The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema. Jason Wood

The successes of Amores Perros and Y tu mama tambien alerted the eyes of the world to the riches to be found in Mexican cinema, from the talents of directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Alfonso Cuaron to the poster-boy looks and electrifying screen presence of Gael Garcia Bernal. Their rise to prominence, abetted by a new entrepreneurial spirit amongst Mexican financiers and producers, coincided with an emerging generation of Mexican cinemagoers thirsting for intelligent, identity-affirming, locally-made product. Having endured a period of relative famine throughout the eighties and nineties, Mexican audiences once more had a national cinema to shout about, and the global audience and Hollywood too had to sit up and take notice. Jason Wood's book, compounded of extensive interviews with all the key figures of the buena onda, edited into an 'oral history' narrative interspersed with linking prose - offers a hugely insightful look at Mexico's film culture, tracing its recent successes back to key historical antecedents, and to the social, political, technical and individual and collective creative forces that helped give birth to it.