User:Lopez

From MediaStudies

I am a dual Art History and Media Studies (Critical Studies) track at Scripps College. This of course means that my final project will address intersecting problems in both fields of study (eek!super-thesis). My interest in Media Studies and Art History include film, photography and media literacy. Some of my favorite movies are (in no particular order): Taxi Driver, Roman Holiday. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Blow-up, A Clockwork Orange, Rope, Dr. Strangelove, The Battle of Algiers, Annie Hall, Bad Education, It Happened One Night, Before Night Falls, Volver, The Lives of Others, Devil Wears Prada*, Marie Antoinette, All About My Mother, Talk to Her. Man I love films. My favorite director is Pedro Almodovar.

As far as my research, I am very interested in the concept of Third Cinema and what has become of it today. I am most interested in looking at this activist film in Mexico, as well as other forms of visual culture like murals, paintings, and phtography. Here I am most interested in the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo. With the emergence of new mexican cinema, what is its relation to its rich cultural history of mexican visual culture?

My Proposal:

For my final project, I propose a dual-disciplinary (Art History & Media Studies) paper that will examine the populist impulse of Mexican visual culture in the first half of the 29th century. My goals will be to situate ‘populist’ art in a cultural analysis of the search for national identity that begins with the Mexican Revolution and continues through the 1950s, the general time frame which I will be assessing.

This project is of importance because I note the omission of Third Cinema theory from present film theory. I think it would be interesting to situate this movement in Mexico, as the scholarship of Third Cinema in Latin America that has been done has focused on Brazil and Argentina. I think it’s important to look at what I view as a unique circumstance in Mexico given the legacy of art with shared roots in Marxist political struggle. In the 1920s, Mexico’s art movements were on the world stage. What does this mean for a film movement to arise within this context?

My format will be that of a chronological historical inquiry, but I am looking for intersections and patterns of representation of national identity in the various artists which I assess.

My tentative outline is as follows:

I. Introduction The problem of national identity during the revolution The key function of the visual arts in creating this identity

II. The Legacy Revival of muralist art by the government Push for education though public art Three Greats: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and Jose Clemente Orozco Looking to indigenous past and socialist future

III. The Print Ultimate move toward more accessible, mass producible media Photographs of Manuel Alvarez Bravo Lithograph prints of Jose Clemente Orozco

IV. Mass Production of Art Return to the simple woodcut as a means of mass communication of socialist ideas Taller de Grafícas Populares (TGP) or People’s Print Workshop established by Leopoldo Mendez in Mexico City Take their cue from muralist, but also react to their didactic form

IV. Cinema Golden age of Mexican popular cinema, a climate formed by the US film industry’s failure to capture these markets Need arising for a different kind of cinema, dubbed a ‘Third Cinema’ How does national identity transform in face of neo-colonialism and imperialism? Analysis of Mexican-naturalized Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados

V. Conclusion Look at after-effects of this legacy in 21st century Media phenomenon: Nuevo Cine Mexicano & events described in documentary Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad

Resources:

Primary

Collection of recent acquisitions of prints from the Taller de Grafica Popular at LACMA Comprehensive collection of Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s photographs at the Getty Center Los Olvidados. Dir. Luis Bunuel. 1950.

Secondary

Third Cinema Theory: Tercer Cine Manifesto: Towards a Third Cinema. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. "An Aesthetics of Hunger" essay by Glauber Rocha “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Cinema”

Historical Essays in Theorizing National Cinema Essays in Rethinking Third Cinema Essays in Questions of Third Cinema

Note: Clearly this preliminary research has thus far been a little heavy on the Third Cinema aspect, but I just recently viewed the works of the TGP at LACMA and there is not a lot of scholarship on this work. My knowledge of muralist depends on Latin American art courses I took.