Award-winning Mexican filmmaker visits Wexner 9/25-26; new film premieres on WOSU 10/1

Dear Journalist,

Award-winning director Natalia Almada (Al Otro Lado, POV 2006; El General, POV 2010) returns to PBS's POV series with a beautiful and mesmerizing new film. From dusk to dawn, El Velador (The Night Watchman) accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us that, amid the turmoil of a drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, ordinary existence persists and quietly defies the dead.

Please consider sharing this extraordinary story with your readers. Almada is available for interviews, and you can find an embeddable trailer, artwork and more on the POV Pressroom. She will be at the Wexner Center for the Arts on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 25 and 26. The film will be broadcast on WOSU on Monday, Oct. 1 at 12 Midnight, and will stream on the POV website from Sept. 28 - Dec. 20.

Almada, who is the great-granddaughter of former Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles, has enlisted a number of prominent Mexican and international writers to write essays that will accompany the forthcoming DVD release of the film. Each essay presents a different perspective on the themes evoked in the film. Almada and her collaborators can provide personal insights into these issues, discussing how one can respond to the chaos and corruption of Mexico today, both as an ordinary citizen and an artist. We believe El Velador and the urgent matters it addresses will be relevant and interesting for your audience. Almada possesses the rights to all the pieces commissioned.

For screeners and interview requests, please contact POV Communications. Visit the POV website to view a trailer and clips from the film and access press materials; download photos here. More information below.

Best,

Cathy Fisher and Amanda Nguyen
cfisher@pov.org, anguyen@pov.org, communications@pov.org
POV Communications, 212-989-7425

POV’s ‘El Velador (The Night Watchman)’ Witnesses Aftermath of Mexico’s Drug Wars With a Guard Who Silently Watches Over the Dead, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012 On PBS; Online Sept. 28 – Dec. 20

"The Mexican drug cartels have inspired countless films, but never one as final as Natalia Almada’s El Velador. After this experience, everything else seems trivial."—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

El Velador (The Night Watchman), an Official Selection of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight and New Directors/New Films Festival, has its national broadcast premiere on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012, at 10 p.m., during the 25th anniversary season of POV on PBS. (Check local listings.) It will stream on POV’s website, www.pbs.org.pov/, from Sept. 28 – Dec. 20.

The cemetery of El Velador (The Night Watchman) is located in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa and Mexico’s drug heartland. Since the war on drugs began, the number of graves in the cemetery has exploded and the opulence of the mausoleums has exceeded the imaginable. Ranging in design from minimalist modernism to fanciful imitations of mosques pictured in magazines, these tombs look more like houses for the living than resting places for the dead. Who can afford such luxuries and dies so young?

As youthful widows methodically sweep the marble floors of elaborate crypts, luxury cars glide silently between tombs and construction workers build new memorials more lavish than their homes. One by one the funeral processions come and go; family and friends weep as they lay their loved ones to rest. A procession leaves, and a new one arrives a day or two later. Through Martin’s eyes, El Velador (The Night Watchman) sees night pass in a place where time stands still.

Shortly after taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón declared war on Mexico’s drug cartels and assigned the military the task of fighting the drug trade in Mexico. The drug war has killed more than 55,000 people during Calderón’s presidency, according to Reuters. Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was elected president of Mexico on July 2, 2012. In the two days following his victory, a car bomb killed two police officers, gunmen opened fired on a wake near the U.S. border and rival gunmen left 10 dead near the capital. Mexico has become the battlefield for an international, illegal drug trade, with the majority of its customers in the United States.

“When I first went to film at the cemetery where the film takes place in July 2009, there were four new mausoleums under construction and a tractor was digging up the dirt for a new hole to bury another 300 bodies,” says filmmaker Almada. “The ‘progress’ of the cemetery mirrored the violence that was spiraling out of control. With my camera in the back corner of that cemetery, I set out to answer the question of how to look at violence.”

About the Filmmaker:
Natalia Almada (Director/Producer/Director of Photography/Editor)
Natalia Almada is the recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film about her great-grandfather, Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles, El General, which had its national broadcast premiere on POV in 2010. Almada’s previous directing credits include All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001), an experimental short film that received international recognition, and Al Otro Lado (To the Other Side), her award-winning debut feature documentary (POV 2006) about immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music. Her films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), dOCUMENTA(13) and the Whitney Biennial. Almada has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a USA Fellow and a TEDx speaker and was the recipient of the 2011 Alpert Award in Film/Video. She lives in Mexico City.

About POV
Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and celebrating its 25th anniversary on PBS in 2012, the award-winning POV is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today’s best independent documentary filmmakers. POV has brought more than 325 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide and has a Webby Award-winning online series, POV’s Borders. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today’s most pressing social issues. Visit www.pbs.org/pov.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the desJardins/Blachman Fund and public television viewers. Funding for POV's Diverse Voices Project is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.