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The 21st FICM Presented a "Symposium on Mexican Cinema"

Estefanía Zúñiga

A "Symposium on Mexican Cinema" was presented as part of the 21st Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), in which four personalities orbited one topic: Mexican cinema.

Alba Sánchez, a communications graduate, presented part of her doctoral dissertation, which takes us to the Mexican border and film production in the northern states of Mexico, evaluating themes that we see represented in Mexican films.
 

Alonso Ríos, literature professor currently working on a specialization in film studies, was also present at the panel and addressed the relationship between cinema and cartography through the film Sin señas particulares (2020, dir. Fernanda Valadez), which tells the story of Magdalena, a woman who has not heard from her son since he left her town to cross the United States border months before.

Maricruz Castro, author of La invención iconográfica: identidades regionales y nación en el cine mexicano de la edad de oro, revisited Sin señas particulares, adding the film La civil (2021, dir. Teodora Mihai), to discuss motherhood and violence in contemporary Mexican cinema made by women, affirming that the mothers represented in both works "don't favor motherhood through blood ties, but rather the decision to be nurturing."

To close the symposium, Dr. Tania Ruiz, a member of the research unit on cultural and social representations of the humanities coordination of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), shared her doctoral thesis on the Autonomous Department of Press and Publicity (DAPP), in which she discussed the representations and constructions we make about the idea of a migrant, of a mother or of what it is to be Mexican.