USA / Mexico / Canada,
1997, 88 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
-
Vicky Funari
- prod
-
Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Vicky Funari
- scr
-
Vicky Funari, Paulina Cruz Suárez, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor
- cam
-
Marie-Christine Camus
- editor
-
Vicky Funari, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor
- cast
-
Paulina Cruz Suárez, Mathyselene Heredia, Mariam Manzano Durán, Erika de la Cruz Ramírez
- source
-
CineMamás Productions, 156 Wool Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. FAX: 415-552-8979
- gga award
-
Golden Spire, Bay Area Film & Video: Documentary
-
COMMENTS
Screened with The Ballad of Cecilia Rios. Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Vicky Funari and Paulina Cruz Suárez in person.
OTHER
San Francisco director Vicky Funari’s Paulina is a unique, provocative look at a Mexican woman’s life-long struggle to live on her own terms. In the 1950s, when she was a child, Paulina Cruz Suárez’s parents traded her away to Mauro, the town boss, for land rights. At 15, after being raped by Mauro and kept as an unwilling mistress for two years, Paulina escaped to Mexico City where she found work as a maid. The story of Paulina’s fall from grace and return to her village to confront her parents and villagers about her tragic past goes full circle in this nonfiction feature film. On location in rural Veracruz and Mexico City, Paulina meets with her family and former neighbors to talk about key events in her life. While some corroborate her story, others present radically different accounts of Paulina’s relationship with Mauro. By intercutting traditional documentary sequences with lushly photographed dramatic reenactments to present the various versions of her story, Funari expertly navigates through critical social issues and challenges her audience to sort out the various truths embedded in the shifting perspectives of the film’s interviewees.
—Julia Segrove-Jaurigui
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
