Cultura de la Pantalla en Laredo (1895-1972)
ABOUT
This project focuses upon the history of film exhibition, programming and cinemagoing experiences in Laredo, Texas, USA, a U.S.-Mexico bordertown where 95% of its inhabitants are of Mexican ancestry and where Spanish is still widely spoken along with English. Methodologically it is a replica of the Belgian Enlightened City project on cinemagoing in Flanders, applying a triangulation of methods around a cartography of cinemas in Laredo (cf. database on venues, people and exhibition companies); an analysis of film programming (1922 to 1972, sample year per decade); and oral history on audience’s remembrance of film consumption habits in Laredo (1930-1970). The central aim of the project is to make a diachronical analysis of the social role of screen culture in Laredo (1895-1970) as a result of the tensions between commercial and ideological forces and the actual consumption, through a study of cinemas and film consumption in interaction with modernity public space and urbanisation.
FUNDING
The project has not received any funding. Faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students of the Communication programs in Texas A&M International University, at Laredo, Texas, have worked in the project on a voluntary basis.
TEAM / CONTACT
LINKS TO PROJECT
- Lozano, J.C., Meers, Philippe & Biltereyst, D. (2018). Going to the movies in the 1930s-1960s in a small Mexican American border town: Memories of cinemagoing and of U.S. and Mexican films in Laredo, Texas (pp. 155-170). In Daniela Treveri, Danielle Hipkins, and Catherine O’Rawe (Eds.), Rural Cinema. Exhibition and audiences in a Global Context. Palgrave-Macmillan. ISBN: 978-3-319-66343-2.
- Lozano, J.C. (2018). Exhibiting films in a predominantly Mexican-American market: The case of Laredo, Texas, a small U.S.-Mexico border town, 1896-1960. In D. Biltereyst, R. Maltby, and P. Meers (Eds.), Routledge Companion to New Cinema History (pp. 254-267). London: Routledge. ISBN: 9781138955844.
- Lozano, J.C. (2017). Film at the border. Memories of cinema going in Laredo, Texas, 1930s-1960s. Memory Studies, 10(1), 35—48.