Come join us for our second collaboration with Austin’s Fantastic Fest!

For decades, Mexican fantasy and horror cinema hid in the shadows; wearing a luchador mask, surviving budgets tainted by economic gloom, holding vampires with a nylon thread, receiving the scorn of near-sighted critics and consumption by audiences sunk into tongue-in-cheek appreciation.

But things have changed. Over the past two decades there has been a clear rise in the amount, quality and risk found in Mexican horror and fantasy cinema. It is not by chance that today, in the midst of a horrifying reality, Mexican genre films enjoy popularity, freedom and sometimes, profitability.  As if that were not enough, our beloved national genre warrior – Guillermo del Toro – has recently been knighted by Hollywood.

Join us for a scenic tour of Mexican genre cinema guided by Morbido Fest’s head programmer, Abraham Castillo Flores. Delving beyond luchadores and psychotronica, Abraham unearths the monsters that fomented a distinctive but barely acknowledged corner of our cinematic consciousness.

We will revisit the origins of Mexican fantasy and horror cinema and examine its development through the 20th Century and the start of the 21st.  Along the way we will meet the filmmakers and performers responsible for these celluloid nightmares. Some of these films can be questioned but rest assured, anything they lack is compensated by their sheer honesty and passion.

In parallel we will dissect national legends and traumas that have been continuously reinterpreted by our national filmmakers that stand as a reaction to the tragic reality that Mexico is now experiencing.

Who would have thought that stories filled with wailing legends from our pre-Hispanic past, starved female vampires, Aztec mummies, monk ghosts, child practitioners of the dark arts and tropicalized sci-fi Queens, would become part of our cultural heritage?

Photo courtesy of the Collection of Fundación Televisa