The Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE) announced today the passing of noted nonfiction and experimental filmmaker and archivist Gregorio Rocha, of serious injuries from a road accident that happened yesterday in the outskirts of Mexico City. He worked in the production of documentary about historical and social issues, and was best known for his 2003 film The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa / Los rollos perdidos de Pancho Villa, winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Morelia Film Festival.
Born in 1957 in Mexico City, Rocha studied Communications at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and Film Directing at the Centro de Estudios Universitarios (CUEC) of Mexico’s National University (UNAM). At the beginning of his film career, Rocha worked with his then partner Sarah Minter in experimental short films such as 541-69-96 (1982), Saint Frenzy / San Frenesí (1983), Saturday of Shit / Sábado de mierda (1985-1987), Memoria mexicana (1989), and A pleno sol (1989), which explored teenage nihilism and documented the underworld of the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City.
In 1996, Rocha directed the documentary short The Arrow (1996), an experimental film about the search for Aztec roots, and Railroad to Utopia / Ferrocarril a Utopía (2000), a nostalgic journey through animated vintage photographs into the history of a socialist community in Northwestern Mexico, founded by American colonists in 1886.
Intrigued by the legendary Mexican military leader Pancho Villa's little-known relationship with Hollywood, Rocha went on a search for lost footage that Villa commissioned from the American Mutual Film Company in 1914, allowing cameramen to follow him into war. The footage includes some of the first battle scenes captured in "moving pictures." In The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa, Rocha documents his encounters as he scours the film vaults and back rooms of institutions across North America and Europe for the seven reels of film that immortalized Villa. His research unveils a legacy of fictional and documentary depictions of Villa dating from the silent film era, revealing a world unsure whether to venerate or to fear this imposing figure and the forces of popular revolution that he embodied.
Other film titles by Rocha include the 2006 documentary Acme & Co., and the 2014 documentary Walls / muros. His work has been screened internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, the Morelia Film Festival, and the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles.
Rocha received numerous national and international fellowships and grants including the Fulbright/COMEXUS grant, the Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim and the MacArthur fellowship, and was a recipient of the National System of Art Creators (SNCA) of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) from 2011 to 2014. He also received the Award of Merit in Film from the Latin American Studies Association, the Best Fiction Video Award at Vidarte in Mexico City and the Mesquite Prize for Best Experimental Work at Cinefest San Antonio. Rocha was a visiting professor of Cinema Studies at New York University and the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) in Mexico City.
For several years Rocha was collecting camera equipment and films from various periods and in different formats, and was trying to put together a museum specializing in small formats of film and a space for experimentation with the projected image to establish connections between the analog and the digital. He is survived by his sons Emiliano, who is also a filmmaker; and Ginés.
