The Mexican Film & Litfest Comes to Whittier
From Feb. 6 through Feb. 8, Whittier College hosted two of the most decorated women in the International Film and Literature industries: Tatiana Huezo and Jennifer Clement.
Huezo is the director of many documentaries and films that primarily focus on women’s experiences in Mexico and South America. She has been honored with accolades such as the Berlinale Documentary Film Award in 2023, a win for the Next Generation Award from Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards in 2021, and Best Director at the 2017 Ariel Awards.
Along with being the first female president of PEN International as of 2015, Clement is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Canongate Prize, and countless other honors. Clement notably writes about the once hidden experience of Mexican and South American women whilst living under male-oriented and male-facilitated violence.
The festival was held in Hoover 100, where Huezo’s films El Eco and Prayers for the Stolen (El Noche de Fuego) were viewed on the first and second evening, respectively. Huezo was present for discussion once the credits rolled after both films. Furthermore, on Thursday evening (Feb. 8), Clement provided an open Q&A and a reading from works such as The Promised Party, Prayers for the Stolen, and Widow Basquiat.
Huezo’s adaptation of Prayers For the Stolen brought viewers into the dense and rocky jungles of Mexico, following Ana and her best friends, Luz and Maria, through their adolescence as Ana and her mother navigated living under the threat of cartel violence. The almost too bright, blood red poppies that the women of the village were harvesting opium from radiated off the screen– a stark contrast to the thick greenery that surrounded them. Moments of childhood joy and the steps throughout girlhood were tightly interwoven with the suspense of cartel trucks rolling by residential areas, and Ana’s mother hiding her under a cluttered false porch. The audience held their breath with her as she lay in a shallow grave as men approached her home.
After the films, both Huezo and Clement were available for questions from the audience. The novel Prayers for the Stolen was based on the anecdotes Clement had heard quietly spilled out across a kitchen counter deep in Mexico. Clement’s inspiration for the novel was also sparked by the imbalance she noticed in the amount of coverage women in Mexico were granted in newspapers, literature, and films. The stories shared were always about men, or with clichés of female dancers and escorts. “There were no stories about women, or the violence men committed against them,” Clement lamented. “Women’s jails were far from city centers and rarely had visitors.” Women’s voices were not being heard, nor their stories shared. This brought Clement to spend years researching and investigating the lost stories of women in Mexico, Gurrerra, and countless stretches of South America.
Most notably, the women who hid their daughters from the cartel in rabbit burrows, and the women who substantiated villages because of the epidemic of violence tearing men away from communities. Clement recalls how one of the women in these communities described living in solitary female colonies: “Vivir sin hombres es como dormir sin sueños.” Living without men was like sleeping without dreams.
People lost pieces of their communities, their families broken by the threat of violence and imprisonment under corrupt governments. Financial survival depended on finding work across the border. Stories about women, and particularly the theme of girlhood, is prominent in Clement’s collection of works. She found that there was a spiritual recess; a plane of existence where girls and immigrants disappeared to as both parties were met with violence that made them seemingly disappear from their communities. The connections between Ana and her closest friends were illustrated in a refreshing light; they were girls who played in lakes and streams, and tried to match their thought wavelengths through humming, perhaps experiencing a spark of a psychic connection with each other. Even in developmental moments like stealing a beetroot to use as lipstick, or having their hair cut short for the first time, the girls endured everything together, and found peace in each other despite the horrors of the community’s circumstances.
Clement returned to campus on Feb. 8th and hosted an open reading and Q&A about her latest work, The Promised Party, as well as other pieces from her collection. The Promised Party is a memoir of when she grew up in an artist colony with Frida Kahlo’s children. Her upbringing in a renaissance household made for an interesting perspective that she took with her into her research. “I’ve tried to write miserable topics with enchantment,” she notes. In The Promised Party, Clement intertwines supernatural and poetry elements into her personal experience growing up in Mexico City, and does the same with topics like gun violence, girlhood, and romantic relationships. Her dedication to her prose speaks to the complex and somber epidemics that she immerses the reader in.
Photos Courtesy of IMDB and Baruch College
