Documentary Projects
Artistic Projects
Educational Projects

Felix

Félix captures the story of a human smuggler who is also a low-budget border film actor. In this documentary we are exposed to the network he controls in Tijuana: the strategies, methods and members of his organization that smuggles undocumented immigrants into the United States. Félix reveals the world of human smuggling from the point of view and perspective of the smuggler and includes fragments from films in which he has portrayed or fictionalized himself.

Script and Direction: Adriana Trujillo
Production: José Inerzia, Adriana Trujillo and Iván Díaz
Line Prodution: José Inerzia
Production Companies: Polen Audiovisual, FOPROCINE / IMCINE
Year: 2011

Skin Destination

Essay film that addresses the different bodily uses, practices and phenomena that take place in Tijuana: city of first-rate aesthetic operations, dental offices, drugstore capital, and stage to drug traffic and consumption. City of mutilated bodies by the hand of drug trafficking and where simultaneously hundreds of tourists transform themselves, heal, and have operations performed on them; it is in this space that the entry-departure of bodies on the border is registered. In this documentary, different formats, narrative strategies, genres, archive and reappropriation material take place and mix in a border-like manner (just as in the city). This essay film posits the hybrid and fictionalized nature of a city and its urban myth which is built upon its dense reality and corporal fiction.

Script and Direction: Adriana Trujillo
Production: José Inerzia
Production Company: Polen Audiovisual

El Hogar al Revés (Upside Down Home )

El Hogar al Revés explores the main current environmental concerns as to what is causing global warming from a new perspective: by bringing to light the way in which the average citizen takes part in this striking deterioration from his or her domestic life and presenting a series of transformations in order to activate change. We will review how global ecological crises are viewed and lived from the point of view of women from different countries that have struggled to earn their own voice in the quest for an ecologically and emotionally sustainable life. El Hogar al Revés attempts to give its spectators an unexpected twist in order for them to discover the great responsibility they have from their own domestic environment and hopefully, attempt to improve it.

Screenplay and Direction : Itzel Martínez del Cañizo
Production: Ozcar Ramirez (Artemecánica)
Production Companies: Artemecánica / Polen Audiovisual

Georafias Cruzadas

Geografías Cruzadas shows us the diverse aspects in the dynamics of life of two groups of teenagers by means of their own audiovisual productions that were made through intensive workshops (Polen Project) in two different cities: Tijuana, Mexico and Zaragoza, Spain. The products reflect the diverse means of communication with their day-to-day space, their worries and dreams, without leaving out young similarities. Through the participatory method and interviews we witness an exchange of glances in which the Spanish reflect about the dynamics of the Mexican city and the visual productions that were developed there, and Mexicans in turn speak about life, habits and constant change of the Aragonese capital.

The documentary also addresses the historical, social and cultural relationships between the young and chaotic Tijuana and the serene and historic Zaragoza by means of panoramic and archive footage, texts, and music. Geografías Cruzadas is an encounter between these two countries through video and the eyes of the young.

Direction: Adriana Trujillo
Production: YONKEart
Script: Itzel Martínez, Iván Diáz y Adriana Trujillo
Year: 2006

Screenings:
Centro de História de Zaragoza (Spain), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain), Centro Cultural Tijuana (Mexico), Festival Dokumente (Mexico), Ciclo Cine Compromiso La Plata (Argentina).

Postales Corporales

Seven human behaviors and pleasures have been classified as sins, but are inherent to the human condition and therefore inseparable from the body and mind. Postales Corporales is a body divided in seven chapters, bodily stories told through physical and psychic nakedness in terms of the so called deadly sins. Each postcard explores the skin of Luís, Mariona, Ana, Rubén, Ada, Aramis and Noemí as they reflect about their “sin” and its relationship with their body as a final challenge in terms of identity and ephemeral limits between their interior and exterior.

Direction and Production: Adriana Trujillo & Isabel Gahren
Production Companies: Universidad Autónoma de Barceloa & Barcelona TV
Year: 2005

Watch Trailer

Screenings:
Caixa Forum Barcelona, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona CCCB, Doc’s Televisión pública Cataluña, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de San Diego (EU), Colectiva Familiar Memorable Laboratorio de Arte Alameda (Mexico), San Diego Latino Film Festival 2007 (EU).

Awards:
Premio Espacial del jurado Barcelona Visual Sound (2006), Mejor Documental Festival de Cine de Baja California (2006).

Ciudad Recuperacion

Ciudad Recuperación is an artistic intervention on the processes of drug rehabilitation of a group of men through the development of a game of fiction.

The interns, camera in hand, create a personal narrative as a group focusing on the ideal city, where they imagine a space of their own, dignified, integrated: a Tijuana, perhaps possible, that reinvents itself tailored to the wishes and ideals of its inhabitants “in recovery.”

Aside from this vision of Recovery City by the addicts, the video contrasts the testimonials of another social group made up by upper and upper-middle class women from Tijuana. The way in which the drug addicts in Recovery City present the ideal conditions for their social reinsertion is intervened with interviews of women from a privileged sector of this city, who in turn imagine the same city, equally ideal, where they see themselves personally integrated from their own perspective. Ciudad Recuperación works as an essay on the utopia of belonging in the context of Tijuana’s social reality.

Screenplay and Direction: Itzel Martínez del Cañizo
Production: inSite_05/ YONKEart

Screenings:
Encuentro Entre Dos Mares Bienal São Paulo-Valencia (España) 2007; inSite_05 Ex Cine Bujazán Tijuana ; Instituto de Cultura de México en Washington (EU)

Salon de Baile La Estrella

In a city like Tijuana that is characterized by having a population that comes from around the country the existence of ballroom is a good option for fun. People from all over Mexico that enjoy danceable music, whether it’s cumbia, norteña, ballads, or banda, find an interesting opportunity to make new friends and new dance steps. Video, with its dual ability to capture emotions and discourses, as well as images, colors, shapes and events as a whole, became the perfect weapon and tool to dive into this small world so full of life and peculiarity.

Direction: Itzel Martínez del Cañizo Fdz.-Jose Luis Martin Galindo
Production and original idea: Sergio Brown.
With the support of: Loop Urbanos 1999-2000.YONKEart

Screenings:
inSite 2000 Cinépolis Tijuana, COLEF, Semana Nacional de Antropología 2000.