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Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.

Introduction to Mexican cinema

Moving pictures were first seen in Mexico on 14 August 1896, at an exhibition of the Lumière Cinématographe in Mexico City. By the following year, newsreels and actualities were being shot by local filmmakers, and by 1905 local entrepreneurs were involved in film production and exhibition. The 1910 Mexican Revolution attracted filmmakers from around the world, and its leader, Pancho Villa, took the title role in US director Raoul Walsh’s first film, an early biopic entitled The Life of General Villa (1914). Mexico has been a magnet for foreign filmmakers ever since, from S.M. Eisenstein (Que viva Mexico, 1931) and Fred Zinneman and Paul Strand (Redes/Nets, 1934) in the 1930s; to Spanish director Luis Buñuel, most of whose films between 1946 and 1960 (including Los Olvidados/The Young and the Damned, 1950) were made in Mexico; as well as blacklisted director Herbert Biberman (Salt of the Earth, 1954) (see hollywood blacklist), and Miguel Littín, exiled from Chile, who made a number of films in Mexico, including Actas de Marusia/Letters from Marusia (1975).   ...

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Mexico, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 18 May. 2021

Searching the online catalog

You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included.

Introductory reading(s)

Selected book title(s)

Finding scholarly articles & journal title(s)

Many publications have articles on Mexican cinema. Our collection does not have journals that cover Mexican cinema exclusively. However, we have several journals which look at Latin American cinema. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page. Below are the titles we have in our Library's collection.

Selected movie titles

Find more Mexican film titles in the library's online catalog.

Internet resource(s)

Keeping up with the journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.