Xilitla

Directed by Melanie Smith

Xilitla 2010 examines the legacies of modernism and the incomplete modernities encountered in Latin America, through the relics and ruins of surrealism. Made in collaboration with filmmaker Rafael Ortega, Xilitla is named after a small town in Mexico, the location of a garden created by the eccentric British aristocrat Edward James (1907–1984). James was an important collector of surrealist art, and several works that he owned by artists such as Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte are now in the Tate collection. He spent much of his fortune constructing the garden between 1960 and 1984. It is dominated by fantastical concrete sculptures and unfinished architectural structures which he built among the tropical plants.