Mexican Cinema

Cinema of Mexico
Open air screening at the Guadalajara International Film Festival
Number of screens	5,303 (2012)
• Per capita	4.6 per 100,000 (2012)
Main distributors	Paramount Int'L 20.3% Warner Bros Int'L 16.2% Fox Int'L 14.6%
Produced feature films (2011)
Fictional	51 (69.9%)
Animated	6 (8.2%)
Documentary	16 (21.9%)
Number of admissions (2012)
Total	228,000,000
• Per capita	2.0
National films	10,900,000 (4.79%)
Gross box office (2012)
Total	$779 million
National films	$36 million (4.62%)

The history of Mexican cinema goes back to the ending of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when several enthusiasts of the new medium documented historical events – most particularly the Mexican Revolution – and produced some movies that have only recently been rediscovered. During the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Mexico all but dominated the Latin American film industry.

The Guadalajara International Film Festival is the most prestigious Latin American film festival and is held annually In Guadalajara, Mexico. Mexico has twice won the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival, having won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film for Maria Candelaria in 1946 and the Palme d'Or in 1961 for Viridiana, more than any other Latin American nation.

Mexico City is the fourth largest film and television production center in North America, behind Los Angeles, New York City and Vancouver, as well as the largest in Latin America.

The first "moving picture", according to sources by film historian Jim Mora, was viewed in 1895 using Thomas Edison's kinetoscope. A year later, the cinematographe projector was introduced by Auguste Lumière. Mexico's first queues appeared in cinemas in the capital to see international one-minute films such as The Card Players, Arrival of a Train, and The Magic Hat. The "silent film" industry in Mexico produced several movies; however, many of the films up to the 1920s have been lost and were not well documented.

The origins of early filmmaking is generally associated with Salvador Toscano Barragán. In 1898 Toscano made the country's first film with a plot, titled Don Juan Tenorio. During the Mexican Revolution, Toscano recorded several clips of the battles, which would become a full-length documentary in 1950, assembled by his daughter. Other short films were either created or influenced from French film-makers.