¡Que Viva Mexico!

Financed by the American writer Upton Sinclair and shot with Eisenstein's longtime cinematographer Eduard Tisse, the project collapsed when the money ran out, and the director never got to edit his footage. Only in 1979 did his collaborator Grigori Aleksandrov assemble it into the film we know — a hypnotic, monumental portrait, and one of the legendary unfinished works in all of cinema.

For this screening, those nearly century-old images meet a new sound. Mexican composer Rodrigo Sigal — a leading figure in electroacoustic music, director of the Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts, and a 2024 recipient of the Bellas Artes Medal — performs his own score live in the room. Weaving pre-Hispanic instruments, electronic textures and echoes of the film's own musical past, Sigal gives each figure on screen its own voice, opening a living dialogue between Eisenstein's vision and the sound of the present.

This screening is supported by the Embassy of Mexico in Norway, the Mexican Department of Culture, University of California, and the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico).