The Last Council

The first fiction short film I wrote and produced was The Last Council (Itandehui Jansen, 2012). The story is inspired by a real event that happened in my native community when I was a child. During each change of command in my community the people’s money is counted in public. Everything is displayed in an assembly where all the community is gathered to witness. One day, after the change of command, the money was robbed from the municipal safe. I decided to write a story based on this event to invite a reflection on money and corruption. I wanted to contrast a communal vision in search of common good against a capitalistic vision focused on individual financial improvement.

The story revolves around the change of municipal command in a community in the Mixtec region in Oaxaca, Mexico. As part of the change of command ceremony the money in the municipal safe is counted. While the departing authorities take care of the money in virtue of the common good, the incoming authorities intend to spend it as soon as possible, thinking of personal whims. To contrast these two postures I decided that the outgoing authorities would speak in Mixtec while the incoming ones would speak in Spanish. This eventually led to a generational division between the actors since it was complicated to find young people who speak Mixtec in the region where we were filming. It was thus decided that the council of outgoing authorities would be formed by elder actors whereas the council of incoming authorities would be made up of young actors. This contrast further accentuates the difference between communitarian and capitalist visions.

A script is not the final product but mainly the means of communication with the production team. The script must narrate a story and at the same time ease the collaboration between the director, the cinematographer, the art department, the costume department, the sound department, the actors and every participant in the film. Bearing in mind that most of the production team in The Last Council did not know Mixtec, I decided to write the script in Spanish including the dialogues to be spoken in Mixtec. The script is therefore a bilingual document as it includes lines in Mixtec that correspond to the scenes shot in this language.

ULTIMOCONSEJO-guion

During pre-production the director and I decided that the story had to be shot in a Mixtec community with Mixtec speakers for the pertinent roles. We also decided to work with non-professional actors that were native to the region. We thus decided to work closely with Dr. Ubaldo López García who was invited to play one of the members of the outgoing council trespassing the mandate to the younger council. Dr. Ubaldo is a Mixtec native speaker and is widely recognized for his research and work on the revitalization of the Mixtec language. We gave Dr. Ubaldo some space to improvise his political discourses in Mixtec while filming since had had been a municipal authority in his own community and thus perfectly understood the narrative context.

During post-production the score composer Gerry Celada suggested that the music for the credits sequence could include a song in Mixtec. We liked this idea very much and I wrote a poem based on the ceremonial discourses given during the changes of command that take place on Mixtec towns (as compiled by Dr. Ubaldo). The lyrics of the song had to be modified because when I wrote the first version I did not know that it would be sung by a female singer so the Mixtec pronouns turned out to be inadequate. When I received the first recording by Gerry I adapted the lyrics so they could be sung by a woman. The first version of the song can be read in this section while the final and revised version is featured in the film:

1 Jukua xika un, xika nda’ando

2 Na kadatsa kuenta kida ita daa

(Na kadaña kuenta kida ita daa)

3 So’nondo nda’atsa vita ja’a

(So’nondo nda’aña vita ja’a)

4 Sa yakui, sa ntsee xanaxi.

 

1 Na ndutsa metsa en ita kuan, en ita kuixi

(Na nduña meña en ita kuan, en ita kuixi)

2 Na ndutsa en ñuma kuan, en ñuma kuixi

(Na nduña en ñuma kuan, en ñuma kuixi)

3 Na natón, na daye’e ku nundo ndidando

4 Na ndada nachitsa xi’in ita vili kue’endo.

(Na ndada nachiña xi’in ita vili kue’endo)

The score recording was made in Mexico City with close collaborators of the score composer. The singer of the song is not a Mixtec speaker but she was aided by my brother, Roberto Bautista García, who is also an actor in the film. The filming process was therefore filled with several moments of translation between Mixtec and Spanish.