By Adam Rabiner
Every now and then, as with earlier screenings of Chinatown and The Grapes of Wrath, the Plow to Plate curators chose a film whose relationship to food is oblique, an infrequent departure from more typical selections such as last month’s Supersize Me where the choice couldn’t be more obvious. Such films stretch the viewer to perceive connections they may have glossed over in another setting, such as San Francisco’s water supply in Chinatown or the Dust Bowl’s relation to the mass migration of Okies in the 1930s.
Similarly, El Remolino (The Swirl) is a film about much more than food. El Remolino is a remote, rural hamlet populated by no more than a hundred people, the descendants of a handful of early families that settled the land, on the banks of the Usumacinta River in Chiapas, Mexico, more than a hundred years ago. The film traces the social and ecological impact of the river’s annual flooding, which is getting worse and worse each year due to deforestation and is now head high. In the wake of the flood the local one room school-house shuts down for months and the corn and zucchini crops are destroyed.
The town’s name, El Remolino, (whirlpool, whirl, whirlwind, or disturbance) is an apt metaphor, one used by the villagers themselves, to describe not just the river but their lives. And life, as it is lived on the banks in this out of the way and barely populated village, is the theme of the film, captured both by film maker Laura Herrero Garvin in her first documentary feature, and by Esther, one of the few individuals prominently featured, with her prized and hard earned hand-held video camera memorializing family, friends, moments of celebration, and raw nature. Esther is especially fond of filming Dana, her school age daughter, whom she helps with her homework, practices English with, and sacrifices for, preparing her for a better and more prosperous and free future. El Remolino weaves Esther’s raw, grainy, homemade footage with Garvin’s professional quality scenes, drawing out the contrasts between their lives, resources, the first and third worlds each inhabits.
The other main character is Pedro, Esther’s 46 year old homosexual brother, the oldest of eleven surviving children, the only one not to marry, who still lives with their parents. Pedro, like his father (a man perplexed by a daughter who asserts her independence like a man and a son who prefers to wear makeup and dress as a woman) is a farmer, though the chickens and birds he keeps seem more like his beloved pets than agricultural commodities. Both he and Esther have struggled against and resisted their parents’ traditional views about gender and sexuality.
That Pedro and Esther are brother and sister is not immediately obvious. Though they are united by deep self-knowledge and a refusal to conform to societal norms, Esther is filmed mostly alone or with Dana, and Pedro with his animals, parents, or at a community event. Their commonality reveals itself gradually as their personal family stories of parental abuse, rejection, and repression overlap. Their kinship is suggested by other qualities: intelligence and sharp observational and narrative skills.
If El Remolino is an anthropological and sociological documentary about a recognizable but very different world from our own, it fits snugly within the framework of the Plow to Plate series, whose gestalt uses the overarching theme of food to examine its multifaceted touch points: nature, business, economics, health, the environment, science, politics, and community, to name a few.
El Remolino will appeal to those who enjoy our usual fare, but it invites those whose favorite category on Netflix is documentary, as well as foreign film devotees and those who passionately advocate for women’s and human rights. This dreamy, lyrical, and poetic movie, visually and aurally interesting, is filled with sights and sounds of nature, and great music. Narrated by two strong, central characters whose reflections and observations reveal a deep sense of themselves and their community, The Swirl starts slowly and quietly, taking its time, but gradually builds into something powerful, like a summer storm.
Every now and then, as with earlier screenings of Chinatown and The Grapes of Wrath, the Plow to Plate curators chose a film whose relationship to food is oblique, an infrequent departure from more typical selections such as last month’s Supersize Me where the choice couldn’t be more obvious. Such films stretch the viewer to perceive connections they may have glossed over in another setting, such as San Francisco’s water supply in Chinatown or the Dust Bowl’s relation to the mass migration of Okies in the 1930s.
Similarly, El Remolino (The Swirl) is a film about much more than food. El Remolino is a remote, rural hamlet populated by no more than a hundred people, the descendants of a handful of early families that settled the land, on the banks of the Usumacinta River in Chiapas, Mexico, more than a hundred years ago. The film traces the social and ecological impact of the river’s annual flooding, which is getting worse and worse each year due to deforestation and is now head high. In the wake of the flood the local one room school-house shuts down for months and the corn and zucchini crops are destroyed.
The town’s name, El Remolino, (whirlpool, whirl, whirlwind, or disturbance) is an apt metaphor, one used by the villagers themselves, to describe not just the river but their lives. And life, as it is lived on the banks in this out of the way and barely populated village, is the theme of the film, captured both by film maker Laura Herrero Garvin in her first documentary feature, and by Esther, one of the few individuals prominently featured, with her prized and hard earned hand-held video camera memorializing family, friends, moments of celebration, and raw nature. Esther is especially fond of filming Dana, her school age daughter, whom she helps with her homework, practices English with, and sacrifices for, preparing her for a better and more prosperous and free future. El Remolino weaves Esther’s raw, grainy, homemade footage with Garvin’s professional quality scenes, drawing out the contrasts between their lives, resources, the first and third worlds each inhabits.
The other main character is Pedro, Esther’s 46 year old homosexual brother, the oldest of eleven surviving children, the only one not to marry, who still lives with their parents. Pedro, like his father (a man perplexed by a daughter who asserts her independence like a man and a son who prefers to wear makeup and dress as a woman) is a farmer, though the chickens and birds he keeps seem more like his beloved pets than agricultural commodities. Both he and Esther have struggled against and resisted their parents’ traditional views about gender and sexuality.
That Pedro and Esther are brother and sister is not immediately obvious. Though they are united by deep self-knowledge and a refusal to conform to societal norms, Esther is filmed mostly alone or with Dana, and Pedro with his animals, parents, or at a community event. Their commonality reveals itself gradually as their personal family stories of parental abuse, rejection, and repression overlap. Their kinship is suggested by other qualities: intelligence and sharp observational and narrative skills.
If El Remolino is an anthropological and sociological documentary about a recognizable but very different world from our own, it fits snugly within the framework of the Plow to Plate series, whose gestalt uses the overarching theme of food to examine its multifaceted touch points: nature, business, economics, health, the environment, science, politics, and community, to name a few.
El Remolino will appeal to those who enjoy our usual fare, but it invites those whose favorite category on Netflix is documentary, as well as foreign film devotees and those who passionately advocate for women’s and human rights. This dreamy, lyrical, and poetic movie, visually and aurally interesting, is filled with sights and sounds of nature, and great music. Narrated by two strong, central characters whose reflections and observations reveal a deep sense of themselves and their community, The Swirl starts slowly and quietly, taking its time, but gradually builds into something powerful, like a summer storm.