In 1930, Soviet avant-garde film director Sergei Eisenstein travelled to Mexico to start a film project known as “¡Que viva México!”. Upon the recommendation of Charlie Chaplin, Eisenstein had secured funding from the successful American socialist novelist Upton Sinclair. During his trip, he shot dozens of hours of footage for what was planned to be a multi-chapter film about the history of Mexico, but funds were soon exhausted and Eisenstein’s chances of finishing the film himself were further diminished by his inability to obtain an extension to his permission to remain away from the Soviet Union. Much of the footage was brought back to the US by the producers, and Eisenstein never completed his work.

 

Eisenstein intended to make a film symphony, a film serape or Diego Rivera Mural of the seventh art. 'I wanted to show a timeless Mexico where the past was merged with the present'; but the shooting stopped abruptly because the funding was cut, and although they promised to send the material, never received it and he died without being able to conclude with his own hands one of his great works. 

Lightcone Films