Search

Monday, March 16, 2015

Narco Cultura


                                                                 Narco Cultura 
We know too much about Mexico's drug war. We hear about it constantly, about the 60,000 murders and the slaughter of innocents, but getting a sense of what that means to our culture and the influence it has on our music is harder to come by. The documentary "Narco Cultura" is an excellent place to start.
What this film does to the viewer. It reveals two very different societies, One in Juarez Mexico and the other one California, U.S.  Both societies exhibit, each in its own way, unmistakable signs of cultural collapse.
 What's happening in Juarez?  The city of Juarez is an epicenter of mass murders.  The city of Juarez is known as the murder capital of the world.  How that killing is reflected and refracted through the lens of Mexican American popular culture is in some ways equally shocking.
Our guides to these complementary worlds are completely different. In Juarez, we are in the company of Richi Soto, a soft-spoken but dogged crime scene investigator, while in Los Angeles and on tour we hang out with Edgar Quintero. He's an joyful song writer, who is a rising star in the writing and performing of narcocorridos,  “ narcocorridos” are hugely popular songs that highly celebrate and glorifies the savage killings and killers of the drug wars.
This film it’s both passionate and devastating at the same time. “Narco Cultura” gives you an inside look at the drug war in Mexico from two different but chilling perspectives. As directed and shot by Shaul Schwarz, an accomplished photojournalist who spent two years in this world as a still photographer before starting to film, "Narco Cultura" benefits from the access Schwarz earned through his time on the ground

No comments:

Post a Comment