30 period porn films collected for Mexican film library
March 30th, 2011 - 1:13 pm ICT by IANSMexico City, March 30 (IANS/EFE) A total of 30 classic Mexican pornographic films, most of them silent and made between 1920 and 1950, are now being collected at the national film library of Mexico. In many of them priests appear as subjects.
“El sueno de Fray Vergazo”, “Historia de un abrigo de mink” and “Las muchachas” are among the films at the Filmoteca film library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“It’s explicit porno. We figure it was made to be shown in bordellos (brothels),” said Guadalupe Ferrer, the library’s film programme director.
The library has a total of 45,000 films. The majority of the porn movies are silent. Many of the films, which run between 12 minutes and 30 minutes, are untitled and it is not known who made them, he said.
The filmmakers used pseudonyms because pornography was banned till the 1990s in Mexico. Some of the films were donated to the library while others were found at antique shops by curator Francisco Gaitan, who has always been on the lookout for such items.
“Priests appear pretty frequently as subjects,” Ferrer said.
Other films feature common characters such as cowboys and village woman wearing traditional attire.
“It’s Mexican cinema as seen through the eyes of the characters, revealing parts of Mexico,” Ferrer said, referring to the films’ documentary value.
The young women in the films may have worked at brothels and were paid to appear in the movies, Ferrer said.
The directors may have been wealthy men because they had access to the expensive 35 mm and 16 mm cameras used to make the films, he said.
–IANS/EFE
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Tags: 16 mm, 35 mm, antique shops, brothels, documentary value, film library, gaitan, mexican cinema, mexican film, mexico city, mink, mm cameras, muchachas, national autonomous university, national autonomous university of mexico, national film, pornographic films, traditional attire, village woman, wealthy men