Un retrato de Diego

Documentary film about Diego Rivera produced by his grandson, director Diego Rivera Lopez and released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Rivera’s death. Rivera Lopez says, “In the 50 years since his death, my father’s image has been obscured by the recent presentation of Frida as a heroine, and now I think its time to put him back in perspective.””A Portrait of Diego” illustrates the socio-political impact of Rivera’s work on a Mexico emerging from the ruin of civil war. It includes interviews with Rivera’s daughter, Guadalupe Rivera Marin, the writer Carlos Monsivais and the painter José Luis Cuevas. It includes 40 minutes of film made in 1949 by one of the most important the Mexican photographers of the early 20th century, Manuel Älvarez Bravo (1902-2002). That film was recently discovered in the archives of Rivera’s friend, dinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997), who photographed some of Luis Buñuels films, including “Los Olvidados” (1950),Rivera himself was filmed with a group of women of Tehuantepec, with flower (Alcatraz) sellers in Xochimilco, in his studio while painting a portrait of Dolores del Río and during the construction of his museum, Anahuacalli. There are also scenes of the Palacio de Bellas Artes’ commemoration of Rivera’s first fifty years as a painter, when more than 500 of his works were shown at that venue.