Writer’s Choice

Mexican Film Festival takes hard look at country’s issues

This is not the rabbit-cooking stalker from “Fatal Attraction.” This Glen Close is an assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese.

Close is also a key organizer of the 2006 Mexican Film Festival. The festival, a co-production of the Mexican Students Association (MEXSA) and Cinematheque, UW–Madison’s student film society, runs through Sunday, March 5. Movies screened until March 2 fall under the purview of MEXSA; those shown March 3-5 are from Cinematheque.

The films, all made within the last seven years, portray a Mexico very different from the one seen by many northerners at spring break.

“The current generation of Mexican filmmakers takes a very critical look at social institutions and at family and gender roles,” Close says. “These films dispel many of the myths perpetuated by Mexican cinema in past decades, and introduce distinctive new cinematic languages in response to current international styles.”

Close says he and the student film festival programmers have been careful to include commercially successful films such as Hugo Rodriguez’s “Nicotina” (2003) and Fernando Eimbcke’s “Temporada de Patos/Duck Season” (2004), as well as more challenging fare by less well-known directors like Ignacio Ortiz (“Cuentos de hadas para dormir crocodrilos/Bedtime Fairy Tales for Crocodiles,” 2002) and Benjamin Cann (“Crónica de un desayuno/A Breakfast Chronicle,” 1999).

“Unlike previous Mexican films widely known in the United States, such as the fanciful ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ from 1993, these current pictures prefer to take sober looks at troublesome issues of displacement, class stratification, social violence, organized crime and political corruption in contemporary Mexican life. These also will be reflections on new personal liberties associated with the social upheavals in the era of the North American Fair Trade Agreement,” Close says, citing Julián Hernández’s “Mil nubes de paz/A Thousand Clouds of Peace” (2004) and María Novaro’s “Sin dejar huella/Without a Trace” (2000).

Given all the food for thought that these films occasion, related lectures also are included in the festival, including:

• “Legends of the Fall: Phallocentrism and Democracy in Mexico,” Rolando Romero, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, 3:30 p.m., Friday, March 3, 4070 Vilas Hall.
• “Women’s Cinema and Contemporary Allegories of Violence in Mexico,” Joanne Hershfield, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 4 p.m., Saturday, March 4, 4070 Vilas Hall.

All screenings and lectures are free and open to the public. One caveat, Close says, is that some of the films are not subtitled, so check posters carefully if this is an issue.

For more information and complete schedules, visit the MEXSA Web site or Cinematheque’s Web site.