MEXICO: THE CELLULOID REVOLUTION

This review essay evaluates two books published in 2010, the centennial year of the Mexican revolution: La luz y la guerra: el cine de la Revolucion mexicana (ed. Fernando Fabio Sanchez and Gerardo Garcia Munoz) and Constructing the Image of the Revolution: Cinema and the Archive (Zuzana Pick). An initial reflection on the Yo Mexico multimedia light-and-sound show, held in Mexico City's zocalo in November 2010, serves as a springboard for an analysis of these two books' historical, critical and theoretical accounts of the presence of the Mexican revolution in cinema. Among the key themes dealt with are the ideological meanings pinned to the revolution in filmic discourse; the relations between cinema, state and market interests; the intertextuality, commodification, reflexivity and aesthetics of spectacle that define and determine many of these narratives; the notion of filmic images as 'visual archives' of the revolution; and the ways in which cinematic images address and are received by audiences.