#Bales2023FilmChallenge April 21: A fiddler for #FiddlersFrolic

In Mayan worldview, mortals move along the horizontal, gods along the vertical plane. A boy travels both worlds, united by music and wonder.

Juanito, a #Mixquic boy with hypersensitive hearing finds solace from the hustle of #MexicoCity in the silence of the chinampas – the pre-Hispanic man-made agricultural plots in lake #Xochimilco. There he plays his cardboard fiddle for the nature around him, until the sound from a real violin reaches him. The violinist, an old hermit who lives on one of the #chinampas, takes the boy in and teaches him how to master his hand-built instrument Yanco. When the man dies, the boy goes out at night to be able to play Yanco. In a changing world where the living and the dead used to naturally cross paths, the strings stir different to some.

The #Nahuatl film Yanco (Servando González / Mohy Quandour, 1961) is a small cinematic miracle that begs for a beautiful restoration akin to how കുമ്മാട്ടി [Kummatty] (Govindan Aravindan, 1979) opened up the world to indigenous filmmaking.

#film #cinema #Mexico #ServandoGonzález #MohyQuandour #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @bales1181 @film https://letterboxd.com/12pt9/list/bales2023filmchallenge/