The Mexican Government has spent €22 million on restoring and expanding the country’s film archive and national film centre to create the world’s biggest cinematheque to bring world cinema to cinema-goers and restore film treasures. The Cineteca Nacional has screened more than 1,200 individual films a year in the past and now will be able to offer Mexico’s audiences so much more.Mexico is the fifth largest country in the world for cinema-going and the audience of the Cineteca is uniquely a young demographic – the average age of its audience is 22 years old. Over the years it has been visited by many of the world’s leading filmmakers including Theo Angelopoulos, David Cronenberg, Bruno Dumont, Peter Greenaway, Werner Herzog, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Naomi Kawase, Mike Leigh, Nicolas Philibert, Ulrich Seidl, Bela Tarr, Liv Ullmann, and Mexican filmmakers such as Carlos Reygadas and the many times awarded Guillermo Del Toro. The Cineteca Nacional and the Mexican Film Institute are holding a breakfast launch in Cannes to unveil the new building and the plans for reopening the Cineteca this year and they would like to invite you to the launch breakfast tomorrow and tell you about their plans in more detail.
Bruno Chatelin