Emblematic Elusions: A Glimpse into Archivo Jotxs - Special Edition IV

"This fourth and bilingual edition of Emblematic Elusions casts its eye toward Mexican cinema’s queer undercurrent with Archivo Jotxs, a research archive based in Mexico City that traces 700+ films revealing the presence and erasure of non-heterosexual, non-binary, and trans identities on screen. Across three seminal film essays: Machos (1990, Enrique Gómez Vadillo), Una Rata en la Oscuridad (1979, Alfredo Salazar), and Bramadero (2007, Julián Hernández), this edition dissects the spectral and the erotic as cinematic languages of both resistance and repression. Iñaki Mori fills a critical gap in Mexican film studies, offering a rare and robust history of a neglected cinema. From Enrique Gómez Vadillo’s subversion of the ‘cine de ficheras’ genre, to Alfredo Salazar’s sapphic horror, to Julián Hernández’s tender reimagining of gay intimacy—these texts unearth the contradictions that have shaped Mexican cinema’s negotiation of sexuality, colorism, nationalism, and class. The pages of Emblematic Elusions IV unfold as a site of cinematic recovery and queer historiography foregrounding lost, censored, and maligned works that expand who has the right to look (and to desire) in Latin American film."