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Conference on Monsivais' Unforgettables

Luis Gabino Alzati, Clara Sánchez translated by Cindy Hawes

Jorge Volpi commented that Carlos Monsiváis was many Monsiváis'. He spoke of the environments within Mexico City where he grew up: it was a marginal environment, protestant, different. This environment permitted him to develop the capacity to see Mexico from the outside and from the inside, because Monsiváis was outside the mold of Mexican culture that was impregnated with machismo and a strong catholic matiz.

The director of [TV] Channel 22 considered that Monsiváis learned this distant, critical and sharp perspective from  Salvador Novo. He signaled the existing intellectual tradition of belonging to a culture and yet looking at it from outside. In this sense, the proposed that Monsiváis used irony as a means of getting closer to that monolithic reality of his time.

At the same time, he claimed that the writer and essayist (Monsiváis) was an emblematic figure in the sphere of popular culture, one which he also explored. He knew how to transpose his own figure into the entirety of Mexican society.

Monsiváis was also an indispensable social actor and key to understanding contemporary Mexico, especially after the student movement of 1968, and then during the election process in 1988, the Zapatista uprising in 1994 and the victory of the left in the capital of the country in 1997.

"He was an unflinching fighter for the causes of the minorities and he left us a legacy, a critical eye and an ironic way of looking, observing, that from which he interpreted contemporary Mexico through film. Monsiváis describes us (Mexicans) as characters and witnesses of a melodrama that hasn't yet ended," he pointed out.

 The film critic and writer, Carlos Bonfil, the curator of the 12 films included in the cycle, introduced his presentation with the following description: In spite of being such a huge cinephile, Carlos Monsiváis avoided at all costs going into a commercial movie theatre. He explained that Monsiváis ran from the theatres because: "before the proliferation of the large movie complexes and the invasion of those annoying fireflies that are the cellular phones in the darkness of a room, Carlos had abandoned the outings to the movies, even to attend the cycles or the screenings at the National Film Archive, or at any [film] festival in any part of the world. the temples of communitarian enjoyment that was offered by the capital's movie theatres: the Cosmos, Gloria, Estadio, Roble, París, Edén, Mariscala, Olimpia- the movie lover (Monsivais) had for himself one possible viewing space: his own living room and his public that consisted of his ritual visitors who were his accomplice friends:: Iván Restrepo, Margo Su, Alejandro Brito, Marta Lamas, Consuelo Sáizar, Sergio Pitol among many more. He gave his improvised movie space the name of Emma Roldan, in homage to a secondary (but really top-tier) figure in national film."

Bonfil mentioned that these projections. His cats walked around in front of the projection screen and when the spectators left they would be reflecting on whether they had seen, "the best; the most memorable, or whether it was the unflinching stimulus of their host.

Bonfil closed the session with questions and answers in which one of the most prominent themes was that of [film] piracy, which Bonfil underscored when he explained that Monsiváis' film archive could be best considered as: "a depository of very well selected pirate films." The film critic commented that the writer [Monsiváis] considered that a good way to combat piracy would be to offer the material free of charge to television or that it [the material] be programmed for the same price, at 20 pesos, in film clubs. Bonfil closed his talk eulogizing Carlos' recall capacity, and who was, coincidentally, a great fan of cinematographic trivia, "Carlos had a memory with an impressive 'hard disc.'"

The cycle of Monsiváis' Unforgettables will be shown in the 8th Morelia International Film Fest with a screening of the following films: El compadre Mendoza (1933) and ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (1936), both by Fernando de Fuentes, on copies that have been restored for the FICM festival; Las abandonadas by Emilio Fernández (1944), Campeón sin corona by Alejandro Galindo (1945), Enamorada by Emilio Fernández (1946) Nosotros los pobres by Ismael Rodríguez (1947), Pueblerina by Emilio Fernández (1948), Salón México by Emilio Fernández (1948),  ¡Esquina bajan! by Alejandro Galindo (1948), El rey del barrio by Gilberto Martínez Solares (1949), Aventurera by Alberto Gout (1949) and Víctimas del pecado by Emilio Fernández (1950).