Événement

Titixe

We are proud to present a Suns Cinema favorite from BlackStar Film Festival and the DC Premiere of Titixe.

A mourning tree, dancing sprouts, ghosts, stories and forgotten seeds. This is a Mexican familys very last attempt to cultivate their land.

The last peasant of a family has died and with him, all wisdom to till the soil has been lost. Without experience, his daughter and granddaughter will attempt a last traditional harvest to try to convince Grandma, the widow of the peasant, to keep their plot of land. Together they will uncover the leftovers (locally known as the titixe) of this man and his world: a mourning tree, dancing sprouts, the language of clouds, ghosts, stories and the endless menace of losing the crops to a tempest. This is an intimate mosaic of the last harvest of a Mexican family, in a country that has forsaken its rural origins.

Director's Note:

Eight years ago, my grandfather confessed to me that it grieved him that his offspring had no interest in cultivating the land like he did. The acknowledgement took me by surprise, my mother emigrated to the city as a teen and I grew up without a connection to our rural past. I told him that I would like to come with him to his terrain and learn from him how to make things grow. I suggested we could even make a film together and he became joyous. But I let the years pass without coming, until he died. I went with my mother (and my camera) to say goodbye to his land before Grandma sold it. We mourned Grandpa in the empty plot, but we also cried for losing the majestic landscape; the bees, birds and crickets; the black earth waiting for seeds. Mom decided then to attempt a last black beans harvest with her savings. Maybe we could convince Grandma to keep the land! Maybe I could film that which Grandpa may have shown me! We began to work and the landscape became full of color and life; full of my mothers sensibility, my grandmothers sense of humor, the experience and work of my Uncle Abel. But as the beauty of plants filled the terrain, the constant menace of failure and the harsh agricultural reality in Mexico emerged fiercely. For me, it is crucial to link our loss to a callous contemporary context (shared by many corners of the global south); a context of abandonment, violence and disdain for peasants, for their work and for their worldview.

Winner
Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award - Full Frame Documentary Festival