Allen Downs

Making Mixtec Pottery

Over the course of 38 minutes, Allen Downs’s Making Mixtec Pottery intimately captures the process of creating clay pottery in Oaxaca, Mexico. Along with the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs are considered the most culturally and artistically advanced group of people of Oaxaca, dating from 2000 BC. The film begins by following a single man from start to finish as he shapes a red clay pot. He extracts the clay from a mountainside, combines it with water and mica (a binding agent), and slowly forms the vessel with his hands. Downs documented this process intimately, using extreme close-ups to meditate on the artist’s hands as he works. As the film progresses, various establishing and mid-range shots are interspersed before transitioning to footage of other men creating their own pottery with their own techniques. Downs’s gentle, personal portrait of the work of the Mixtec potters reveals the process behind an ancient art form.

A Mexico

A Mexico traces a road trip down Interstate 35 from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Oaxaca, Mexico. The film has a lucid, dreamlike quality, beginning under the guise of night.

Love Shots

“Love Shots traces the overwhelming, colorful landscapes of Minnesota and Mexico: shots of lush, Mexican mountains and country roads are interspersed with Minnesotan lakes on a rainy day and aerial views of the city from a friend’s airplane. Downs also documents his family life; his wife, Anita, and daughter Lila appear throughout the 8-minute short. Distinguished by its frenetic pace—cutting sharply between saturated images and frequently showing scenes sped up to multiple times their normal pace—Love Shots also exhibits Downs’s fascination with conspicuous consumption, manifested in various images of advertising, shopping, and scenes from amusement parks.” —Ruth Hodgins, Walker Art Center

Winter In China

"A surreal, brillantly captured festival. Allen, as always, depicts the soul of the people. His camera encompassing the beauty as well as the reality of Mexico." –Glenna Johnson

Pow Wow

Short film by Allen Downs.

Color of the Day

Portrait of the streets from downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The Tree Is Dead

Short film by Allen Downs.

Freight Stop

A film by Minnesotan Allen Downs

Art and Seeing

Film by Allen Downs.