Over the last ten years I have participated as scriptwriter and producer for different film projects spoken in Mixtec and I want to share some of my experiences in writing and producing films in an indigenous language.
I started writing plays in Mixtec with the purpose of revitalising my own language. Film interests me because it allows the inclusion of dialogue in a native language which then gets translated through subtitles, something that is more limited in theatre where there is generally no way to include subtitles. This is why I started writing screenplays. My transition from theatre to film was facilitated by fiction as this retains common elements through film and theatre like dialogues, staging and performance. In the following posts, you can read about the process in relation to different film productions.
If you would like to cite this text, we suggest the following reference: Bautista García, Armando (2020), “Reflexiones de un guionista mixteco”, published by the Indigenous Cinematics/Cinemática indígena project.