page_title: Mexican art
section_title: Cinema
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican art / Cinema
caption_attribution_description: Español: Lugares de rodaje de "Roma" de Alfonso Cuarón en la Ciudad de México English: Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma" filming locations in Mexico City. BW version.
context_page_description: Various types of visual arts developed in the geographical area now known as Mexico. The development of these arts roughly follows the history of Mexico, divided into the prehispanic Mesoamerican era, the colonial period, with the period after Mexican War of Independence, the development Mexican national identity through art in the nineteenth century, and the florescence of modern Mexican art after the Mexican Revolution.
  Mesoamerican art is that produced in an area that encompasses much of what is now central and southern Mexico, before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire for a period of about 3,000 years from Mexican Art can be bright and colourful this is called encopended. During this time, all influences on art production were indigenous, with art heavily tied to religion and the ruling class. There was little to no real distinction among art, architecture, and writing. The Spanish conquest led to 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, and art production remained tied to religion—most art was associated with the construction and decoration of churches, but secular art expanded in the eighteenth century, particularly casta paintings, portraiture, and history painting.
context_section_description: Cinematography came to Mexico during the Mexican Revolution from the U.S. and France. It was initially used to document the battles of the war. Revolutionary general Pancho Villa himself starred in some silent films.  In 2003, HBO broadcast And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, with Antonio Banderas as Villa; the film focuses on the making of the film The Life of General Villa.  Villa consciously used cinema to shape his public image.
  The first sound film in Mexico was made in 1931, called Desde Santa. The first Mexican film genre appeared between 1920 and 1940, called ranchero.
  Mexico has twice won the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival, having won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film for María Candelaria in 1946 and the Palme d'Or in 1961 for Viridiana, more than any other Latin American nation.
  While Mexico's Golden Age of Cinema is regarded as the 1940s and 1950s, two films from the mid to late 1930s, Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) and Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1935), set the standard of this age thematically, aesthetically, and ideologically. These films featured archetypal star figures and symbols based on broad national mythologies. Some of the mythology according to Carlos Monsiváis, includes the participants in family melodramas, the masculine charros of ranchero films, femme fatales (often played by María Félix and Dolores del Río), the indigenous peoples of Emilio Fernández's films, and Cantinflas's peladito (urban miscreant).
  Settings were often ranches, the battlefields of the revolution, and cabarets. Movies about the Mexican Revolution focused on the initial overthrow of the Porfirio Díaz government rather than the fighting among the various factions afterwards. They also tended to focus on rural themes as "Mexican," even though the population was increasingly urban.
  Mexico had two advantages in filmmaking during this period. The first was a generation of talented actors and filmmakers. These included actors such as María Félix, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Armendáriz, Pedro Infante, Cantinflas, and directors such as Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Many of these starts had success in the United States and at the Cannes Film Festival . On the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Boulevard, there is a sculpture of four women who represent the four pillars of the cinema industry, one of whom is Mexican actress Dolores del Río . Gabriel Figueroa is known for black-and-white camerawork that is generally stark and expressionist, with simple but sophisticated camera movement. The second advantage was that Mexico was not heavily involved in the Second World War, and therefore had a greater supply of celluloid for films, then also used for bombs.
  In the 1930s, the government became interested in the industry in order to promote cultural and political values. Much of the production during the Golden Age was financed with a mix of public and private money, with the government eventually taking a larger role. In 1942 the Banco Cinematográfico financed almost all of the industry, coming under government control by 1947. This gave the government extensive censorship rights through deciding which projects to finance. While the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) censored films in many ways in the 1940s and 1950s, it was not as repressive as other Spanish speaking countries, but it played a strong role in how Mexico's government and culture was portrayed.
  The Golden Age ended in the late 1950s, with the 1960s dominated by poorly made imitations of Hollywood westerns and comedies. These films were increasingly shot outdoors and popular films featured stars from lucha libre. Art and experimental film production in Mexico has its roots in the same period, which began to bear fruit in the 1970s. Director Paul Leduc surfaced in the 1970s, specializing in films without dialogue. His first major success was with Reed: Insurgent Mexico (1971) followed by a biography of Frida Kahlo called Frida (1984). He is the most consistently political of modern Mexican directors. In the 1990
caption: 22 Tepeji Street, Colonia Roma - the house where the film Roma was filmed. Roma became the first Mexican entry to win Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
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