Experiencing Interruptions?

Viejito/Enfermito/Grito (Old Man/Sick Man/Shout)

Ananias, an SF Bay Area artist and immigrant, performs the folkloric Danza de los Viejitos (the Dance of the Old Men). Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, where the dance originates, Ananias interprets its movements through the lens of his spirituality, his long-term HIV-related disabilities, and his search for a place in the world.

  • Dolissa Medina
    Director
  • Dolissa Medina
    Writer
  • Gera Ananias Mendez
    Writer
  • Dolissa Medina
    Producer
  • Gera Ananias P Mendez Soria
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • World AIDS Day / Day With(out) Art 2023 - Numerous Venues

    December 1, 2023
  • National Latinx Conference on HIV, HCV, SUD
    El Paso
    United States
    May 3, 2024
  • Tag! Portland Queer Shorts Film Festival
    Portland, Oregon
    United States
    April 6, 2025
    Director's Award
Director Biography - Dolissa Medina

Dolissa Medina is an artist from the borderlands of South Texas devoted to queer world mending through film, writing, and collaborative projects that explore questions of belonging and home. Her experimental documentaries have screened at venues including The Whitney, Anthology Film Archives, Rotterdam International Film Festival, MIX-NYC, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. She is also founder of Grito Viejito, an interdisciplinary artist collective using a Mexican folk dance to stage dialogues around health, HIV histories, and queer futures.

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Director Statement

This film is the first project of Grito Viejito, a research-creation project that re-imagines the Mexican Danza de los Viejitos (Dance of the Old Men). In the folkloric dance, children or young adults use a mask and cane to perform exaggerated movements of the elderly. The figures should be humorous, but as a child growing up in South Texas in the 1970s, I would watch young people in parades with sunken cheeks and bent bodies, and was scared by this uncanny sight. This uncanny feeling returned to me in the 1980s as I watched my 25-year-old cousin using a cane, his face wasted from AIDS.

Responding to these experiences, I began Grito Viejito with my long-time HIV+ friend Gera Ananias P. Soria. Together, we have taken my teenage memories of a young man made old before his time, and reclaimed it through participatory, interdisciplinary filmmaking that documents queer brown stories through costumes, movement, and intergenerational exchange. We hope to use "Old Man/Sick Man/Shout" as a cultural tool to build community, promote HIV prevention, and address long-term health issues in our Mexican and Latine communities.