Creative Capital

Description

El General is a feature-length documentary that combines personal and family history with archival footage and sound recordings, photographs and newspaper clippings. Almada’s film uses her ancestors’ lives to explore Mexico’s history; her great-grandfather was Plutarco Elias Calles, known alternately as “The Father of Modern Mexico,” and a brutal dictator. Her grandmother began, but did not finish, an autobiography in 1978. The documentary illuminates the differences between Mexico under Calles and today, as well as Almada’s personal conception of history as compared to the official version of events. At its core, El General is about the imagined past, emphasizing inconsistencies between memory and fact.