On a hot day last August, Tony Martinez, an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and Santa Fe native, pulled on a pair of overalls and spent two hours on his hands and knees, crawling gingerly through 6 inches of powdery dirt under the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi with his camera.

Normally the producer and director wouldn't be doing this, but his business partner and camera man, Kevin Spivey, was too chicken. "There are skulls under there," Spivey explained, adding that he worried about catching the ebola virus.

The 155-year-old cathedral is indeed built on the rubble of five previous churches and their burial grounds. Some people believe Don Diego de Vargas is interred there, but it is certainly the final resting place for bishops and priests as well as many prominent citizens of Santa Fe. Bones. Burial items were disturbed during previous construction and are, Martinez said, "strewn about."

Before he could film in there, the cathedral had to get special permission from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The archdiocese, for the first time in 22 years, also agreed to open the crypt where the archbishops are buried.

When Martinez emerged from his sweaty underground exploration, the camera was covered in silt, and he wasn't sure if he had any usable footage.

But late next month, people will get their first look at the moving images when a new documentary film, El Corazón de Santa Fe, premieres at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

The film, commissioned by the Friends of the Cathedral Basilica, is about the history of Catholicism in the area over the last 400 years.

According to the filmmaker, the story of the Spanish settlement of New Mexico has "never really been told." Many people are not fully aware, he said, that the colonists "did not come to Santa Fe to find the seven cities of gold. They came to establish a Catholic religious settlement in New Mexico."

Martinez and his Texas-based production company, Silver Horn Entertainment, are now adding the music and graphics and plan to "lock" the film by the end of the week.

Martinez was given complete editorial control over the content, and the result is a no-holds-barred report, according to The Very Rev. Msgr. Jerome Martinez y Alire, rector of the cathedral. "He asked me early on whether this would be just a puff piece or whether I wanted the real history. I said the real history in all its warts, wrinkles and beautiful spots," said Martinez, who was interviewed for the documentary on two occasions for a total of four hours.

The film deals frankly with the initial treatment of the Indians by the Spanish that led to the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 as well as some of the original policies of Archbishop Jean Batiste Lamy, the builder of the cathedral. Lamy, a European and a man of his time, was "less than sensitive to the culture of the people," the monsignor said. He thought adobe churches and santero art were primitive and demeaning to the holy liturgy, and sought to modify or replace them.

The documentary also includes the story of María Gertrudis Barceló, also known as Doña Tules, said to be buried in the south transept. Mary J. Straw Cook, author of a book on the wealthy courtesan, told the filmmaker in an interview that Doña Tules paid $1,200 to Lamy to be buried in the parish church. And when he got word that the infamous woman was on her death bed, Lamy hurried back from Durango for her funeral. "Her money might have initiated the building of the cathedral," Cook said.

While honest, the film isn't all negative, Tony Martinez stressed. "Marc Simmons (historian and New Mexican columnist) told me that you can learn a lot more from history by studying what went right, not what went wrong. I have the same philosophy. I'd rather look at what happened positively rather than dwell for the 150 millionth time about how vile the Spanish were in the conquest of the New World."

He first approached the cathedral about making a film in 2003 when plans for the 150th anniversary that October were already under way. The timing just wasn't right, but two years later it was perfect. When the city's 400th anniversary committee couldn't raise the funds, Martinez went back to the cathedral, which was already mulling the idea of a documentary as a gift to Santa Fe in honor of the anniversary.

Within a couple of weeks they had an agreement, and Martinez had the editorial control he wanted.

"The church is embarrassed by some things that happened," said Jim Cutropia, the cathedral's financial director, but he told Martinez, "That's history. Don't cover it up. But tell the story of what (we) did to try to fix it later on."

Cutropia, who saw the rough cut of the film with Monsignor Jerome recently, said, "It didn't pull any punches. (But) it was very fair."

Silver Horn is being paid $200,000 to produce the film, and the Friends of the Cathedral, which has a donor-advised fund at the Santa Fe Community Foundation, is working to raise the money through donations, sales of the DVD and a premiere event for which tickets are already on sale.

Creating a narrative

Martinez's roots in Santa Fe are deep. He was born at the old St. Vincent Hospital and grew up on Arroyo Tenorio. He was baptized at the cathedral, where he also made his first communion and served as a lector. He attended the Cathedral School and graduated from St. Michael's High School in 1975. As a teenager, he worked in his father's photo studio (Lord's) on the west side of the Plaza.

Martinez has been itching to tell the story of his hometown for years. He was raised primarily by his grandmother, he said, who had a "natural love for the culture and history of Santa Fe."

Although he now attends the Methodist Church with his wife, Martinez said, "I'm so grateful to my grandmother for sharing her history and faith.

"I'm way too impatient and not as good a person as I could be," Martinez added, but to this day when he walks into the cathedral, "it is part of me, where I grew up."

Martinez left Santa Fe to attend Arizona State University and has not lived here since. He worked in television news for a couple of decades, then founded Silver Horn Entertainment. His documentary, Colors of Courage: Sons of New Mexico, Prisoners of Japan, inspired by his father's experiences on the Bataan Death March, won an award at the Taos Film Festival in 2003. He's also won a Peabody and several Emmys for a series of biographies on the greatest athletes of the 20th century for ESPN. His 2008 documentary, Letters of Honor, about letters written by New Mexico war veterans, has been highly acclaimed.

El Corazón de Santa Fe features interviews with 50 people, including state historians such as Marc Simmons, John Kessell and Thomas Chávez.

"These are not my ideas," Martinez said. "I take massive amounts of (material) and create a narrative, a bridge that takes you from one point to the next with factual information and beautiful pictures."

He works with a team on all projects. Roy Machado of Dallas is creating the musical track, which includes performances by the cathedral choir directed by Carmen Florez Mansi. Also in Dallas, a graphic artist, Joey Curry (The Creative Spin), is treating the historic images with a technology that makes the viewer feel like he or she is watching a 3-D movie, without the funny glasses. An 1800s photo of the Plaza feels like a mini — six or seven-second — film.

Originally the documentary incorporated footage from a Spanish film, El Camino Real. At the last minute, the producers said the Spanish government would not allow Martinez to use it and he had to pull out eight minutes of the documentary. But within two weeks, Martinez said, Michael King, the curator of education at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, had put together 50 actors in period costume with horses and 17th-century accouterments to re-enact the arrival of the Spanish.

"It was frigid day in April with the wind howling, the cameras full of dust. We could barely stand it, but this is what they must have (experienced)," Martinez said.

The documentary, shot in 1080i, a high-definition video mode, also contains some footage of sandstone being removed from the original quarry near Lamy used in construction of the original cathedral. Silver Horn recorded a helicopter picking up the stones, some as heavy as 1,500 pounds, from the top of the quarry and dropping them in the valley where they were trucked away. Ranch owner Joe Miller gave permission for the quarry to be reopened — after 75 years — for the cathedral renovation.

The Friends of the Cathedral group is hoping to eventually take the documentary to film festivals in the U.S., as well as in Canada and in Europe, Cutropia said.

But first Martinez said he wants to see if the general public thinks it is really good. "I want it to be well-liked," he said. "It means so much to me. I love Santa Fe so much."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.

IF YOU GO

What: Premiere of El Corazón de Santa Fe
When: 7 p.m. July 22
Where: Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.
Tickets: $25 and $100 (includes DVD of the movie and admission to reception at Café Paris); 988-1234 or at www.ticketssantafe.org
Reception: At Burro Alley's Café Paris following the premiere, with food donated by Rahera and Paul Perrier, Café Paris owners; beer donated by Dr. David Gonzales and the monks of Christ in the Desert monastery in Abiquiú; and wine donated by parishioner Ruth Ritchie. People are encouraged to wear New Mexican festive attire.
On the Web: To see the Silver Horn Entertainment portfolio, go to www.silverhornentertainment.com.