In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Ephemerata
  • Translated by Laura Isabel Serna and Rielle Navitski

Contents

  1. 1). "The Realm of the Ridiculous: Those Who Go to the Movies"

    Don Juan the Fool (pseudonym)

    El Universal (Mexico City), June 6, 1920

  1. 2). "On the Silent Art"

    Francisco Zamora (as Jerónimo Coignard)

    El Universal Ilustrado (Mexico City), July 28, 1921

    Source: Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin

  1. 3). Letter from Union of Federal District Cinema Employees to President Álvaro Obregón, 1922

    Source: Archivo Nacional de México/National Archive of Mexico, Mexico City

  1. 4). Letters from film exhibitors to Secretary of Industry, Commerce, and Labor, 1923

    Source: Archivo Nacional de México/National Archive of Mexico, Mexico City

  1. 5). Programs from the Cine Garibaldi (Mexico City), 1923

    Source: Archivo Nacional de México/National Archive of Mexico, Mexico City

  1. 6). "Cinematograph of the Week no. 6"

    Gustavo F. Aguilar (as "Sánchez Filmador")

    El Universal Ilustrado (Mexico City), February 19, 1925

    Source: Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin [End Page 140]

  1. 7). "The Influence of Hollywood"

    Revista de Revistas (Mexico City), July 10, 1927

    Source: Hemeroteca Nacional de México/Mexico National Newspaper and Periodical Library, Mexico City

  1. 8). "Cinematic Zig-Zag"

    Revista de Revistas (Mexico City), July 17, 1927

    Source: Hemeroteca Nacional de México/Mexico National Newspaper and Periodical Library, Mexico City [End Page 141]

TRANSLATED ORIGINAL TEXTS WITH INTRODUCTIONS

The Realm of the Ridiculous: Those Who Go to the Movies
D. Juan el Bobo [Don Juan the Fool]
El Universal (Mexico City), June 6, 1920

Signed only with a pseudonym (we have been unable to identify the author), this lively account of film exhibition in Mexico City chronicles the wide range of activities that might take place in the space of the movie theater, from flirting to caring for children to consuming meals or loudly expressing displeasure with the film or projectionist. While a number of journalists in the period commented on the atmosphere of working-class movie theaters in varying tones of amusement or alarm, this journalist also takes upper- and middle-class venues as targets for satire.

The text's illustrations, rendered by cartoonist Clemente Islas Allende, offer vivid vignettes of incidents inside the movie theater. Counterclockwise from top left, the captions read: "others go to movies to do anything at all, except watch the film"; "… and some to sleep …"; "A baby gets angry, screams, stomps, the audience gets exasperated, the music stops, and Pearl White …"; "The rest come to wait for their sweetheart [gata]";1 "Oh! … Look! … They're killing her! … They're murdering her… [She] screams and screams, until the police intervene"; "[He] bothers everyone, sounding out words aloud, more than the scenes he's interested in the intertitles"; "And in the climactic scene, a cowboy blocks everything [with his hat]."

Translation

No epidemic has been unleashed on the world with greater force than the epidemic of cinema. Neither the invasion of the Huns, under the command of Attila, nor the avalanche of "boches" led by [Kaiser] Wilhelm II, has had the overwhelming force of the cinema's conquest, which has extended from one corner of the earth to the other.2 If one put together all of the meters of film that have been "taken" since the invention of this marvelous entertainment, and wrapped them around the world, at a distance, one would form around our planet more than one transparent ring, like those of Saturn. [End Page 142]

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[End Page 143]

The cinema has classes. It has them in its technique, its artists, and its audience. A film directed by Chano Sierra is not equivalent to one from the Caesar studio; there's a world of difference between an Alberto Collo and a Fernando Navarro; and the difference between the audience of the Cine Olimpia and the Salón Allende is staggering.3

The cinema has only one aspect in which all classifications disappear: the ridiculous. Not the ridiculousness onscreen, which has rapidly diminished, in exact proportion to the perfecting of the silent art, but the ridiculousness of the audience.

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