Cities of Gold & Mirrors

Years before ‘Spring Breakers’, Cyprien Gaillard made this haunting 16mm film documenting American students drunken holiday hedonism against the backdrop of a brutalist Cancún hotel complex in Mexico. Named after the French-Japanese children’s cartoon, the film shows buff and bikini-clad white American chugging tequila against the Mayan-like architectural background interspersed with images of dolphins. This ambiguous film combines the ruins of ancient Amerindian culture with the failed hopes of 20th-century modernism. Gaillard’s latest 3D film ‘Nightlife’ also drew on the strange remnants of history, in particular, the legacy of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Nazi Germany.