Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution

Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2011

With a cast ranging from Pancho Villa to Dolores del Rio and Tina Modotti, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution demonstrates the crucial role played by Mexican and foreign visual artists in revolutionizing Mexico’s twentieth-century national iconography. Investigating the convergence of cinema, photography, painting, and other graphic arts in this process, Zuzana Pick illuminates how the Mexican Revolution’s timeline (1910-1917) corresponds with the emergence of media culture and modernity. Drawing on twelve foundational films from Que Viva Mexico! (1931-1932) to And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003), Pick proposes that cinematic images reflect the image repertoire produced during the revolution, often playing on existing nationalist themes or on folkloric motifs designed for export. Ultimately illustrating the ways in which modernism reinvented existing signifiers of national identity, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution unites historicity, aesthetics, and narrative to enrich our understanding of Mexicanidad.

Author Biography

Zuzana M. Pick is Professor of Film Studies at the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University, Ottawa. She is also the author of The New Latin American Cinema: A Continental Project.