COLLECTIONS

Holdings.

The Archive's holdings include large collections of advertising material:  posters, lobby cards, window cards, handbills; scene and production stills, photographic negatives and prints, transparencies; publicity materials addressed to distributors and exhibitors, and other related items.  It also holds a large array of periodical publications and magazines published in Mexico, as well as some historical artifacts.  All fictional genres of Mexican cinema are represented: comedy, rural and urban dramas; action and adventure; historical and religious; horror and science fiction, etc.  The majority of items on file correspond to the period that extends from 1931 to 1991.  The Archive does not hold a film library in large formats (16mm or 35mm).

Special collections.

Besides de above mentioned collections, the Archive contains special sets of documents/artifacts.  A key resource is the Clasa-Mohme Papers and Records, which is a group of original documents belonging to one of the most important U.S. distributors of Mexican films.  These papers and records cover the years 1942-1960 and contain the business correspondence of Clasa-Mohme's office in San Antonio, Texas. Also included are the box-office reports for many Spanish-language theatres, most of them located in Texas.  Non-theatrical records, of academic and religious institutions that showed Mexican movies, are likewise part of this collection.

Other special items came from the estates of Mexican film producer Jesüs Grovas; Mr. Rudolph Calles (nephew of film pioneer Guillermo Calles's); actor/director Carlos Villatoro; actress Esther Fernández, and entertainer Lita Enhart.

In addition, records of interviews made by Agrasánchez are kept.  Among the interviewees are: directors Alejandro Galindo and Alfredo Crevenna; actors Roberto Cañedo, Tito Guízar, Esther Fernández, Lupita Tovar and Lilia del Valle; producer/director Raúl de Anda; producer/director Miguel Zacarías and his son, Arq. Miguel Zacarías Jr.; producer Rogelio Agrasánchez Sr.; researcher and author David Maciel, etc.  Also, interviews to several movie poster artists and his relatives are in record:  Marco Antonio Echeverría, Leopoldo Mendoza and his wife; Armando Martínez Cacho, Ruy Renau (Josep Renau's son), and others.

Interesting as well is a collection of more than 1,000 photographs taken by noted Mexican artist Jesús Magaña, which offers a unique glimpse into the world of movie actors and stage performers of 1970s.

Finally, a painstakingly compiled set of production stills and behind-the-scenes shots of actors, directors, producers, staff and journalists tell its own story about the activities of several Mexican film studios from the 1930s to the 1980s. 

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