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Fans of classic Mexican cinema have an embarrassment of riches to feast on later this month when the Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) retrospective “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema” begins. The series, curated and produced in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival and sponsored by Mubi, will feature an eclectic mix of 22 midcentury Mexican films produced from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Running at Flc from July 26-August 8, the series features classic horror movies, film noir, comedies, Westerns, lucha libre superhero movies, and early 3D cinema from one of Mexico’s richest periods of cultural output. Many of the films are either debuting new restorations or, in some cases, screening theatrically in the United States for the first time. The titles were originally screened together as part of a retrospective at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival, which featured 36 Mexican films before trimming its lineup down to 22 entries for the New York remounting.

“Film is like a battleground. There’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion.” So said Sam Fuller of Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, but he could just as easily have been speaking about Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin given how drastically and often ferociously the 1951 film shifts in emotional registers, from the erotic to the violent, from the tragic to the transcendent.

As one of the quintessential cabaretera films from the golden age of Mexican cinema, Victims of Sin moves at the quickening pace of the Afro-Cuban rumba dances we witness throughout. These dances, and the music supporting them, underscore the sensuality that seems to run beneath almost everything in the seedy little corner of Mexico City where the film takes place, as well as set up the female characters as objects of male lust and jealousy.

Written by Fernández and Mauricio Magdaleno, the film...

The Criterion Collection has announced its slate of releases for June 2024, which is headlined by 4K restorations of two of the boutique label’s most popular Blu-rays and four new high profile additions to the collection.

David Lynch’s landmark 1986 neo-noir horror film, which marked his first collaboration with Laura Dern alongside her future “Twin Peaks: The Return” co-star Kyle McLachlan, will be re-released by Criterion with a new 4K transfer. It joins Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Lost Highway,” “Inland Empire,” “The Elephant Man,” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” in the Criterion 4K library.

Also getting the 4K treatment is Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which sees Johnny Depp playing Hunter S. Thompson stand-in Raoul Duke in a psychedelic adaptation of the landmark countercultural novel.

New additions to the collection include Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s “Bound,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Querelle,” Emilio Fernández’s “Victims of Sin,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe’re thrilled to introduce Notebook’s email newsletter, the Weekly Edit: a mix of our latest essays, interviews, and festival coverage, with a few archival gems to boot. Learn more and sign up here.REMEMBERINGThe Cow.This weekend brought devastating news that Dariush Mehrjui, the landmark Iranian filmmaker, and his wife and screenwriting partner Vahideh Mohammadifar were found murdered in their home. A lifelong enemy of state censorship, Mehrjui helped kick off the Iranian New Wave with his second feature, The Cow (1969), which was denied an export permit when it was originally completed. “Despite the fact that the film was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, the Pahlavi regime preferred not to have the film’s portrayal of rural Iranian village life color the nation’s desired image of modernity on the world stage,...

"A film that shocks! A picture that dazzles! An experience that thrills!" Janus Films has revealed a brand new official trailer for a 4K restoration of Victims of Sin, a 1951 classic Mexican film from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, written and directed by Emilio Fernández. It's ready for a proper cinema re-release in the US, with a run at the Film Forum cinema in NYC starting in a few weeks. Set in México City, a famous Cuban dancer from "Cabaret Changó" rescues a baby from a garbage can and decides to raise him, but her pachuco pimp gets in her way. Of course. IDescribed as a "blend of film noir, melodrama, and musical", the film has rarely been seen in the US, with the first release in Mexico in 1951. It stars acting-dancing sensation Ninón Sevilla, plus Tito Junco and Rodolfo Acosta, with cinematography by the legendary Gabriel Figueroa. Fernández...

While the name Gabriel Figueroa may not be a familiar one to many, even those with a stronger affinity for filmmaking and the art behind it, New York’s own Film Forum is hoping to change that.

On June 5, the theater began a career spanning retrospective surrounding the work of iconic cinematographer and Mexican film industry legend Gabriel Figueroa. Taking a look at 19 of the photographer’s films, the series is running in conjunction with the new exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, entitled Under The Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa – Art And Film.

Best known as a pioneer of Mexican cinema, primarily with his work alongside director Emilio Fernandez, Figueroa’s work was as varied as they come. His work with Fernandez is without a doubt this retrospective’s highlight, particularly films like Wildflower. One of the many times Mexican cinema’s “Big Four” worked together, the film saw the...