In de zaal van Barba Azul in Mexico City dansen en drinken de vrouwen met de mannen die dat kunnen betalen. In de kleine toiletruimte op de bovenverdieping vangt Mami ze aan het begin en het eind van hun diensten op. Zolang Mami haar fooi maar krijgt, let ze op de tassen, zorgt ze dat er voldoende toiletpapier klaarligt en zit ze klaar voor een opbeurende of ondersteunende babbel. Daarbij debiteert ze regelmatig haar eigenzinnige levenswijsheden, zoals: “Mannen hebben maar twee dingen te bieden, ten eerste: niks, en ten tweede: geld.”
Deze intieme documentaire speelt zich grotendeels af binnen de vier muren van Mami’s domein. Onder de wisselende groep meiden en vrouwen die zich hier voor de spiegels opmaken, volgen we vooral de nieuwste danseres, Priscilla. Zij komt dansen om de ziekenhuisrekeningen van haar 22-jarige zoon, die kanker heeft, te kunnen betalen. Voor haar, en veel van de andere vrouwen, is Mami’s kamertje een veilige, bijna moederlijke haven in de harde (nacht)wereld van hedendaags Mexico.
Credits
80 min
kleur
DCP
Gesproken talen: Spaans
Regisseur
Laura Herrero Garvin
Production
Laura Imperiale namens Cacerola Films, Patricia Franquesa namens Gadea Films, Laia Zanon namens Gadea Films
Cinematography
Laura Herrero Garvin
Editing
Lorenzo Mora Salazar, Ana Pfaff
Sound
Eloisa Diez
Gerelateerde sets
IDFA Competition voor Feature-Length Documentary
22 oktober 2019
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La Vida Loca
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The Salvadorian street gangs are, first and foremost, an image, a handbook of contemporary history, a picture of the local put together in a world that's become global. It's a memory of the gang, the fundamental myth of organized crime. Children of the Bloods and Crisp, made famous by the Dennis Hopper film "Colors", these gangs sprang up in the Hispanic ghetto of L.A. Now traditional enemies, they are engaged in an all-out suburban war. It started in the streets of Los Angeles then spread to numerous North American cities and prisons, in which thousands of gang members are now incarcerated.
Serving long, if not life sentences for homicide, robbery with violence, drug trafficking and weapons carrying, the gangs took possession and control of the prisons. Originally from all over Central America, over a ten year period of confused teenagers, economic and political
immigrants and, especially the offspring of thousands of Salvadorians escaping the civil war, they formed themselves into well-structured criminal organizations, killing their enemies both "inside" and "outside" the gangs. The gangs were called maras, after the marabuntas, the carnivorous ants of Central America, which destroy all life in their path. And so was born the Mara Salvatrucha (literally, "Salvadorian ant"), also known as the MS-13, based on 13th Street in South Central Los Angeles. Another mara followed hot on its heels, the formidable M-18, which took its name from 18th Street where it ran wild. The national maras in the southern States are sub-divided into pandillas (sets) at a
regional level and cliquas (cliques) on a neighborhood level. These local "chapters" sometimes serve a single street. Tattooed from head to foot, the gang members, are called pandilleros or homeboys. The tattoos not only serve as identifiers but provide a visible sign of their voluntary exclusion from society. How can you get a job with the number 13 or 18 tattooed on your forehead and your cheeks adorned with teardrops signifying the number of enemies you've killed? Writing a new chapter in the history of gang warfare in Los Angeles, the story might have
been contained within the United States of America. But that was reckoning without governmental policies... In 1996, the American government simultaneously enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and the Immigrant Responsibility Act, in other words the adoption of a ferocious "double sentence" legislation allowing the authorities to send more than 100,000 gang members detained in the United States straight back to Central America. With terrifying consequences. The order, social stability and economy of Panama, Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala, Costa-Rica, and Nicaragua, the countries to which this flood of delinquents returned, was corrupted, triggering intense paranoia about security. In one decade, the United States succeeded where it had failed before, in keeping the local dictators in power and financing civil wars and Coups d'Etat!…
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