by Nicholas Vroman
Mexican director Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba’s Formas de atravesar un territorio begins with a sly evocation of an ethnographic study of a traditional Tsotsil shepherding family – Doña Sebastiana and her four daughters – living and working in the hills near San Cristobal de las Casas. Like her previous opus, La danza del hipocampo (2014), the film builds like a Miguel Littin-esqe exploration of place, history, memory, indigenous being in the modern landscape, ways of seeing and the filmmaker’s very place and relation to this world she is documenting.
Ruvalcaba has long been exploring the nature of documentary itself. Her short films, Hermosa danza de la resistencia (2013), Ladridos (2017) and La Comunidad del Oído Atento (2018) for example, reach deep into a tool box of various methods of representation ranging from abstract an imagistic representation, modern dance, fly-on-the-wall direct documentation, found footage, still photographs and so much more. Her filmic work can be overwhelming in its ways of connecting ideas and images, but is always profoundly grounded in the way it navigates the tricky terrains of the world and her beautiful imagery and clear voice. Formas de atravesar un territorio builds on her compelling vision and ways of making documentaries.
As Ruvalcaba has recounted, “I am from San Cristóbal de las Casas and I have memories of always observing Tzotzil women doing their activities such as herding sheep and other things. I wanted to start making a film with them and learn more about their universe. And I began to realize and ask myself where I was telling their story from*.” The idea that, specifically, her point of view would influence their story is a major conundrum that raises many questions in ethnographic film. Ruvalcaba explores her position of being the other that has been inhabiting the same geographic space with a certain economic and hegemonic privilege in relation to her subjects – with whom she embedded herself for 3 years. Like in China Mieville’s The City and the City, the “Mexican” city folk of San Cristobal de las Casas effectively don’t even see the indigenous folk who come down from the mountains to the city to trade.
But not only does Ruvalcaba dig deep into that relationship, but she brilliantly burnishes and makes shine many facets of ways of looking at their lives and the very world that they and Ruvalcaba inhabit.
From the moment she follows the women’s daily routine of taking sheep into the hills to graze they acknowledge the filmmaker’s presence. Ruvalcaba becomes a part of their life. They allow her to enter. She carefully documents their activities, braiding (which will become a leitmotif in the film) rope, shearing sheep, spinning and rolling yarn, carding and weaving. She languorously sketches out the “work” of these women, giving the viewer a feel of daily lives. The women posing with their stark black woolen blankets and a scene of them sitting in chairs in a field miming the actions of weaving puts another spin on how to look at their lives. Here their motions bring to mind any number of traditional mimetic dances – like the rice harvesting dance of the Japanese obon celebration. This is not necessarily their tradition to do this sort of dance, but Ruvalcaba (who has a long interest in modern dance) creates this new way of looking at this world, now turned into a beguiling scene of abstract motion.
She brings in images of maps – cartographies of the place, collections of dried flora – indexes of the things of this place, old photographs – frozen moments captured time/memories of this place. They all serve to build new bridges of perception and create deeper connections to this place. Particularly when a man, a guide, details the lost trails and roads that once defined the landscape, when Don?a Sebastiana looks at old s photos which brings out her sense of shame of her status in the world and her hopes for her daughters and when the abstract lines that make a map are given names of places and landscape features defined by their essential characteristics (Mossy Mountain, for example).
This is the tip of the iceberg of Ruvalcaba’s rich tapestry of images and ideas that also bring up the industrial destruction of the landscape, the unquestioned coexistence of old and new ways of navigating the world by a new generation and metaphors and images of how our senses themselves define the experience of place. A closing montage shows hands touching, feeling plants and leaves, wool, the things that make up a territory that can be traversed in many different ways.
*“Soy de San Cristóbal de las Casas y tengo un recuerdo de siempre observar a las mujeres tzotziles haciendo sus actividades como pastorear borregos y otros. Quise empezar a hacer una cinta con ellas y conocer más su universo. Y me empecé a dar cuenta y preguntarme a mí misma desde dónde estaba contando yo su historia”.
Semaine de la Critique
Formas de atravesar un territorio
Screenplay and directed by: Gabriela Domi?nguez Ruvalcaba
Producer: Pi?a Quintana Enciso
Cinematography : Natali Montell
Editing: Dalia Huerta Cano, Gabriela Dominguez Ruvalcaba
Sound: Emma Viviana Gonza?lez
Sound design: Christian Giraud
Music: Arcadio M. Lanz
Mexico, 2024, 72 Min