Perdida

(Perdida)

Viviana García Besné / Mexico / 2011 / 90 min
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  • Diosa de Plata

    Best Documentary

  • Luciana Carbajal Award

    Best Documentary

  • Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia

  • Telluride Film Festival

  • BAFICI

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Spanish with English subtitles

With Guillermo Calderón, José Luis Calderón, Mate Calderón, and Ricardo Montalbán

After being told that her family had made some of the worst films in the history of Mexican cinema, Viviana spent many years ashamed of that legacy and distanced herself from everything that the Calderón family had ever done.

But a chance encounter sparked her interest and led to a 3-year quest to uncover the story of a family that had been involved in all aspects of the film business in Mexico and the United States — theaters, distribution, and production — whose rise and fall throughout the 20th century closely mirrored that of Mexican cinema as a whole, a once-powerful film industry that was now virtually nonexistent.

The story that Viviana discovered through old film reels, photographs, newspaper articles, clips from the family’s film vaults, and interviews with the survivors of Mexican cinema’s golden eras included tales of romance and stories about movie and music legends like Ricardo Montalbán and the mambo king Damaso Perez Prado. This journey allowed her to make peace with a legacy of film pioneers.

Press

“Mexican film history gets an amusing and surprisingly personal overhaul in Perdida, as Viviana Garcia Besné –granddaughter of the Calderon dynasty– gleefully liberates skeletons from closets and apocryphal footage from forbidden vaults in an earnest albeit frequently hilarious effort to clear things up about her family's unorthodox contributions to the art.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“In Perdida, Viviana García Besné narrates her family’s home videos — representing a once mysterious history to her — wondering how these images had survived for more than 80 years. To limit our cinematic curiosity would be to lose the very history, expertise, and innovations that have defined cinema since its inception. If we can learn anything from the past, it’s that not once has the history of film ever operated in static isolation.” – Daniella Mazzio, Indiewire

“Its interest to film buffs — especially those with tastes toward the psychotronic — is undeniable.” – Rod Lott, Film Attack

“This film traces the unbelievable true story of the Calderón family, which built grand movie palaces in Mexico and the U.S. and employed thousands to produce incomparable, hugely successful, often reprehensible populist-genre films utterly and uniquely Mexican. (...) It’s a Grey Gardens enquiry into a cinematic dynasty.” – Telluride Film Festival

About the Director
Viviana García Besné is a filmmaker, archivist, and activist for the preservation of popular cinema. Her first project, the documentary Perdida, premiered in the official selection of the Telluride Film Festival and received several awards during its time at festivals. Her other films include Behind the Scenes: La llorona, on the Mexican cult classic; and Looking for El Santo, on the surreal story of Mexican wrestler El Santo‘s debut on the big screen during the Cuban Revolution.

Viviana García Besné - La llorona

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Viviana is the founder of Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo Cinematográfico, the only independent archive in Mexico that specializes in popular cinema and the study of audiences. From 2017 to date, Permanencia Voluntaria has partnered with prestigious institutions such as the UCLA Film and Television Archive, The Film Foundation, the Cinema Preservation Alliance, The Academy Film Archive, the University of Guadalajara, and the UNAM Film Library, as well as with figures such as Nicolas Winding Refn and Tim Burton to carry out seven impeccable restorations. The challenges of these restorations have been many, since they had to work with elements as varied as original camera nitrates, original camera negatives, internegatives, and unique 16mm positives, making each restoration a huge learning experience.

The Archive contains Mexican cult classics such as Santo vs. The Evil Brain, La llorona, and The Bat Woman, among many others.

Notes on Film

“My grandmother’s memories are nothing like the story the film books told about my family. Nothing was written about my great grandfather, and my grandmother insists he brought sound films to Mexico. Searching for this story, I discovered incredible things, like old reels of film with pictures of my great grandfather and Lupe Vélez, a romance between my grandmother and Ricardo Montalbán, that my great aunt and uncle were pioneers of Mexican nudes, how the Rumba movies began, that my grandfather produced the first films with El Santo, that President Echeverría told my uncles to stop producing and devote themselves to the widow business… finally, this film is a reflection on memory.”

– Viviana García Besné, Director

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