Darkmoon

Darkmoon is a poetic documentary film dealing with a young female Tzotzil-Maya poet (Suyul). She is a bilingual poet and writes in her mother tongue, Tzotzil, and in her second language, Spanish. Even though Suyul's poetry seems to be very indigenous and cultural specific, she is very critical towards assumptions of "indigeneity". She deconstructs the term "indigenous", but gives us a deep insight into a super-humen Tzotzil reality of her poetry. However, she is sharing her knowledge only up to a certain point with the audience, well being aware of concepts of knowledge and representation. Co-protagonist is a good old friend of her (Ronyk) who is a Tzotzil painter & filmmaker. He is at the same time also co-filmmaker of Darkmoon and was involved in the production process. Finally Suyul and Ronyk are making fun of a traditionally very western "reality" that was imposed on their ethnic group and are rendering that reality and knowledge about it as exotic and absurd.Location is Chiapas. Chiapas is the southern most state of Mexico, location of several contemporary Mayan groups and other so-called 'indigenous' societies.

Darkmoon is the debut film of Thomas John (visual anthropologist) and was produced in closecollaboration with "Ronyk" (Enrique Floriano Hernández Cruz), who is an indigenous Mexican painter,photographer and filmmaker. Ronyk is also the co-protagonist of Darkmoon. He is a close friend ofAngelina Suyul,the main protagonist, who is a Tzotzil-Maya poet and does bi-lingual poetry, in hermother tongue, 'Tzotzil', and in her second language, 'Spanish'.Poetry is an artistic expression for Angelina Suyul to articulate modern young indigenous identity andto connect in the same time with her cultural roots. She combines contemporary literature genres withcultural knowledge of her Pueblo. The film is an attempt to apply an artistic and poetic audio-visuallanguage to mediate aspects and meanings of Angelina's personhood & her poetry.