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ProfileIssue: Capricorn 09

Natalia Almada Makes EL GENERAL

el_generalsm_200Courtesy of Women Make MoviesPast and present collide in this extraordinarily crafted film when filmmaker Natalia Almada (ALL WATER HAS A PERFECT MEMORY), winner of the US Directing Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother. These recordings feature Alicia Calles’s reminiscences about her own father—Natalia’s great-grandfather—General Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolshevique” and “El Jefe Máximo,” or “the foremost chief.” Today, he remains one of Mexico’s most controversial figures, illustrating both the idealism and injustices of the country’s history.

Through Alicia’s voice, this visually stunning and stylistically innovative film moves between the conflicting memories of a daughter grappling with her remembrances of her father and his violent public legacy. Combining meticulously edited audio, haunting photographs, archival newsreels, and old Hollywood films with an original evocative soundtrack, sweeping footage of modern-day Mexico City, and interviews with today’s working poor, EL GENERAL is a poetic and cinematic exploration of historical judgment and a complex and arresting portrait of a family and country living under the shadows of the past.

Natalia Almada was born in Mexico. Her directing credits include ALL WATER HAS A PERFECT MEMORY, an internationally recognized experimental short, and AL OTRO LADO, an award-winning feature documentary about immigration and drug trafficking. Almada’s work has screened at Sundance, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Biennial as well as on ARTE and PBS. She is a 2008 Guggenheim fellow and has received support from Creative Capital, the Sundance Institute, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She shares her time between Mexico and Brooklyn. Learn more at Women Make Movies. dots

by Women Make Movies

Profile Archives (total entries: 38)

Leo 09 - The Leadership Issue

Rebecca Lolosoli Provides Safe Haven for Vulnerable Women in Kenya

polaroid_rebecca_lolosoli_181Rebecca Lolosoli is much more than the matriarch of Umoja Village, an all women's community located in the Samburu District of Kenya. She put herself on the line for others…her life has been threatened for going against the indigenous Samburu traditions and culture. What started in 1991 as a group of 16 raped women, denounced and outcast by their families, on a patch of sun-dried, neglected land, granted to them by the Kenyan government at the behest of Rebecca is today a unique group of 50 flourishing, happy women and girls, orphans and widows and even a few beloved goats. (read more)

Aries 08

Nina DiSesa Shares Uncensored Tactics for Winning at Work in Her Book “Seducing the Boys Club”

ninadisesa_165Why are there still so few women in top management positions in the corporate world? Nina DiSesa, Chairman of McCann Erickson in New York, thinks it is because women don't understand men and tend to follow the rules and this doesn't work. She explains that women need to learn how to handle men in business in much the same way we do in our personal relationships - through what she calls S&M, seduction and manipulation. Nina says this has nothing to do with sex, and that in the end, everyone wins. In her book "Seducing the Boys Club" she gives the rest of us who think that all we need to do is work hard to get ahead, a swift kick in the butt!

Cancer 10

Linda Furiya Writes About Growing Up Japanese in the Midwest

linda_furiya_150“Many of the meals I ate at home in rural Indiana were Japanese. My mom used what ingredients she could get her hands on then put it out on the table effortlessly. The sensual aspect of Asian food and Mid-west sustainability is ingrained in me. Those are the basic roots of why I love cooking, “ says Linda.

(read more)