SNEAK PREVIEW An ethnography in the best sense of the word, Jose Álvarez’s film transports us to the Totonac village of Zapotal, Santa Cruz, providing a series of indelible moments: an awkward first dance, a lonely wash in a spring, the daily toil of bowl makers, some young men’s first “flight,” (an event that defies easy description). Álvarez displays a tireless curiosity, embodied in a roving and slyly self-aware camera, but without the lingering didacticism of more classical anthropological efforts. Gorgeously shot and exquisitely scored, the film avoids clichés about the insulated village. Instead, Canícula captures the tension between tradition and the creeping forces of modernity, universalizing the struggle: “The Totona preserve their past, which is their dignity as well as ours. (KP)