09 · 30 · 09

Mexican Cinema is Analyzed

Administrador

Díaz Calderón gave a presentation on filmmaker Gonzalo Martínez Ortega and irrational domination in which he emphasized the way in which victims are described "as people who are on the threshhold of madness and reality. There is a negation of the identity of the other that appears as the antecedent or complement of the negation."

García addressed the theme National Mechanic, the national cartoon of Luis Alcoriza saying, "the film became a decisive work in the country's cinematography, in which each (moment of) happiness is accompanied by one of pain." The author said the film is "an attempt to unravel the national character through a critical and acidic look, situated in a social event that unites various social types in an atmosphere of extreme disorder."

Vargas read her talk Amores Perros: esthetic codes of Mexican film in the new milenium. The academic, who presented an aesthetic analysis, emphasized that the film nominated for an Oscar and winner of the Critics Award of the International Critics' Week left its mark in cinematography, and its aesthetic recourses have been repeated. "Amores Perros is an anti-narration which is structured from a fragmented aesthetic of codes and semantics," she said. "The non-linear story makes one return time and again to the initial point of crash and recovery."

Zamorano gave her talk on A Legend of Mexican Film: La Llorona in which she looked into the origins of the La Llorona myth, and pointed out that the first Mexican short film that addressed the theme was that of Guillermo "el Indio" Calles called La chillona in 1993.

The researcher said that between 1933 and 1974, six features were made about the myth. Then 30 years went by until Las Lloranas by Lorena Villareal appeared in 2004. From 2004 to 2007, 10 feature films about this mythical woman were made by both Mexican and foreign filmmakers, like Terrence Williams, who made a trilogy about her.

Zamorano explained that La Llorona is the protagonist of 10 to 20 colonial legends that describe her as a powerfully disturbing and vengeful person.

"She is a live legend, a fragment of Mexican collective imagination that is still alive in the stories grandmothers tell children to frighten them and keep them from getting too close to the rivers," she said.