The ‘habitacion’ or bedroom is huge. I have no idea who may have slept here hundreds of years ago when the Spaniards built this city in 1531 from the ground up. We are ensconced in a chamber fit for a queen (or mother superior) in this ex-convent turned four-star hotel in the heart of Puebla’s historic district. Did I tell you earlier that we got this room online from www.hotels.com during the height of the swine flu scare for $68 USD per night prepaid? The tariff is $2300 pesos per night rack rate which converts to $198 based on 13.2 pesos to the dollar current exchange rate. The walls are so thick that they mask the sound of the party going on in the courtyard below for almost 300 people. Thick adobe walls, stuccoed and painted a glazed golden ochre, and painted with original frescoes. The ceilings have to be 20 feet high and they original wood ceiling has been restored to its original beauty.
Puebla is talavera ceramic heaven. it is definitely worth a stop for two or three days to get the flavor of the Moorish architecture and hand-painted decorated tile work that adorns the beautiful colonial buildings.
After two hours of sleep last night (since we had to awaken at 2:30 a.m. to catch a 6 a.m. flight from RDU to Houston and then on to Mexico City), we have settled in. The Estrella Roja bus station is just down at the end of the large hall in the international terminal at the Mexico City airport. It was easy to take our luggage after clearing customs and immigration and walk to the bus depot, buy our tickets and get on the next bus to Puebla. Total cost: 184 pesos (about $15 USD per person) and the wait was no more than 30 minutes. The travel time was under 2 hours. The taxi into the historic district from the Puebla bus terminal cost 50 pesos and we gave a 10 pesos tip. Easy as pie!
Estrella Roja checks your bags and does a wand search before entering the bus. They also give you a little snack bag with your choice of soda or juice, cookies and ear phones to watch the movie (Crash was showing w/Spanish subtitles). Very comfy. We wind out onto the highway and not far beyond the city we are under the volcano. Fertile fields of rich volcanic soil are planted in corn and beans. The spires of a village church all gold and glistening in the morning light (we have arrived in Mexico City at 11:15 a.m.) rise above a humble village. A bicyclist pedals down a dirt road lined with eucalyptus, tall and elegant. In the distance, the volcano leaves a trail of vapor across a pure blue sky. It is a land of rolling hills, pines, live oak, moss colored. Leaves of corn are spring green. As we enter Puebla, we pass huge industrial parks and the massive, sprawling Volkswagen plant. This is a prosperous, large and productive city.
‘Weaving a Curve’ Movie Just Accepted to 100 Mile Film Series–Short Shorts
ChathamArts in Pittsboro, North Carolina, holds a series of documentary film screenings that are produced and directed by people who live within 100 miles of the “epicenter” — Big Culture in a Tiny Town! That would be: Pittsboro. I submitted our short film (just under 6 minutes) to the Short Shorts screening and we were accepted! The series coordinator is Linda Booker, a distinguished NC documentary filmmaker.
The screening is Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 7:30 p.m. at the Fearrington Barn, Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC. You can find out more on the ChathamArts website www.chathamarts.org This will be the first time the film will be shown on the big screen.
The film tells the story of Federico Chavez Sosa, master weaver of Teotitlan del Valle, how he learned to weave and perfect making the curve using the two-pedal, two harness tapestry loom introduced by the Spaniards in 1521. Federico talks about what it means to him to be a weaver, combining the aesthetic and spiritual, the past and the present. In Spanish with English subtitles.
I wrote, produced and directed the film with my friend Eric Chavez Santiago who shares billing with me. Eric is the director of education at the textile museum in Oaxaca, and took the documentary filmmaking workshop with me in his village of Teotitlan del Valle last February. We both thought it would be a useful skill to know, and this has proven correct. Eric has gone on to make short documentaries of aging weavers, dyers, and spinners in remote villages of Oaxaca. I am now making a documentary at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing about an innovative nursing research project that is looking into hunger and fullness feeding cues that infants and toddlers give to their parents and caregivers. If the cues are not recognized or are ignored, it is believed that this can result in early childhood obesity which could then lead to childhood type 2 diabetes.
Erica Rothman, our workshop instructor, repeatedly said that the goal of our documentary filmmaking workshop was to provide the skills to enable people to go back to their own communities and tell their unique stories through film. For me and Eric, I think we achieved this goal.
The next Oaxaca Filmmaking Workshop: Visual Storytelling is scheduled for February 19-26, 2010. If you are interested in attending, see the blog post for all the details or write me at normahawthorne@mac.com
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Posted in Cultural Commentary, Teotitlan del Valle, Workshops and Retreats
Tagged 100 Mile Film Series, documentary filmmaking, Erica Rothman, Linda Booker, NC, Pittsboro, Weaver Federico Chavez Sosa, Weaving a Curve movie