AYINEL TA KO’TAN, HABITAR LOS RECUERDOS by Delmar Méndez-Gómez

The film director goes in search of the memories of his dead great-grandmother trying to get to know aspects of her life, because only late in life he learned to speak Tseltal his and his great-grandmother mother tongue. This impossibility of communication was one of the reasons why they never established a conversation in Tseltal. The film is a reunion, a personal and intimate learning, the re-appropriation of a landscape and of a linguistic world. Only by learning Tseltal the director could reconstruct the life of one of the most valuable person, whom he wishes to keep present in his existence.

  • Original Title: Ayinel ta ko’tan, 2020-2021
  • Director: Delmar Ménde-Gómez
  • Photography: Humberto Trece
  • Sound: Marco Antonio Santiz Gómez
  • Editing: Delmar Ménde-Gómez
  • Country: México
  • Running Time: 18′
  • Production: Satil Film

Delmar Méndez-Gómez, Chiapas, Mexico, 1990 is an essayist, documentarian, and Tseltal scholar. He has a PhD in Anthropological Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa. He is a member of the Mexican Youth Network for Research (ReMJI) and a member of the Audiovisual collective Satil Film. He has been a fellow of the Young Creators program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in two issues (2018 and 2021), of the Interfaz literary scholarships (2018) and of the Program of Stimulus to Artistic Creation and Development, PECDA- Chiapas (2018-2019). He has participated as director and editor of the documentaries Sonowiletik: music of the soul (2013), and Ak ’Riox: guide of roads (2015, with Liliana López). He is currently filming the documentary about him Meme ‘/ Abuela. He has published academic articles such as “Breaking down walls: filmic narratives on Central American irregular migrations” (2020), “The ways of fighting: art and politics of native peoples in Chiapas” (2020), “Alternative paths and screens: production and exhibition Community Cinema in the Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas ”(2019). Likewise, several of his literary essays are published in the magazines Primera Página, Sinfín, Cielo sur, Tierra Adentro, Círculo de Poesía and Punto de Partida. He is the author of the essay book Te sututet ixtabil / El rota de la bola (Coneculta, 2020). His lines of research are communication and visual culture, body and performativity, and sociology of memory.