The VIFF Vancity Theatre and the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival present:
Mexico Noir
Friday, March 25 – Sunday, April 3, 2016
If you think you know film noir, prepare to be blown away by the existential angst of the Mexican noir that flourished in the 1940s and 50s. This collection of rarely seen but recently rediscovered classics – plus a subversive 70s parody and a brand new Buñuelian crime drama from Arturo Ripstein is guaranteed to rock your world.
“Fatalistic tales of passion, jealousy and betrayal… part film noir, part grand opera… They unfold in either a splendiferously seedy or luxurious black-and-white world. Nearly every protagonist is a haunted neurotic, and all subterfuge leads inexorably to death.” —J Hoberman, New York Times
With special thanks to the Filmoteca UNAM (Mexico’s National University Film Archives), Cineteca Nacional, José Manuel García,Rafael Aviña, Morelia International Film Festival, Juan Antonio dela Riva, Chloë Roddick, and Fundación Televisa.
Night is the setting for the thriller, the detective film and the film noir; for the antihero consumed by jealousy, mistrust and uncertainty, wrapped up in his own pride, recklessness and bravado, and held by destiny that is implacable and cruel, racing through a maze of memories where the present tangles up with the past, with nihilism and disillusionment with society.
Mexico Noir, one of the great legacies of the Alemán administration (Miguel Alemán Valdés was president of Mexico from 1946 to 1952), is a metaphor of the times, replete with films that follow the reactions and formulas of the suspense genre and melodrama—an equation of blood, sweat, tears, not to mention adrenaline and sexual fluids—and that crisscross to create crime thrillers, cabaret films, tales of poverty and slums, of intrigues and espionage that end in violence.— Rafael Aviña
The Golden Age of Mexican cinema extended from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, when Mexican films dominated Latin America and made significant inroads into Spanish-speaking communities throughout North America. At its height, in the decade during and following World War II, Mexican popular filmmaking achieved a level of quality comparable to Hollywood, with a robust star system with such magnetic performers as Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, María Félix, and Arturo de Córdova; world-class directors like Roberto Gavaldón, Julio Bracho, and Emilio Fernández; cinematographers such as Gabriel Figueroa and Alex Phillips; and the superb technical facilities of the Churubusco Studios.