Finding the Lost Cinema of Mexico

Acting as a conclusion to The Lost Cinema of Mexico, this chapter explores how its collection of essays contributes to new directions in Mexican cinema scholarship. This chapter explores how, in their different essays, the authors, critically recover the cinema of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, decades supposedly “lost” to an industrial crisis and to “highly commercial” and “culturally disreputable” genres, and challenge the nuevo cine-influenced perspective which has produced this crisis narrative. This chapter aligns The Lost Cinema’s rescue and reconceptualizing approaches with cultural studies’ re-evaluation of popular, and particularly commercial cinemas as these have taken place both locally and in the Anglo-American academy. The chapter ends by evaluating The Lost Cinema of Mexico as part of a process of critical recovery, rescue, and reconceptualization and looks forward to new areas of scholarship it will inevitably facilitate.