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For all intents and purposes, Fernando de Fuentes is Mexican cinema. A pioneering studio filmmaker whose work includes one of the earliest examples of the ranchera comedy, as well as the seminal gothic horror film The Phantom of the Monastery, de Fuentes is a fountainhead of Mexican cinema. Not only did he inaugurate numerous popular genres at the domestic box office, but earned Mexico its first major international award at the Venice Film Festival in 1938, in addition to ushering in a national visual language that proliferated during the peak of Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema.
Born in Veracruz in 1894, de Fuentes studied Philosophy at Tulane University and spent some time working at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. before returning to post-Revolution Mexico. In 1933, a mere decade after the end of the Mexican Revolution, he directed EL PRISIONERO 13, a satire so caustic its ending had to be re-edited after military authorities objected to its depiction of government corruption in the throes of Mexico’s long and bloody Revolutionary War. What followed were two more films, GODFATHER MENDOZA (1934) and LET’S GO WITH PANCHO VILLA! (1936), of equal ire and bite. His Revolution Trilogy, though controversial upon release, is now acknowledged as a cornerstone of classic Mexican cinema.
As Mexicans everywhere remember their nation’s Revolution this September 20, we’re proud to present de Fuentes’ landmark trilogy in New York City for the first time in 15 years.