Sunday, January 5, 2020: 4:30 PM
Chelsea (Sheraton New York)
Jaime Pensado, University of Notre Dame
This paper examines the Catholic cinematic movement of Emma Ziegler in Mexico. The evolution of her thinking is particularly important because, even though her performance as a president of the Mexican Female Catholic Youth (JCFM) did not stand out during the 1940s, her role of national representative of the International Catholic Office for Cinema was much more influentiala decade later. As one of the main leaders of this organization, she reinforced innovative relationships with cinematographic groups in France, Argentina, Peru and, particularly, Cuba, where the OCIC organized powerful campaigns on liberal catholic awareness. In Mexico and in her capacity as one of the founders of the Center for Cinema Orientation Pio XI, Ziegler criticized the Church’s moralizing campaigns. Relying on the new liberal discourse about films that the publication of Pius XII’s papal encyclical Miranda Prorsus engendered, she pressured ecclesiastical authorities to appreciate the importance of films. In her view, not only did this medium had the capacity to form or deform the souls of the nation’s youth, it also had the power to change the political and moral course of their lives.
The goal of orienting the people’s consciousness that Ziegler assumed was not easy because she had to confront different individuals both inside and outside of the Church who all competed for control over the national art of creating cinema. She accused the state authorities responsible for national movies of cinematographic illiteracy. At the same time, she criticized key religious authorities for failing to appreciate the new leadership that secular women like her had assumed. Finally, Ziegler openly criticized the directors who sought to film the Mexican youth of the time. She accused some of them of fostering licentiousness and Marxist propaganda among the youth and congratulated others on spreading a catholic message through their films.
