A Trip to Tetlapayac

Directed by Chiemi Shimada

World-famous and already notorious Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein spent 1931 in Mexico, after the rejection of his projects in Hollywood. But the epic film he planned and largely shot would never be completed. In 2012, film historian Ian Christie visited the hacienda where Eisenstein spent much of his time in Mexico, to ask what really went on there, and discover what’s happened since. This essay film, made in partnership with Japanese filmmaker Chiemi Shimada, looks beyond the apparent failure, to ask what contemporary audiences – and Eisenstein himself – could still learn from Que Viva Mexico!