Under a calcified tree, a young man is striking bones on stones to the rhythm of electro music blasting from a small speaker. Words on the screen enhance the images of the strange musical performances that follow to give a “brief history of ancient farming in Mexico”. If Edgardo Aragón chooses percussion instruments made from organic materials, it’s to remind us that this history is one of slave-labour plantations, pillaging and resistance paid for in blood. But in the film’s final quarter, with picture postcard images of the shores of the Pacific, the sound disappears. Mirroring the lagenaria ciceraria thrown into the sea from a plane, memories of the “death flights” resurface in silence.
