En el sentido de orquestar la totalidad de la obra fílmica, Brigitte Broch es una estratega inequívoca sobre el universo en construcción. Brigitte Broch has been imagining sets since she was a child, before the term Art Director became as recognized as it is today. Nowadays she is the one who extends the concept of “truth” on the scene, she reproduces the reality as it exists within the plot of these characters and the conflict they’re immersed in.
Actress and dancer was the first thing that little Brigitte wanted to become. She never studied design or photography, architecture or related subjects. She always relied on her instinct and the courage to declare herself self-taught. In the 70s she joined a theater workshop where she met the director Luis Mandoki, a friendship that would benefit her to live the first experience in cinema and deeply fall in love with this art. Mandoki invited her to collaborate in the production of the documentary Papaloapan, in the community of the Mazatlecos; subsequently he encouraged her to never leave this profession.
Brigitte is the accent on the set. She can be highlighted as the architect, executer, visionary and clear strategist of the universe being constructed; a magnificent production designer and art director for the most iconic Mexican films of the last few decades, as well as international titles that have been acclaimed by the Academy. With more than four decades on production sets, the art that Brigitte Broch achieves is that of a spacial expression of those lives that construct the story one sees on the screen, achieving environments that appeal to the fidcelity of these characters and elevate the artistic expression of each film.
The titles included in her laudable career include horror films such as Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos (1993), for which she earned her first Ariel; Sólo con tu pareja (Alfonso Cuarón, 1991); The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008), and Shakespeare’s legendary romance Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996), for which our tributee won the ACCA (Awards Circuit Community Awards) in 1996. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized her work along with Catherine Martin in this film with an Academy-Award nomination for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration in 1997 and in 2002 they both won the Academy Award for Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrman, 2001).
Brigitte Broch won the Ariel for Best Art Direction in 2000 for Sexo pudor y lágrimas (Antonio Serrano, 1999) and was nominated the previous year for La otra conquista (Salvador Carrasco, 1998) as well as the following year for Amores perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000). She was nominated for Best Set Decoration in 1995 for El jardín del Edén mexicano (María Novaro, 1994); in 2006 she was nominated by the Art Directors Guild Award in the Contemporary category for Babel (Alejandro González Inárritu, 2006) and most recently at the Goyas in 2011, for Best Art Direction for the haunting film Biutiful (Alejandro González Inárritu, 2010). Highlighting the talent and versatility of her perception, the more than 32 films in which she has been a Production Designer also include La vida conyugal (Carrera, 1993), Hechizo en la ruta maya (Peploe, 1995), Entre Pancho Villa y una mujer desnuda (Berman, Tardán, 1996), 21 Grams (Iñárritu, 2003), Vantage Point (Travis, 2008), Abel (Luna, 2010), Hidalgo, La historia jamás contada (Serrano, 2010); and Safe House (Espinosa, 2012).
Even though Brigitte Broch was born in Germany in 1943, she is a proud, naturalized citizen of Mexico almost 50 years after arriving. The Guanajuato International Film Festival gives a National Tribute -with a special emphasis placed upon “national”- to Brigitte Broch, a woman who is unreservedly involved in the journey that each story invites and puts all her talent in service of the meticulous tissue of the elements that construct a set, where the apparent silence and subtlety give a sense to the lives that for a minutes stop being a piece of fiction.
