
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
8.5No synopsis available yet.
Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada
2007
7.7No synopsis available yet.
Lila Downs - Pecados y Milagros
2012
NRThe 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
NRDesaparecer / 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
8.5No synopsis available yet.
Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada
2007
8.5No synopsis available yet.
Lila Downs - Lotería Cantada
2007
7.7No synopsis available yet.
Lila Downs - Pecados y Milagros
2012
NRThe 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
NRDesaparecer / 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
NRThe 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
NRPulsos 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
NRPortrait of an old Mexico City neighborhood in the verge of gentrification.
Mi Barrio
2009
NRFrom 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
NRFrom 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
NR2004 Mexican experimental short
Juquilita
2004
NRMexico 1968.
De la Naturaleza del Hueso
2018
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Por dentro somos color
2024
NRThe 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
NRIn 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
1.0Portrait 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
NRIn 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
7.0No synopsis available yet.
Fuego
2003
