MANIFESTO

ORIGINS MEDIA is a high-end studio of cinematic historical recreation.

We don't make videos. We build case files: faces that survived only in an oil painting, workshops demolished a century ago, voices silenced two hundred years ago. We investigate them back to their origins. And then we film them — as if a modern camera had been there.

Because today, for the first time since man began to tell his story, it can be: ORIGINS "The Hidden Gears of the World"

I belong to the last generation that had to go out and hunt for knowledge.

I remember when I was a boy, we studied with encyclopedias of 6, 8, or 12 volumes to look up information and do our homework. We wrote letters to one another—especially to the friends who didn't live in Acapulco. And to have our music, we hunted it: hours in front of the radio, finger poised on the record button, waiting for that song to play so we could capture it on a cassette. Sometimes we caught it already halfway through. It didn't matter. It was ours, and it was special because we had worked to get it.

I learned early a lesson that sounds old-fashioned today: what is worthwhile never comes on its own. You chase it.

Mine was a hinge generation. We watched television pass from black and white to color. And we watched the first computer enter the house, an ATARI: a machine primitive and advanced for its time, one you had to address in its own language.

No one in my house understood what we were really living through. Neither did I. But it was the beginning of something…

And then there was the cinema: Star Wars. Indiana Jones. Scarface. E.T. Saturday Night Fever. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Ghostbusters. The Exorcist. Aliens... They weren't films: they were a crack in the wall of my world. They taught me that imagination is the only limit — that between a dream and reality there stands only one thing: someone willing to fight for their dreams, to create them, to produce them...

At twelve, I held a video camera in my hands for the first time (it was my brother Agustín's). A Sony Handycam, the cassette kind, that came in a silver case. That day my life split in two. I discovered that I could not only dream images: I could catch them, capture them, make them mine. Just like the songs on the radio — but now I was both the creator and the hunter at once.

Since then I have only wanted to do one thing: TELL STORIES.

I took the long road. For the sake of convenience I studied a degree in business administration: the most sensible path I could take upon finishing high school at nineteen, the one you take when you want to follow in the family's footsteps...

But essence, instinct, passion — those are not up for negotiation.

Many years later, the Ministry of Culture of the Government of the State of Guerrero opened a diploma course in cinematography, by competition, to train new talent, based at the Centro Cultural Acapulco. There was no fee to enter, and although it was open to anyone who wished to enroll, the filters were hard to pass: dozens of applicants from all over the state, only nineteen places. You had to prove your track record and professional experience —photographs, scripts, breakdowns, video demos, discs with already-produced reels— and submit a formal letter of recommendation from a director or producer as part of the selection filters.

I knew no one. I had no letter. I had no patrons.

I gathered all the material I had produced up to that point, with my own resources and to the best of my understanding, and I submitted it out of pure stubbornness. And out of love: my partner at the time supported me unconditionally in every project I was passionate about, and for that I will be eternally grateful. It was the person who most insisted that I enroll in the diploma course and show what I was capable of, that I show my potential to someone else…

The day came, the list went up. My name was not on it.

And I threw in the towel. Just like that. You learn to swallow those things and to live with them.

On the second day after the course had begun, the phone rang. They were asking why I hadn't shown up. I gave the obvious answer: that my name did not appear on the list. The voice on the other end told me to come at once.

That voice was Jeanette Rojas Dib, a film producer, a member of the jury. A woman who had never laid eyes on me in her life. She reviewed my material, saw something, and signed with her own hand the letter of recommendation I had been missing.

She never asked for anything in return. She never made me pay for it — not then, not now; and my instinct tells me she never will.

My entire life changed because of a letter I never asked for, signed by someone who owed me nothing.

If you ever wonder why this studio exists to open the door of cinema to those who don't have millions behind them — there is your answer. I was on the other side of that door. And someone I did not know opened it.

✒Forever, thank you, Jeanette. You changed my life!

Inside that course, the world opened all at once.

Over the following months I learned directly from professionals of Mexican cinema: film appreciation, screenwriting, cinematography, camera direction, lighting, planning and production, acting with Gabriel Retes —whom the Mexican press bid farewell as «a guerrilla of cinema»: twenty feature films, the man behind El bulto and Bienvenido/Welcome— and with Lourdes Elizarrarás, Premio Ariel for acting, an excellent screenwriter and director of great warmth and human feeling. Also with Alan Cotón, who has a unique gift for sharing his knowledge and carrying you, through the imagination, onto the set—director of Sofía, Soba and Nesio: Diosa de Plata for the most interesting cinematic offering of the year, Best Foreign Film at the New York International Festival and twice nominated for the Ariel; with Rafael Montero, who trusted us enough to share the pre-premiere of his next film "La Cama" back then; Carlos Taibo, who gave us a copy of his book on production; Arturo de la Rosa and Jorge Gallardo de la Peña, among others who without a doubt marked my life and left their imprint.

And I did not only take notes: they put me in front of the camera. I acted in the diploma course exercises and in the final short film "Complot Al Arte", which Gabriel sent to competition. There, from the other side of the lens, I understood what a director truly asks of an actor.

After the diploma course something happened that was not on the syllabus: Gabriel and Lourdes came to my house for lunch. And when I went to Mexico City, I would eat at Gabriel's, or go out with Lourdes. They offered me their sincere friendship.

✒Thank you, Lourdes, for taking me and helping me with the INDAUTOR paperwork and showing me, step by little step, how to do it with all the patience in the world.

Gabriel passed on to a better life on April 20th, 2020. Lourdes and Alan are still on the other end, answering my messages and my greetings.

I never lacked talent to learn from. What I had in abundance were good people along the way: they guided me, opened the door for me, and gave me their trust, their friendship, and their affection.

And from that you don't recover: you grow stronger. It leaves you with a sense of solidarity, of debt, of gratitude — of giving back a little of the much that life has given you.

There's something you ought to know about me, because it explains why I do what I do.

I was born with ectodermal dysplasia, a genetic condition that determines, among other things, your low tolerance for heat, for the sun, and for extreme activity — but also your physical appearance, in a very marked and particular way.

For years my place was behind the camera. But I also stepped in front of it — and not for decoration: acting, with a director demanding truth of me from a metre and a half away.

Today I devote my life to giving back a face to people who no longer have one: to those who survived only in an oil painting, to those history left without a face, to those no one ever photographed.

Perhaps that is why I understand so well what a face means.

Over the years I gradually built my own production house: Santa Lucía Films. And it wasn't a desk with a camera: we came to have our own soundstages for television programs —POLÍTICA Y PODER, ZONA ALTERNATIVA, ENTRE MUJERES, ENLACE PyME—, live editing with a switcher, a video suite, an audio suite, a crane, and five-camera shoots for special events. For its time, it was well equipped.

I filmed everything that would let itself be filmed: cultural, sporting, and social events, commercials, and a documentary about the CLAVADISTAS DE LA QUEBRADA — the men who dive into the sea from forty metres of rock, the very soul of Acapulco.

And I produced a youthful, aspirational, musical mini-series: ACAPULCO SUEÑA.

I financed it with my own resources. I was the screenwriter, its camera director, and I edited it myself. Five original musical themes were composed for it. And it mobilized more than 170 people: actors, extras, musicians, composers, an audio engineer, camera operators, technical staff, a singing coach, a dance instructor, a production crew, location scouts, permits, makeup, wardrobe, and so on.

ACAPULCO SUEÑA — TRAILER

▶ACAPULCO SUEÑA — TRAILER

ACAPULCO SUEÑA — THE COMPLETE MINI-SERIES

All eight episodes, exactly as they premiered. Click any one and it plays right here.

▶Episode 1▶Episode 2▶Episode 3▶Episode 4▶Episode 5▶Episode 6▶Episode 7▶Episode 8

Every one of them was local talent. Every one, from Acapulco.

It consumed my time, my money and my strength. I could never regret this experience; every day was worth it, because I met truly wonderful people, with great talent and enormous human warmth. And all because a woman opened a door for me when no one knew who I was — and years later it fell to me to open it for a hundred and seventy talents from my state. Forever grateful, Charly, Omer, Janinne, Sarai, Tony, Abraham Romero (Chaneke), León, Danae, Alondra, Valeria, Cristian, Frida, Yamileth, Miguel, Karla, Kevin, Fernanda, Scarlet, Fernando, Saúl, José, Analin, Azurim, Cristian, Christopher, Diego, Jonathan, Shalom, Alan, Javier, Edson (R.I.P.), Lenin, Evaristo, Erick, Salvador, Carlos Toscano, Berenice, Hortencia, Jazmín, Jorge, Jason, Patricia, Octavio (ROSTROS), Marco Aguileta, Luis, Marisa, Ricardo, Manuel, Milton (ROSTROS), Angel, Tania, and so many other names of Guerrero talents whom I feel fortunate to have known at this stage of my life.

Víctor Sotomayor, Director of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Acapulco (FICA) —the man who has brought Alain Delon, Sophia Loren, Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek to the port— saw the pilot program and offered me a signed letter on FICA letterhead recommending the series "Acapulco Sueña" to the state government as a tool to promote Acapulco internationally.

✒I keep that letter fondly, with great respect, gratitude and admiration for Víctor Sotomayor. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for believing in "Acapulco Sueña".

The series never reached the screen. The government changed, I was left without sufficient resources, the entire project collapsed, and "Acapulco Sueña" died in a drawer, in slow motion before my eyes and those of 170 talents of the State of Guerrero...

That is where I learned the second lesson of the craft: your work can be good and die all the same, if its survival depends on others letting it live.

Never again.

THE SANTA LUCÍA FILMS ARCHIVE

The soundstages, the editing suites and the filming of the mini-series ACAPULCO SUEÑA. Acapulco, Guerrero.

On 25 October 2023, a Category 5 hurricane named Otis struck Acapulco in the small hours and destroyed it.

My partner (the love of my life), our little dog «Blue» —an adorable Weimaraner— and I were at home that night. The roof came down "literally." We came out alive by a miracle (thank God), among the rubble of the bathroom where we managed to take shelter when the house began to shake.

I spent two years writing the screenplay for a feature film: OTIS, LA HISTORIA JAMÁS CONTADA. What I saw. What no one told.

When I finished it, I did the only thing a man could do without the resources to produce a project of this scale: I ventured in and began to learn how to produce videos of cinematic quality with artificial intelligence. And there I crashed into a wall no one warns you about when you're new to this technology. The AI couldn't generate Sebastián, seven years old. It couldn't generate Mateo, sixteen (age restrictions in FLOW). I rewrote the entire script so that all the characters would be adults. I tried again. And then I still couldn't show the real violence of what happened after OTIS, faithfully captured in the script, because artificial intelligence models have automatic blocks that forbid you to generate and show explicit violence: blood, firearm attacks against people, fatal accidents, open wounds, children and/or minors in danger, and so on. (restrictions of Kling OMNI and FLOW).

OTIS “LA HISTORIA JAMÁS CONTADA” — INTRO

▶OTIS “LA HISTORIA JAMÁS CONTADA” — INTRO

I shelved it. Two years of work, put away.

But I didn't give up: I chose a battle I could actually win. I returned to my other passion, my obsession with history, the past, the events that made us what we are— and with it I built the studio I had been waiting forty years for.

That is how ORIGINS MEDIA was born.

And that is why this studio is not my goal: it is my path. Every case file we publish, every subscriber, every person who joins this house brings me closer to the film I will one day be able to shoot with my own technology, without asking anyone's permission.

Hurricane OTIS took everything from me, killed me, and then made me be born again. It also gave me this.

For a century, telling the past in images was a privilege of those with a fortune behind them: studios, wardrobe, armies of extras. The rest of us were left with the idea intact, burning, unable to bring it out.

Then, after four decades, what we had only seen as science fiction came to pass: artificial intelligence was born. And I already knew exactly what to do with it.

Because the tool was never the point. Anyone who grew up hunting for songs on the radio knows it in their bones: the magic was never in the cassette. It was in the song.

AI didn't give me talent, and it didn't give me stories—it took away my chains. It handed me, at fifty-two, the studio I had dreamed of at twelve.

A window onto a new kind of high-end historical cinema. A new era. And this time, within reach of anyone with something true to tell.

I have carried that something for forty years.

THE LAW OF RECREATION

«Every dossier created at ORIGINS MEDIA is born of deep historical research drawn from verifiable public sources, recreating in this way an interpretation of characters, places, objects and eras, proudly using cutting-edge AI technology in both audio and video with cinematic quality.»

This is not fine print tucked away at the end. It is the identity of the house, and we sign our name to it.

What you see here is not archival footage. It is a recreation: our interpretation, built with rigor, of something that truly happened. We will never tell you an image is authentic when it isn't. We will never uphold a fact we cannot defend and verify.

Many producers, content creators and directors are prudently hiding artificial intelligence within their work. We put it on the cover, proudly.

Because in the era now beginning, the only thing that will be worth anything is knowing whom to trust: who is showing you the truth.

• No sensationalism.No clickbait titles, no invented mystery, no manufactured scandal to steal a click.
• No false authenticity.No recreation will ever be presented as a genuine document.
• No filler.If a dossier holds up in twelve minutes, it lasts twelve minutes.
• No rush.One dossier every fortnight. Not one more. We would rather be awaited than consumed.

We don't want to be a channel. We want to be a studio.

Someone opened a door for me without ever knowing me. ORIGINS is my way of leaving it open to the world.

And I believe in something simple: the past deserves to be looked upon with the same attention and the same quality with which we look upon the present today — so that we may learn from it and not repeat the same mistakes that would condemn us to live them again.

"Without memory, there is no future"

Welcome to ORIGINS.