Gods of Mexico.

Gods of Mexico is a captivating portrait of indigenous peoples of Mexico who still maintain centuries old traditions and ways of living.

The film centers on the concept of white and black - starting with a traditional process of making salt: collecting briny water, spreading it under the sun in terraced salt pans, digging a pit to forge a lime kiln. It ends with a depiction of miners toiling in the bowels of an industrial mine using far more extractive practices, and between these are couched Black and White portraits of traditional peoples of Mexico.

Watching it, I was struck by how much beauty can exist in simplicity. I found myself reminded that powerful things can happen with patience. I realized that magic is a thing that can be real if you give it air to breathe. I wondered what my life might be like if I gave it a bit more silence and reverence.

I found myself comparing it against George Steinmetz’s similarly striking Feed the Planet, whose scenes highlight the various ways in which we go about feeding the world’s 8 billion people.

I wanted to share some of the imagery here, in hopes that someone else might be moved to watch it, and by watching, it might move something in you. Let me know if you do!

Film Title Slide Wide view of workers spreading brine across terraced salt pans on a hillside Aerial view of a worker spreading brine across terraced salt pan. An inky black question mark swirls in the water beneath the worker’s feet The workers stand side by side, using long wood poles to spread the brine. Their movements are in unison, like a dance. A man reaches upward from a deep pit for a burlap sack being lowered by a rope. The bag contains lime bricks to build a kiln A field of endless saguaro cacti stretching out across a hillside at dusk, fading sunlight catching on their edges A black and white photo of a ceremony in which 4 men ride in circles on a large wooden pinwheel stretched between trees. The pinwheel is decorated with ornate circular discs, and a boy watches from high up on the trunk of a rope-bound tree An unknown reddish substance gathers in a pool, filled with strands of a white substance. The pool seems to almost glow. An elder fisherman carrying a long wood pole over his shoulders from which hang various fish. A long stretch of sand is visible in the background. Three men gather at the edge of a reedy bank. They wear stern looking wooden masks and tall wicker hats, and white linen clothes. A man sits in a dry dirt field, from which rise many wood crosses marking graves. A couple stand in a rocky field, dressed in ornate clothes from a different era. A black horse is bent eating next to a leafless tree in the distance. A man with a curved scythe and wearing a plastic bag as a cape enters a reedy marsh, standing in a wooden boat filled with harvested reeds. A woman stands next to a giant white skeleton, perhaps of a whale, though there is no water visible anywhere near. The woman holds a bundle of something fibrous, that looks almost like hair. A figure stands looking over a vast desert from which rise enormous rock pillars. He is wearing his clothes backward, to face the photographer, and a bearded mask is worn on the back of his head