The following was my introduction to Elena Poniatowska at City Hall. 2015 will see a series of events related to Mexico and the United Kingdom. It is an honour to welcome Elena Poniatowska to Liverpool who has just been at the London Book Fair. Of course, she is here in Liverpool, now because of her…
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Mexican Film of the 80s: ¿El cine de la crisis? / Cinema of Crisis? – SCMS and Morelia Film Festival
From March 25-28, I attended the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Montréal. I gave a paper,“Taste, Trash, and Distinction: Historical Lessons from Mexican Screen Studies”, as part of a panel, ‘The Cinema of “Crisis” Reading 1980s Mexican Film against the Grain’ organised by Olivia Consentino, Ohio State University. In attendance was Ma.Cristina Alemán…
The Politics of Being a Writer in Mexico: Ayotzinapa
This poem has been circulating amongst my friends and followers on social media in the last day. It draws attention to the power of writing and the writer’s role as public intellectual in Mexico. Huerta’s intervention is an important tool in the building of transnational solidarity and a means of reaching a wide audience where news…
Macario – A (Transnational) Day of the Dead Film
I am currently working on a chapter on adaptation and am pulling out films that have literary origins to watch to flesh out my discussion. Given that it is the Dia de los santos difuntos [All Saints Day], which still falls within the celebratory commemorative period of Dia de los muertos [Day of the Dead],…
“This World is My Place”: Homies, Art Censorship, and Big Birthday Bashes
The subtitle to the Chicana/o Studies book I co-edited with Catherine Leen was taken from an eponymous poem by Bernadette García. In her poem, García asserts her right to write about those who are considered “Other” by her professor because, “[T]his exclusive space you’ve constructed around yourself and a select few is rapidly diminishing in size confined to…
Curation and Film Festivals
As someone who is developing a project on curation, this article from NACLA about the growing influence of the Guadalajara Film Festival and its role in supporting Mexican filmmaking is very apropos: http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/29/guadalajara-takes-new-leading-role-mexican-film
Arturo Ripstein and La perdición de hombres
I recently sent off a chapter to the editors of a collection on the Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein. I want to share some brief thoughts on this prolific director and some images from the film I discuss in my chapter, La perdición de los hombres/The Ruination of Men (2000). In an interview with Paulo Antonio Paranaguá…
Cinco de mayo, la batalla [The Battle]
Media Type: Film Year: 2013 Who wrote / made it : Rafa Lara Plot summary: Cinco de mayo, la batalla [The Battle] deals with the run up to and the battle on the fifth of May/cinco de mayo, when the Mexican army defeated the invading (mostly) French army. When it was made, it was the…
Violence in Heli
Find my recent post “VIOLENCE AS NARRATIVE FUNCTION OR, SOME THOUGHTS ON WHY HELI DIVIDES CRITICS” in Mediático: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico/2014/06/30/violence-as-narrative-function-or-some-thoughts-on-why-heli-divides-critics/
Who is Elena Garro?
Elena Garro (1916-1998) is a writer whose career has been over-shadowed by her tumultuous relationship with her one-time husband Octavio Paz. I wrote about her novel Los recuerdos del porvenir (first published in 1963 and translated into English by Ruth L. Simms as Recollections of Things to Come) in my first book. Los recuerdos del porvenir is an…