2003
Montezuma gives in without a fight, the Empire falls apart. But the Mexicas rebel and push out their invaders - until the plague that the Spanish brought, smallpox, begins to decimate the indigenous population. And even today, 500 years later, they suffer misery, malnutrition and illiteracy. Yet they continue trying to be respected along with their culture.
2003
In accord with its cosmogony, as the Mexica - the men of corn - approach the end of a life cycle, they experience a foreboding of things and are able to interpret extraordinary natural phenomena, the onset of possible nefarious events. Today, this magical sense of thinking persists in health and fertility rituals in the indigenous world.
2003
Shortly after the end of the Revolution, some governors dedicated themselves to creating a new Mexico and to transforming certain customs and traditions that proved to be a heavy historical and social burden for the population. The government of Garrido Canabal spurred on agriculture and livestock farming, founded schools and fought fanaticism with fanaticism. This program contains never before seen footage of a Tabasco unknown to national television, rescuing the images produced by a government obsessed with transforming Mexican society.
2003
This program presents an approach to understanding corn from different perspectives, from its botanical peculiarities to the importance of its production and commercialization in the context of being the leading alimentary product in contemporary Mexico. In the program we see the double nature of corn for the ancient Mexicas, for whom it was both a sacred and dietetic product, and we ponder its confrontation with the European cereal par excellence: wheat. With the help of experts and specialists from multiple fields, we see a vision of the nutritional value of corn and we approach the disturbing situation of the Mexican countryside in the current day. This is a profound analysis of corn, a complex product that is particularly ours, and it leads us to consider its significance to us as individuals, as a nation, as a continent and as a planet.
2003
This program describes the history of democracy in Mexico: the democratic ambitions etched out in the Constitution and their historic reality; the hopes, fears and disappointments that the word 'democracy' has inspired in Mexicans, in the past and in the present, but above all, in the future democratic process that the country is living.
2003
The Congress of the Union is the highest tribunal of the country. The greatest men who have shaped the face of Mexico have passed through it. Within the Congress, major political and social causes have been protected and approached, and the current Constitution was ratified there. However, as a faithful reflection of the condition of the country, it has also prompted disillusion for many years, and served as a mere ornamental fixture of Mexican politics. All in all, the Congress of the Union is the synthesis of the Mexican nation.
2003
In the last decade of the twentieth century, Pemex abandoned the exploitation of new oil fields, diminished its reserves and saw its industry decay. But the majority of the country's economy depends upon petroleum, and without carrying out large new investments, crude oil reserves will run out and an economic crisis will approach.
2003
The Mexican Institute of Social Security, a fundamental organization for the peace and social stability of our country, faces a terrible financial crisis today. This program highlights the great efforts accomplished since its foundation and offers a general vision of the mechanisms and obstacles that confront this entity that serves more than 50 million Mexicans.
2003
When a business is launched, a winning formula is always what is sought. In Mexico there is a company, Sanborn's, whose amazing history has just reached its hundred-year birthday; and many might ask what has been the formula that has allowed it to work among us with such great success that it is now an inseparable part of the ways and customs of cities all over the country.
2003
Salvador Novo was more than just an avant garde writer who pertained to the group The Contemporaries. He was more than a literary figure who passed through all literary genres and left lasting works. He made himself into a character who found out how to threaten the falsely timid of his time as well as the machismo of the post-revolution in order to live in absolute balance with his desires. A friend of powerful people, a companion to many artists, an expert in culinary arts, a non-systematic historian, a chronicler of life, Novo was, above all, provoker and possessor of dazzling talent: poet, essayist, playwright, teacher. He alarmed many due to his conduct which was as intelligent as it was scandalous. Irony was his defense, words his weapon.
2003
This program offers an approach to the generation that, during the decades of the 1950's and 1970's, forced a change in the direction of Mexican art and became known as ''the generation of rupture''. Narrated by the characters who lived it, in this program we see and hear from José Luis Cuevas, Vicente Rojo, Juan Soriano, Lilia Carrillo, Manuel Felguérez and Fernando García Ponce.
2003
This program delves into the biography and work of one of the most representative directors of Mexican cinema. A creator of stories, characters and film genres that still live on in the popular imagery of various generations. Thanks to Ismael Rodríguez's films, Pedro Infante became the most lasting myth of Mexican culture.
2003
During the 1930's the Mexican film industry was consolidated as a productive industry. Nevertheless, from that first moment there were actors and producers of the motion picture industry who worked on the margins of the studios and production companies. Films that have been made and continue to be made by these directors who work outside of the main channels of production have shown, over the course of seven decades, the aesthetic tendencies or political concerns of their authors who opted to makes films which are different and independent: the other cinema.
2003
Since the beginning of its history, the Mexican cinema has entered into the intimacy of the country's families to show us their patterns of life, their joys and their sorrows. From the early reels in which the family was seen as the center of the universe, a warm and safe place, the melting pot of moral and religious values, to the raw dramas of the last few decades, our film industry has portrayed the evolution of the Mexican family.
2003
Mexico is a country with a great cinematographic history and, although throughout its history it has had moments of both great splendor and crisis, it is a spectacle which forms a part of the everyday life of the majority of the population. At the beginning of the new millennium, Mexicans' cinematographic language began to change, just as new forms of production were developed and systems of promotion and distribution were modernized. In the last few years, despite the competition of foreign film industries, millions of people have attended movie theaters to see Mexican films.
2003
The cinematographic adaptation of literary works began in the Mexican film industry in the first years of last century. An innumerable amount of novels, short stories and theater pieces have been brought to the screen, converting the written word into images and sounds. Film and literature: two different ways of narrating stories that have remained intimately linked throughout the history of Mexican cinema.
2003
During the first days of Mexican cinema, facts that now form part of the history of our country were recorded documentary style. With the passing of time, a plot-driven cinema has been developed which has recreated major happenings from different points of view such as the Conquest, the colonial period, Mexico after independence and particularly the time of the Revolution. In the last few years, film makers have occupied themselves with shaping a vision of recent events of the past few decades for the big screen, such as the massacre of October 2, 1968 or the recent violence in the state of Guerrero.
2003
Luis Barragán (1902- 1988) is considered to be one of the greatest contemporary architects and one of the principal figures of twentieth-century international architecture. Since 1980, when he was granted the Pritzker Prize - the "Nobel Prize" of architecture - the poetry of his architectural language garnered vast international attention. This genius of architecture and design has forged an original style that is unmistakably Mexican and yet universal at the same time.
2003
The peaceful atmosphere brought on by the Porfirian dictatorship, between 1876 and 1910, seemed to provide the perfect setting for preparing the country to take the road to economic stability and material progress. The factory smokestacks, the railways, and the new ways of life introduced by foreign settlers made the elites believe that the times brought about by Don Porfirio would put the country in concert with the rest of the ''modern'' nations of the world.
2003
At the beginning of the 1940's, Mexico City was losing its old, provincial and sleepy character in order to make the move toward becoming a great city that attracted millions of people who hailed from different regions of the country and even from abroad. Today, in this program, the voices of those who inhabited the city give an account of this space of contradictory coexistence, where, in an effort to win the heart of the country, tradition and the newly arrived modernity were in a fierce debate without surrender.
2003
The Metro is a vital piece of infrastructure for Mexico City: it transports more then 4.5 million passengers on a daily basis. This program offers a look at the Metro as a system and as a microcosm, in which social relations and technology are enmeshed. It provides a trip through the system's history, up until the end of the 1960's, in order enter into contact with the human universe that populates it and organizes it twenty-four hours a day.
2003
A hilarious exploration of the world of laughter, headed by the best comic actors of Mexico. Trained in outdoor theaters and later playing the unforgettable leading roles in the movies, actors like Cantinflas, Joaquín Pardavé, Tin Tan, Piporro, Mauricio Garcés and other great talents are the wizards whose humor has captivated millions of people.