L'hybridation esthetique et culturelle dans le cinema mexicain contemporain :

Abstract

Contemporary Mexican cinema is located in-between, as much in geographical terms as in aesthetic and cultural ones. Many tensions reside within it, such as the ways in which it negotiates with contemporary Hollywood film and also with other cinemas and artistic forms. This research aims to explore the tension that animates every cross-cultural image and is expressed so distinctively within Mexican history and visual culture.This thesis seeks to investigate the extent to which contemporary Mexican cinema can be considered a site of appropriation of different media cultures in intercultural relations: in other words, as the product of connections between local elements and those transnational ones that emanate from other cinema cultures.The main corpus of study comprises the films of Alejandro GONZALES-INARRITU and Carlos REYGADAS, which were released during 2000-2008. These films were analyzed using an intermedial approach, in order to emphasize their links with other media (such as television, comic strip, literature, painting) or other genres (advertisement, documentary, video-clip). The processes of communication that inform the films’ production and reception are considered, and the recurrent tensions between notions of the local and the global that characterize contemporary Mexican cinema are also highlighted. Moreover, this essential characteristic of contemporary Mexican cinema emphasizes its importance for understanding the factors at stake within intercultural communication.Adopting a communicational approach towards cinema, this thesis analyses images as complex objects and uses a dialogical reasoning that crosses different disciplinary boundaries. It aims to utilize productively a semiotic (more precisely semio-pragmatic) approach and a historical, anthropological and cultural approach towards images.