Elena Pardo

Directing

Elena Pardo

Known for

Directing

Credits

20 titles

Elena Pardo is a visual artist and documentary, experimental and animation filmmaker living in Mexico City. She explores the possibilities offered by photochemical films for preserving and capturing images, working in a laboratory. Since 2005, she has been a member of the extended film collective Trinchera Ensamble. She is also co-founder and current director of Laboratorio Experimental de Cine [Experimental Film Laboratory] (LEC), an artistic project that came into being in 2013. LEC engages in the dissemination, production, educational activities and programming of content in different cinematic formats.

Known for

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada poster
8.5

No synopsis available yet.

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada

2007

Lila Downs  - Pecados y Milagros poster
7.7

No synopsis available yet.

Lila Downs - Pecados y Milagros

2012

Children’s Game #12: Musical Chairs poster
NR

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in alternate directions. When the music starts, the players skip one behind the other around the chairs. When the music stops, everyone scrambles to occupy the nearest chair and one person is left standing. The loser carries a chair away, stomping out of shot to the left. The music starts again, and so it goes on until the winner claims the last chair. Then there is only an empty space.

Children’s Game #12: Musical Chairs

2012

Desaparecer poster
NR

Desaparecer / Disappear: to stop being in sight or in a place, cease to exist. In Mexico one person disappears every 1 hour and 50 minutes, that is, 13 people a day. Through the use of landscape and self portrait, we explore the ephemeral quality of image and physical presence. Codirection: Manuel Trujillo Production format: 16m (Text from Canyon Cinema)

Desaparecer

2016

Nanacatepec poster
NR

A 16mm film performance draws inspiration from the Nanacatepec, a rock traversed by a network that extends without a defined shape. Its fruits, in the form of mushrooms, serve as creators and transformers of everything in the world.

Nanacatepec

2024

Children’s Game #13: Piñata poster
NR

A piñata is a papier-mâché figure stuffed with sweets. Common at birthdays in urban patios, here we find it in a field, where a garish Superman dangles between tall poles on a rope jerked by an adult, to make hitting harder. Each player is blindfolded and spun around several times before attempting to hit the piñata with a long stick. The kids’ wild swinging is directed by the shouts of friends, while the allotted time of each turn is counted down in a singsong about finding and losing one’s way. Fierce blows are dealt with varying accuracy until the piñata is fully smashed open and its sweets shower to the ground, leaped on by all the kids at once. The hollow, punctured figure is triumphantly dismembered.

Children’s Game #13: Piñata

2012

Behind the camera

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada poster
8.5

No synopsis available yet.

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada

2007

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada poster
8.5

No synopsis available yet.

Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada

2007

Lila Downs  - Pecados y Milagros poster
7.7

No synopsis available yet.

Lila Downs - Pecados y Milagros

2012

Children’s Game #12: Musical Chairs poster
NR

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in alternate directions. When the music starts, the players skip one behind the other around the chairs. When the music stops, everyone scrambles to occupy the nearest chair and one person is left standing. The loser carries a chair away, stomping out of shot to the left. The music starts again, and so it goes on until the winner claims the last chair. Then there is only an empty space.

Children’s Game #12: Musical Chairs

2012

Desaparecer poster
NR

Desaparecer / Disappear: to stop being in sight or in a place, cease to exist. In Mexico one person disappears every 1 hour and 50 minutes, that is, 13 people a day. Through the use of landscape and self portrait, we explore the ephemeral quality of image and physical presence. Codirection: Manuel Trujillo Production format: 16m (Text from Canyon Cinema)

Desaparecer

2016

Nanacatepec poster
NR

A 16mm film performance draws inspiration from the Nanacatepec, a rock traversed by a network that extends without a defined shape. Its fruits, in the form of mushrooms, serve as creators and transformers of everything in the world.

Nanacatepec

2024

Children’s Game #13: Piñata poster
NR

A piñata is a papier-mâché figure stuffed with sweets. Common at birthdays in urban patios, here we find it in a field, where a garish Superman dangles between tall poles on a rope jerked by an adult, to make hitting harder. Each player is blindfolded and spun around several times before attempting to hit the piñata with a long stick. The kids’ wild swinging is directed by the shouts of friends, while the allotted time of each turn is counted down in a singsong about finding and losing one’s way. Fierce blows are dealt with varying accuracy until the piñata is fully smashed open and its sweets shower to the ground, leaped on by all the kids at once. The hollow, punctured figure is triumphantly dismembered.

Children’s Game #13: Piñata

2012

Inventario Churubusco poster
NR

The historical Estudios Churubusco lab, where golden era Mexican films were processed in the 1950s, is still open, pretty much untouched. This film is a desperate and loving attempt to keep memory of the people, knowledge and objects that coexist in this space, that risks closing at any time. Lab workers participated in the shoot as animators, actors and technical advisors.

Inventario Churubusco

2018

Underground Pulses poster
NR

Pulsos Subterráneos is a subjective recording in 16 mm of the experiences of defense and resistance in the territory, culture and life of two communities in Mexico: Vetagrande in Zacatecas and Capulalpam in Oaxaca, facing the mining business.

Underground Pulses

2023

Mi Barrio poster
NR

Portrait of an old Mexico City neighborhood in the verge of gentrification.

Mi Barrio

2009

Leave What Scares You poster
NR

From the communal future, a woman recalls the words of her ancestors, women warriors who gathered to record their words about community service. At the same time she questions her own future: Will we ever stop fighting? Does anyone care what we say?

Leave What Scares You

2023

Leave What Scares You poster
NR

From the communal future, a woman recalls the words of her ancestors, women warriors who gathered to record their words about community service. At the same time she questions her own future: Will we ever stop fighting? Does anyone care what we say?

Leave What Scares You

2023

Juquilita poster
NR

2004 Mexican experimental short

Juquilita

2004

De la Naturaleza del Hueso poster
NR

Mexico 1968.

De la Naturaleza del Hueso

2018

Por dentro somos color poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Por dentro somos color

2024

On the Nature of the Bone poster
NR

The concept of memory and image are mixed in this piece to reveal the continuity in the justifications that the Mexican Government issues to perpetuate violence.

On the Nature of the Bone

2022

On the Inside We are Color poster
NR

In Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca, the women's organization Poj Kaa maintains a community herbarium. Foraging for plants is a way to share knowledge with grandmothers, midwives, healers and shamans. In Teotitlán del Valle the Ruiz family makes their own journey in search of colors, which they find inside plants and insects that are used to dye the wool with which they weave rugs. Both practices involve exploring the territory, recognizing it, naming it and relating to everything in it.

On the Inside We are Color

2026

Máquinas de palabras poster
1.0

Portrait of a Mexico City neighborhood where pages and pages are printed, and little by little, words appear. Máquinas de Palabras is a performance created in March 2023 in Mexico City, and is the result of a collaboration between Labo K (Rennes-based film laboratory) and LEC (Laboratorio de Cine Experimental) in Mexico City. A portrait of a Mexico City neighborhood where pages and pages are printed. And little by little, words appear... "From the deliberate use of found images to films that make uncompromising use of raw material, the camera and the plants will take our eyes... Pupils will certainly be illuminated by the projector... How can moving images stay in our heads?"

Máquinas de palabras

2023

Tierra poster
NR

In the film Tierra the artist’s hands manipulate the organicity of the raw materials. The colors and textures are closely portrayed in 16mm by Elena Pardo and summarizes the long process of the realization of the mural Tu cuerpo selva in Oaxaca, Mexico in a few frames.

Tierra

2005

Fuego poster
7.0

No synopsis available yet.

Fuego

2003