GABRIEL FIGUEROA
Through Thursday, June 18
Other national cinemas like Italy and Japan had a Big Three, but they were always directors. Mexico alone had a Big Four: stars Pedro Armendáriz and Dolores del Río, director Emilio Fernández, and… Director of Photography GABRIEL FIGUEROA (1907-1997). Influenced by Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva México!, and taught by Citizen Kane’s Gregg Toland, Figueroa worked with every luminary at home — including directors Fernández, Roberto Gavaldón, and Luis Buñuel and legendary diva María Félix — and internationally with John Huston, John Ford, Don Siegel, and Clint Eastwood — and was often accounted Mexico’s fourth great muralist along with Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco; and nominated for Mexico’s Oscar, the Ariel Award, every year from 1946 to 1954, 11 nominations overall, winning 7 times (once against himself). No cameraman has ever dominated a national cinema as he did or created so majestic and instantly recognizable an image of it.
FIGUEROA FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING NOTES
IMPORTANT NOTE: We are unable to screen the 35mm English subtitled print of RIO ESCONDIDO as originally planned. In its place, we are screening the only other available 35mm print, which has French subtitles only. For the benefit of our Spanish-speaking (and French-reading) audience members, we will screen RIO ESCONDIDO once only on Sunday, June 14 at 5:30 pm.
ADDED BUÑUEL SCREENINGS IN FIGUEROA FESTIVAL
LOS OLVIDADOS: Sunday, June 14 at 9:20
NAZARĺN: Wednesday, June 17 at 2:25, 6:20, and 10:15
Presented in conjunction with “Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa — Art and Film,” an exhibition at El Museo Del Barrio (Fifth avenue at 104th street), on view through June 27.
Presented in association with Fundación Televisa, El Museo del Barrio, Cinema Tropical, and The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, with the support of Filmoteca de la Unam, the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation, and the Consulate General of Mexico in New York.
Reviews
“Gabriel Figueroa brought a talent for gracefully rendering landscapes and human forms traversed by slants of light to his collaborations with Fernández during the ‘Golden Age of Mexican Cinema.’”
- Aaron Cutler, The L Magazine
Gabriel Figueroa receives tribute in New York - Televisa
Click here to watch video clip (In Spanish - en español)