A grandmother and her granddaughter baking together at a kitchen table in warm afternoon light

SF APOCALYPSE

LA POCHA NOSTRA

SF APOCALYPSE

DURATION:
31'17"
DESCRIPTION

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".

CREDITS

CONCEPT & DIRECTION: Guillermo Gomez Peña, Gustavo Vazquez, and Lalo Obregon. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Los Hermanos Nalgada. SCRIPT: El Mad Mex Gómez-Peña and Aranza ¨la Tranza¨ Cortés Karam. SOUND DESIGN: El Sonidero de Greg Landau. PERFORMANCES BY Sarah Johnson, Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens & The Ecosexuals (Eve Minax, Ewelina Jarosz and Lady Monster), Adrian Arias, Andreina Maldonado and Ralfka Gonzalez… POETRY BY Gomez-Peña and Francisco Orrego “El Dandy Neopachuco”, LIVE MUSIC by Allison Lovejoy & The 7 Deadly Pleasures Los Hermanos Nalgada Production ®2022 (Angela la Flamme, Momos Cheeskos and Danny Cao), Rupa Marya and The April Fishes (Mario Alberto Silvia and Misha Khalikulov), Mike Dingle, Xenakis and Beth Custer. ADDITIONAL CAMEOS BY Andy Pollack, David Rozelle and Alessandro Paladini

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An older woman resting in warm sunlight
LA POCHA NOSTRA

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and artistic director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra.

LA POCHA NOSTRA