"Memorias de un Mexicano" - brochure - The Cinema Museum

A National and Family Portrait
A unique compilation of early cinema, the documentary Memorias
de un Mexicano shows authentic newsreel footage from the beginning
of the 20th century filmed, and collected, by cinema pioneer
Salvador Toscano. The film was produced in 1950 by Toscano’s
daughter, Carmen who, during nearly ten years, selected and edited
material from her father’s archive. She converted the original 16 fps
speed into 24 fps adding sound, script and narration. The film was
exhibited at Cannes Festival in 1954 and declared Mexican Historical
Monument in 1967.
Memorias de un Mexicano depicts a crucial period of Mexican
history: the Revolution that took place between the 1910s and the
1920s. Through a voice over, an invisible narrator tells the story of his
family as well as that of the whole nation. Mexican life at the turn of
the century is shown through popular dances, religious ceremonies,
inaugurations of railways, and official commemorations of the independence
centenary. The core of the film, however, is its selection of
the military and political actions that happened since the outbreak of
the Revolution and the fall of Dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1910.
Central to the film is cinema itself: the story begins with the arrival
of the Cinématographe Lumière to Mexico City in 1897. Indeed it
was Salvador Toscano himself - a cinematographer and also an entrepreneur
- who opened in the same year the first cinema of Mexico