We are celebrating our first 10 finished restorations!
We are thrilled to share a momentous achievement in our journey of preserving and celebrating popular Mexican cinema. With immense pride, we commemorate the restoration of the first 10 films from our beloved archive. This incredible milestone would not have been possible without the unwavering support of all of you.
SANTA First sound Mexican film
GET INVOLVED!!!! 1933 Directed by Antonio Moreno
Join efforts with some of the most prestigious film institutions in the world, such as The Academy Film Archive and The National Film Preservation Foundation, to save and restore our local film heritage.
Did you know that the first sound film in Mexico, Santa (1931), was financed by a group of El Paso visionaries who created Azteca Films? They joined forces with Hollywood talents like the Spanish American silent film star Antonio Moreno and the Rodríguez Brothers. They also hired one of the most well-known Latina movie stars, Lupita Tovar, and created a film that changed the course of Mexican cinema. Upon its release, Santa thrilled Mexican audiences and Latinos across the United States who had migrated and felt displaced from their homeland. Thanks to Santa, Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S. found comfort and nostalgia and saw their struggles depicted in movie theaters across the country. Cross-border collaborations such as the films produced by Azteca Films remind us of the long history of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico in matters of commerce and art. It is in this cross-border tradition that we approach the restoration and preservation of Santa and so many other essential films deserving preservation.
Please join us in this critical endeavor and experience what it feels like to see your name on the credits of a historical film!
This restoration is being supported by the National Film Preservetion Fund and The Academy Film Archive. We are using the original vitaphone discs and several different elements, from a 16mm battered print to a couple of newly discovered nitrate reels, to reconstruct this historic film.
LA LLORONA aka WEEPING LADY
1933/ 69m Directed by Ramón Peón
Lupe (María Elena Marqués) is arrested for stealing in the market; the police send her to a renowned forensic doctor who is single (Antonio Badú), to be a subject for his research into genetic differences in the criminal underworld. The doctor does not know that Lupe is not really a thief, but is merely posing as one in an attempt to infiltrate a criminal cell that is threatening her father. Despite her personal background, Lupe, colluding with the doctor’s sister, gains a foothold in the house, where she is employed as a maid. Social conventions marginalize her, but soon her secret will be revealed. Carita de cielo (Angel face) is a singular comedy of errors, the main purpose of which is to exploit the leading actress’ previous success in Doña Bárbara (Fernando de Fuentes, 1943). Even if the comedy filmed by José Díaz Morales is occasionally absurd, the movie’s cast elevates it to a classic of its time. Fernando Soto Mantequilla, who appears at certain moments in a role reminiscent of the great Cantinflas, confirms scene after scene his status as one of the great supporting actors of Mexican cinema. In Carita de cielo, the comedy of manners transcends all its limitations as soon as Ninón Sevilla appears on-screen. The producer, Pedro Calderón, added her to a plot that was already farfetched, attracted by the beauty of this showgirl who had just arrived from Cuba. The producer decided to include her in two musical numbers that have no connection to the plot. His gamble paid off because Ninón Sevilla’s charisma and magnetism keep the eyes of the spectator focused on her. This was not just the beginning of a long film career for the Cuban actress and dancer; it was also the first appearance of the Caribbean music legend Benny Moré on the big screen.
EL FANTASMA DEL CONVENTO aka The Phantom of the Monastery
1934 Directed by Fernando de Fuentes
Made in the wake of La llorona’s success and directed with flair by Fernando de Fuentes (regarded as one of the masters of early Mexican cinema), The Phantom of the Monastery(El fantasma del convento) tells the macabre tale of a troupe of hikers who become lost in a forest and take refuge in a haunted monastery. There, they encounter shape-shifting shadows, ominous sealed doorways, and a cellar crowded with coffins...
An expressionistic Gothic triumph which has tragically languished in obscurity outside of Mexico, The Phantom of the Monastery has now been lovingly restored thanks to the funding provided by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and The George Lucas Family Foundation.
While the first Mexican horror film, La Llorona (1933), a jumbled telling of the Mexican legend of “The Crying Woman” cross pollinated with “The Cat and the Canary,” precedes it by a year, El fantasma del convento is the first Mexican horror film of true import. On a walking tour, a married couple and their best friend are overtaken by nightfall and seek shelter at an ancient monastery. They are given refuge by the brothers. The abbot tells them that the cloister is haunted by the spirit of a monk who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his best friend’s wife, a legend that parallels the infidelity in the travelers’ own personal dynamic. Through the night the supernatural gains sway until dawn discloses new revelations.
Fernando de Fuentes, considered the finest director of early Mexican cinema, is best regarded for his three films of the Mexican revolution, El prisionero trece (1933), El compadre Mendoza (1934) and Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1936). El fantasma del convento is a comparative chamber work, steeped in mysticism and Catholic guilt. Its intimate quality shares a sensibility with Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) and Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), two other independent films that likewise linger along the grey margin of life. Like those films it probes the ephemeral moment when the veil between life and death is rent, when dreams and death prowl the land of the living. Its connectivity to this aesthetic extends to the derelict filming location, Colegio de San Francisco Javier, northeast of Mexico City, a dead space like the Courtempierre flour mill in Vampyr and the Saltair Pavilion in Carnival of Souls. Similarly, it shares a reliance on music that demonstrates the power of the diabolical, here a brief but powerful score by Max Urban.—Scott MacQueen
CARITA DE CIELO aka Angel Face
1948 Directed by José Díaz Morales
Lupe (María Elena Marqués) is arrested for stealing in the market; the police send her to a renowned forensic doctor who is single (Antonio Badú), to be a subject for his research into genetic differences in the criminal underworld. The doctor does not know that Lupe is not really a thief, but is merely posing as one in an attempt to infiltrate a criminal cell that is threatening her father. Despite her personal background, Lupe, colluding with the doctor’s sister, gains a foothold in the house, where she is employed as a maid. Social conventions marginalize her, but soon her secret will be revealed. Carita de cielo (Angel face) is a singular comedy of errors, the main purpose of which is to exploit the leading actress’ previous success in Doña Bárbara (Fernando de Fuentes, 1943). Even if the comedy filmed by José Díaz Morales is occasionally absurd, the movie’s cast elevates it to a classic of its time. Fernando Soto Mantequilla, who appears at certain moments in a role reminiscent of the great Cantinflas, confirms scene after scene his status as one of the great supporting actors of Mexican cinema. In Carita de cielo, the comedy of manners transcends all its limitations as soon as Ninón Sevilla appears on-screen. The producer, Pedro Calderón, added her to a plot that was already farfetched, attracted by the beauty of this showgirl who had just arrived from Cuba. The producer decided to include her in two musical numbers that have no connection to the plot. His gamble paid off because Ninón Sevilla’s charisma and magnetism keep the eyes of the spectator focused on her. This was not just the beginning of a long film career for the Cuban actress and dancer; it was also the first appearance of the Caribbean music legend Benny Moré on the big screen.
Viviana García Besné
AVENTURERA
1950 Directed by Alberto Gout
Widely considered the greatest film in Mexico’s singular rumbera genre, Aventurera is a pitch-black film noir punctuated by Afro-Caribbean musical numbers. Cuban-born dancer-singer Ninón Sevilla stars as a proper young lady who, within ten minutes, witnesses a parent’s suicide, is sold into prostitution, and transformed into a nightclub sensation. Through these hairpin turns; the rules of female portrayal are rewritten. Elegantly rendered in inky black-and-white by legendary Golden Age of Mexican Cinema cinematographer Alex Phillips, Aventurera is a razor-sharp indictment of bourgeois society.
VICTIMAS DEL PECADO
1951 Directed by Emilio Fernández
Hailed by critics as one of the best Mexican films ever made, Victimas del Pecado explores the mysterious, exotic underworld of postwar Mexico City. The red-light melodrama Víctimas del Pecado (1951, above) by the great Emilio Fernández. A newborn baby dumped into a garbage can; a preening, sadistic pimp who can smoke, chew gum, and dance frantically at the same time; a nightclub dancer who tries to live righteously but winds up in prison for her pains; and several splashy music numbers–who could resist this? Not the Bologna audience, who burst into applause when, after slapping a child silly, said pimp got a quick and violent comeuppance. Of course the gorgeous cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa contributed a lot: One shot of a train blasting black smoke into the night would be enough to exalt a far less delirious movie.
LLÉVAME EN TUS BRAZOS
1954 Directed by Julio Bracho
NEW DISCOVERY! RESTORATION PREMIERE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023 To pay off her father's debts, Rita leaves her humble fishing village in Yucatan and gets exploited by several men, including a married politician who turns her into a big dancing star.
MAS FUERTE QUE EL AMOR remasterización
1955 Directed by Tulio de Michelis
Young industrialist with a working-class background forces his way into the old-money society that’s trying to shut him out.
SOMBRA VERDE aka UNTOUCHED
1954 Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
The pearly bones of Shakespeare’s The Tempest are just visible in this exotic romance set in the jungle around Veracruz, where a research scientist (Ricardo Montalbán, taking some time out from MGM to return to his native country) has gone in search of barbasco roots, used in the production of synthetic hormones. Lost deep in the interior, he encounters a mysterious, machete-wielding stranger and his beautiful daughter—played by Mexico’s national scream queen, Ariadna Welter (El vampiro).
LAS MUJERES PANTERA aka PANTHER WOMEN
1967 Directed by René Cardona
To resurrect the leader of their cult, the Panther women practice blood sacrifices and fight up and down the ring. They soon find someone who thwarts their schemes through brawls and pursuits. As eccentric as the wrestling that he puts up on screen, with characters and stories that escape all definition, René Cardona’s film is an amusing mix of the best Mexican B-movies of the Sixties.
MUJER MURCIELAGO aka BATWOMAN
1968 Directed by René Cardona
Wrestlers are found dead at the coast of scenic Acapulco. Gloria, to all evil-doers of the world known only as Batwoman, starts to investigate... Creature from the Black Lagoon meets the world of lucha libre! Never looked serious ass-kicking foxier!
SANTO VS JINETES DEL TERROR aka SANTO VS RIDDERS OF TERROR
1970 Directed by René Cardona
We also reconstructed the never seen before sexy version Lepers and Sex.
