Mexican Jail Footage (1980)

• 82%
• 1980
• Gordon Ball

Paranoid surreptitious in-jail camera held in this prisoner's hands documents daily events and posturings of 25 gringos (and Mexican jailmates) arrested at Puerto Vallarta 1968 without charge. Was there Mexico, DF - Washington, DC collusion behind this round-up from Yelapa ferry boats, private town houses and palm-roofed wall-less jungle huts? It took place during national polarization (of youth culture, official culture) in US; older US tourists were shocked to find more new generation they thought they'd left behind, and official Mexico was already paranoid in the face of coming Olympics (police would shoot 108 people) six months later. Narration's a dense web of comedy, horror and Kafkaesque grotesque behind a succession of raw sunlit images of comely youths imprisoned, male and female.