Cinematográfica Marte Program at the 15th FICM

A program dedicated to the production house Cinematógrafica Marte, created in collaboration with the Cineteca Nacional, will be exhibited during the fifteenth edition of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM).

The Cinematográfica Marte movies that will be shown at the 15th FICM are: The Outsiders (1967, dir. Juan Ibañez), Patsy, My Love (1969, dir. Manuel Michel), Las puertas del paraíso (1970, dir. Salomón Laiter), Siempre hay una primera vez (1969, dirs. Guillermo Murray, Mauricio Walerstein), Trampas de amor (1969, dirs. Tito Novaro, Manuel Michel, Jorge Fons), Paraíso (1970, dir. Luis Alcoriza) and Para servir a usted (1971, dir. José Estrada).

The seven titles that make up the retrospective are representative of a moment of rebirth for Mexican cinema, in the sixties and seventies, marked by events such as the formation of the Nuevo Cine group and the publication of its magazine, the founding of the University Center for Film Studies (CUEC-UNAM) and the celebration of the First Experimental Film Contest.

Trampas de amor, by Tito Novaro, Manuel Michel and Jorge Fons. Photo: Cineteca Nacional.

Alejandro Pelayo, director of the Cineteca Nacional, writes that the most important result of this first competition was that it provided visibility to a new generation of filmmakers with a modern vision of the world: "The existence of new filmmakers willing and eager to debut at an industrial level and the urgent need for a renewal of themes and the cinematographic language in Mexican cinema, are the grounds upon which a new production company was founded. Cinematográfica Marte is commanded by two very young entrepreneurs: Mauricio Walerstein and Fernando Pérez Gavilán".

The first Cinematográfica Marte production, The Outsiders, based on an original story by Carlos Fuentes and Juan Ibáñez, became a mythical film, in the words of Alejandro Pelayo, "a cultural reference of the sixties."

The production company's films were also characterized by their thematic and formal innovation. With the participation of intellectual figures such as Carlos Monsiváis, Gabriel García Márquez and Elena Garro, and actors such as Julissa, Julio Alemán, Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Héctor Suárez, Ofelia Medina, Jorge Rivero y Alfonso Arau, among many others, Cinematográfica Marte films marked an era and opened new doors for Mexican filmmakers.