Past Editions

Documentary Competition

Jorge Ayala Blanco

Over the last decades, and thanks to an impressive body of work, Jorge Ayala Blanco has become one of Mexico’s most respected film critics. Since 1963 he has worked as a full-time professor at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC). He became a film critic that same year, and since then has contributed without interruption to Mexico’s leading periodicals. His research has focused on film exhibition in Mexico.

His critical works on Mexican cinema have taken the form of sequential volumes: La aventura del cine mexicano (1968), La búsqueda del cine mexicano (1986), La condición del cine mexicano (1986), La disolvencia del cine mexicano (1991), La eficacia del cine mexicano (1996), La fugacidad del cine mexicano (2001) and La grandeza del cine mexicano (2004). Other works have cultivated his interest in international cinema: Cine Norteamericano de Hoy (1968), Falaces fenómenos fílmicos (1981), A salto de imágenes (1988), El cine, juego de estructuras (2002), El cine actual, desafío y pasión (2003), El cine invisible (2004) and El cine actual, palabras clave (2005). He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National Researcher’s System) since 1988, and currently writes for the journal El Financiero.

Carlos A. Gutiérrez

A promoter and curator of film and video programs, Carlos A. Gutiérrez studied Communication Sciences at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and earned a master’s degree in Film Studies at New York University. He is co-founder and co-director of Cinema Tropical, a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the promotion, programming, and distribution of Latin-American cinema in the United States. As a curator, he has presented numerous film and video programs at institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Colombia, among others.

Between 1998 and 2003 he was Director of Film and Scenic Arts at The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. He has been a panelist and a member of the nominating committee of the Media Arts Program in Mexico, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Student Academy Awards. He is part of the selection committee of the New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. He frequently gives conferences or participates at round tables at universities. He is currently a member of the Hanson Film Institute advisors’ council and a contributor to Bomb Magazine and Adweek’s Marketing y Medios.

Tom Luddy

Since 1979 has been associated with American Zoetrope as a film executive or producer. As Zoetrope’s Director of Special Projects he developed and supervised the 1981-82 worldwide revival of Abel Gance’s 1927 masterpiece Napoleon, as well as the 1980 presentation across America of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s seven-hour long movie, Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland. Luddy coordinated Zoetrope’s sponsorship of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1983), and two collaborations with Jean-Luc Godard, Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) and Passion (1982). He was also instrumental in Zoetrope’s support for Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980). Other films in his career as a producer worth mentioning are: Mishima, (Paul Schrader, 1985), Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer, 1987), Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987), King Lear ( Jean-Luc Godard, 1987), Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988), Manifesto (Dusan Makavejev, 1988), Wait Until Spring, Bandini (Dominique Deruddere, 1990), Wind (Carroll Ballard, 1992), The Secret Garden (Agnieszka Holland, 1993) and Mi familia / My Family (Gregory Nava, 1995).

In 1974, Luddy co-founded the Telluride Film Festival. He served as a member of the New York Film Festival Selection Committee for three years and he was also on the board of the San Francisco Film Festival for many years. He has been Jury of the Moscow and Berlin Film Festivals in 1979 and 1987 respectively, and in 1983 he was the appointed American Jury Member at the Cannes Film Festival, under the chairmanship of Louis Malle.