Venus Rising

ProfileIssue: Capricorn 09

Natalia Almada Makes EL GENERAL

Courtesy 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.