Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in Jonny's Blurty:

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
1:40 pm	Mexican Film Production Mexican film production during its initial years was similar to that of the Lumière brothers for several reasons. In the first place was the concept of cinema itself. The journalists who attended the first exhibitions had problems in conceptualizing what they saw since a vocabulary to describe film had not yet developed. They also did not know the term "film," describing the works as if they were paintings in an exhibition or associating them with photography, the theater, or "large, life-size" magazine illustrations. The idea that cinema was an extension of the illustrated press seems to have its origin in the Positivism of the Científicos, which had permeated educational circles and power during those years. During 1896, the same year the Científicos established themselves and government subsidized El Imparcial was launched, problems arose with a film of Gabriel Vayre that reconstructed a duel in Chapultepec between two members of congress. The newspaper El Globo, with its liberal tradition, protested against the "trick" to which the public were about to be subjected and demanded that he insert a few words at the beginning of the film to declare that the piece was reconstruction. The press believed that the cinema should show real, natural scenes, that as a scientific invention it should not lie and trick but show "the truth." One newspaper ridiculed a reconstruction of the Dreyfus trial and another questioned as to how it was possible to see Joan of Arc alive when she had been dead some hundreds of years. The cameramen had an average or higher education; the renowned director Salvador Toscano, for example, studied engineering. Hence his keenness to show the "truth" of events through film. The year 1906 was a watershed in the history of cinema in Mexico since film distributors started up that were able to satisfy the demand for new material. Quickly more than 30 cinemas opened up and the market was better organized. The distributors signed contracts with exhibitors outside the capital. In 1908 there were to attempts at obtaining a monopoly by the group headed by P. Avelinde and A. Delalande, agents of Pathé Frères, and the Unión Cinematográfica. The attempt ended in disaster since there were no mechanisms to check that their associates fulfilled the conditions necessary for the continuing entry of new distributors. The film business began to stabilize, and more films were produced in Mexico and the first film studios established. These included the American Amusement Company, Lillo García y Compañía, which made only two films with a storyline, Aventuras de Tip Top and El grito de Dolores by Felipe de Jesús Haro. The rest of their work captured real scenes in the style of the Lumière brothers, as did films produced by such other cameramen as Julio Kemendy, Jorge Alcalde, Enrique Rosas, the Alva brothers, Salvador Toscano and Guillermo Becerril. (Comment on this)
1:39 pm	Mexican Nationally Made Films Nationally made films were scarce during the first years of cinema since neither virgin stock nor the chemical ingredients to develop and make copies were made in Mexico, let alone the apparatus to shoot and project films. Mexico had to depend on manufacturers in Europe and the United States. It was not until June 1897 that copies of films made by the Lumière agents arrived along with virgin film stock. According to press reports, two Frenchmen resident in Mexico, Enrique Mouliné and Corrich, began to produce films in the city of Puebla, starting with a film of a bullfight featuring Ponciano Díaz, the most celebrated bullfighter of the time, and later a film of the evening festival in honor of the Virgen del Carmen, also in Puebla. Both shows were very well attended. But the films were not shown immediately, as the agents had to send their negatives to France for processing. Only in December did the inhabitants of Puebla see the results. National film production began to drop in these first years since few impresarios had 6,000 pesos to buy equipment to take and show their films, a price at that time equivalent to buying a house in the center of Mexico City or a ranch near the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León. Lack of organization within the market also contributed to this reduced film production. Mexico, dependent on foreign input since it lacked technology, first developed film exhibition, followed by their distribution and finally production; the reverse of the developed countries. The response of the public was enthusiastic. In four years 22 small salons had opened, scattered throughout the popular neighborhoods of Mexico City. The price of entry dropped to between two and three centavos. As every impresario received the same new films, the public soon grew tired of seeing them repeatedly, and the impresarios began to combine cinema with variety shows using impromptu singers. The public was incensed and responded by shouting and throwing objects at the performers. The press protested that Mexico City was not prepared for an abrupt increase in spectacles since there were not sufficient police to keep order. The church joined the fracas when functions were offered for men only showing Méliès films of women in tights. The municipal government initially was reluctant to close down the salons, since violence and alcoholism seemed to decrease in the working-class neighborhoods that boasted small screens. City Hall eventually was forced to crack down, however, and the impresarios fell back on touring the republic, especially those cities that were springing up along the railway network as if by magic. (Comment on this)
1:38 pm	The Cinematographic "View" On Saturday, August 15, the public saw Children's Quarrel, The Tuileries of Paris, The Charge of the Cuirassiers, Demolishing of a Wall, The Water-sprinkler and the Boy, Card players, Arrival of a Train, and The Child Meal. In the handbill the Lumière agents proudly declared that the cinematograph was the "only apparatus that during this last year had managed to win over and keep the admiration of the most enlightened people of the Old World. The president of the Mexican Republic, General Porfirio Díaz, the president of the French Republic, M. Félix Faure, the Emperor of Germany, the Czar of Russia, the Queen Regent of Spain; indeed all the nos of the world have applauded and praised its success." Each ticket cost 50 centavos, a high price for that time, equivalent to a seat in the shady side of the bullring or the orchestra seats in a theater. The shows' success meant that the impresarios were giving nine daily showings, one every half hour starting at 5:30 P.M. A heterogeneous public invaded the small salon with approximately 40 seats, distributed without the class divisions which different ticket prices imposed in the theater. The audience would have been similar to that seen at church on Sunday, with the exception 12 o'clock mass which the rich usually attended. The social mix was not to the taste of one group who demanded special screenings. On Thursday August 27 the first "gala show" was announced "to satisfy the demand of numerous well-to-do families." The program consisted of 12 films instead of eight, at a charge of one peso rather than the usual 50 centavos. When the spectacle began to settle into a routine, Gabriel Vayre began to shoot films of various official activities and aspects of Mexico City. President Díaz monopolized attention, being filmed riding in Chapultepec, entering the coach that took him from his residence in Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace in the city center, or walking with his ministers. On Sunday, August 23, the first films with a Mexican theme were shown to General Díaz in his residence. These included "a moving group of General Díaz again and some members of his family, a scene in the Pane Baths, another in the Colegio Militar, concluding with another film taken in the Viga Canal." By taking these films the Lumière cameraman satisfied both their curiosity as tourists as well as Mexican nationalism and vanity. They hoped that the people portrayed would come to the cinema en masse to see themselves, accompanied by family and friends, and they were not disappointed. They knew how to flatter different social groups and as a result the cinema penetrated deep into the heart of Mexican society. (Comment on this)
1:36 pm	Mexican Motion Pictures From the start Mexican films were influenced by varied expressions of nationalist sentiment. The silent film era can be divided into two parts, the first (1897 to 1915) coincides with the birth and development of the cinematographic "view" while the second (1917 onward) was characterized by narrative film. The original intention of cinema was to capture moving objects. The cameraman "provided a glimpse of the outside world," from whence came the word "view" used to describe films at the time. Later the organization of images became more complex as film technique and narrative input progressively was improved. In 1896 the projection of these films lasted between one and three minutes; 15 years later, during the Revolution, "views" could last three hours. It is no that Mexico did not develop the art film during this first period to the same extent as film reportage or the documentary recording of events. For various reasons cameramen only filmed objects in movement around them. Evidence of nineteenth-century nationalism in the subjects selected during the first period was conspicuous, particularly in theories that sought to establish a national art in literature and painting to give Mexico prestige abroad. Narrative films would have clear and defined nationalist proposals from the moment they first appeared in 1917. On July 24, 1896, seven months after the first film screening in the basement of the Gran Café de Paris, agents of the Lumièe brothers, Ferdinand Bon Bernard, the concessionaire for Venezuela, British and French Guyana and the Antilles, and technical director Gabriel Vayre, arrived in Mexico. Mexico was one point in the vast program that the inventors planned out for their emissaries to conquer the world using images. They were cultural ambassadors, and they knew their job and how to penetrate their markets. The most important part was to obtain the backing of the governing bodies to open the doors of the countries they visited. They were not always well received. In China for instance, the Empress prohibited the spectacle after it was shown, perhaps because she saw it as a powerful instrument of acculturation. On August 6 the impresarios made their first screening for President Porfirio Díaz in Chapultepec Castle. The show was a success, and the films were projected repeatedly until late in the night. On the fourteenth of that month a further showing was given to journalists and scientific groups in the mezzanine of the Plateros Drugstore at 9 Plateros Street (today Francisco I. Madero Street) in the heart of Mexico City, in the hall which housed the Mexico Stock Exchange. Reports of the time all described the events as wondrous: "it is necessary to attend an exhibition to form a complete idea of the marvelous effect that it produces. It is enough to say that no one is happy just seeing it once, and that is the truth," affirmed one journalist in El Correo Español. (Comment on this)
1:35 pm	Monterrey: Industrial Center of Mexico By 1980 Monterrey was the second industrial center of Mexico. The value generated by its industries equaled 25 percent of the value generated by industries in the Valley of Mexico—and the value generated by Guadalajara, Puebla, and Toluca combined. Monterrey's easy access to resources, government stimuli, and access to external credit in dollars permitted it to expand rapidly during the oil boom of the 1970s. But it also accumulated a considerable debt, and the collapse in oil prices and the peso devaluation of 1982 gave rise to one of the worst economic crises to hit Mexico in the twentieth century. The industry of the north central Mexico was hit particularly hard by the crisis. From 1980 to 1988 Mexican industry as a whole grew at a minimal 0.8 percent per annum, while that of Nuevo León as a whole actually decreased by 1.1 percent per year. Its share in the industrial GDP fell from 10.2 percent in 1980 to 8.8 percent in 1988. The severity of the crisis in Monterrey was owing to the characteristics of its industry, which tended to specialize in intermediate and capital goods. The liberalization of the economy and the entrance of Mexico into the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1985 put an end to the numerous advantages that domestic industries had enjoyed. The local industrial groups of Monterrey had difficulty paying their debts, and some, such as Alfa, defaulted (by the beginning of 1982 the external debt of Grupo Alfa had climbed to US$2.3 billion). Monterrey corporations consolidated their activities, abandoning sectors such as tourism and real estate, decreasing their emphasis on basic metal products (for example, the legendary Fundidora de Fierro y Acero closed its doors in 1986), and increasing their emphasis on foodstuffs and chemicals. The crisis of 1982 dovetailed with a general shift throughout Latin America away from import substitution industrialization, and Monterrey entrepreneurs realized that they had to reorient their industrial production toward external markets. In this sense the Monterrey business elite anticipated the economic policies of the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94) and the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The modification of the Foreign Investment Law in 1984 eliminated barriers for the influx of foreign capital, allowing Monterrey corporations to sell shares, develop coinvestment strategies, and form strategic alliances with U.S., European, and Asian capital. The Monterrey industrialists' strategic alliances with foreign capital and their reorientation toward foreign markets allowed them overcome the devastating economic crisis of 1994-95. (Comment on this)