Viernes 26 de Julio de 2013

Cineteca Nacional, México. Por Paul Julian Smith

A sultry spring afternoon in Mexico City, and the Cineteca Nacional (film archive and theater) is already teeming. Young people loll on the new lawns or sample excellent ice cream under the spectacular white-latticed dome that filters the harsh light. And screenings at the ten theaters have yet to begin. Today is an important day. Workers clip vegetation and polish pathways in anticipation of a visit by a delegation from Conaculta, the national council for the arts that is the supervisor of the Cineteca. The civil servants have come to see the almost completed extension of the complex, now claimed to be the biggest cinematheque in the world. It's the brain child of Paula Astorga, the council's energetic director general.

Things were not always so sunny at the Cineteca. Founded in 1974 as the national film repository, it was gifted first to the brother of one president and then to the sister of another. Its darkest day, evidently brought about by criminal incompetence, came in 1982 when a fire consumed irreplaceable holdings on celluloid and paper alike. With the end of the 71-year regime of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in 2000, new possibilities
emerged. One director previous to Astorga was Leonardo García Tsao, a distinguished critic, and Astorga herself has survived a change of government, with the PRI now returned to power and allowing her to remain in place. Given the history of clientelism in Mexican arts administration, this is something of a miracle.

It seems plausible that former President Felipe Calderón's rash of funding for large cultural projects at the end of his period in office (a lavish new National Library has also just been completed) resulted from a desire to leave a legacy more lasting than a failed and deadly war on drugs. In any case, the expansion of the Cineteca with two new vaults for film storage, a restoration lab, and four additional screens marks a welcome contrast with the retrenchment of arts institutions in Europe and elsewhere. Certainly the facilities now surpass New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center and London's British Film Institute South Bank.

Astorga explained the institutional context to me in an interview. Four state bodies support Mexican film: Churubusco Studios (also upgraded) produces; the CCC (public film school) trains; IMCINE (the national film institute) regulates; and the Cineteca conserves and exhibits. More than an extension, the current project is a refounding of an institution that Astorga conceives of as a center for thought. Along these lines, in-house researchers at the
Cineteca's library-the indispensible Centro de Documentación, headed by Raúl Miranda-have begun a new journal, Icónica. (Full disclosure: I gave a lecture in the library and contributed to the journal's first issue.) Abel Muñoz, the editor of Ico´nica, has also coedited a recent book of reflections on contemporary Mexican cinema, published by the Cineteca and written entirely by young critics and academics.

This emphasis on youth in scholarly activities is echoed in the exhibition policy. Although the Cineteca continues to schedule seasons of historic Mexican cinema, it now also presents itself as the sponsor of a new generation of local directors such as Nicola´ s Pereda, whom Astorga specifically mentions. As the former organizer of Mexico City's now-defunct international film festival, FICCO, Astorga is well placed to engage with contemporary filmmakers whose work did not always appeal to previous occupants of her position, including García Tsao, who was known for some scathing reviews of Mexican films in Variety.

Although much programming remains scholarly under Astorga, focusing on historic and present-day art film, the slates also boast a populist strand that may prove controversial to old-school cinephiles. The open-air screenings, staged in a grassy space that was formerly an arid parking lot, were inaugurated with a classic Mexican film of the Golden Age and a new print of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Discussing her strategy for audience creation, Astorga points out that because Mexico is a young nation demographically-considerably younger than Europe or the United States-she regards youth as her key target. Moreover, with some 26 million people, Mexico City is the biggest city in the world, but it lacks a circuit of alternative distribution; as in television broadcasting, which is dominated by Televisa and Azteca, movie exhibition in Mexico is a duopoly, with the chains Cinemex and Cin´epolis regularly accused by locals of kowtowing to Hollywood producers.

So Astorga places a high priority on exhibition space for young Mexican film, even though Cin´epolis has recently opened its own Art House strand for independent film. And although the Cineteca is situated in the comfortable southern suburb of Coyoaca´n, best known to tourists as the site of Frida Kahlo's house, it seeks to draw audiences from all over, including the staff of the hospital that stands next door. Increasing access is a main goal of the refounded Cineteca, and ideally this will not entail a reduction in quality. One of the most intriguing access initiatives is a ''memory archive'' housing digitized home movies submitted by private citizens. Venturing outside the soft south, moreover, Cineteca has just opened a branch in the gritty city center: The large Cine Teresa, a notorious porn theater, has been refurbished and is now devoted to Mexican film.

Having completed my research at the library and interview with the director general, I take in a movie on one of the new screens. Everardo Gonza´ lez's beautiful and disturbing documentary Cuates de Australia, a prizewinner at the Los Angeles Film Festival, is typical of the films by young directors now finding homes at the Cineteca that would be hard get on the commercial circuit in their home countries. Although the film's English-language title is the depressingly literal Drought, the original title (meaning ''Australian buddies'') comes from the picturesque and enigmatic toponym of the movie's location, an arid and impoverished settlement in Mexico's distant northeast, a world away from the booming capital. The inhabitants, who subsist on livestock, must move to a marginally more pleasant location for part of every year, when the pathetic water hole on which humans and animals alike depend distressingly dries up. Documentary cinema has made a huge contribution to the revival of young Mexican cinema in the past decade; another example is Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith's mesmerizing Presunto culpable (Presumed Guilty), which was briefly banned by the courts, but became one of the highest-grossing local films of recent times.

By contrast, Gonza´ lez's contemplative style and leisurely pace are less audience-friendly. Drought begins with a scene of equine sex graphic enough to satisfy erstwhile patrons of the Cine Teresa before cutting to a hospital room where a young couple view with touching delight the ultrasound image of their unborn child. And it ends with the closure of this natural cycle: The child is safely born, albeit in an undernourished condition, and the rains finally fall, causing the bleak desert to start into verdant life. While there is always a risk of aestheticizing deprivation in such films, the director lived in the tiny community for some three years and his handsome cinematography (which often appears to be monochrome, given the location's lack of color) creates haunting effects that serve to reinforce, rather than distract from, the evidence of grinding poverty to which Drought attests.With five features to his credit, Gonza´ lez has established himself as an important voice, and despite the grim theme of Drought-at one point we watch as a young foal collapses and dies-the film's satisfying aesthetic and narrative structure renders it relatively accessible to the new noncinephile audience to which the Cineteca is successfully reaching out. Here's hoping the Cineteca will screen and promote such films for a long time to come, and that its successful refounding will inspire emulation by other cinematheques as well.

Artículo publicado en la revista estadounidense Film Quarterly. Sólo disponible en inglés.

Autor: Paul Julian Smith, de la Universidad de la Ciudad de Nueva York (CUNY), especialista en cine mexicano y español, y autor de un estudio acerca de Amores perros, el cual puede consultarse en nuestro Centro de Documentación.