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• SF APOCALYPSE

  BY LA POCHA NOSTRA

  In 2020, Gomez-Peña was invited to a toxic waste site right in the periphery of San Francisco that a group of anarchists had occupied during pandemia and turned it into an art space. The place includes a bunch of abandoned train wagons, an old Hells Angels clubhouse and a native plants garden curated by a powerful Lakota couple. It is an astonishing place. He joined the raggedy collective right away. And asked his long-time collaborator filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez if he was interested in making a film there. He invited Lalo Obregon, one of the original cameramen of Jodorowsky(El Topo, Fando y Lis and La Montaña Sagrada)...and together they put out a call: 25 performance artists, dancers and musicians showed up. The result is a half hour performance movie, a utopian/dystopian project titled “SF Apocalypse,” commenting on the collapse of the creative city. Performance film was their salvation during pandemia. The films they make are quick and dirty, and self produced. They edit them at Gomez-Peña’s kitchen table. It's like returning to the origins of underground cinema; an old Chicano motto from Gustavo Vasquez. “Minimum budget, maximum quality".
• ALIEN PLANET 2.22

  BY LA POCHA NOSTRA

  Fed up with the big city life, the pandemic, ecocide, and generalized violence, in August of 2022, Gómez-Peña and Balitrónica ran away to the gorgeous desert of Roswell, New Mexico, the oldest desert in North America. The RaiR Foundation generously housed and supported their strange filmmaking process during their stay. Gómez-Peña and Balitrónica invited artists EmaLee Arroyo, Sarah Stolar, Jess Fitz, and Kate Turner to make a performance art film. There was no script or film score, but rather drafts of performance rituals, a bunch of found props, handwritten poems, and some equipment to play with. The word “alien” was on their mind. What follows are excerpts of the material created during this residency.
• TIME, SPACE, NOTHING

  BY FRANKO B

  "Hi, I'll tell it in English. It was a moment one freezing afternoon, left, wandering… wandering on the beach. There were a lot of people, There were people, dogs, children. I noticed this figure that from behind looked like a director, it seemed that in front of the waves, he had an orchestra, and organised and directed these waves. The sea wasn't that rough, but maybe that's how he saw it. And he had no one, he was pretty isolated, self-isolated. Inside this… He didn't talk. He directed. And I even came close before I made the film, and it was just, it's as if he saw something, He was directing. Yet, To me, he moved me, He touched me, seeing him. And then the text came to me. I didn't even have to write the text, I told it and then copied it, Yes, yes. I never wrote it watching the video after, a few days later, I improvised." Franko B.