Mexican Cinema
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 May 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2024
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0170
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 May 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2024
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0170
Introduction
Mexico has had a successful national film industry since its inception, with some peaks and troughs. One of the peaks generally labeled as the Golden Age (edad de oro) of Mexican cinema lasted approximately from the 1930s to the 1950s. While the precise dates are subject to debate, there is general agreement that it was highly productive. Studios modeled after those in the United States and supported by generous government funding through a film bank, made hundreds of films. The short turnover in production frequently led to repetition in narrative, wardrobe, character, set, and technical style. This means of production was cheap and, because film was a popular form of entertainment in Mexico and elsewhere, it was lucrative. The studios went into decline in the 1960s with the arrival of television, changes in audience tastes, diminishing government support, and the opening of the first film schools and their associated film societies. During this period, B-movies flourished while art cinema had a strong run in production terms and critical praise, if not in audience attendance figures. The 1980s saw an overall decline in filmmaking in volume and was variable in quality, and this pattern continued for many years. Mexican film criticism as it evolved inside and outside of the academy grew out of a period of change in the 1960s and has remained consistently and primarily focused on historical and contextual analysis. The year 1992 was a major turning point for the attention given to Mexican cinema, most particularly outside of Mexico. The considerable box office success of Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Arau) in that year led to more focused academic interest from abroad. This attention has subsequently multiplied exponentially with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores perros (2000) breakthrough hit, his move to transnational filmmaking, and the international successes of others such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Carlos Reygadas. The field has grown globally with critics both inside and outside of Mexico energized by this international and transnational focus. In the early twenty-first century, there is a curious confluence of apparently contradictory elements at play whereby Mexican filmmaking has gone from one of its lowest points of production in terms of volume, while it is garnering significant international scholarly and popular attention through the film festival and awards circuit and strong local audiences for popular genre films that get limited distribution outside of the Americas. This annotated bibliography cannot prove to be exhaustive but should provide pointers to useful exemplary texts for those wanting to gain an understanding of Mexican film.
General Overviews
In Mexico, as in many countries, film studies is interdisciplinary. Researchers are as often found in sociology, anthropology, and art departments, as in film studies departments. In most university film studies departments, practice is privileged over theory. As a consequence, many of the foundational texts and current theoretical work were published first in newspapers and later in edited collections. There are universities, such as the University of Guadalajara and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [National Autonomous University of Mexico] that have strong publishing arms where much theoretical work by academics is placed, although there can be difficulty accessing some of this outside of Mexico because of uneven distribution and the cost of foreign academic books for Mexican universities. This has led to the siloing of research, although there are significant efforts made by scholars to bridge these through archival research and engagement with fellow researchers at international conferences. Over recent years, there has been a growing range of work being published by scholars based in Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States.
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- 8 ½
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- À bout de souffle
- Accounting, Motion Picture
- Acting
- Action Cinema
- Adaptation
- Advertising and Promotion
- African American Cinema
- African American Stars
- African Cinema
- AIDS in Film and Television
- Akerman, Chantal
- Allen, Woody
- Almodóvar, Pedro
- Alphaville
- Altman, Robert
- American Cinema, 1895-1915
- American Cinema, 1939-1975
- American Cinema, 1976 to Present
- American Independent Cinema
- American Independent Cinema, Producers
- American Public Broadcasting
- Anderson, Wes
- Animals in Film and Media
- Animation and the Animated Film
- Anime
- Arbuckle, Roscoe
- Architecture and Cinema
- Argentine Cinema
- Aronofsky, Darren
- Art Cinema
- Arzner, Dorothy
- Asian American Cinema
- Asian Television
- Astaire, Fred and Rogers, Ginger
- Audiences and Moviegoing Cultures
- Australian Cinema
- Auteurism
- Authorship, Television
- Avant-Garde and Experimental Film
- Bachchan, Amitabh
- Battle of Algiers, The
- Battleship Potemkin, The
- Bazin, André
- Bergman, Ingmar
- Bernstein, Elmer
- Bertolucci, Bernardo
- Bigelow, Kathryn
- Biopics
- Birth of a Nation, The
- Blade Runner
- Blockbusters
- Bong, Joon Ho
- Brakhage, Stan
- Brando, Marlon
- Brazilian Cinema
- Breaking Bad
- Bresson, Robert
- British Cinema
- Broadcasting, Australian
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Burnett, Charles
- Buñuel, Luis
- Cameron, James
- Campion, Jane
- Canadian Cinema
- Capra, Frank
- Carpenter, John
- Casablanca
- Cassavetes, John
- Cavell, Stanley
- Censorship
- Chahine, Youssef
- Chan, Jackie
- Chaplin, Charles
- Children in Film
- Chinese Cinema
- Cinecittà Studios
- Cinema and Media Industries, Creative Labor in
- Cinema and the Visual Arts
- Cinematography and Cinematographers
- Cinephilia
- Citizen Kane
- City in Film, The
- Cocteau, Jean
- Coen Brothers, The
- Colonial Educational Film
- Color
- Comedy, Film
- Comedy, Television
- Comics, Film, and Media
- Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)
- Copland, Aaron
- Coppola, Francis Ford
- Copyright and Piracy
- Corman, Roger
- Costume and Fashion
- Cronenberg, David
- Cuban Cinema
- Cult Cinema
- 3D Cinema
- Dance and Film
- de Oliveira, Manoel
- Dean, James
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Denis, Claire
- Deren, Maya
- Design, Art, Set, and Production
- Detective Films
- Dietrich, Marlene
- Digital Media and Convergence Culture
- Directors
- Disability
- Disney, Walt
- Doctor Who
- Documentary Film
- Downton Abbey
- Dr. Strangelove
- Dreyer, Carl Theodor
- Eastern European Television
- Eastwood, Clint
- Ecocinema
- Ecocinema
- Eisenstein, Sergei
- Elfman, Danny
- Epic Film
- Essay Film
- Ethnographic Film
- European Television
- Exhibition and Distribution
- Exploitation Film
- Fairbanks, Douglas
- Fan Studies
- Fantasy
- Fellini, Federico
- Festivals
- Film Aesthetics
- Film and Literature
- Film Guilds and Unions
- Film, Historical
- Film Noir
- Film Preservation and Restoration
- Film Theory and Criticism, Science Fiction
- Film Theory Before 1945
- Film Theory, Psychoanalytic
- Finance Film, The
- Ford, John
- French Cinema
- Game of Thrones
- Gance, Abel
- Gangster Films
- Garbo, Greta
- Garland, Judy
- German Cinema
- Gilliam, Terry
- Global Television Industry
- Godard, Jean-Luc
- Godfather Trilogy, The
- Godzilla
- Golden Girls, The
- Greek Cinema
- Griffith, D.W.
- Hammett, Dashiell
- Haneke, Michael
- Hawks, Howard
- Haynes, Todd
- Hepburn, Katharine
- Herrmann, Bernard
- Herzog, Werner
- Hindi Cinema, Popular
- Hitchcock, Alfred
- Hollywood Studios
- Holocaust Cinema
- Homeland
- Hong Kong Cinema
- Horror-Comedy
- Hsiao-Hsien, Hou
- Hungarian Cinema
- Icelandic Cinema
- Immigration and Cinema
- Indigenous Media
- Industrial, Educational, and Instructional Television and ...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Iranian Cinema
- Irish Cinema
- Israeli Cinema
- It Happened One Night
- Italian Americans in Cinema and Media
- Italian Cinema
- Japanese Cinema
- Jazz Singer, The
- Jews in American Cinema and Media
- Keaton, Buster
- King Kong
- Kitano, Takeshi
- Korean Cinema
- Kracauer, Siegfried
- Kubrick, Stanley
- Lang, Fritz
- Latin American Cinema
- Latina/o Americans in Film and Television
- Lee, Ang
- Lee, Chang-dong
- Lee, Spike
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Cin...
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The
- Los Angeles and Cinema
- Lubitsch, Ernst
- Lumet, Sidney
- Lupino, Ida
- Lynch, David
- Mad Men
- Marker, Chris
- Martel, Lucrecia
- Marxism
- Masculinity in Film
- Media, Community
- Media Ecology
- Melodrama
- Memory and the Flashback in Cinema
- Metz, Christian
- Mexican Cinema
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Ming-liang, Tsai
- Minnelli, Vincente
- Miyazaki, Hayao
- Méliès, Georges
- Modernism and Film
- Monroe, Marilyn
- Mészáros, Márta
- Music and Cinema, Classical Hollywood
- Music and Cinema, Global Practices
- Music, Television
- Music Video
- Musicals
- Musicals on Television
- Narrative
- Native Americans
- New Media Art
- New Media Policy
- New Media Theory
- New York City and Cinema
- New Zealand Cinema
- Opera and Film
- Ophuls, Max
- Orphan Films
- Oshima, Nagisa
- Ozu, Yasujiro
- Panh, Rithy
- Pasolini, Pier Paolo
- Passion of Joan of Arc, The
- Peckinpah, Sam
- Pedagogy
- Philosophy and Film
- Photography and Cinema
- Pickford, Mary
- Planet of the Apes
- Poems, Novels, and Plays About Film
- Poitier, Sidney
- Polanski, Roman
- Polish Cinema
- Politics, Hollywood and
- Pop, Blues, and Jazz in Film
- Pornography
- Postcolonial Theory in Film
- Potter, Sally
- Prime Time Drama
- Psycho
- Queer Television
- Queer Theory
- Race and Cinema
- Radio and Sound Studies
- Ray, Nicholas
- Ray, Satyajit
- Reality Television
- Reenactment in Cinema and Media
- Regulation, Television
- Religion and Film
- Remakes, Sequels and Prequels
- Renoir, Jean
- Repo Man
- Resnais, Alain
- Romanian Cinema
- Romantic Comedy, American
- Rossellini, Roberto
- Russian Cinema
- Saturday Night Live
- Scandinavian Cinema
- Scorsese, Martin
- Scott, Ridley
- Searchers, The
- Seinfeld
- Sennett, Mack
- Sesame Street
- Shakespeare on Film
- Silent Film
- Simpsons, The
- Singin' in the Rain
- Sirk, Douglas
- Soap Operas
- Social Class
- Social Media
- Social Problem Films
- Soderbergh, Steven
- Sound Design, Film
- Sound, Film
- Spanish Cinema
- Spanish-Language Television
- Spielberg, Steven
- Sports and Media
- Sports in Film
- Stand-Up Comedians
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stardom
- Stop-Motion Animation
- Streaming Television
- Sturges, Preston
- Superhero Films
- Surrealism and Film
- Taiwanese Cinema
- Talk Shows
- Tarantino, Quentin
- Tarkovsky, Andrei
- Tati, Jacques
- Television Audiences
- Television Celebrity
- Television, History of
- Television Industry, American
- Theater and Film
- Theory, Cognitive Film
- Theory, Critical Media
- Theory, Feminist Film
- Theory, Film
- Theory, Trauma
- Touch of Evil
- Transnational and Diasporic Cinema
- Trinh, T. Minh-ha
- Truffaut, François
- Turkish Cinema
- Twilight Zone, The
- Twin Peaks
- Varda, Agnès
- Vertigo
- Vertov, Dziga
- Video and Computer Games
- Video Installation
- Violence and Cinema
- Virtual Reality
- Visconti, Luchino
- Von Sternberg, Josef
- Von Stroheim, Erich
- von Trier, Lars
- War Film
- Warhol, The Films of Andy
- Waters, John
- Wayne, John
- Weerasethakul, Apichatpong
- Weir, Peter
- Welles, Orson
- Wenders, Wim
- Whedon, Joss
- Whiteness
- Wilder, Billy
- Williams, John
- Wire, The
- Wiseman, Frederick
- Wizard of Oz, The
- Women and Film
- Women and the Silent Screen
- Wong, Anna May
- Wong, Kar-wai
- Woo, John
- Wood, Natalie
- Yang, Edward
- Yimou, Zhang
- YouTube
- Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema
- Zinnemann, Fred
- Zombies in Cinema and Media