Constructing the image of the Mexican Revolution : cinema and the archive / Zuzana M. Pick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pick, Zuzana M.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War films.

History.

Mexico--History--Revolution, 1910-1920--Motion pictures and the revolution.

Mexico.

War films--Mexico--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

x, 253 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2010.

Summary:

With a Cast Ranging from pancho Villa to Dolores del Ro̕ and Tina Modotti, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution demonstrates the crucial role played by Mexican and foreign visual artists in revolutionizing Mexico's twentieth-century national iconography. Investigating the convergence of cinema, photography, painting, and other graphic arts in this process, Zuzana Pick illuminates how the Mexian Revolution's timeline (1910-1917) corresponds with the emergence of media culture and modernity.

Drawing on twele foundational films from Que Viva Mexico! (1931-1932) to And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003), Pick Proposes that cinematic images reflect the image repertoire produced during the revolution, often playing on existing nationalist themes or on folkloric motifs designed for export. Ultimately illustrating the ways in which modernism reinvented existing signifiers of national identity, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution unites historicity, aesthetics, and narrative to enrich our understanding of Mexicanidad.

Contents:

Introduction : visualizing and romancing the revolution

The revolution as media event : documentary image and the archive

Historicity and the archive : reconstruction and appropriation

Pancho Villa on two sides of the border

Avant-garde gestures and nationalist images of Mexico in Eisenstein's unfinished project

Reconfiguring the revolution : celebrity and melodrama

The aesthetics of spectacle

Competing narratives and converging visions

Conclusion : thoughts on working with the archive.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780292721081

0292721080

OCLC:

318870039