Pre-Columbian Art in Mexico

In this film Octavio Paz speaks of his childhood in Mixoac, once an independent town, now a suburb of Mexico City, from whence he made visits to an Aztec shrine nearby. For him the site was `a kind of doorway that led to another part of Mexican tradition that I didn't know and could only guess at ... mine, yet also distant from me.' We are taken to Aztec locations such as that of the Coatlicue colossal figure found in Mexico City. Paz introduces us to the complex cosmology of the Aztecs, their notions of time and space, and their symbols, such as the zigzag serpent motif, representing the duality of the life force - rise and fall, growth and death. Also featuring prominently in this film are the great pyramids of Tenayuca, Chichén-Itzá, Teotihuacán and Tajín. We learn that the Mesoamerican religions all share the notion that the gods have sacrificed themselves to create the world, and that human beings must worship so as to keep the gods alive. For these peoples there was no merely aesthetic pleasure, no pure abstraction, no art for art's sake. All the forms in their art and architecture have symbolic meaning.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.