In Excess: Sergei Eisentein's Mexico - Cineclub

Anita Brenner deserves a separate introduction due to her importance
as both the author of Idols Behind Altars (as well as other important works
on Mexico) and as Eisenstein’s interlocutor for much of his stay in Mexico,
where she functioned as a kind of center of gravity for many of the artists
and intellectuals with whom Eisenstein came into contact in Mexico.
Her importance in the cultural scene of Mexico of the 1920s and 1930s
had been largely overlooked until recently, when her daughter’s detailed
biography of Anita Brenner’s life, as well as a collection of articles, began
to appear both in English and Spanish. These books, along with other
scattered facts of Brenner’s involvement in the Mexican scene, provide
the reader with information on her fascinating life, making sense of many
of the connections between the avant-garde circles in Mexico, New York,
and LA, as well as Paris and, ultimately, Moscow. 37
Born of Jewish American parents of Latvian origin in Aguacalientes
(Mexico), Brenner became one of the most important and effective
promoters of Mexican culture abroad. Upon her return to Mexico in 1923
(in large part because of not feeling accepted in Texas, where she grew up,
being Mexican and Jewish), on the eve of Vasconcelos’s cultural reforms,
the eighteen-year-old Anita Brenner became friends with Frances Toor,
the creator and editor of Mexican Folkways, an English-Spanish travel
magazine. Published in Mexico between 1925 and 1937, the magazine
was devoted to the traditional arts of Mexico, with a particular focus
on Mexican indigenous arts and featuring contributions from Rivera,
Modotti, and others. The magazine was intended largely for the U.S.
audience and in many ways it crystallized and gave form to the emerging
trends of the Mexican artistic movement of the time while also bringing
international attention to it. In the words of Frances Toor, by 1932, Mexican
Folkways “played an important part in the formation of the new Mexican
attitude toward the Indian by making known his customs and art;
and for the same reason the magazine had an important infl uence on the
modern art movement.” 38 In 1929, at the astonishingly precocious age of
twenty-four, Anita Brenner published Idols Behind Altars, which included
photographs by Weston and Modotti. It was only then that she enrolled
in the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia, under the supervision
of Franz Boas. We shall return to Anita Brenner in other contexts
in chapters 2 and 3, and in any case this is not the place to thoroughly
discuss—and critique—Brenner’s approach to Mexico. 39 Suffi ce it is to
say at this point that this approach corresponded remarkably well to
Eisenstein’s own ideas and understanding of Mexico, its art, and of art
in general. Brenner herself became, upon her return to Mexico on her
honeymoon in 1930, one of Eisenstein’s favorite conversation partners in
42 : chapter one