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 Entertainment | May 2005 
Mr. Mayor and Me in Mexico
 Perla Ciuk - Nytimes
| | Lynn Fainchtein, far left; Luis Mandoki, center; and the mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, filming in the mayor's office. (Photo: Janet Jarman/NYTimes) |
All throughout the rocky month of April, television news crews were almost useless. On April 7, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, addressed 300,000 supporters before being stripped of his official immunity in a land dispute. A step toward bringing him to trial, it could have ended in his imprisonment and ineligibility as a 2006 presidential candidate.
But state television and the private duopoly of Televisa and Televisión Azteca transmitted only the essentials of a daylong process that took place in the Chamber of Deputies, giving it routine treatment on the nightly news (though it was fully covered on the cable channel of the Chamber of Deputies, which almost no one watches). On April 24, as more than a million Mexicans joined a "march of silence" in protest, more ambitious coverage was organized by the Argos production company, which was broadcast only on Channel 40, a cable channel.
Three days later President Vicente Fox surprised observers by amending the law, ending the conflict, and setting the stage for a hotly contested election that will almost certainly pit candidates of the National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party against Mr. López Obrador, who, according to the latest statistics, will represent the Democratic Revolutionary Party.
But even as the eye of television news blinked at this historic passage, a single camera, silent and watchful, has followed the besieged mayor through his moments of uncertainty and anxiety. In an unusual twist, it has been handled by the Mexican film director Luis Mandoki, who, during 16 years in Hollywood, made eight pictures, including "White Palace," "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "Message in a Bottle." He eventually returned to Mexico, where in 2004 he shot "Innocent Voices." Now Mr. Mandoki is embarking on an as-yet-untitled documentary that will follow Mr. López Obrador through the July 2006 election.
While the documentary camera brings American audiences an engaging mix of attitude and fact in films like the Bush-bashing "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the scandal chronicle "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," it is also finding its way into the heart of political process abroad, occasionally, as here, going where conventional news can't, or won't, venture.
"What I would give to have the access Luis Mandoki has," said Epigmenio Ibarra, the director of Argos, whose company, with some backing from the Democratic Revolutionary Party, deployed 24 cameras to cover the "march of silence." (Even more difficult than shooting, Mr. Ibarra said, is figuring out how "to distribute and show the material, which usually ends up in university screenings.")
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Mr. Mandoki's approach is that he says he is not a Democratic Revolutionary Party supporter, nor even much interested in party politics. Rather, he said, he was drawn to the project by Lynn Fainchtein -the music producer on "Innocent Voices" - and saw it as a way to watch a potentially momentous tale unfold in a country in which "there is still a lot of resistance against true democracy."
After making his last two films in Hollywood, "Angel Eyes" and "Trapped," Mr. Mandoki was drawn back to Mexico.
"I'm doing what really fascinates me," he said. "If not, it wouldn't have made sense to return."
The mayor agreed to cooperate with the project in mid-March, after a breakfast with Mr. Mandoki and Ms. Fainchtein. Deciding factors, Mr. López Obrador said during a recent interview, were Mr. Mandoki's professionalism and objectivity, along with his own sense that film has taken charge of history.
"Before, we used to read; now, we have images to create social conscience and leave a historical testimony," said Mr. López Obrador, who, showing a sense of humor, wore a black plastic anti-López Obrador bracelet on his left wrist. The bracelets, he explained, are sold in Las Lomas, a wealthy suburb, and this one was given to him at a press conference that morning.
Mr. Mandoki's crew consists of two alternating cameramen, Ignacio Miranda and Lorenzo Hagerman (who is lending his equipment), and Ms. Fainchtein's assistant, Federico Martínez. The team expects to buy cameras and continue filming in high-definition video, with a budget that Ms. Fainchtein estimates at $260,000 before postproduction. For the moment, there are no salaries, and financing comes from the personal pockets of Mr. Mandoki and Ms. Fainchtein to avoid commitments that could compromise the filmmakers' views.
"I'm looking to see if I can raise support from Amnesty International or some other independent organization," Mr. Mandoki said. "I've also talked with some private investors in the United States and some European television channels that might be interested in advance sales."
After starting at a dramatic moment that at least vaguely echoes Haskell Wexler's 1968 encounter with demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in "Medium Cool," the filmmakers have been gratified and frustrated, in turns, by their process. They might spend three hours with the mayor one day, three minutes on another, and then a couple of weeks may pass without seeing him at all. Mr. López Obrador has gradually gotten used to the camera, but he has also rejected it at times in annoyance. Now he allows the cameramen to accompany him in his car, and has even agreed to some shooting with his sons in his small apartment.
The good chemistry and confidence Mr. Mandoki and Ms. Fainchtein have achieved with their subject may owe something to the mayor's fond cinematic memories. The first time he saw a movie, he said, was in the traveling tent of gypsy exhibitors, who used to arrive every weekend in Tepetitán, the town in Tabasco where he was born in 1953. He recalls movies of the 40's starring Jorge Negrete and Luis Aguilar and films by Luis Buńuel, of which he particularly remembers "The Young and the Damned."
For Ms. Fainchtein, the main challenge is simply "to be there when things happen, and know when things happen." This isn't easy because everyone on the team has other work commitments on top of what is expected to be 600 hours of filming.
And Mr. Mandoki, ever the filmmaker, is bent on getting at something beyond the cut-and-thrust of party warfare. "I want to capture more than the politician, the man in his everyday life, of course, to the extent that he permits us, and I ask my cameramen to be attentive to things beyond the obvious," he said.
Though not a partisan, Mr. Mandoki said that he had already drawn at least one conclusion about his subject: "I have directed many actors. I think I can tell when somebody is lying, and in the mayor's eye I can see the truth." |
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