1. Mexican post-industrial cinema (1990-2002)
Juan Carlos Vargas
After a period of artistic and thematic eclosion, generated by the paternalistic and
unconditional backing of President Luis Echeverría’s (1970-1976) government, for the next
two six-year presidential periods, Mexican film industry was in the hands of arthritic,
mediocre and without scruples private enterprises, that produced populistic films of the
lowest quality possible, repeating worn out formulas in a cinema of whorehouse themes,
sexual innuendo filled comedies and narcotics dealer films, thus eliminating the possibility
of a competitive commercial cinema, with a sense of worth, in a market dominated by
Hollywood.
By the end of the Eighties this production model, with the addition of the new neo-liberal
and globalizing politics implemented by president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994)
brought a deadly blow to the dying Mexican film industry and brought with it the
bankruptcy of the national film distributor Películas Nacionales in 1991, and two years later
the liquidation of the exhibition chain Compañía Operadora de Teatros (COTSA) companies
that in spite of being corroded and rickety, were used to promote national films.
On the other hand, the lack of protection and fiscal incentives for national film production
provoked that production would drastically fall. Up to the end of the eighties the historic
average was of ninety films a year, yet, in 1997, production fell as we can see on the
following table:
Production Year Number of Mexican Films
1997 15
1998 11
1999 19
2000 32
2001 18
2002 14
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2. In that sense, industry, understood as a dynamic structure that has an economic and
artistic infrastructure in order to produce films in a continuous and sustained form does not
exist any more.
Since 1990 to date, Mexican cinema has gone through a stage of uncertainty in a post-
industrial transition in which its artistic infrastructure has survived, that is we still have
directors, screen writers, actors, photographers, editors, technicians, etc., and in spite of
the adverse circumstances, filming has been going on specially because of four main
reasons:
• The effort of the filmmakers themselves to continue their projects;
• The — paradoxic — support that the government gives by means of the Instituto
Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE), as a co-producer and liaison to obtain national
and foreign financing;
• Co-production with other countries, specially with Spain;
• The creation of several private producing companies with fresh ideas.
These companies support the launching of films with strong marketing campaigns, with
companies such as Producciones Amaranta, Titán Producciones, Argos Cine y Altavista
Films, and through other two created by directors, such as Tequila Gang (Guillermo del
Toro), and Anhelo Producciones (Alfonso Cuarón).
Nevertheless, during this shaky period, in the artistic domain, Mexican cinema achieved the
greatest international recognition in its history, most of it through prizes in festivals,
examples of these are: La invención de Cronos (1992), first time direction by Guillermo
del Toro, and Amores perros (1999), first feature by Alejandro González Iñárritu,
produced by Altavista films, they won the prize at the critics’ week at the Cannes Film
Festival, also, González Iñárritu’s film obtained another 26 international prizes. In the same
context, El héroe (1993), an animated short by Carlos Herrera, took the Golden Palm in
that category and Japón (2002), first time direction by Carlos Reygadas, won the golden
camera. Reygadas received another twelve international recognitions. On the other hand,
Profundo carmesí (1996) by Arturo Ripstein and Y tu mamá también (2001), by Alfonso
Cuarón won at the Venice Festival, the first film obtained three prizes and the second one
two. Also Cuarón’s film has obtained another 10 prizes outside Mexico.
As far as the commercial aspect, much of the middle class audiences that were lost during
the eighties were gained back, opening market niches, and box office records were broken.
Como agua para chocolate (1990), by Alfonso Arau, was successful in Mexico and sold
about twenty-two million dollars worth of tickets in the United States; Sexo, pudor y
lágrimas (1998), a first co-production by Titán Producciones and Argos Cine, directed by
the debutant Antonio Serrano, made over 118 million pesos (around 11.8 million Dollars)
and was seen by five million spectators; Amores perros brought in around 100 million
pesos in Mexico and another hundred million internationally; Y tu mamá también made
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3. 103.5 million pesos, and was seen by around four million spectators, and was distributed in
forty countries, and made more than fourteen million dollars in the United States, and El
crimen del padre Amaro (2002), by Carlos Carrera, favored by the political and religious
scandal provoked by the church and ultra right-wing groups that pretended to censure it,
became the biggest box office in Mexican film history, in only twenty days it reached a
record 118 million pesos, record set by Sexo, pudor y lágrimas, whose box office sales
were achieved in twenty weeks of exhibition.
In this stage there is also a new generation of directors, actors, scriptwriters,
photographers and technicians that not only renew the artistic base, but also presented
new ideas and subjects, they used a more contemporary film language and they chose the
traditional stories of Mexican cinema such as melodrama and comedy in a more realistic
and current way. In the field of feature films more than forty directors made their
appearance, among them we can name the already mentioned Del Toro, Carrera, González
Iñarritú, Reygadas and Cuarón, and also Juan Mora Catlett (Retorno a Aztlán, 1990),
Francisco Athié (Lolo, 1991), Roberto Sneider (Dos crímenes, 1993) Fernando Sariñana,
(Hasta morir, 1993), Juan Carlos Rulfo (Del olvido al no me acuerdo, 1997), Carlos
Bolado (Bajo California. El límite del tiempo, 1998), Gerardo Tort (De la calle, 2000),
Armando Casas (Un mundo raro, 2001), Juan Carlos Martín (Gabriel Orozco: un
proyecto fílmico documental, 2002) and Julián Hernández (Mil nubes de paz cercan el
cielo, amor, jamás acabarás de ser amor, 2002).
Likewise, interesting filmmakers from past generations such as Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
(La tarea, De noche vienes Esmeralda), Gabriel Retes (El bulto, Bienvenido-
Welcome), Jorge Fons (El callejón de los milagros, 1994), and the already mentioned
Ripstein (Principio y fin, Así es la vida), whose films known in Europe and acclaimed in
Spain, were able to continue their trajectory.
Mexican film also acquired new faces and emblematic female presences: Arcelia Ramírez
(La mujer de Benjamín, Cilantro y perejil), Salma Hayek (El callejón de los
milagros), Tiaré Scanda (El callejón de los milagros, Sin remitente), Susana Zabaleta
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4. (Sobrenatural, Sexo, pudor y lágrimas), Cecilia Suárez (Sexo, pudor y lágrimas,
Todo el poder) and Vanessa Bauche (Amores perros, Piedras verdes); and also male
presences: Daniel Giménez Cacho (Sólo con tu pareja, Profundo carmesí) Roberto Sosa
(Lolo, Ángel de fuego), Demián Bichir (Hasta morir, Sexo, pudor y lágrimas), Juan
Manuel Bernal (Hasta morir, La habitación azul), Bruno Bichir (Principio y fin, El
jardín del Edén), Luis Felipe Tovar (Bienvenido-Welcome, Todo el poder), Damián
Alcázar (La leyenda de una máscara, La ley de Herodes), Jesús Ochoa (Entre Pancho
Villa y una mujer desnuda, El segundo aire), Diego Luna (El cometa, Y tu mamá
también), Osvaldo Benavides (La primera noche, Seres humanos), Luis Fernando Peña
(De la calle, Amar te duele), and the internationally best paid Mexican actor Gael García
Bernal (Amores perros, Y tu mamá también, El crimen del padre Amaro).
Also, labor conditions at the time provoked migration of talented people. Directors Luis
Mandoki, Arau, Del Toro, Cuarón and González Iñarritú started a Hollywood career, as well
as actress Salma Hayek and some photographers like Emmanuel Lubezki, Guillermo
Navarro and Rodrigo Prieto.
And even though in this post industrial time you cannot deny an artistic and commercial
resurrection of Mexican film, its situation and perspectives are still unfavorable. With the
arrival of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) at the presidential elections in 2000, which
ended seventy years of party dictatorship imposed by the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI), this did not bring substantial changes in cultural policy, even though the
new government has backed the workings of IMCINE, it has not established mechanisms
and concrete laws to back the rebirth of the industry.
The new law Reglamento de la Ley de Cinematografía was approved in 2001, and it
recognizes the industry as an artistic vehicle with a social importance, it contemplates fiscal
incentives and a 10% of screen time for national film, but there are no clauses that
penalize violations to law, and the actual screen percentage is very low, furthermore, in
December 2002, it pushed a clause of retention of one peso for every ticket sold at the
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5. cinema box office, yet, there are no rulings to enforce its application, and there has been
no tributary system established to make it effective, the net result has only been that
exhibitors increased ticket prices. Besides, this measure is facing opposition at the
Comisión Federal de Mejora Regulatoria (COFEMER) at the Secretary of Economy, which
considers this anti-constitutional and the fact that National and American distributors and
exhibitors are promoting filings to avoid its enforcing. Besides, there’s also the explicit and
threatening opposition of the president of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)
Jack Valenti. See the article: Jack Valenti or All Of The Pesos From The Box Office Are
Mine. in El ojo que piensa, issue 1.
Nevertheless, it’s precisely the chains of distribution and exhibition the ones that make the
biggest earnings, since producers only obtain about 10% of the ticket price, and only when
the film has been seen for at least three million people, for this reason most producers do
not recuperate their investment, according to Luis Estrada director and producer of La ley
de Herodes (2000):
One of the greatest myths about the rebirth of Mexican cinema is that it is a
good business, because it still isn’t. There are many hidden vices that crawl in it for
many years. The fact that the TV stations are not involved in the promotion and
commercializations of films, the way the box office is divided, are some of them (…). In
spite of the fact that many films are successful, they do not recuperate their
investment, although that is not the case of Y tu mamá también, and Sexo, pudor y
lágrimas, but it is true of many others, because of the almost forty pesos that the
viewer pays at the box office, if you’re doing very well and you recuperate the cost of
investments in copies and publicity, you get about four pesos of earnings, but they
would be yours only once you’ve paid the cost of production, and that would hardly
make the investment put in the film to break even. [1]
Producer Matthías Ehrenberg, from Titán Producciones also thinks that TV companies
should back up cinema:
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6. “I think that in the face of the attack of such a big industry as is the
American, the countries that are able to articulate TV quotas will be able to
reactivate their film industry, benefiting also the those TV companies. In
Mexico this is a debate that is open and has to be retaken… there is
nothing been done for the industry, unless your film does very well and we
are able to get some significant sells this would allow us to move money
around. But there is no pre-sale, no investment, no money comings from
the TV channels, which make a lot of dough in their monopolistic exercise”.
[2]
And Epigmenio Ibarra, director of Argos Cine, thinks that the state’s active and efficient
participation is indispensable:
In Mexico doing films is not a good business... what we want is strategic vision of fiscal
aid, so that investments dare to risks their capital in Mexican films and see it as a true
business. The state has to understand that their participation in cinema is not just a
responsibility but also a cultural obligation. [3]
Mexican film’s current panorama makes it evident that one of the indispensable requisites
for Mexican film industry to be reborn is that the state backs it, with a decided political will,
and that considers it not just a cultural good, but an enterprise that can be competitive and
a good business in national and international film markets. In June 2003, the Secretaría de
Gobernación invited representatives of the three sectors of films media to three Mesas de
Trabajo para el Fortalecimiento de la Industria Cinematográfica Nacional, (Work Sessions
for the Strengthening of National Film Industry), with the objective of making a concrete
proposal. We will have to wait to see if it is listened to and carried out.
Juan Carlos Vargas is the researcher of the Centro de Investigación y Estudios
Cinematográficos of the Universidad de Guadalajara. He has written articles for
the film magazines Dicine (México), CinémAction (France and Secuencias (Spain).
He wrote an entry for the book Tierra en trance. El cine latinoamericano en 100
películas, and is one of the authors of the collective work Historia Documental del
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7. Cine Mexicano (1977-1994). He just published the book Los Mundos Virtuales. El
cine fantástico de los noventa.
[1] Calva Gómez, Araceli, “¿Quién pierde y quién gana en el cine?”, Newspaper
Público, weekly ¡Hey!, 26/05/2003, p. 4.
[2] Bernal, Mario, “Pide Matthías Ehrenberg apoyo de las televisoras para el
cine”, newspaper El Universal, Entertainment Section, 19/06/2002, p. 11.
[3] Calva Gómez, Ibídem, p. 5.
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