Planting Seeds

Moving on to Morelia, a beautiful colonial city in Michoacán, my mind has been put to ease both concerning the film's value for the 'young generation' as well as the fear that the poetic layer of the film might get lost in translation.

After a beautiful introduction by film writer and feminist documentary theorist Sophie Mayer to a full cinema, where she describes the film as being a ‘seed’ of thought for the viewers to take away and let grow, the comments from the audience were both insightful and encouraging. I was so captured by the discussion that I didn’t even stop when the room started to shake, and I only realised afterwards that it was an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale!

The idea of planting a seed was strangely something I had spoken about with the small, but incredibly engaged audience at Faro cultural centre in the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City the day before. The first comment came from an older lady who thanked me for the film and apologised for the small number of people attending, saying that this is a film that everyone should see. My answer was that the numbers of the audience aren’t the most essential thing. Even if it’s important to me to make the film available to as many people as possible, the real success is when even just one person walks out of the cinema with a new ‘seed’ that they will nurture and let grow in their own way. I think this is how change happens; when we share ideas and keep bringing each other’s work and discoveries forward. It’s not about the achievement of isolated artists, activists or scientists; it’s a chain reaction between people from all walks of life and through history.

So thank you to the young and the old for reminding me that these issues concern everyone, and thank you to Ambulante for an absolutely brilliant film festival! I am very much looking forward to the rest of the screenings.