Glancing At Power

What does what we teach children inside and outside the classroom reveal about the world? How can we effectively and meaningfully communicate to them what is happening around them? The news that Teacher Celeste will leave her class has filled the children with sadness, as she has only a few days left before moving to another school. Together, they experience a September full of movements, directions, and revelations, in the beloved universe of a classroom in a Mexican village.

La Hora Marcada was a 1986 Mexican television anthology series famous for its horror and science fiction themes in the vein of the Twilight Zone. Although virtually unknown outside the country, it achieved a popular and critical success in Mexico. It had a series of rotating writers and directors, among them Emmanuel Lubezki, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón.

The film portraits the stage previous to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, from the end of Porfirio Díaz´ government, the social volatility, the ephemeral government of Madero and the presence of the working class in the figures of Villa and Zapata, until the signing if the Constitution of 1917. All of this through moving images, filmed during those events mainly by the Alva brothers, filmmakers of that time. Those images let us perceive the contradictory and shuddered glance of the people of that period.

Mexican feature film

A woman offers a lock of hair to her magical puppet theatre. She turns the crank handle, and it gives her a gift, the artifact absorbs her into a performance of puppets and insects where her presence will illuminate life.