Filming Pancho: How Hollywood Shaped the Mexican Revolution

On January 3, 1914, Pancho Villa became Hollywood's first Mexican superstar. In signing an exclusive movie contract, Villa agreed to keep other film companies from his battlefield, to fight in daylight wherever possible, and to reconstruct battles if the footage needed reshooting.

Through memoir and newspaper reports, Margarita De Orellana looks at the documentary film-makers who went down to cover events in Mexico. Feature film-makers in Hollywood portrayed the border as the dividing line between order and chaos, in the process developing a series of lasting Mexican stereotypes--the greaser, the bandit, the beautiful se?orita, the exotic Aztec. Filming Pancho reveals how Mexico was constructed in the American imagination and how movies reinforced and justified both American expansionism and racial and social prejudice.

Author: Margarita de Orellana

Publisher: Verso

Publication Date: Dec 08, 2009

Number of Pages: 222 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 1859843484

ISBN-13: 9781859843482