"Excavating previously marginalized histories of Spanish-language film culture in the United States and painstakingly tracing its transnational connections, the exhaustively researched anthology Cinema Between Latin America and Los Angeles embodies the most exciting directions in film and media studies today. The volume’s essays offer rich, fine-grained studies of the local informed by international perspectives, considering the political economy of Spanish-language production and distribution, the forging of film publics, and the cross-pollination between cinema and entertainments like musical theater, popular song, and even contemporary fusions of lucha libre and performance art. Deftly rendering the complexities of cross-border exchanges and the role of film consumption in shaping social identities, Cinema Between Latin America and Los Angeles unearths forgotten but fascinating precursors of today's vibrant Latino and Spanish-language media."
~Rielle Navitski, coeditor of Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960
"With essays on previously unstudied production and distribution companies, Mexican producers’ attempts to appeal to U.S. audiences, Spanish-language cinema, Edwin Carewe’s Ramona (1928), Mexican teatro de revista, and the Mayan Theater this volume makes a compelling case for viewing Los Angeles as a crossroads for Latin American (especially Mexican) cinema. The authors’ transnational perspective allows them to trace the history of a film culture shaped by intermediality, migration, and vibrant border crossing entertainment cultures. The essays in this volume offer nothing less than a prehistory of Latino media."
~Laura Isabel Serna, author of Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture
"Highly recommended."
~Choice
"Cinema between Latin America and Los Angeles: Origins to 1960 is not just ‘another book about cinema’, but an original, eclectic and to some extent brave contribution to the field. Instead of limiting itself to an audience of film scholars and historians, the book widens its scope to cinema aficionados interested in knowing about the presence and the essence of Spanish- language films up to 1960."
~Bulletin of Spanish Studies
