“What’s Important is That a Film Elicits a Reaction in You” Kenya Márquez, filmmaker She hasn’t yet turned 45, but already she’s worn the hats of screenwriter, director, and festival organizer. Polanski marked her and Almodóvar showed her the way forward. Maybe it was the wig, the deep blue shadow, the red of Roman’s lips. A deserted street in Paris. The chiaroscuro. The blood on his hands. Or maybe there was more to it than that. But one day Kenya Márquez saw Polanski’s The Tenant in a film appreciation class and it changed the course of her life. Previously unimagined paths opened up before her eyes. Rejected by more than one film school, she’d turned her hand to journalism. later, the burning desire to make films drove her to test her luck on the other side of the Atlantic, where she worked as a telephone operator. It wasn’t until she met Pedro Almodóvar in a phone booth in Spain and asked for his advice that she took the first flight back to Mexico to “write her films and get them off the ground.” Director, producer, and screenwriter Kenya Márquez (Guadalajara, 1972) studied Communications Sciences at the Valle de Atemajac University and screen writing at the Film Training Center (CCC). Her first short film, Cruz (1997), won Best First Film at the 1st Mexico City International Short Film Festival in 1998 and the following year was nominated for an Ariel in the category of Best Fictional Short. In 2001, La mesa servida (2000) was chosen as Best Comedy at the New York Shorts International Film Festival and nominated one of the six best short films at the 3rd Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival. In 2007, Señas particulares (2006), a prelude to her first feature, won the Jalisco Film Academy Award at the 22nd Guadalajara International Film Festival and the Palmita EFM Award for Best Short Film at the 5th Franco-Mexican Film Festival. Márquez made her feature debut with Fecha de caducidad (2011), which won more than a dozen awards in several categories –directing, photography, acting sound– at Morelia, Miami, Cine-Ceará (in Fortaleza, Brazil), Moscow, Vancouver, Valladolid, Trieste, Huelva, and Marseille. She also directed the documentary El secreto de Candita (2001) and produced the short film Epílogo (2009) and the feature length documentary Voces del subterráneo (2009). At 30, she was appointed director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival, a position she held for four years (2002-2005). She has also sat on the juries of numerous festivals in Mexico and abroad and taught audiovisual arts at several universities. More recently, she was awarded a screenwriting bursary by the Mexican Film Institute for her project Asfixia, which tells the story of an albino woman who has done time and who makes friends with a hypochondriac. “I want to address the subject of discrimination with a touch of black humor,” says Márquez. —How did you become interested in film as a profession? It was circumstantial. I started out in journalism, where I initially covered police reports and later politics and entertainment and sports too. I traveled a lot. Back then, I realized I was constantly observing people. I’d listen in on their conversations, take note of their behavior. Sometimes I’d even ask them things that had nothing to do with the story I was covering. I found myself writing stories about the people I’d interviewed. It was a way of telling stories but totally unpremeditated. —Do you remember the first film or film experience that marked you? I started working as a journalist while I was studying Communications Sciences. It was there, at university, that I saw Roman Polanski’s The Tenant during a film appreciation class. It was a watershed for me. I left that class knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to make films, a dream that took me a long time to realize because I was turned away by several film schools in Mexico and abroad. I backpacked around Europe to see if I could make it, but had no luck. Until one day I bumped into Pedro Almodóvar in a phone booth in Spain and told him I wanted to study film but couldn’t get into a school. He replied categorically, “Go back to your country.” I was working as a telephone operator at the time and decided to take his advice and get the first flight back to Mexico, where I got down to writing my films and getting them off the ground. I started taking filmmaking more seriously while I was in journalism. I read a lot of books on the language of film. I’ve always been a film buff and avid festivalgoer. I’d watch movies from the Golden Age of Mexican film with my grandmother and international films with my mother. I filmed my first project, Cruz, in 1997, based on a script I’d worked on with Alfonso Suárez. The theme of the film is matriarchy and it’s inspired by several places in Guadalajara where I once lived. The film did really well. It was screened at some 60 festivals and won several awards. In a manner of speaking, it was my cinematic coming of age. It allowed me to realize that pre-production and being on set made me happy. I’d found my path. —How would you define your style? Journalism gave me the sensitivity to be a good observer. It helped me tell the stories of people who are all around us. I like marginalized characters, the ones you hardly ever see. Aside from Polanski, other films and directors that have influenced me are Tom Tykwer’s María Mortal and Bergman, especially Cries and Whispers, the Taviani brothers, Kaurismäki, Visconti, and Buñuel, who marked me from an early age. Krzysztof Kieslowski, in terms of sensations and depth. He’s very incisive without being obvious. I’m more of a classicist, although I tend to veer towards unique narratives and characters. —What kind of stories are you interested in telling? My time as a news reporter left its mark on me. It made me who I am. My dark side, my sense of black humor largely stems from there. Discrimination is a constant in my stories; that cruel part of humans, how we discriminate against people because of trivialities like the way someone dresses, their economic situation, their behavior. I like to tackle social subjects subtly, so it doesn’t seem like I’m lecturing. —What do you see on the horizon for Mexico’s film industry? Right now, comedy is the strength of the Mexican film industry but there’ll be other filmmakers who’ll make different kinds of movies and I think diversity is what matters most. I think there should be films for every audience and there will always be films that reflect our reality. What’s important is that a film elicits a reaction in you, no matter what that reaction is.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:08:49 +0000
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