The Centre

An artistic impression of the restless, monumental central city square – Zócalo in Mexico City. In search of silence, the camera comes in a huge circle. It catches masters of small ceremonies.

“The Centre” was completed within 100 hours thanks to the Polish-Mexican film crew. It was the effect of winning a competition for the best script about the old town of Mexico City announced by Docs Festival in Mexico DF.

Production: Docs Mexico DF, Julia Popławska
Date: 2012
Director: Julia Popławska
Run Time: 10 min

Very quickly I decided to take part in the competition announced by the Festival Docs Mexico DF. I wrote a script for my short documentary not having been to Mexico City before, not knowing much about its culture and – at the time – not speaking a word of Spanish. I borrowed books about Mexico City from library and after reading them within a week I had some idea of the Old Town? City of Mexico City. Zocalo square is in its centre, surrounded by the most important administrative buildings and a church built by the Spaniards on the ruins of the ancient Templo Mayor.

This is a place which one should study for years to have an idea of what used to be there in the archeological and historical aspects. After learning a little I intuitively found out that. Zocalo is a centre of ancient pre-Columbian world. I wanted to invite viewers of my documentary to feel how it is to be in the centre. My script won and I was invited to take part in the Reto Docs part of Festival Docs Mexico DF, where I was offered a hundred hours in which I had to make a documentary based on my script.

In search of silence, the camera comes in a huge circle. It catches masters of small ceremonies.

The aim was to give an impression of being in the centre of the pre-Columbian world. I invited Katarzyna Kural Sadowska to work as the camerawoman. I asked her to film long panoramic shoots all around while standing in the centre of Zocalo Square. We both worked there with a Mexican sound and production crew.

Because we had only 100 hours (five days) to make a ten minute film, we had to hurry we had no time to lose. For the first time I worked in the Mexican style. It turned out that “mañana” was the basic word to describe our co-operation. I found out that doing anything on time would be impossible, but in the end we coped with everything. During the filming I had the opportunity to meet Zbigniew Paleta, the Polish violinist and composer, who had been living in Mexico City for many years. He had started “Piwnica pod Baranami”, the famous Polish cabaret in Cracow. His violin is still very well recognized in many Polish music compositions. He helped me a lot with understanding Mexican culture and the way of communicating. We all had a wonderful time exploring the fascinating Mexico City.