2013 Essays

Adriana and Dolores Ehlers

Tuñón, Julia

The sisters Adriana and Dolores Ehlers, who worked together all their lives, were pioneers in every area of filmmaking. As Dolores described in a 1977 interview, they shot documentaries, worked in film processing laboratories, sold projection apparatuses, and participated in the politics surrounding cinema during the difficult phase of the Mexican Revolution known as carrancismo (Ehlers n.p.). When they were children, their father died and their mother supported them by working as a midwife. They lived with another family in the port city of Veracruz and politically supported the anti-Porfirian aims of the Revolution’s generals, Madero and Carranza, aligning themselves with other women leaders of the time (Ehlers n.p.).