07 · 17 · 18

Julio Bracho at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

On March 2017, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presented with great success the  "Between Twilight and Dawn: Julio Bracho and the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" series, which was created in collaboration with  the Morelia International Film Festival ( FICM). The series was also screened at the 14th edition of the festival.

This was the second time that Julio Bracho's films were screened at MoMA, after the series "Mexico at Midnight" was shown in 2015, where titles such as Another Dawn (1943) and Crepúsculo (1945) were included.

Publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice and Art Forum reaffirmed the importance of showing the work of Julio Bracho, a very important Mexican filmmaker.

Kristin M. Jones wrote for The Wall Street Journal: "In 2015, when the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibited 'Mexico at Midnight' a revealing series of richly evocative noirs, it highlighted several talented directors worthy of a broader appreciation in the U.S. Now Between Twilight and Dawn: Julio Bracho and the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema' explores the work of one of those artists in an exhibition of films ranging from a surrealist comedy and stylized melodramas, to a bold adaptation of the novel by Martin Luis Guzmán La sombra del caudillo. [..] Bracho was as versatile as he was prolific, an artist with a keen visual sense, a talent for capturing passionate characters, and also ideas about society and politics. "

In a substantial text for Art Forum, J. Hoberman explains the importance of Bracho's cinematographic work: "Throughout the 1940s, a period in which few European films were imported to Mexico, Bracho filled the gap with an ambitious series . His strongest films include an adaptation of a nineteenth-century novel anticipating Manoel de Oliveira and Raúl Ruiz in their irony, a comic exercise of the Old Testament and an antifascist thriller comparable and somewhat superior to Casablanca (1942, directed by Michael Curtiz). These and other Bracho films are less distinguished by the personality of the director than by the interest in the filmed hobby that he shared with Jean Renoir, Douglas Sirk and Orson Welles. "

Some of the functions of the "Between Twilight and Dawn: Julio Bracho and the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" series, were presented by Daniela Michel, founder and general director of FICM, and actors Diana Bracho and Pablo Bracho.