Reel Indigeneity: Race and Film Beyond Mexico's Golden Age

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Indigeneity has long been a topic of reflection and cultural production in Mexico, particularly in relation to the question of national identity. When film arrived in 1896 (de los Reyes) it too became a medium through which this reflection persisted. Scholarly work on the representation of indigenous subjects on film in Mexico has tended to focus on theatrical films from the golden age (roughly from the 1930’s to the 1950’s). In particular, these discussions have emphasized the films by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández (Chavez, Hershfield, Tierney, Monsivais and Bonfil) and those that are seen as precursors to his work.
This panel is an effort to expand the conversation on indigeneity and film in Mexico beyond the golden age and beyond theatrical film. In this endeavor, the notion of the ethnographic is a salient one. The papers of this panel address the ways in which the ethnographic is evoked and conveyed through film, while exploring the implications of the use of this mode in the Mexican context. Julian Etienne looks at the practices and visual documents created by the Mexican National Indigenist Institute and specifically, its Audiovisual Ethnographic Archive. Mónica García Blizzard’s paper examines early ethnographic film, and the ways in which the ethnographic mode lives on in theatrical films of the 20th century. Patricia Arroyo Calderón will examine titles from the 1950’s and 1960’s in order to discuss how the introduction of new tropes in Mexican films allows for a renewal of the ethnographic mode, and re-presentation of indigeneity as folklore.
In having Dr. Laura Podalsky as its respondent, the panel not only seeks to expand a conversation on Mexican film, but also invites the possibility of engaging in a broader conversation on race, ethnicity, postcoloniality, and media across Latin American film traditions.

Sub Track

• Film Studies

Chair

• Mónica García Blizzard, Ohio State University

Individual Presentations

• The Ethnographic as Motif in Mexican Cinema - Mónica García Blizzard, Ohio State University

• Folklore and ethnography go to the movies: cultural diversity, economic development, and the paradoxes of Mexican cine indigenista (1955-1965) - Patricia Arroyo Calderón, University of California/Los Angeles

• Race beyond the marquee. The films of Mexico's Archivo Etnográfico Audiovisual - Julian Etienne

Discussant

• Laura A Podalsky, Ohio State University