The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa

In 1914, ambitious American filmmakers cut a deal with cash-strapped Pancho Villa to film his army in action against the Federalés for a slantedly heroic, semi-fictional biography in which the Mexican revolutionary starred as himself. The resulting silent era precursor to reality TV has become something of a Holy Grail to cinema historians since no copies are known to still exist, and with The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa Mexican filmmaker Gregorio Rocha turns his personal worldwide quest for any scrap of this infamous footage into an empathetically exhilarating first-person documentary. Poring over records, news clippings, photographs, and 90-year-old leftovers from the cutting room floor, Rocha provides fascinating historical details (Villa agreed to stage attacks during the day so the camera could better capture the action), explores contradictory accounts from various witnesses, and offers up interesting insights from movie scholars on his way to storage-locker discoveries in Southern California and El Paso, Texas, and the unearthing of suspicious stock footage from other movies made at the time. Although occasionally a little self-indulgent (Rocha often holds his own video camera at arm's length to get footage of himself walking down the street), this will nonetheless appeal to true cinephiles and even general audiences whose interest might have been piqued by the HBO biographical film And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (VL-7/04) with Antonio Banderas. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Blackwelder)