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When I started watching the film I thought it was a documentary. As the film progressed I realized it was actually a number of short stories or episodes of some sort. When I was watching it seemed like I was listening to a lecture or presentation on …

I actually felt that the scene of the women combing their hair wasn’t eroticized. I felt that the camera wanted to depict a closeness to nature and basic man. If you see Concepcion and her betrothed, he is looking at her face, not her breasts or what w…

From what I understood from the presenter the movie was sponsored and administered by Americans therefore I doubt that tit was aimed to soviet audiences or that it intended to provoke communist pride. In fact, I think that the movie ended up in a museu…

I found the Que Viva Mexico to be an interesting film even though it seemed a little disorganized in terms of the storyline. It appeared to be made as a documentary in the first half which showed the traditions and lifestyles in Mexico and the other ha…

Well, before putting my fingers onto the keyboard, i pondered this movie for quite a while. I missed the prologue, but still, i like it, for its distinct style and way of portraying, and my biggest impression is that it’s really a typical Soviet one.1….

Viva Mexico seemed to be drawn to the cultural aspects of Mexico that would be of interest to any foreigner. There were a lot of elements in the film that indicated the time it was filmed. The film took the approach of a documentary in the initial scen…

I really enjoyed this movie. Specifically though, I was really intrigued by the deep connections the filmmakers make between the Mexico they film and nature and the past. The first part, in which they observe the ruins, and the people are integrated in…

This movie was weird and random and I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand the general statement or the purpose of it. I thought it was really artistic…the photography was amazing at first…in the beginning of the movie when they compared p…

I just read on IMDB that this is a masterpiece, and that the author of the review puts this film right up there next to Citizen Kane and Casablanca. I think this is an exxageration in every sense of the word. I didn’t think this film was good or bad, i…

Me costó bastante entender la película hasta el final, cuando hablaron de soldaderas.   La falta de una narrativa y tener que leer subtítulos lo hizo bastante difícil. No entendí al principio por qué hablaron de aquella muchacha que se casaba, y porque, por lo menos al parecer fue la misma muchacha, en el principio andaba […]

There is something very enigmatic about Eisenstein’s approach to “Montage”.
Especially moving were the huge amount of close-up shots of the face, made even more dynamic by the casting of real mexican people as opposed to actors. The faces were creased and weathered, and seemed to tell a million stories on their own. There were also, as in most Eisenstein films, a couple close ups of men with their eyes rolled all the way back in their head leaving only the whites of their eyes. This image seems to evoke extreme suffering, and perhaps looking towards god. I’m interested to hear what others thought.
And the pilgrimage! Crazy! Was that staged? The shot of the three men with the cacti on their back standing on a rock and turning towards the camera was wild!
Anyway.
I loved the beginning of the film (Not the part with the old guy talking but once the actual film started) that took the human form, and specifically the mexican people, and directly paired it with the land, the history and the monuments. It had a huge impact on me and I felt that the shots were at the same time respectful to the culture, but also removed and uninformed. There was a sense of awe established by the shot construction about these stone figures and symbols, a very light physical comparison of the facial features on both the mexican people and the stone people, but a lack of any explanation with regards to significance that these symbols have. I wonder if this will be a reoccurring theme in the films we watch next? I imagine there will be either a complete lack of explanation, a mistake with regards to certain represented symbols, OR a total over emphasized explanation of a specific mexican symbology that would never be expressed if the film was made by a mexican filmmaker. That’s a theory anyway…
Regardless, the soviet style and mentality definitely showed itself in the film and I enjoyed the idea mentioned in class about the Mexican revolution providing an ideal narrative and story for how it relates to Stalin’s communist USSR.
I also enjoyed the film…
Nice.

Esta película es muy diferente que las otras que hemos visto en la clase. Mi primera impresión de la película es que es muy pictórica. Las primeras escenas consisten de imágenes quietas que son casi como fotografías y no son solamente fotos pero…

¡Que viva México! provides an unexpected point of view of Mexico from Russia. I think the film sincerely attempts to provide a picture of a “true” Mexico. What I found interesting is what they show and what they don’t show. The movie starts off by…

Los rituales al rededor de la muerte incluyendo el funeral del fallecido fueron las escenas que envolvieron todos los demas temas de la pelicula y por esto creo el director y los productores representan mexico como una sociedad donde la muerte es parte…

I feel like there’s a lot that could be said about this movie, but so much is left for interpretation, it’s hard to know where to begin.I don’t know if I completely liked or agreed with the general statement of this movie, but there are some elements t…

This film seems to be interested in the iconic figures such as the Virgen de Guadalupe and the flag, which are representative of Mexico. In response to Marianne, after Marcos death, instead of the flag being raised, we see the flag coming down. As I me…

Yo miraba esta película antes del principio del esto semestre. Para serte franca, mi impresión general para esto film es que, yo fui sumamente sacudida por los primeros minutos del cine, y por lo tanto es la primera película que me da un sentimiento…

The film La Batalla en el Cielo shows an interest in the mundane activities of daily life as each shot is filmed for a prolonged period of time in order to create the allusion that the activities are unfolding and taking place right before the audience…

Like I said in our discussion yesterday, what most affected me was the persisten sound of a clock ticking. I’ve learned in literature, for example in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, that this is a reassuring sign of temporality and the coming promise …

Overall, I did not like Batalla en el cielo. The fact that is it was almost a border line pornography film kind of helped with determining my opinion because it lacked dialogue and overall story telling; you didn’t really know what people were thinki…

This film was very interesting to watch, despite its prolonged depictions of apparently mundane events.  There was such a lack of dialogue, which was refreshing and disconcerting at the same time for me; it is refreshing because it seems more honest (for lack of a better word), seeing as we are not always talking, especially […]

I think this film showed a unique representation of Mexico. Compared to the other films that we have seen in class, this film shows the actual interaction between the high class and the working class. In addition to that, aspects of the lower class a…

This blog is over 800 words, I hope that’s ok, I had a lot to say. Tonight was the second time that I watched this movie, and I’m glad I watched it twice. The first time was this weekend, and it was spent basically trying to take in all of the…

This movie is really difficult to understand. There are several scenes that I have not yet figured out what they mean or even what happened. I think I am going to watch the movie a second time to fully grasp what’s going on. It is challenging to …

I think that Marcos killed Ana for no reason and that is the point of the movie. I think he was in so much despair and uneasiness that he let all the repressed feeling one can have to control him. All his fears and disappointments became actions. I don…

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