Music

• MÉXICO NOW: MEXAMORPHOSIS: In collaboration with the music program of the Americas Society “Music of the Americas”, we presented a celebration of Mexican musical diversity with the chamber group Mexamorphosis. An evening of music connections between contemporary regional Mexican styles and European early music, drawing out influences from Iberia and west-Africa. Led by Guadalupe Peraza, Mexamorphosis, created cross-cultural concerts that featured solo and polyphonic western early music in dialogue with traditional African, Turkish, and Mexican instrumentation. Music transitions between styles are made considering their historical and stylistic influences on one another, making the combination harmonically and instrumentally logical.

Film

• DOCUMENTARY SCREENING: LOS GUARDIANES DEL MAÍZ WITH LA NACIONAL. And for our closure at La Nacional, a cocktail reception and the screening of Los Guardianes del Maíz/ The Keepers of Corn directed by Gustavo Vazquez and produced by Jonathan Barbieri. The film tells the story of native corn told by the indigenous farmers, artisans and cooks in Mexico whose ancestors shepherded the ever-evolving seeds from the dawn of agriculture into the 21st Century – a story of collective labor spanning more than 350 generations.
• DOCUMENTARY SCREENING AND Q&A: WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND. Iliana Sosa creates an intimate, lovingly patient portrait of her 89-year-old grandfather Julián, from his final, long, solo bus ride to visit his daughters in El Paso, Texas, to his efforts to build a second house on his property in Mexico. Intending one house for his blind son and the other for those he can no longer travel to visit, he prepares fastidiously for a future he may not share with them, and reflects poetically on the past that led to this present. Sosa’s film is a marvel of presence, filled with gorgeously attentive images and casually revelatory moments born of patience and loving complicity.

ARTIST TALK

• CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY WITH MARTHA NARANJO SANDOVAL. For the fourth occasion, Celebrate Mexico Now and Baxter St, partner to bring an interactive conversation with Mexican photographer and visual artist Martha Naranjo Sandoval, in which she discussed her practice. Attendees had the opportunity to view her unique stereo collages through a special slide viewer and to flip through a large collection of photographs from her archive.

Culinary Program

• ¡VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN, VIVA LA MASA! WITH SOBRE MASA.  Mexican chef Zack Wangeman and his wife Diana Wangerman created a special three course menu to celebrate Mexican Revolution Day with at Sobre Masa tortilleria & restaurant!

Literacy

• QUETZALCÓATL: AZTEC TALES, LEGENDS, AND MUSIC. Alongside Literacy Inc., NYC Reads and City’s First Readers, for a celebration of Mexican traditions of central Mexico, one of the world’s great cultural epicenters. Aztec Tales, Legends, and Music feature Mexican Storyteller, Valentina Ortiz, and Los Mariachi Angeles de New York. Valentina shared stories of Quetzalcoatl, the agile and cunning plumed serpent; the essence of life and wisdom who is often at the center of the tales about the origin of the world, the cycle of the sun, the creation of humans, and the birth of music, food, and happiness.

Literature

• PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN WITH AUTHOR JENNIFER CLEMENT. Every day in the most dangerous states of Mexico, adolescent girls and young women are abducted from bus stops and schoolyards. Some become the slave-mistresses of drug lords and their armies of assassins. This is the horrific reality behind the acclaimed novel by American-Mexican writer, Jennifer Clement, “Prayers for the Stolen”. Jennifer Clement, lives in Mexico City and was president of PEN Mexico during a time when Mexico became one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, and also a place where the news media routinely represses information. In partnership with the Center of Fiction, Celebrate Mexico Now, invites you to be part of an intimate conversation about the novel with author Jennifer Clement moderated by Mexican journalist and writer Naief Yehya.

Performance

• LET ME TELL YOU… ALL LIES WITH CARLOS A. CRUZ VELÁZQUEZ / COLECTIVODOSZETA. Aa solo-show along with Psychedelic Spectacular, a duo of live projection artists including Mexican artist, Carlos A. Cruz Velázquez, in which they invite the audience into a journey of self-acceptance through music, dance, costume reveals, and dramatic stupidity.