“O The film ‘Las Hijas del Maguey’ is my first feature film and I consider myself an ‘artivist’ because I really like making art but I always have to have an activist and social perspective – and, mainly, the cause of women musicians- enough”, said the director to the Lusa agency.
For Francisca Siza, 32 years old, the documentary feature film “must also be a work of social information” capable of getting the message across through art, “in this case cinema”, even if resources are scarce.
“This documentary had very little funding but our interest was really to show the struggle of these Mexican women so that more women join the movement they formed so that they can get more work and establish companies, in a country like Mexico”, he explains, highlighting the human character of the interviewees.
“We traveled thousands of kilometers by car, by bus and sometimes by plane, across eleven states in Mexico. We slept in tents or on the ground and thought we wouldn’t make it, but when we saw the incredible story of these women – who gave us more than what they had – gave us the strength to continue. To tell this story to the world”, recalls Francisca Siza.
In April, the film won the prize for First Documentary at the Puerto Aventuras International Film Festival, organized by North Americans in Mexico, having previously been distinguished at the Berlin Kiez Film Festival, in the German capital, and at the Stockholm City Film Festival, in Sweden, among other distinctions.
The production of mezcal, a traditional Mexican drink, was an area “dominated by men, in a society with great sexist tendencies”, despite some changes that have occurred in recent years.
“The women who produced mezcal were, as one interviewee said, considered prostitutes because men said they shouldn’t indulge in alcoholic beverages”, the director reports on local society.
“One of the strongest stories is told by Maria Luz Saavedra, vice-president of the Mujeres del Mezcal association who was the target of two assassination attempts because of her involvement in the plantations”, says the filmmaker, stressing that, in both attacks, the support and Police protection was almost unimpressive.
Therefore, the film began as a work about Mexican women who produce mezcal, “but ended up becoming the story of the fight for visibility” of women and the human rights of the families of producers and rural workers.
The Mujeres del Mezcal association is a non-profit women’s organization that began 25 years ago with two “very politicized” producers who began by achieving at parliamentary level the application of the drink’s designation of origin category in all states of Mexico, so they could sell the merchandise legally.
It is currently an association with more than five hundred women in several states in Mexico, which fights for them to obtain better forms of income with a view to family well-being. Recently, the process of exporting the drink began.
“Right now, women scientists are involved in the entire process who study the mezcal plant, developing biofertilizers that make production more sustainable; there are businesswomen and obviously agricultural workers”, he says.
The largest consumption of mezcal is domestic but, unlike tequila, mezcal production is “artisan and ancestral”, with the United States being the main importer.
As a filmmaker Francisca Siza says she used a “classic language” and without major technical devices, taking advantage of the colors and sounds of the areas portrayed.
Director Francisca Siza studied documentary cinema in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this being her first feature film, for which she was produced by Gautier Heins.
The documentary ‘Las Hijas del Maguey’ lasts one hour and fifteen minutes and the director expects the film to be distributed in the United States “soon”.
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