admin
Mexico basks in the glow of its first best director Oscar for Alfonso Cuaron and his blockbuster film “Gravity,” a new generation of home-grown filmmakers wonders if the magic of the golden statuette will rub off on them.
Cuaron’s 3D space thriller scooped seven Oscars, the most of any film on Sunday, and was lauded for ground breaking special effects conveying space and weightlessness, though it lost the best picture award to drama “12 Years a Slave’’.
The movie, which stars Sandra Bullock as an astronaut cut loose from her space shuttle, has already earned US$700 million at the worldwide box office and Cuaron’s win is the first best director Oscar for a Latin American.
However, the 52-year-old Cuaron has spent most of his career outside Mexico, after he struggled to raise financing for projects back home, and fellow leading directors Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu also both moved abroad.
Back in his homeland, a new generation of Mexican directors has been quick to point out Cuaron’s work has had little to do with the domestic industry.
“Gravity” was made for an estimated US$100 million by Warner Brothers Pictures, while directors in Mexico have to scramble to drum up just US$2 million for a film.
Many Mexican independent filmmakers have had more commercial success abroad than in their home country, where filmmakers complain they can’t compete against the big budgets of Hollywood studios, whose films dominate screens at cinemas.
“The only place where you cannot see Mexican film is in Mexico,” said Ivan Avila Duenas, who debuted his fourth feature film at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s International Film Festival, FICUNAM, on Sunday.
Though Cuaron cut his teeth in Mexico, most of his best known works have been Hollywood-backed projects.
In the 1990s, he left Mexico to work in the United States, then Britain, and became more known for his movie adaptations of British authors, including the third instalment of J K Rowling’s work, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” as well as P D James’ dystopian “Children of Men.”
Ironically, success abroad enabled Cuaron to direct with bigger budgets in Mexico, where his 2001 Spanish-language road trip film “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” helped launch the international careers of actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.
When Cuaron scored his first hit in the 1990s, Mexican film output was anemic, with only 10 or so films a year.
Last year yielded over 100, aided by tax breaks for corporate sponsors and co-productions between Mexican and foreign companies. – Reuters.
Online Reporter