The cinematic component of Harbourfront’s Mexican program is not the festival’s strongest, assembling as it does two adventures of the masked wrestlers Santo and the Blue Demon with a pair of recent documentaries about Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
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Still, how often does Toronto get a Santo double bill? Saturday at noon, the Brigantine Room at York Quay Centre hosts Santo Y Blue Demon Vs. Los Monstruos, in which our masked heroes battle a mad scientist intent on adding them to his monster army. At 5:30 pm (after a break to allow you to venture outside and see real masked luchadores interviewed by Michael Paszt), Santo Y Blue Demon En La Atlántida finds the super-friends pitted against one another by a mind-controlling Nazi. (And you thought they had to go to Argentina for that.)
Things get more serious on Sunday with two documentaries by Francesco Taboada Tabone, Pancho Villa: The Revolution Isn’t Over at 1 pm and The Last Zapatistas: Forgotten Heroes at 4 pm. Taboada Tabone tries to recreate those revolutionary movements by interviewing their surviving participants, most of whom are more than happy to share their idealized memories decades later. The results tend toward hagiography more than history, but I think that’s what the filmmaker had in mind.
