Viva la Revolución: Celebrating the Hundredth Anniversary of Mexico’s Revolution 

August 14, 2010 - August 27, 2010

El Compadre Mendoza, August 14

Mexico works in century cycles. First there was the call for independence from colonial Spain, declared by Father Hidalgo in 1810. One hundred years later, Francisco Madero would prompt an uprising against the autocratic Porfirio Diaz. This tumult encompassed seven years of strife, producing famed revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, and between them Presidente Carranza and his Constitutional Army. This historical period, rife with heroics, betrayal, and sacrifice, inspired numerous Mexican films, but none better than Fernando de Fuentes’s Revolution Trilogy masterfully made in the 1930s, a decade still reeling from the rebellion. De Fuentes’s great triptych relies on not-so-simple citizens drawn to revolution as an act of bravery or commitment or, in some cases, treachery. But revolution is rendered, above all, as the triumph of clear-eyed men, not historical abstraction. A rare screening of José Bolaños’s La soldadera (1966) illustrates the oft-neglected presence of women on the front lines of revolution. Here, the legendary Sylvia Pinal (as Lázara) takes up arms when her husband has fallen. PFA’s own print of Paul Leduc’s Reed: Insurgent Mexico (1971) traces the political conversion of John Reed, an American journalist, as he traverses northern Mexico with Pancho Villa’s army. Five films, one revolution. Viva México.

Steve Seid
Video Curator

Saturday, August 14, 2010
6:30 p.m. Prisoner Number 13
Fernando de Fuentes (Mexico, 1933). The first in de Fuentes's famed trilogy on the Mexican Revolution is a devastating portrait of mendacity among the military pointing to the very human side of this and every revolution. (74 mins)

Saturday, August 14, 2010
8:15 p.m. El Compadre Mendoza
Fernando de Fuentes (Mexico, 1933). A Mexican classic wittily and intelligently dissects the ambivalence of revolutionary values in a Zapatista idealist and his loyalty to an opportunistic landowner.

Friday, August 20, 2010
7:00 p.m. Let’s Go with Pancho Villa!
Fernando de Fuentes (Mexico, 1935)
In the definitive film on the Mexican Revolution, "de Fuentes makes a strong plea for peace on the personal level every bit as effectively as did Jean Renoir in Grand Illusion."—UCLA Film Archive

Friday, August 20, 2010
9:00 p.m. La soldadera
José Bolaños (Mexico, 1966). Famed Buñuel collaborator Silvia Pinal is a young woman who joins Pancho Villa’s army in this intriguing look at female empowerment—and armament, based on the never-finished fourth section of Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico. (88 mins)

Friday, August 27, 2010
7:00 p.m. Reed: Insurgent Mexico
Paul Leduc (Mexico, 1971)
Paul Leduc's account of writer John Reed's involvement in the Mexican Revolution brings home revolutionary realities. “The sentiment is anti-convention, anti-folklore, anti-heroism; therefore, closer to revolutionary reality.”—Village Voice (105 mins)

Supported by the Mexican Consulate of San Francisco, Filmoteca de la UNAM, and IMCINE. Special thanks to Jonathan Chait, deputy consul, and Andrea Paniagua Borrego, Consulate General of Mexico; José Manuel Garcia, Filmoteca; Daniela Michel, Morelia International Film Festival; Alejandro Díaz, IMCINE; and Bertha Navarro, producer, Reed.