Report on Guadalajara: Art and industry

This article is a report on The Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, generally held to be the most important in Latin America, whose 26th edition took place from 25 March to 1 April 2011. After a general survey of the festival (including reference to a vampire strand curated by Guillermo del Toro), the article offers a full account of the festival's forum on the Present and Future of Mexican Cinema, addressed by industry and government delegates, which stressed the three themes of distribution, audience development and the relationship of cinema to television. The article then goes on to analyse four of the fourteen Mexican fiction features premiered at the festival: a comedy, two thrillers and an auteurist film (by established director Maryse Sistach). These films are representative of current production in Mexico. Although they vary in genre, their common bourgeois setting coincides with the new constitution of cinema audiences in Mexico, where the increase in ticket price means that only the wealthy can afford regular attendance at cinemas.