MEXICO CITY – Servando Gonzalez Hernandez rose from gofer at a Mexican film studio to become a director in Hollywood. But he may be most remembered in Mexico for a film that nobody ever saw.

Gonzalez, who died in Mexico City on Saturday at age 85, was the government's chief documentary filmmaker when he said “a military type” asked him to set up six cameras around a Mexico City plaza in 1968 and film the events below.

What occurred was the Tlatelolco massacre, when soldiers opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators and – by varying accounts – 25 to 350 people died in one of the most controversial events in Mexican history.

Gonzalez told the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada last year that the man who hired him appeared after the raw film was developed and took it all away.

“He disappeared. I never knew anything about that material,” he said. “I haven't even known who has it.”

Gonzalez got his start at 13 as an apprentice at Estudios Clasa and gradually learned the trade, rising to become head of the film laboratory at Latin America's largest film operation, Estudios Churubusco, before setting out to make movies himself.

His best-known work abroad was “The Fool Killer,” a 1965 film starring Anthony Perkins and Dana Elcar. It wasn't the first Hollywood production by a Mexican director, but it was among very few at that time.

Gonzalez's made other notable films in Mexico, including “Viento Negro” (“Black Wind”) of 1965, “El Elegido” (“The Chosen One”) of 1977 and “El Ultimo Tunel” (“The Last Tunnel”) of 1987 – the most expensive movie of the 1980s by Mexico's film industry, said Jose Antonio Valdes, a researcher at the Cineteca Nacional, a film archive.

Relatives did not release a cause of death, but several Mexican newspapers said Gonzalez had suffered from cancer. He is survived by three sons and two daughters.