Seeing through ¡Que viva México!: Eisenstein's Travels in Mexico

Abstract

Of the many illustrious foreign travellers who flocked to Mexico, allured by the cultural renaissance taking place in the aftermath of the 1910 revolution—Andre Breton, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, amongst others—few have bequeathed as controversial a legacy as that left by Sergei Eisenstein. The Soviet filmmaker’s arrival in Mexico on 9 December 1930 and his travels through the Republic over the course of a year, during which he filmed some 40 hours of material for his famously unfinished film iQue viva Mexico!, have become part of Mexican film-lore. Indeed Eisenstein is frequently invoked as an enduring influence—for better or for worse—on Mexican visual culture more generally. In 1931, as Eisenstein was compiling his footage, in one of a series of articles published in the prestigious cultural magazine El universal ilustrado, playwright Adolfo Fernandez Bustamante evaluated Eisenstein’s impact on Mexican culture in the following terms: