ERENDIRA IKIKUNARI’S MAKE UP

ERENDIRA IKIKUNARI’S make up was developed from the original make up concept of Juan Mora’s previous feature, RETURN TO AZTLAN, which dealt with the myths of the Aztecs of Mexico and was spoken entirely in their royal tongue, Classical Nahuatl. In that movie we faced the problem of creating wardrobe for a pre-Columbian period piece with practically no budget at all. The perfect answer was to substitute wardrobe with body make up, and it came from observing that in the Mixtec pre-Columbian codices, characters were usually decorated all over with signs, and that certain Mexican Indian tribes, like the Cora, still paint their bodies for their ceremonies. All of this was the result of several years of research. It was surprising to discover that a practically nude person, covered with body make up, appeared to be richly attired, and also, as in the case of the depiction of gods, transformed into an extraordinary being. In that way we created all kinds of characters: gods, great warriors, peasants, merchants, etc. To avoid that the actors resembled European renaissance comedians, we painted used a special make up material, specially developed from clay pigments for the film, and not with the usual one, based on creams.

In the case of ERENDIRA we went even further. In the RELACION DE MICHOACAN, a XVI century codex, we read that the great warriors of that time used to stand by bonfires, stacked with green wood, and cover their bodies with the soot from the dense black smoke. That gave us the idea of using different quantities of black body make up to distinguish the great warriors from the foot soldiers. Also, being ERENDIRA the depiction of a fratricide war, to distinguish the factions at war, the rebels were painted black, the Spaniards’ allies had white markings over their black and, with the character Erendira, a red element was used. In this way we could show that all belonged to a common culture although they were fighting each other as harsh enemies.
Make up also served to give dignity and greatness to the characters, and to show different social strata and trades. Also, in the RELACION, characters appear with faces painted in different colors that served also to create a variety in the make up palette.