Natalia Almada

Widows and fatherless children spend long afternoons by the graves, scrubbing the marble floors in front of the portraits of their relatives. The silence and ambient sounds move the story onward. Hammer-blows, smattering mopeds, screeching transistor radios broadcasting news about gruesome deaths. The night watchman Martín is our companion through the city of the dead, measuring the hours with his regular patrols among the graves. Time, and the passing of time, resounds throughout this work.

Almada asserts the right to be a subject in the documentary narrative; in the periphery, or in direct portrayals of her family history. In her works, she deals with Mexico’s contemporary history, where the legal system and civil order are dissolving. Without any visible violence, its presence is nevertheless painfully tangible, seen from a position in the quiet eye of the storm.

Natalia Almada was born in Sinaola, Mexico in 1974. She lives and works in Mexico City and New York. She has a master of fine arts degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. Almada has received several international awards including the U.S. Documentary Directing Award for El General at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and Best Short Documentary Award at the 2002 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2012 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Selected museum & exhibition screenings: Resisting the Present, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2012; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012; dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, 2012; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2012; Whitney Biennial, New York, 2008.

Selected film festivals: Sundance Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, New York, Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival.