PETER MELARAGNO: DANCING WITH CORTES HOME CORTES CUBA VENICE ROME THE NOVEL MISC DV@PMELARAGNO.COM |
---- Feature documentary ---- Dancing with Cortés ---- A Personal Journey ----
The Conquest of Mexico: the 500th year anniversary. Spanish, French and Italian subtitles.
In a rented car, follow La Ruta Cortés from the conquistador's point of first contact with the Aztecs in 1519 (present-day Veracruz) to his momentous first meeting with Moctezuma on a causeway leading into the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.
This two-week road trip – over deserts, mountains and volcanoes, into cities and locales encountered by Cortés (Veracruz, La Antigua, Playa Villa Rica, Xalapa, Coatepec, Xico, Tlaxcala, Cholula, Huejotzingo, Amecameca, Iztapalapa) plus the archaeological sites of Cempoala and Quiahuiztlan – is inter-cut with two actors delivering excerpts from accounts of the conquest composed by Hernán Cortés and one of his lieutenants, Bernal Diaz del Castillo.
The film attempts to fathom the tragedy inherent to the complete destruction of Tenochtitlan, one of the grandest cities ever created by the original peoples of the Western Hemisphere (eyewitness accounts of myriad islands and canals paint the city as rivaling Venice on the Adriatic) yet within two years of their momentous meeting – Cortés and Moctezuma, on a causeway leading into the Aztec capital – the city would be completely leveled by the Spanish overlords.
Petrus Gregorius as Hernán Cortés Robert Gonzalez as Bernal Diaz del Castillo Dora Arreola as La Malinche.
