Hit documentary on Caravaggio to be shown in Mexico

The documentary “ Caravaggio, L'Anima e il Sangue ” ("Caravaggio. The Soul and the Blood"), directed by Mexican filmmaker Jesús Garcés Lambert, has become the most-seen art documentary in Italy and will arrive in Mexico this May, according to Garcés himself.

“The documentary will be screened in Mexico in mid-May and we're still defining the venue; an institution or cultural venue first, then it will be shown in theaters,” explained Garcés Lambert during an interview with Notimex.

With the participation of Claudio Strinati, Mina Gregori, Roberto Longhi, and Rossella Vodret as consultants, the documentary tells the story of the polemic painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio (1571-1610).

Garcés Lambert cast as the famous painter a man he met on a street, who had a difficult past and had spent time in jail, an experience which, according to the filmmaker, gave the man the level of depth required by the role. Yet he wasn't the only one. Several women of "dubious" past were also cast to play the women of Caravaggio's paintings.

“Working with people who aren't actors but part of the lower social classes, because we're talking about criminals, was a very interesting experience since these people reflect the same emotions the people depicted in Caravaggio's paintings have,” explained the filmmaker.

Garcés Lambert added that Caravaggio painted the people he got drunk with in taverns, prostitutes, and other characters considered to be part of society's lower classes.

“Caravaggio lived in a very violent time, violence was part of every-day life,” he said about the artist, who died in 1610 in Tuscany under mysterious circumstances and who theories speculate may well have been murdered.

“In Mexico we don't get the chance to see his paintings in the flesh, to see them in churches like they do in Italy and what I want to do with the film is for people in Mexico to feel as if they were in a church seeing the paintings,” said Garcés.

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