to the overall mood of Rojo. Rojo tells that story of this massacre through a more accessible story, using family dynamic as an avenue to express opinions on the student movement through generations. In some ways it seems more lively or fruitful, not just because it is filmed in color, but intertwined into the theme of family and unity there is a presence of food that plays a role in this film that is presented right before and during a conflict occurs within the family. A Few times, when there were arguments among the generations, these took place in the kitchen where food was present, usually being prepared, giving the viewer a glimpse into the culture, something that “El grito” didn’t do.
ReplyDeleteBetween the two films, El Grito and Rojo Amanecer, I find many other students sharing my own thoughts as to the large contrast from the space an apartment, to the actual streets in Mexico. The contrast of the two gives the audience a 360 view of the revolution, but also what comes of it, punishment and oppression leaving the people claustrophobic in terms of freedom. I was surprised at both films’ honesty, and in fact shocked from the actual footage in El Grito. This film of course has a sort of pure honesty being live footage, and showing events as they happen, as no film besides this kind can imitate such power.
ReplyDeleteHowever I was taken aback completely by Rojo Amanecer, and was also insanely impressed as to how such a budget can convey so much to the screen. As one of the students lay in bed, swaying in and out of sleep after losing blood, he suddenly wakes up and tells his comrades, his friends, that he had a dream. Instantly, the word ‘dream’ took me back to Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” and I was almost disgusted to associate this man’s dream with the dreams of the trio in the film. The three in “The Dreamers”, I believe, were labeled as such because all they did was dream, they did not do. In fact, while I do not believe this was discussed in class, I would say from their sleeping state in the last 10 minutes of the film, and Eva Green’s character’s attempt to kill the three of them together, the ending riot scene in its entirety was a dream; simply, I believe it is evident that the characters do not fight for their revolution with more than words.
Yet, the students in Rojo Amanecer were not just dreamers, but activists as well. Still, his haunting statement of having a dream, and coming to a dark realization of actual events reminded me that Bertolucci’s film was a sort of soft child’s play in comparison. These students did not dream of the things the Mexican military were capable of, and nothing could have prepared them for such as is shown in El Grito as well. This was a reality that was hard to swallow for me, and made me more interested than ever before to present on Latin and South America.
I think the evidence from within The Dreamers would suggest that the very end is no longer a "dream." Here close cinematic analysis would be important. For example, handling of point of view can tell us whether or not this is "meant" to be a dream or not (film history has conventions for marking a dream as a dream, as well as for marking that one has returned to the "real" world). Still, your larger point comparing the activism (or lack thereof) b/w the two films is well taken.
DeleteThe role of women in the months leading up to and during the Tlatelolco Massacre as it is depicted in the films Rojo Amanecer (Red Dawn; Jorge Fons, 1990) & El Grito (The Scream; Leobardo López Aretche, 1968) is very interesting, especially in contrast to each other. In the latter, women are shown in much more varied roles and participating almost equally with their male counterparts in the revolution. Right from the opening, it is made clear that women are not relegated to the domestic sphere – as they are in Rojo Amanecer – because the omnipresent yet passionate narrator is a woman. While the ratio between male and female students is fairly skewed in the favor of the men, women are still shown doing many of the same activities as men; they both hand out pamphlets of protest, paint revolutionary murals, print handouts, and actively listen at the many, many rallies. Some issues arise when looking at the number of speakers, for example: out of the approximately 12 speakers, only 2 are women. But in those women’s speeches, interesting patterns arise, such as the focus on el pueblo and la familia in the first woman’s speech and the incredibly passionate delivery of the second woman, and the fact that both women give significantly more time for applause and affirmation. Outside of these speeches, the imagery of women is quite similar to that of the men, as they are shown in poses of revolution (which is exceptionally clear in the repetition [at least 4 times] of the very long-haired woman in the flowing dress with both hands raised in the air) and conflict (seen in the campesina woman in the government building [I think; my Spanish is so rusty it’s unsafe to consider without a tetanus shot] who is physically and verbally challenging to the men in suits, personifying the title)…although they do not get the same cumulative amount of screen-time.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, in Rojo Amanecer, there are only four female characters – the mother Alicia, the daughter Graciela/Chelita, the female student, and the neighbor. As has been talked about in others’ blog posts, Alicia is very much a caregiver, both just within her family and to the students. Graciela is rather silly and selfish, focused more on her looks and being rich than being helpful in any way, even solely within her own family. The student is a little more complex, but it is incredibly telling that I can’t remember her name or even if we are given her name. Women in the later film are basically stereotypes, confined to the domestic sphere and in great danger whenever they leave it.
One last interesting note is the fact that all the photographers for El Grito are men. This points to the conclusion that the reality is that women were much more active and out-and-about in the revolution in Mexico in 1968, even though the more modern film by 22-ish years is more restrictive of women’s roles.
Nicely observed!
DeleteOne of the first things I noticed when watching “Rojo amanacer” was the absence of the outside world. It struck me as odd that there were no scenes of protests or even any other locations than the apartment. However after reading Jacqueline Bixler’s article I now know why. This movie was shot independently, because it would be censored by the Mexican government. So making the film independently, Jorge Fons had little money to work with. Knowing this, Fons still did a very good job of portraying the horror of the Tlatelolco massacre, as well as the state of the country (revolution) without actually showing anything other than the apartment. According to Bixler: “Fons and his actors invested their own money and reconstructed a dilapidated storage area to serve as the Tlatelolco apartment”.
ReplyDeleteIt’s like the apartment is one small representation of Mexico as a whole, at this time. In the scene when the family is eating dinner, almost all views on the movement of 68 are being represented in the argument between the two boys, their father, their mother, and their grandfather. Jacqueline Bixler reiterates this point in her article: “One apartment and one family, consisting of three generations, serve as a microcosm of Mexican society and political life” (Bixler, 193)
One of my first thoughts after the viewing of Rojo Amanecer was “did the Mexican Army really force themselves in to homes and kill innocent people?” With the uncertain nature of the details of the Tlatelolco massacre, I am still unsure if this is historically correct. However, I examined the reason behind this scene. Since there was no possibility of spending resources on staging their own massacre, they had to stage a massacre in the “microcosm” of the apartment. Without this scene, the audience would feel detached from the violence of the massacre.
I wonder if this movie had been made 10 years later, after Vincente Fox was elected and made the footage of the massacre available, as well as other facts about the massacre that were previously a mystery, how would this movie have been made differently? For one, it wouldn’t have had to be an independent because of censorship, it could have been a big budget film with many reenactments of the massacre, as well as splicing in clips of the actual massacre. Fons also could have been even more historically accurate, given new information on the massacre.
“Rojo Amanecer” brings out the complex relationship in a family that does not share similar interest. A Patrilocal family is the main interest of the film. Rarely does the camera shy away from the apartment, with exceptions of a few wide shots of Mexico City, as well as the apartment complex of where the film is shot. The role of the family plays into the larger problem of the city. Beto, the father, is a government official that doesn’t has as much authority as his father-in-law, an ex military captain. The grandfather is always complaining about the youth, and Beto is adamant that his sons should not be standing up to the government. The students are fighting for a more democratic society and want to break free from the authoritarian style leadership that the political party in charge is displaying on its citizens. From the beginning of Rojo Amanecer when the oldest grandsons are complaining that what is being broadcasted on the radio is not free speech, you understand the depth of how the government is able to control and influence its citizens. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many Mexicans would have been illiterate (Bixler, 174). 1968 Mexico, you would see more illiterate people than that of free thinkers. I would consider this time period in Mexico close to the enlightenment period here in America and Europe.
ReplyDeleteEl Grito is an interesting perspective because it shows how massive the student movement really was. You never really got the feeling of how many people were really behind the movement from watching Rojo Amanecer. Unfortunately I could not find a version with subtitles so I don’t know how to interpret it. However, I find it interesting that much of the footage seems pretty rare, such as the militarization of police, and the violence that resulted in many of the youth’s deaths. Many students seem to be provoking police, by walking around with tape on their mouths, holding their hand up, displaying the peace sign and at other times chanting in the favor of public support. Ending El Grito with the Olympics and the use of banging drums to me really emphasis that government won its battle by using brute force against the students, which was completely uncalled for. The party in power simply refused to turn over any of its power over the public.
While I've studied this time period through the film lenses before and have worked hard to get a grasp on it, observing what happened in Latin America during this time period, specifically in Mexico, has made me consider it from a different point of view. Something I noticed in "Rojo Amenecer" (1990) is the status of the family which is presumably middle class. Some clues that point to their middle class status is the fact that the family has the ability to be supported contentedly with a single income, financially stable enough for a grandparent to live in and a comfortably sized apartment. Considering the people against whom the youth were rebelling during this time period, the students' middle class status is really interesting. Similarly, in The Dreamers, the siblings live in a very extravagant home where the parents are able to hand out money right and left. Look at the home Meinhoff lives in before she becomes a rebel. It, too, is a large house that reveals a middle class status. If I am reading the films correctly, these students then are fighting against the own places from which they came. Of course, this doesn't make the work the students unjustified, but it makes it more complicated and more interesting.
ReplyDeleteThis is especially the case considering the soldiers against whom the students were fighting. In an article called, "'Presna, Presna': A Journalist's Reflections on Mexico '68," John Rodda writes about his experience in Mexico during the massacre. He writes, "When we reached the bottom of the staircase the surrounding area was full of troops who stood around shivering. If you examine the few photographs of soldiers involved in this operation and see the glaze of their eyes, this, together with their shivering, supports the suspicion that they were high on drugs" (15). I don't know how legitimate this is, but taken into consideration along with the fact that the soldiers were young and lower class and the probability that the first gunshot was fired at the soldiers by men working for the government makes the massacre in Mexico even more troubling. The level of corruption that is involved in the massacre is beyond disturbing, and I think the ending of the film does a brutal job of showing not only the violence of the masterminds of the massacre, but the complicated relationships among the gangs, police, students and the students parents.
I haven't fully developed my thoughts on all of the messy and complex connections dealing with family and with economic status, but it's something I think I'm going to start looking into further.
Memory is a tricky thing, because even though we try to remember as much as we can, there are always some details that slip through the cracks. Many individuals tend to use photography or film to capture a lost memory but there are also complication with that. First, filmstrips and photos are easily destroyed, and secondly, even though types of media do not even tell the whole picture. When you take a picture, you are highlighting the objects that are in the frame, and isolating the objects out of the picture. Both el Girto (1968) and Roco Amanecer (1990) are films that use the power of framing to their advantages.
ReplyDeleteEl Grito show the viewer everything it sees, the violence that is becoming upon these people and the emotions it is trying to evoke. However, the main question we should be asking ourselves is can we trust what we are truly seeing or our we being block from something outside of the screen. Now, through guided research, one could probably find out, but the average viewer would not be able to look up this information and is just left with the fact handed to him/her.
Roco Amanecer, however, uses framing to hide the violence from the audience and focuses on the family inside. As Jacqueline E. Bixler notes “ Mexico’s intellectuals and artists have spent those years counteracting the politics of amnesia by creating a repertoire of collective memories” (171). This film stands out because within it’s framing it hiding a detail political message even when you think it is not. A lot of this may be production design and not enough space for action sequences, but nonetheless, this affect disguises who is at fault for the violence, the students or the military? We are left to wonder through the reactions of different characters like the Grandfather, mother or even the students themselves. For the majority of the film, Director Jorge Fons does not want to take a stand of who was at fault, until he pulls down the metaphorical curtain of the rouge army and kills everyone except for the boy.
Framing is a powerful tool, it gives the director power as too what story he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it. This can have a great affect on how history is perceived has we have already noted in class, and can affect how we remember certain events of our history.
“Rojo Amanecer” was difficult for me to maintain my attention a lot of the time. I thought the way the movie was filmed; the style and the effects accurately rooted the movie in the nineties. I have skimmed some other people’s blog posts and I agree that the movie is very claustrophobic, in the sense that the only environment is the apartment, excluding the small scene of the city street at the end of the movie.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling of tension is felt throughout the entire movie, through the lack of music, which can be used as a buffer between the silence of scene changes or pauses in dialogue. The other reason for the tension was through the relations of the characters and the way they spoke to each other. The opposing feelings of the mother, who just wanted her family safe and the soldiers and students or as Jeremi Suri stated, the “provocateurs,” in “The Mexican Student Movement: Its Meaning and Perspectives” wanted to fight back against the government with no regards towards external consequences.
The obvious consequence is that almost everyone dies at the end; as does the massacre happen outside of their apartment building. The dynamics between the family members also have consequences. The members that were in support of the revolts, brought the problems home. They let the hostility into their home. But in wartime, no matter where you are or who you are, you will be effects. It wasn't just the youth who were effected; everyone who lived in Mexico was affected.
Like we talked about in class, analog photography (and, therefore, the cinema) tends to be trusted as sources of truth, for better for worse. This is because of the nature of film: it records an optical fact, staged or not, and one cannot manipulate images in the darkroom like you can in Photoshop. This discussion resonates well when viewing El Grito. The film itself is real footage shot by students. Though all the footage is inherently “edited” through bias and framing, everything that appears in the film did, in fact, happen at one point in time. As Jacqueline Bixler puts it, the images “speak for themselves.” This lends El Grito a real sense of authenticity that many of the other films we’ve seen in class seem to lack.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand we have Rojo Amanecer, which despite being a staged and scripted film, also maintains its own sense of authenticity. The film was shot in confined quarters and accommodates a large cast. This lends the film a sense of chaos; there is a lot of action and many characters to try to keep up with. But it brings the action to the viewer, up close, unafraid to show the violence and fear experienced by the student protestors and their loved ones.
I wonder, though, whether images actually "speak for themselves." Even if their documentary character--the "reality" of what's depicted--seems very strong, can we ever say that images, even such images, "speak for themselves"? Consider the possibility that "authenticity" might be an effect lie anything else.
DeleteIn Bixler’s article, she mentions something that resonated with me because of a previous discussion that I had over a similar subject matter. The discussion I had was comparing historical fiction and fiction with a historical setting. What makes something Historical fiction as opposed to fiction with an historic setting? In her article Bixler brings up that, “the Spanish word historia refers both to fictional tales and to the purportedly factual narrative of past events…”(171). This was interesting to me in how it framed Rojo Amencer. When examining this film, one is forced to analyze whether it is entirely fictional with an historic setting, fictionalized but based off of true events, or if it is entirely real footage of the event. In this case, it’s an example of historical fiction as opposed to fiction with an historic setting. There are very specific instances in the film in which through dialogue or actions, the character are reminding viewers of the actual event. There is a close up of the grandfather removing the previous calendar day in order to reveal the day of the massacre, the father very specifically mentions that they live in the city of Tlatelolco, the mother goes through the months that her sons have been activists, and the older sons mention the school violence as being one of the reasons that they are protesting and in the streets.
ReplyDeleteThis is unique to the other films that we have viewed in class so far because it focuses on a perspective of a very specific event. It is not a film about a movement or what the movement meant to people, rather what effect a tragic event had on those living it and the atrocities experienced. After watching the film, one not left with an impression of goals being right or wrong, but instead the audience is left in awe as they are left the image of a boy who’s entire family was murdered before him wandering the streets where officials are washing away blood and evidence of a massacre.
When contrasting Rojo Amencer(1990) with El Grito (1968) I am impressed with the incredible restraint Rojo Amencer exhibits. El Grito with its extensive documentation of the movements of both the army and the students, show perhaps the biggest scale we have yet seen on a film in this class. Meanwhile, Rojo Amencer never gives so much as a glimpse of the grand scale or extensive carnage. It has the confidence that its approach will leave the bigger impact with the audience, and I can't disagree with the choice, as I was left rather devastated by the film's brutal conclusion. Not even in its final moments does the film give us the satisfaction. Instead it pans backward to reveal the only the service workers swiftly erasing the evidence of the tragedy. Left to hunger we are for truth, but it never comes. It is denied in much in the same way the victims and their families had the truth denied to them. Hauntingly, it mirrors reality as even today, the sheer number of causalities is unknown.
ReplyDeleteNot even the similar film Dreamers(2003) chose to fully trap us in the apartment. Because for Dreamers, revolution comes as (quite literally) the life saving breath. Not only for the dreamers but for the audience as well. We too breach free of the suffocating apartment and are given the catharsis of action, passion, and movement. Continuing the analogy to Rojo Amencer we are left to suffocate until we are brutalized emotionally and denied our catharsis.
I can't help but feel from the readings (particularly the National Strike Committee manifesto) and the films we watched that Mexico was the most oppressive of all these revolutionary nations. Detailed in the National Strike Committee manifesto, it reveals the depths of the corruption. So much so that they rallied for the new organization of a union. So far was the corruption that they couldn't even trust the unions? In France we saw similar corruption in the unions, but the deals they made were at least good enough that it pacified a large portion of the workers. Then of course there is the brutality. When you compare this to the Japanese Lodge Siege, the juxtaposition daunting.
Very nice!
ReplyDeleteAs many other people have noted, 'El grito' is remarkable in its simple yet radical presentation. Whether it is an easy or difficult film to consume isn't for me to say, really; even while paying close attention, even after having studied Spanish for four years, I was hardly able to get the gist of a scene before the images changed; when the man was sitting in a hospital bed, for example, I caught 'police' and 'forming my political ideology' before the filmmakers moved us back outside without an explanation. From the readings, though, I suspect that it was almost as chaotic for a native speaker. Film analyst Jorge Ayala Blanco, via the Bixler article, called El grito 'a mutilated, unanimous shout,' and while to his ears, it was presumably a shouted word or phrase, it didn't explicitly build or support an argument.
ReplyDeleteInstead, El grito's strength comes from its images. Specifically, the film gains a lot from its use of long shots of the protests in Mexico City. From cameras [presumably] in the apartment buildings around the square [an eerily similar angle to the government footage that Echeverria commissioned], the viewer can see the extent of the protests: thousands of people stretch into the background, overflowing out of the shot and into greater Mexico City. For a government claiming 'four deaths,' the image of thousands of people being marched on by uniformed soldiers and machine-gun-bearing tanks is in itself damning.
It's incredible, then, just how effective 'Rojo Amanecer' manages to be without any of those images. Like Dr Abel said on Tuesday, the films almost function perfectly as a shot-reverse shot; in the one, we see a wholly impersonal picture of the protests from a high window, and in the other, we see the effects and aftereffects of the protests on a single family in a single apartment. Although, I definitely found myself instinctively questioning 'Rojo Amanecer' more than I did 'El grito.' After viewing 'Rojo Amanecer,' I felt like I needed to go fact-check the statements Jorge and Sergio made about the protests; after 'El grito,' I had much weaker doubts. And, maybe this is something to be more careful about in the future.