Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, two of Mexico’s most bankable movie stars, launched the fourth annual Ambulante documentary film festival Friday morning in a packed cinema screening room on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma.
David LaChapelle, the surrealist photographer, launched his first-ever show in Mexico City last night in a media scrum that resembled one of his chaotic images.
The growing economic crisis has prompted the Mexico City government to launch its first ever soup kitchens for the city’s multitude of poor citizens, who are finding it increasingly difficult to feed their families.
The Year of the Ox, the new Chinese lunar year, begins today, and Mexico City’s Chinese community spent the weekend celebrating.
A modern monstrosity out of place amid a dated aesthetic, or a much-needed injection of fresh, voguish design? Whichever side you come down on, Mexico City’s brand new temple to modern art is well worth a visit.
The Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (University Museum of Contemporary Art), also known by its initials MUAC, opened its misted-glass doors to the Mexican public at the end of November 2008.
Rosa Jimenez, a 26-year-old Mexican woman, could currently be serving a sentence of 99 years in a Texas prison for a crime she didn’t commit, according to Lucía Gajá, 34, the young Mexican director of the documentary “Mi Vida Dentro (My Life Inside).”
The film takes aim at the United States criminal-justice system and its treatment of Mexican undocumented female migrants. It is told through the case of Jimenez, who crossed illegally into the United States when she was 17 years old. Clearly on the side of the defendant, the film combines the words of Jimenez, her defense lawyers and the prosecution to lay out what ends up a chilling depiction.
“Mi Vida Dentro” debuted in Mexico last week in cinemas across the capital, and is the first feature-length film from Gajá, who is a graduate of CUEC, the cinema program of the Autonomous National University of Mexico. It’s also the first Mexican documentary to be distributed by Ambulante, the film festival created by two of Mexico’s most bankable stars, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, in 2006.
This car dealership in central Mexico City has a name that almost everyone will recognize.
There were no rabble-rousing speeches, but Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the film version, was greeted by an eager audience at the nearly full Julio Bracho cinema, which hosted the premier of the first part of Steven Soderbergh’s long-awaited portrait of the Argentine revolutionary last night.
“Che, the Argentine,” got its first Mexican screening on the sprawling campus of Mexico’s most influential university, the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). The movie has, like all upcoming major releases here in Mexico, been selling for weeks now on stands that deal in pirated DVDs, but there remain those who want to see the film on the big screen. The audience was a mixture of all ages, from amorous teenage couples to unaccompanied gray-haired men, and they received the portrait of the much-adored revolutionary with gusto.
Guevara is popular among the sprawling student population here in Mexico City, where he and Fidel Castro, then an exiled Cuban lawyer, planned their Cuban Revolution over dinner and cigars on July 3rd, 1955. The myth and heroic image of the Argentine have replaced a real understanding of the complex man that he was. His face is often emblazoned across flags and T-shirts during student protests and commonly evoked as a universal symbol of social struggle.
Lydia Cacho’s celebrity was apparent from the get-go last Thursday night in the trendy Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, where the journalist launched her new book “Not With My Child” (Con Mi Hij@ No).
Ester Ruiz Ramirez, 56, stood in line for hours in downtown Mexico City yesterday to hock a ring and some earrings given to her by her children. Ruiz is one of an expected 800,000 people who will turn to el Nacional Monte de Piedad to borrow small amounts of cash against personal items.
Pasteleria Suiza in the middle to upper class Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City put its own spin on the traditional Rosca de Reyes.
Univision: Young angels in Juarez battle the city’s demons
AFP: Mexico City struggles with waste disposal
AFP: Activists under fire in Mexico
AFP: Ambulance attacked in Ciudad Juarez
Time: Evidence of Killings and Disappearances by Mexico’s Security Forces
AFP: Mexicans honor drug war victims on Day of the Dead