85 minutes
Join us in the lobby at 6:00 PM for a festival reception catered by Baba’s (with wine and NA drinks)
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and starring his mother as the titular Doña Herlinda, this little-known Mexican romantic comedy follows the relationship between neurosurgeon Rodolfo and musician Ramón, who try to keep their queerness hidden as they navigate structures of class and sexuality in 1980s Mexico. But Doña Herlinda has other love plans for her son.
Film Notes by Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro
Doña Herlinda y su hijo, inspired by Jorge López Páez’s story, is the best-known and most internationally disseminated early work of Mexican gay cinema, a theme that would fully emerge in Mexican cinema sometime later. Filmed in Guadalajara, a city once characterized by its extreme conservatism, the film uses corrosive humour and a subtle ambivalence to attack prevailing family values. However, not even a filmmaker with the maturity of Hermosillo could move away from representing women simply as the means of biological reproduction, in this case, for the ultimate gratification of a homosexual couple. They have unflinching support from one of their mothers, a role played by Mrs. Guadalupe Gómez del Toro, the real life mother of the renowned filmmaker and writer Guillermo del Toro, who collaborated on the film as production manager and even appears briefly as a supporting character. The film was blown up to 35mm and was consequently distributed in commercial cinemas, both in Mexico and abroad.
Copy from Filmoteca UNAM. Restored in 2018 by Filmoteca de la UNAM, from the original 16mm negative and a 35mm dupe negative.
Presented by Archives on Screen
Archives on Screen (AoS) brings rare, unseen archival films from around the globe to Minnesota. Co-founded in 2022 by Michelle Baroody and Maggie Hennefeld, AoS has worked with international film archives and local film venues to expose students, diverse audiences, and underserved populations to the richness of cinema history. We screen everything from silent films to contemporary features, focusing primarily on counter-cinemas, such as feminist and queer films, world cinema, and anti-colonial productions. Our events facilitate public education, community engagement, and open conversation about how the archives of film history can help us to imagine different worlds and alternative futures. Archives on Screen’s flagship program, Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour, is a curated selection of films from Il Cinema Ritrovato, an annual international film festival that exhibits new restorations and rediscovered films in Bologna, Italy every summer. We also host a quarterly screening series at the Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis and regular screenings at the Heights Theater and other local venues. Learn more about Archives on Screen at archivesonscreen.org
Relased 1982
Directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo