Making Cinelandia

American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age

By: Laura Isabel Serna

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Paperback | 28 March 2014

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In the 1920s, as American films came to dominate Mexico's cinemas, many of its cultural and political elites feared that this "Yanqui invasion" would turn Mexico into a cultural vassal of the United States. In Making Cinelandia, Laura Isabel Serna contends that Hollywood films were not simply tools of cultural imperialism. Instead, they offered Mexicans on both sides of the border an imaginative and crucial means of participating in global modernity, even as these films and their producers and distributors frequently displayed anti-Mexican bias. Before the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Mexican audiences used their encounters with American films to construct a national film culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, Serna explores the popular experience of cinemagoing from the perspective of exhibitors, cinema workers, journalists, censors, and fans, showing how Mexican audiences actively engaged with American films to identify more deeply with Mexico.

Industry Reviews

"Making Cinelandia is one of the best new books I have read in a very long time - a groundbreaking study of Mexican film culture that will transform our understanding of exhibition practices, censorship, fan cultures, and filmgoing habits during a period traditionally excluded from histories of Mexican cinema. Laura Isabel Serna adds considerably to knowledge of silent-era Hollywood's global reach, transnational stardom, and struggles over the representation of race and ethnicity on movie screens." - Shelley Stamp, author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon "Laura Isabel Serna presents an original and compelling analysis of Mexican film history and the international reception of Hollywood films, making a substantial contribution to our understanding of both. Making Cinelandia shifts attention within the historiography of Mexican cinema from production to reception, from national boundaries to the idea of 'Greater Mexico,' and from national cinema to foreign films. It also provides an exemplary case study of how nation-building occurred in dialogue with U.S. culture." - Chon A. Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema

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