Mexican cinema is booming today, a decade after the internationalsuccesses of Amores perros and Y tu mamá también. Mexicanfilms now display a wider range than any comparable country, fromart films to popular genre movies, and boasting internationallyrenowned directors like Alfonso Cuarón, AlejandroGonzález Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. At thesame time, television has broadened its output, moving beyondtelenovelas to produce higher-value series and mini-series. MexicanTV now stakes a claim to being the most dynamic and pervasivenational narrative.
This new book by Paul Julian Smith is the first to examine theflourishing of audiovisual fiction in Mexico since 2000,considering cinema and TV together. It covers much materialpreviously unexplored and engages with emerging themes, includingviolence, youth culture, and film festivals. The book includesreviews of ten films released between 2001 and 2012 by directorswho are both established (Maryse Sistach, Carlos Reygadas) and new(Jorge Michel Grau, Michael Rowe, Paula Markovitch). There is alsoan appendix that includes interviews carried out by the author in2012 with five audiovisual professionals: a feature director, afestival director, an exhibitor, a producer, and a TVscreenwriter.
Mexican Screen Fiction will be an invaluable resource forstudents and scholars and essential reading for anyone interestedin one of the most vibrant audiovisual industries in the worldtoday.
Paul Julian Smith
Cultural Studies Cultural Studies Special Topics Film Studies Filmforschung Kulturwissenschaften Lateinamerikaforschung Latino American Studies Mexiko /Kultur, Künste Spezialthemen Kulturwissenschaften
''Combining insightful readings of key films with social scienceapproaches to issues of production, distribution, exhibition andaudience response, Paul Julian Smith's Mexican Screen Fictionventures beyond the boundaries of traditional film studies to offera probing and wide ranging study of Mexico's dynamicaudiovisual sector.''
Kathleen Vernon, Stony Brook University
''With his latest book, Paul Julian Smith not only offersvaluable insights into contemporary Mexican screen fiction,bringing together both film and TV, which are located in theirindustrial, critical, cultural and historical contexts. Researchedand written with evident pleasure, he provides us with aninnovative paradigm for thinking about screen media in thetwenty-first century.''
Andrea Noble, Durham University
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