WORLD CINEMA: MEXICO

The global success of film directors Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro has attracted much attention to the New Mexican Cinema. Yet this «Nuevo cine mexicano» cannot be understood without knowing the traditions of Mexico’s intricate film history. This course explores the numerous tendencies of Mexican cinema through the analysis of its most representative genres, features, and directors since the so called Golden Age (1938-1957). An in-depth analysis of films such as Emilio Fernández’s La perla (1947), Luis Buñuel’s Los olvidados (1950), Jomi García Ascot’s and María Luisa Elío's En el balcón vacío (1962), Alejandro Jodorowsky’s La montaña sagrada (1973), and Arturo Ripstein's Profundo carmesí (1996) will contribute to define the characteristics of the most relevant «national» genres – from 1940s melodramas to 1970s psychedelic movies and 1990s crime films. The study of the New Mexican Cinema of Iñárritu (Amores perros, 2000), Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, 2001), and del Toro (El laberinto del fauno, 2006) will comprise an examination of the complex relationship between the US and Mexican film industries, as well as a critique of the very notion of «national identity» in today’s globalized world. We will also analyze new tendencies in commercial, experimental, and documentary Mexican films – including Carlos Reygadas' Luz silenciosa (2007) and Pedro González Rubio's Alamar (2009).