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Mukí Sopalírili Algué Gawichí Nirúgame

TU, MARCH 26 | MARTES, 26 DE MARZO | John Hope Franklin Center, Room 240, Ahmadieh Family Conference Hall. 6:00 pm. 

Light refreshments will be served.

Mukí Sopalírili Algué Gawichí Nirúgame “La Mujer de Estrellas y Montañas | The Woman of Stars and Mountains. Santiago Esteinou, Javier Campos López, Axel Pedraza. México. 2023. 101″ | Spanish, English, Raramuli with English subtitles.

 

This documentary tells the story of Rita, an indigenous woman from Mexico (at Raramuri from the Tarahumara Range), who left her community in the Mountains and went on a journey to Kansas, where she was detained and committed involuntarily to a psychiatric hospital for 12 years, despite the fact that the hospital authorities were never able to determine who was this woman, where did she come from, or what language she spoke.
Échi pelíkula ko Rita niila ra’íchami ju, bilé rarómari muki, japi kawí rewésa simíle a mi ralámuli eperéchi a’lía a minábi binisili a’lía a mi simíli Kansas anelíwachi, jápi mi bu’íli internarta pitáchi na bilé sikiatra anelíwachi a’lia ko kewési machíli, na makói okúa bamí, jichi ko ba échi mukí nibilé machíli kómi jónsa nawájami niili a’lía kómi nilúmi ra’íchami ko ba.
Este documental cuenta la historia de Rita, una mujer rarómari, que abandonó su pequeña comunidad en la Sierra Tarahumara y emprendió un viaje hasta Kansas, donde fue detenida e internada en un hospital psiquiátrico, en contra de su voluntad, por 12 años, sin que las autoridades del hospital pudieran determinar quién era esta mujer, de dónde venía o qué idioma hablaba.

With participation of producer and editor Javier Campos López.

Javier Campos has been working in the audiovisual industry for almost 20 years. In 2006, he began editing the documentary film El Varal (2009), directed by Marta Ferrer, which went on to win Best Documentary Film of the 2010 Morelia Film festival. Since then, Javier has edited 16 documentary films, in addition to a handful of Mexican television series. All of these films have been shown in festivals around the world including TRIBECA, TIFF, FIDOCS Chile, Antenna Documentary Film Festival de Sydney, DOKfest Muchen, and HOTDOCS Toronto. In 2019, he also produced a short documentary film by Pablo Tamez entitled They are somewhere in 2019.  Two of his edited films, Apart and The Years of Fierro, were nominated for an Ariel in 2014 and 2015 respectively (the Ariels is the Mexican equivalent of the Academy Awards). His most recently released film, The Guardian of Memory, won the 2020 Ariel Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Javier Campos graduated with a degree in Communications in 2002, but he has been fascinated by cinema from a very young age. As a kid he rented bootleg Betamax tapes of Hollywood hits from a neighbor in his small town outside of Mexico City. In documentary cinema, he discovered the potential of editing to construct arguments and messages with attention to emotional and aesthetic connection with viewers. While documentary film generates conversations that can lead to concrete change regarding the problems that afflict our societies, it is also a tool for collective reflection that preserves the historical memory of individuals. My influences are varied: the cinema of Errol Morris for its constant questioning without a search for absolute truth, the cinema of Tatiana Huezo for its aesthetic commitment, the cinema of Stanley Kubrick for its ambiguity and symmetry. I am inspired by Lynch’s surrealism and Herzog’s hyper-rationalized stance.