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Press Releases
Celebrate Mexico Now 2020 Online on November 1 and 2 - Free Streaming Celebration of Mexican and Mexican-American Culture
Celebrate Mexico Now (CMN) is the only independent festival in New York City devoted to spotlighting contemporary Mexican artistry. Every year, CMN disrupts the often narrow definitions of Mexican culture by exploring the way artists are reshaping, envisioning and reflecting on their identity in the ever-changing global context.
This year's free streaming program will highlight Mexican indigenous voices through a spoken word event with poets Irma Pineda, Celerina Sánchez, María Enriqueta Lunez and Mikeas Sánchez, as well as a screening of animated shorts films entitled 68 Voices, 68 Hearts. Our film roster also includes What Happened to the Bees?, a documentary about the confrontation of Mayan beekeeping communities with transnational company Monsanto to keep transgenic soy out of their land. Coro Acardenchado’s not-to-be-missed world premiere concert, exclusively commissioned by Celebrate Mexico Now, will integrate body percussion, freestyle improvisation and other contemporary takes into cardenche, a traditional Mexican folk music genre. Lastly, as part of the ongoing conversation about racial injustice in the U.S. and the world, The New York Times journalist Eduardo Porter, author and racism researcher Federico Navarrete and filmmaker and host of the show Negritud, Negros con Actitud (Blackness, Blacks with Attitude) Tatiana García will lead a panel on racism.
Most CMN events will be streamed via the festival’s website at MexicoNOWFestival.org and Facebook Live starting November 1 and 2 and running until November 8th, 2020. Coro Acardenchado's concert will be available for viewing through November 4. Again, all events are free to stream.
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Sunday, November 1 at 11:00 AM EST
68 Voices, 68 Hearts is a series of animated short films that retell indigenous stories narrated in their native tongues. Created by Gabriela Badillo under the premise that no one can love that they do not know, 68 Voices, 68 Hearts seeks to strengthen bonds between indigenous and non-indigenous language speakers, fostering pride in the indigenous communities that make up Mexico’s cultural richness. Celebrate Mexico Now is proud to present the series for the third consecutive year as the project grows and gets closer to finishing the 68 shorts that represent each of Mexico’s indigenous linguistic groups. Join us for a Q&A with filmmaker Gabriela Badillo after the screening. With English subtitles.
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Sunday, November 1 at 4:00 PM EST
What Happened to the Bees? (2020) is a documentary that exposes the deadly effects of regularly used agrochemicals — currently legal in countries like Mexico and the United States — on millions of bees. The film explores how the planting of monocultures threatens the health and environment of Mayan beekeeping communities in southeastern Mexico and portrays their fight to protect their land from massive deforestation, groundwater table pollution and climate change. As a powerful example of the different socio-environmental conflicts taking place in indigenous Mexican territories, What Happened to the Bees? has been featured in festivals across Mexico, the U.S. and the Netherlands. Join us for a Q&A after the stream with filmmakers Adriana Otero Puerto and Robin Canul Suárez, Marinés Roque from educational filmmaking program Ambulante Mas Allá, and Amalia Cordova, Digital Curator at Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The conversation will be moderated by Claudia Norman, the head of Celebrate Mexico Now Festival.
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with Federico Navarrete, Tatiana García, and Eduardo Porter
Monday, November 2 at 6:30 PM EST
This year has marked a significant turning point in the fight against systemic racism in the U.S. As part of the ongoing conversation, Celebrate Mexico Now will present a panel, Racismo, to discuss and reflect on the role arts and culture play in fighting racial injustice, especially within the U.S.-Mexico dynamic. The dialogue will be led by The New York Times journalist Eduardo Porter, author and racism researcher Federico Navarrete, and Tatiana García, filmmaker and host of the Convoy Network show Negros, Negros con Actitud (Blacks, Blacks with Attitude). This event is presented in collaboration with Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Mexico City's Museo Universitario del Chopo and New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Eduardo Porter was born in Phoenix and grew up in the United States, Mexico, and Belgium. He is an economics reporter for The New York Times and has been a correspondent in Tokyo and London. In 2000, he went to work at The Wall Street Journal in Los Angeles to cover the growing Hispanic population. He is the author of The Price of Everything (2011), an exploration of the cost-benefit analyses that underpin human behaviors and institutions; and American Poisson (2020), aims to show how race is at the root of U.S. problems.
Federico Navarrete Linares is a Mexican historian, anthropologist and researcher who specializes in the history of Mesoamerica, and colonization and racism in Mexico. Navarrete obtained his PhD in Mesoamerican Studies from Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM). He is part of the Historical Research Institute and Mexico’s National Researchers System. In 2019, he published the platform Noticonquista, a project that narrates and analyzes the conquest of Mexico through Twitter. He is also the author of Alfabeto del Racismo Mexicano and México Racista. Una Denuncia.
Tatiana García Altagracia moved from Mexico to New York City in 2007. García holds a Professional Certificate in film production from New York University (NYU) and a Master in Fine Arts in film and media production from The City College of New York (CCNY). In 2011, she worked as the associate director of Cinema Tropical, the biggest distributor of Latin American film in the U.S., and has coordinated the Film and Television Production program at the New York Film Academy (NYFA). She hosts and produces Blackness, Blacks with Attitude, a Convoy Network show dedicated to Afro-descendant pride, history and music.
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Monday, November 2 at 8:00 PM EST
This showing is the world premiere of a Celebrate Mexico Now Festival commissioned concert film featuring traditional choral group Coro Acardenchado. The group was born in 2016 as an homage to the cardenche song, a traditional a capella chant from Northern Mexico usually sung by three voices. The term cardenche originates from cardo (thistle), a plant full of thorns that are more painful to remove than to catch — an allegory of love. The group collaborates with cardencheros and infuses the traditional songs with freestyle improvisation, body percussion and other contemporary arrangements. Coro Acardenchado has performed across different theaters and forums across Mexico, including the renowned Day of the Dead Parade in Mexico City. For their Celebrate Mexico Now debut, the Coro Acardenchado presents a multimedia landscape that will take us on a journey from an urban and industrial context all the way to the stillness of natural spaces.
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About Celebrate Mexico Now
For seventeen years running, Celebrate Mexico Now has invited audiences to experience the creativity, heritage, and heart that contemporary Mexican artists bring to every artistic field. Showcasing the wide range of arts expression from across the Americas, Celebrate Mexico Now's expansive repertoire disrupts narrow definitions of Mexican culture by exploring the way contemporary artists are reflecting, reshaping, and reimagining Mexican identity in an ever-changing global context. For Celebrate Mexico Now's 17th Annual season of arts presentation, award-winning curator and producer Claudia Norman of CN Management has assembled an eclectic line-up of featured projects, including numerous US debuts and cross-cultural collaborations. As an independent festival, CMN is made possible through its partnerships with venues and cultural institutions. CMN is additionally supported by private donations, CUNY's Mexican Studies Institute at City University of New York, The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. and media partner PIX11.
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