Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry

Misha MacLaird is an independent writer and film curator specializing in Latin American cinema and audiovisual policy. She received a PhD from Tulane University, USA and has taught courses on Latin American cinema at the University of California, Davis. A native of Oakland, California, she currently resides in Mexico City.

"This is a major contribution to Mexican film studies. Going well beyond the study of films by internationally recognized auteurs, Misha MacLaird provides us with an indispensable road map to navigate through the discourses of crisis and renaissance that hover over contemporary Mexican cinema. She applies wit and intelligence as well as over 15 years of fieldwork to bear on her study of this critical moment in Mexico's political and cinematic culture." - Sergio de la Mora, University of California, Davis, USA, author of Cinemachismo "Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry draws on Misha MacLaird's extensive knowledge and first-hand research to make a compelling argument for thinking about recent Mexican cinema and its aesthetic and narrative elements including successes like Amores perros, Y tu mama tambien, and El crimen del Padre Amaro as the product of profound political and economic changes. Through analysis of formal elements, industry practices, and legislation, MacLaird skillfully examines the ways in which cultural policy, censorship and the inequities of trade liberalization in Mexico and the rest of the Americas have shaped Mexico's film industry and film texts at the turn of the twenty first century. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Mexican cinema." - Dolores Tierney, University of Sussex, UK, author of Emilio Fernandez: Pictures in the Margins "Misha Maclaird discusses Mexican national cinema in terms of cultural policy, wider public policy, foreign policy, and meaning. Elegant and purposeful, this is an important book, not only for the study of Latin American and especially Mexican film but for the entire discipline of cinema studies." - Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside, USA

• Una época fatal: An Era of Fatality, Tragic Endings, and New Beginnings PART I: THE POLITICS OF TRANSITION 1. Industry and Policy: Privatizing a National Cinema 2. Audiences and Markets: On Spectatorship and Citizenship 3. Censorship and Sensationalism: Neotremendismo autoritario PART II: THE AESTHETICS OF TRANSITION 4. Hyperrealism and Violence: Fatal Aesthetics 5. Independence and Innovation: Indie Film and the Youth Market 6. Coproduction and Transnationalism: National Culture in a Global Marketplace 7. Between Tragedy and Farce: Mexico and Its Cinema Relive History