El general

I attended a screening of "El General" at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival, one of a number of recent informative documentaries from south of the border aiming to fill in some of the blanks in our collective cinematic history of this great nation.

Director Natalia Almada has a unique connection to this land as her great-grandfather was Plutarcho Elias Calles, who served as President of Mexico in the 1920s. Through the use of audio tapes taken from her grandmother (Calles' daughter), Almada hopes to put a friendlier face on the towering man known as "Mexico's Mussolini."

The 1900s was rife with presidential assassinations, and Calles was the first to die of natural causes. Exiled to San Diego after his stormy reign, he returned to Mexico in 1941 and died there in 1945. Much of the nation's history has been shrouded in mystery (and remains so to this day) but, while Almada's intention was not to chronicle the events of the past 100 years, she did hope to answer some of the questions.

Almada intercuts colorful images of present day Mexico City with grainy archival footage from the early 20th century. She focuses on the commerce of this great bustling metropolis, pointing out that the half million street vendors account for as much as 40% of Mexico's gross domestic product. In the Q&A following the screening, Almada explained that her intention was simply to show the contrast between the often barbaric treatment of its citizens in her great grandfather's time to the modern Mexico.

What do you know about your great-grandfather? At best, some fragmented memories that you received from others. Now, imagine that your great-grandfather was the president of the country and you want to make a film about him. What do you do? The only thing you have are some old audio tapes where the president's daughter tries, not very successfully, to remember and portrait her father, and you don't really have any of the privileged access that one would assume for being a part of the family. This is the challenge that Natalia Almada had to face for this film.

Almada approaches the problem with grace and intelligence. More filled with questions than answers, the director tries to look at the past, as much as possible: she includes a good amount of historical footage, looks at period newspapers, and gets the most of the old tapes. But she also is at all times looking at the present, exploring the fascinating carnival and chaos that Mexico city is today. For some strange reason, the two lines of the documentary, the past and the present, although almost belonging to two different movies, end up matching quite well. It is the magic of film, or at least, of Almada's film.