“In Guanajuato, women are also making movies”: Director of 'Chicomoztoc'

Juana Adriana RochaCortazar.- Chicomoztoc; Every first of May, the hill of Culiacán is the scene of a celebration that brings together ancestral and religious elements: the pilgrimage to the cross located at one of the highest points in the state. It is a journey between dance and devotion, Nitzia Ruiz tells us about the documentary.

“I grew up watching the holiday from afar. I remember the people going up, how they looked, like a kind of confetti”, reveals Nitzia Ruiz, a filmmaker who dedicated a documentary to this sacred event.

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In 2015, the Digital Arts student at the University of Guanajuato put together a team interested in researching and capturing everything related to Santa Cruz del Culiacán, and after years of knocking on doors, they obtained financing from Netflix.

pure love of art

Nitzia revealed to the Correo newspaper what it was like to enter Chicomoztoc, the true identity of the Culiacán hill.

“That experience of climbing the hill, of going year after year, meeting people, people who came to tell us their stories, and seeing how each one climbs with their different requests, or commands because of that sacred energy of the place. It is just rescuing that story that tells us that this is why these petition rituals were carried out there for a good harvest, and that now we are going to ask for the health of a sick person, or that we are carrying a baby, asking that it grow well, not I know, there are many orders, "he explained.

This type of experience was worth so much effort. Proud, Nitzia remembers that at first they were just a group of students from Cortazar, Salamanca, Guanajuato, Mexico City and Morelia embarking on an adventure. "Some put the cakes, others the jugs of water, we asked to borrow batteries, because on the hill we were not going to be able to load the cameras, all that was now an independent management."

In the midst of the pandemic, Nitzia learned about the Miradas Fund, granted by Netflix and Ambulante, an organization founded by Gael García and Diego Luna to promote documentaries in Mexico. The fund would distribute 500 million pesos among projects throughout Latin America, which were affected by the health contingency. The symbolic support covered the post-production of 'Chicomoztoc'.

The Guanajuato Film Commission also joined the boost that Nitzia's work and her team needed. The credits are the soul of her documentary, she confesses.

The rescue of the past

How many customs were lost with our grandparents, great-grandparents and other ancestors? Nitizia is part of a curious generation that digs into the past. "We grandsons and granddaughters are interested in these issues, looking for where we come from, who were the ones who inhabited these regions."

Although there is still no date for the premiere of 'Chicomoztoc', there is already great expectation among those who know the festivity.

“They asked if we were going to do 'Apocalipto' in Chicomoztoc. And I said, no, it's not fiction, it's documentary! There is some misinformation, but it's good, because now that they see the film they will know what it is about.

The director knows that there is much to say about the Culiacán hill, “archaeologically, ethnographically, aesthetically. Even the theories that there are UFOs there. It has been difficult just to find what topic to address.”

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She revealed that her documentary will feature the participation of archaeologist Julio Celis Polanco, an authority on the subject for three decades, "thanks to him, this whole theory is founded that there is Chicomoztoc, that there is Aztlán."

the female eye

“It's very rare that they say 'the director' or 'the director,'” says Nitzia Ruiz. She is convinced that women bring a different vision to the stories that Mexican talent can tell. She recognizes that there are more and more spaces with a gender perspective.

An admirer of the work of Luna Marán (Oaxaquena), and Tatiana Huezo (Salvadoran), among many others, she joins a growing list of women in the guild.

With 'Chicomoztoc, la santa cruz del Culiacán', she takes the first step towards a promising career in film, and opens the doors for anyone who wants to follow her: "also in Guanajuato, let it start to sound like women are making movies" .

JRP/SZ