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The last time I wrote about Mexican cinema for FILM COMMENT was in 1985. A lot has happened in the intervening years. To begin with, the industry as such almost ceased to exist. The production companies that dominated the box office since the Thirties went out of business during the past decade, leaving it in fewer but more artistically ambitious hands.
The numbers changed as well. In the old days, an average of 100 films were produced each year. After the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo, which began with the economic crisis of 1994, film production dropped to an all-time low. Only eleven features were produced in 1998, the smallest number since the early Thirties. But audiences still flocked to a few of these homegrown films. Newcomer Antonio Serrano's comedy Sex, Shame and Tears (Sexo, pudor y lagrimas, 98) out-- blockbustered The Phantom Menace. That feat offered ample evidence that there was a huge middle-class public willing to pay to see Mexican films at the multiplex. In 2000, earnings by local releases made up 17 percent of the box-office gross, taking an unprecedented bite out of Hollywood's hegemony. Such developements have jump-started the industry, and new production companies like Altavista, Argos, and Titan have begun to emerge in the last couple of years. Last year there were 28 features produced in Mexico, and this year the figure will probably reach the mid-30s.
Fifteen of these features were backed by the Imcine (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematograffa), the state body that continues to be the main source for film financing. An average Mexican production has a budget of roughly $1 million and through a fund program called Foprocine, the state covers about 60 percent of each film's cost. Directors needing bigger budgets, like Alfonso Cuaro6n and Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Mimic), have found themselves drifting north of the border. Both Cuaro6n and del Toro returned to projects in their native tongue, to be released this summer: And Your Mother Too (Y tu mama tambien) and the Spanish coproduction The Devil's Backbone (El espinazo del diablo), respectively. Del Toro is already back in Hollywood mode shooting Blade 2: Bloodlust in Prague, a sequel befitting his fondness for the horror genre.
A significant percentage of the new films...