New York's El Museo presents an exhibition about Gabriel Figueroa, among the most important cinematographers of the so-called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Figueroa worked with leading directors from Mexico, the United States and Europe, traversing a wide range of genres while maintaining his distinctive and vivid visual style.

In the 1930s, Figueroa was part of a vibrant community of artists in many media, including Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Edward Weston and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who sought to convey the country’s transformation following the trauma of the Mexican Revolution. Later, he adapted his approach to the very different sensibilities of directors Luis Buñuel and John Huston, among others. Figueroa spoke of creating una imágen mexicana, a Mexican image. His films are an essential part of the network of appropriations, exchanges and reinterpretations that formed Mexican visual identity and visual culture in the mid-twentieth century and beyond.

In addition, the exhibition includes work by other artists and filmmakers from the period such as Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Edward Weston, and Tina Modotti that draw from the vast inventory of distinctly Mexican imagery associated with Figueroa’s cinematography or were heavily influenced by his vision.

New York: March 4 - June 27.  Details on El Museo's website.

Dürer’s Rhinoceros, a 41-minute film by Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez, is playing at the San Francisco Art Institute as part of the exhibit JAVIER TÉLLEZ: GAMES ARE FORBIDDEN IN THE LABYRINTH.

Dürer’s Rhinoceros is set within the panopticon of Hospital Miguel Bombarda in Lisbon, collaborating with psychiatric outpatients who form the film’s cast. Following the original architectural plans of Jeremy Bentham for a panoptic institution, the prison housed the criminally insane, and was in continuous operation from 1896 until 2000, when it was converted into a museum. Téllez conducted a series of workshops with the patients in advance of filming that led them to enact fictional everyday scenarios within the cells. The dramatic fragmentation of these sequences is set against a series of voiceovers quoting from Plato’s Cave, Jeremy Bentham’s letter on the panopticon, Kafka’s short story “The Burrow,” and a patient’s imagined account of life inside the institution.

Read an interview with Téllez in Remezcla.

San Francisco: Sept. 9 - Dec. 13 at the San Francisco Art Institute.