ZAPATISTA
History never stays buried. A calling card for the feature: the graphic look book, the writer, and the city it is written to be shot in.
Adapted by Frank Gaydos from the novel by P.W. Ross.
History never stays buried
Arrow keys or swipe to move through the book.
Photograph from the Atención San Miguel profile.
Frank Gaydos
Frank Gaydos wrote the screenplay. He has lived in San Miguel de Allende since 2010 and has been writing for the screen since 2014, after a career in organizational development. Scott Simmons’s profile in Atención follows that reinvention, the scripts on his desk, and why this film belongs here.
- Zapatista — feature adaptation of the novel by P.W. Ross, in development
- Into the Beautiful North
- In the Shadow of the Angel
- Hotel Mañana
- Worst Friends Forever
- Road to México
- Black Dispatches — limited series
A city that already looks like the picture
San Miguel de Allende gives a production a preserved colonial center, open country a few minutes out, and a working community of artists. The streets are painted and built by local hands, so the frame stays specific. Rain-season stone, hard desert light, and haciendas sit in the same radius as the airports at León, Querétaro, and Mexico City.
Colonial core, courtyards, el campo, and historical sites without moving basecamp.
León, Querétaro, and Mexico City, plus drivers, housing, and a real supply chain.
Wet-down streets in the rains. Glare into shadow in a few steps. Built for contrast.
An arts city with artisans who already make things in public, for the public.
The arroyo is becoming a public gallery
Along Arroyo Las Cachinches, Sociedad Audubon de México and seventeen local artists opened a mural corridor of the stream’s wildlife, plants, and history. Atención published Colleen Sorenson’s account of the fourteen-year path from an unsanctioned idea to a permitted outdoor gallery. April Gaydos, president of Audubon de México, describes it as a place to see public art and the creek’s natural heritage in the same walk.
Read the Atención story
Recent murals on the arroyo walkway. Photographs: Frank Gaydos.
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Ask for the materials
Script, business plan, and production conversations. The pitch deck is on its own page.