You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
La crisis, a period of political and economic turmoil in Mexico that began in the late 1960s, spawned a new era in Mexican cinema. Known as el Nuevo Cine (the New Cinema), these films presented alienated characters caught in a painful transition period in which old family, gender, and social roles have ceased to function without being replaced by viable new ones. These are the films explored by Charles Ramírez Berg in Cinema of Solitude, the first book-length critical study of Mexican cinema in English. Berg discusses the major films and filmmakers of el Nuevo Cine in depth. He analyzes dozens of commercial movies, from popular comedies and adventures to award-winning films. Introductory ch...
"This is an extremely rigorous, thorough piece of superior scholarship on one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. Benamou introduces a wealth of material on the production process and the repercussions of this project in Latin America, which have been entirely missing from earlier, auteur-centered accounts; this alone makes it a book of great importance. We can't ask for a more definitive, groundbreaking study than the one Benamou has given us."—Bill Nichols, author of Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde
To coincide with the recent DVD release of The Spirit of the Beehive, this paperback collection of essays focuses on the work of acclaimed Spanish director, Víctor Erice. Originally published in hardcover under the title An Open Window, this expanded edition draws on original essays, reprints, and new translations from an international group of writers. New to this edition are four essays from noted film scholars—including editor Linda C. Ehrlich—as well as three added essays from the filmmaker himself. Both the original and new material provide a deeper appreciation of Erice's three feature-length films—The Spirit of the Beehive [El espíritu de la colmena] (1973), El Sur (1982), and...
Conventional silent cinema -- Avant-garde silent cinema -- Transition to sound -- Birth and growth of an industry -- Crisis and decline of studio cinema -- Neorealism and art cinema -- New Latin American cinema's militant phase -- New Latin American cinema's Neobaroque phase -- Collapse and rebirth of an industry -- Latin American cinema in the twenty-first century -- Conclusion : a triangulated cinema -- Appendix : discourses of modernity in Latin America
In recent years, Mexican films have received high acclaim and impressive box-office returns. Moreover, Mexico has the most advanced movie industry in the Spanish-speaking world, and its impact on Mexican culture and society cannot be overstated. Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers is a collection of fourteen essays that encompass the first 100 years of the cinema of Mexico. Included are original contributions written specifically for this title, plus a few classic pieces in the field of Mexican cinema studies never before available in English. These essays explore a variety of themes including race and ethnicity, gender issues, personalities, and the historical development of a...
Love and Despair explores the multiple and mostly unknown ways progressive and conservative Catholic actors, such as priests, lay activists, journalists, intellectuals, and filmmakers, responded to the significant social and cultural shifts that formed competing notions of modernity in Cold War Mexico. Jaime M. Pensado demonstrates how the Catholic Church as a heterogeneous institution—with key transnational networks in Latin America and Western Europe—was invested in youth activism, state repression, and the counterculture from the postwar period to the more radical Sixties. Similar to their secular counterparts, progressive Catholics often saw themselves as revolutionary actors and nearly always framed their activism as an act of love. When their movements were repressed and their ideas were co-opted, marginalized, and commercialized at the end of the Sixties, the liberating hope of love often turned into a sense of despair.
This book features extended conversations with Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) and interviews with his family members, friends and colleagues--including Salvador Dali, Louis Aragon and Fernando Rey--conducted by Max Aub in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Notorious for inventing fanciful versions of his life and his creative output, Bunuel was hard put to deceive the astute Max Aub, who shared Bunuel's background in Spain, in Paris during the Spanish Civil War, and in Mexico, where they were friends and collaborators. Originally published in Spain in 1985, this translated (the first in English) and expanded edition (with several significant interviews and a detailed index not found in the original) provides a detailed picture of Bunuel's life and art. Extensive notes contextualize the conversations and acknowledge the discoveries of recent studies on Bunuel.
The author's main reason for writing this book, however, is simply to provide an introduction to the Mexican commercial cinema for American and other English-speaking readers. Although the United States has been, and continues to be, a major foreign market for Mexican movies, the overwhelming majority of Americans are unaware of them. Mexican films are restricted to the Hispanic theater circuits and shown without English subtitles; therefore anyone wishing to see a Mexican movie would have to be fairly fluent in Spanish. Such a requisite effectively eliminates almost the entire general audience in the United States from exposure to Mexican cinema.
Essays compare early modern Spanish writers to their contemporaries in other countries and to modern Spanish and Latin American literature
None