Sarah Minter

Directing

Sarah Minter

Born 1953-01-01 · Puebla, Mexico

Sarah Isabel Minter Muñoz de Cote (1953 - April 7th, 2016), bette known simply as Sarah Minter, was a Mexican film director and video artist, a pioneer of experimental film and video in Mexico.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Punk Soul poster
6.2

Part-improvised and starring a cast of nonactors led by real-life punk Ana Hernandez (as Alma, which also means “soul”), ALMA PUNK traces the tortuous path of a young riot grrl from the Mexico City punk scene as she moves north to Tijuana and, eventually, towards the United States. It confidently breaks with the rules of staging docudrama with an unsparing look at Alma’s love life, unfakeable scene bohemianism and extensive location footage of Mexico before NAFTA and after the 1985 earthquake. “I feel like no one is supporting me,” Alma says. “Guys want everything and give nothing in return. Isn’t that so?” Like NADIE ES INOCENTE, this film uses the intimacy and flexibility of video (this time, 3/4″) to wring innovation in the editing room, this time to give Alma a similarly alienated and jittery headspace.

Punk Soul

1991

Punk Soul poster
6.2

Part-improvised and starring a cast of nonactors led by real-life punk Ana Hernandez (as Alma, which also means “soul”), ALMA PUNK traces the tortuous path of a young riot grrl from the Mexico City punk scene as she moves north to Tijuana and, eventually, towards the United States. It confidently breaks with the rules of staging docudrama with an unsparing look at Alma’s love life, unfakeable scene bohemianism and extensive location footage of Mexico before NAFTA and after the 1985 earthquake. “I feel like no one is supporting me,” Alma says. “Guys want everything and give nothing in return. Isn’t that so?” Like NADIE ES INOCENTE, this film uses the intimacy and flexibility of video (this time, 3/4″) to wring innovation in the editing room, this time to give Alma a similarly alienated and jittery headspace.

Punk Soul

1991

Punk Soul poster
6.2

Part-improvised and starring a cast of nonactors led by real-life punk Ana Hernandez (as Alma, which also means “soul”), ALMA PUNK traces the tortuous path of a young riot grrl from the Mexico City punk scene as she moves north to Tijuana and, eventually, towards the United States. It confidently breaks with the rules of staging docudrama with an unsparing look at Alma’s love life, unfakeable scene bohemianism and extensive location footage of Mexico before NAFTA and after the 1985 earthquake. “I feel like no one is supporting me,” Alma says. “Guys want everything and give nothing in return. Isn’t that so?” Like NADIE ES INOCENTE, this film uses the intimacy and flexibility of video (this time, 3/4″) to wring innovation in the editing room, this time to give Alma a similarly alienated and jittery headspace.

Punk Soul

1991

Mex-Metr poster
NR

Unusual and suggestive journey through Mexico City and the Metro. In this work the most used public transport system in Mexico City, the Metro, is taken or transformed into a scenic space for a filmic choreography performed by the Ballet Teatro del Cuerpo where the tension between the intimate, the public and the private becomes evident. Music by Vicente Rojo Cama.

Mex-Metr

1987

No artwork available
NR

Video-essay documentary built from behind-the-scenes material of Olivier Debroise’s Un banquete en Tetlapayac, following artists and intellectuals gathered at a hacienda.

Reconstruction

1989

No artwork available
10.0

Starring Maribel Mejia as a young woman who goes on a road trip reeling from a string of heartbreaks and bad relationships, Minter’s early collaboration with her then-partner Rocha feels more apiece with the French New Wave influences of a successive generation. (She spoke admiringly about Godard in an interview, but described her later ideas as more directly influenced by Dziga Vertov.) There isn’t a ton of evidence of the staccato editing that would mark NADIE ES INOCENTE, but one prolonged sex scene – in which a furiously edited sequence of sound effects takes center stage over abstracted imagery – can only hint at the individual liberation to follow.

Saint Frenzy

1983

Adage poster
NR

As she has sex with her husband, she starts to fantasize about cheating on him.

Adage

1980

No artwork available
NR

A woman dissolves

Self-Portrait 1

2001

No artwork available
NR

A woman dissolves

Self-Portrait 1

2001

Nobody Is Innocent poster
8.5

"Kara", in an attempt to extinguish the fire that burns him and to flee from drugs and his own frustration, sets out on a train journey. On his trip he nostalgically recalls all kinds of scenes with his gang the "Punk Shits" in Ciudad Neza.

Nobody Is Innocent

1986

Nobody Is Innocent poster
8.5

"Kara", in an attempt to extinguish the fire that burns him and to flee from drugs and his own frustration, sets out on a train journey. On his trip he nostalgically recalls all kinds of scenes with his gang the "Punk Shits" in Ciudad Neza.

Nobody Is Innocent

1986

Nobody Is Innocent poster
8.5

"Kara", in an attempt to extinguish the fire that burns him and to flee from drugs and his own frustration, sets out on a train journey. On his trip he nostalgically recalls all kinds of scenes with his gang the "Punk Shits" in Ciudad Neza.

Nobody Is Innocent

1986

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Háblame de amor

2009

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later poster
9.0

In 1987, the film director and video artist Sarah Minter, made the documentary exercise Nobody is Innocent, a film that portrayed the daily life of the youth gang Los Mierdas Punk, from and residents of Ciudad Neza, State of Mexico. More than 20 years later, Minter returns to the streets where the tape was recorded to reconnect with the original members of the band, who today are around forty years old and still live in the same places.

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later

2010

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later poster
9.0

In 1987, the film director and video artist Sarah Minter, made the documentary exercise Nobody is Innocent, a film that portrayed the daily life of the youth gang Los Mierdas Punk, from and residents of Ciudad Neza, State of Mexico. More than 20 years later, Minter returns to the streets where the tape was recorded to reconnect with the original members of the band, who today are around forty years old and still live in the same places.

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later

2010

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later poster
9.0

In 1987, the film director and video artist Sarah Minter, made the documentary exercise Nobody is Innocent, a film that portrayed the daily life of the youth gang Los Mierdas Punk, from and residents of Ciudad Neza, State of Mexico. More than 20 years later, Minter returns to the streets where the tape was recorded to reconnect with the original members of the band, who today are around forty years old and still live in the same places.

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later

2010

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later poster
9.0

In 1987, the film director and video artist Sarah Minter, made the documentary exercise Nobody is Innocent, a film that portrayed the daily life of the youth gang Los Mierdas Punk, from and residents of Ciudad Neza, State of Mexico. More than 20 years later, Minter returns to the streets where the tape was recorded to reconnect with the original members of the band, who today are around forty years old and still live in the same places.

Nobody Is Innocent 20 Years Later

2010

No artwork available
NR

Complications with her partner push Clara to leave home with her young son.

Clara's Air

1994

No artwork available
NR

Summer in Utopia follows Sarah Minter’s stays in Copenhagen’s Free Town of Christiania, an anarchist community founded in 1971, as she captures its daily life, history, and ideals across a summer.

Summer in Utopia

2012