The Secret Formula

A short film that takes us on a small auditory and visually remarkable journey through parts of Mexico City.

Experimental filmmaker Rubén Gámez explores the iconography of the maguey plant in Mexican cinematic history.

During the six-year term of President Luis Echeverría, a Mexico-United States coexistence day was organized in Washington. American children and adults flocked to the cathedral, where Mexican dancers performed regional dances. It was a day of folk music, dances, Mexican crafts and food exhibitions.

A large part of the town of Juchitepec, State of Mexico, has left its place of origin to seek its fortune in the city. The survivors suffer the sale of their best land for agriculture to a pantheon. Death is a constant in a place where there is barely enough food.

Made in the urban area of ​​the Valley of Mexico, this documentary presents a collage of images about the overpopulation, pollution and excessive growth of the big city. The accelerated and pulsating rhythm that passes and vanishes in the constant coming and going of vehicles and people.

Nearly thirty years after making his surrealist La Formula Secreta, director Rubén Gámez returned to filmmaking with this impressionistic portrait of modern-day Mexico. Reminiscent in some ways of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, Tequila appears to be a cinematic extension of Mexico’s muralist tradition, a contemporary equivalent of Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros with vignettes, quick ideas, visual puns, cartoons, and political statements.