Viva El Cine Mexicano at Pacific Cinémathèque Feb 10th to 21st

I was recently walking by the corner of Broadway and Main and all of a sudden, I stopped on my tracks. I saw a poster, written in perfectly good Spanish, “Viva El Cine Mexicano” (Hooray the Mexican Cinema). I stopped in my tracks and wondered “what is this?”. It wasn’t until I read that it was presented at Pacific Cinémathèque, that I figured that this might be a joint production of VLAFF and the Mexican Consulate in Vancouver. I wasn’t wrong. I have always had really great relationships with the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (I covered the festival last year), and recently I’ve started to talk more to the Mexican Consulate.

I figured I’d highlight this very worthy event. Given that the Vancouver 2010 Olympics will be well underway during a few of the days of the duration of the Festival, I wonder if the attendance might skyrocket. If that’s the case, I would strongly encourage you to get your tickets for this festival soon.

Mexican cinema (particularly in recent years) has experienced a renaissance. This particular event commemorates 2 big milestones in Mexican history, the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence from the Spaniards and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. The Viva El Cine Mexicano festival will offer a broad variety of excellent movies:

The program showcases works spanning 75 years of illustrious Mexican cinema. Included are classics by Emilio Fernández, Fernando de Fuentes, Luis Buñuel, Paul Leduc, and Arturo Ripstein; two celebrated films dramatizing the Revolution, de Fuentes’s El Compadre Mendoza (1934) and Leduc’s Reed: Insurgent Mexico (1973); and key films by some of contemporary Mexican cinema’s most important and acclaimed directors, including Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Carlos Carrera, Dana Rotberg, Roberto Sneider, María Novaro, and Carlos Bolado.

Many of these artists are represented by their debut or breakthrough works. Five of the films screening here won the Ariel Award (Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscar) for Best First Feature; seven received the Golden Ariel for Best Film. Our exhibition opens with Jorge Fons’s multiple-prize-winning Midaq Alley (1995), which may be the most honoured Mexican film in history. We close with Carlos Reygadas’s extraordinary Silent Light (2008), one of the great films of current world cinema. (Silent Light also screens this January/February cycle in Pacific Cinémathèque’s “Best of the Decade” program, as do additional features by both Cuarón and del Toro — some measure perhaps of the ascendancy, in recent years, of Mexican filmmakers to a place of true international prominence).

All screenings at Pacific Cinémathèque (1131 Howe), $ 9.50 single bill, $ 11.50 double bill. The cost of tickets is really inexpensive, and for the quality of movies they’re showing, really worth it. I encourage all my readers to check at least one of the films of this fantastic festival “Viva El Cine Mexicano”. I will inquire with the VLAFF office to see if I can have some tickets to giveaway. If that’s the case, I’ll update the post and run a contest.

UPDATE – VLAFF and the Viva El Cine Mexicano Festival have given me TWO double passes to El Compadre Mendoza on Thursday, February 11 at 7pm. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday February 10th at 1pm. To enter the contest, simply drop a comment on this post. I’ll draw two winners, one per each double pass. Have fun!

Related posts:

1. Win tickets to Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes) VECM
2. Win tickets to “La Buena Vida” (closing film of Vancouver Latin American Film Festival)
3. Vancouver Latin American Film Festival
4. Projecting Change Film Festival – April 2-5, 2009
5. Viva Mexico!