Ximena Cuevas

Mexican Erotica is a collective reappropriation film that explores sex and eroticism from various artistic and aesthetic points of view. A journey of textures, sensations and unmissable pleasures.

On October 2, 1968, a student uprising descends into violence after the Mexican government begins to use lethal force against the protesters.

What happened to those vedettes who represented the mexican cabaret’s exotic beauty in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Four decades after the end of their roles, they tell their stories with dignity.

Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn't fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground LGBTQ nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty and drugs.

"La Nueva Jerusalem" is a small community of believers lead by Papá Basilio and Mamá Dorita. They're waiting for the second coming of Christ, so they've abandoned the world, searching for a new spiritual life. Mamá Dorita sees in young Tomasa the signals of the chosen one. The young girl will be the new leader in "La Nueva Jerusalem".

Through the montage of film fragments from the Mexican Golden Cinema, it explores the cinematographic representation of of pain, violence, repressed sexuality and Mexicanness.

Ximena Cuevas books herself onto the tabloid talk show Tómbola, toying at first with whimsical deconstruction until she turns the whole affair on its head by seizing the televisual flow itself.

The innocence of creating a mirror, only to repeatedly crush it underfoot.

Blind man: “It is bad to be alone.” The Creature: “Alone, bad.” —The Bride of Frankenstein It can be so bad to be alone that even an artificial heat is better than none.

The discomfort stems from being oneself. The clips included here explore who we are and who we imagine ourselves to be. They are experiments in appearances, examining the use of artifice to enhance life or conceal it. It is a reflection on moral dislocation, hypocrisy, autonomous dreams, self-hatred, and self-destruction—the act of repeatedly killing our dreams.

Short experimental horror documentary on media racism

The palms of Lana Turner's hands were full of scars; the technique she used in order to achieve melodrama was to tighten her fists, digging her fingernails into them until she began to cry. Day after day, soap opera actresses smear Vick's Vaporub into their eyes in order to cry. The effect of these false tears are the tears of the public. In Devil in the Flesh we see the camera's tricks, and even so the action seems dramatic. This piece once again exemplifies my fascination with the artificial: the fabricated emotions; the Christian looking for pain in order to live out Passion; the discomfort of the everyday melodrama; the emptiness that defeats everything

A video poem about the nature of social relations and mass media, Half Lies exposes the seemingly innocuous ways we distort truth. Harmonious families, trade treaties, and current events are among the mediated realities that Cuevas interrogates. Half Lies makes the viewer question the half truths we encounter daily. The video walks the haunting gray area between documentary and drama, creating a world that is both shockingly grotesque and startingly authentic. Using mass-mediated images, animation, image manipulation, and fantasy, Medias Mentiras interprets the chaotic landscape of politics, urban chaos and everyday existence.

Mixing samba, sex, and lovers' lies, this beautiful short is a visual meditation on sexuality, loss, jealousy, and intimacy.

Dorothy doesn't reach her dream of the Emerald City. Rather, she will have already been over the rainbow by the time she arrives at the worst corner in Kansas.

"Perhaps Cuevas' most chilling work, Cinepolis forecasts an image-driven invasion of everyday life, picture-perfect and unnoticed. This alien intrusion comes in the form of a fully branded consumerscape that cheerily foists fast food along with the fantasy. Irreverent and biting, Cuevas fights back with the only weapon available--images of the enemy, and the enemy’s images." --Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive, 2004