Russian Immigration To Mexico - Russians in The Development of The Mexican Film Industry

Russians in The Development of The Mexican Film Industry

In October 1930 the famous Soviet era Movie Director Sergei Einsenstein with the sponsorship of American socialist author Upton Sinclair, begin a tour along Mexico that will produce various legendary films, among the best foreign ones ever produced about the country.

Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico. The trip to Mexico was for Eisenstein to make a film produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, and three other investors organized as the "Mexican Film Trust".

The title for the principal project, ¡Que viva México!, was decided on some time later still. While in Mexico Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general, and they inspired Eisenstein to call his films "moving frescoes".

In mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corporation. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative left by Einseinstein — at the Sinclairs' expense — and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature films and a short subject — Thunder Over Mexico based on the "Maguey" footage, Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934.

Arcady Arcadievic Boytler Rososky (August 31, 1895 – November 24, 1965) was a producer, screenwriter, and director most renowned for his films during the golden age of Mexican cinema.

Boytler was born in Moscow, Russia. During the 1920s, he started filming silent comedies. A collaborator of Sergei Eisenstein, he was called "the Russian Rooster" when he came to Mexico to film La mujer del puerto (1933). In 1937 he filmed Así es mi tierra, which followed the model of Fernando de Fuentes's classic Allá en el Rancho Grande. However, the film subverted the Mexican Revolutionary genre by making the general into the villain.

He died in the Mexican Federal District of heart disease.

Mario Moreno "Cantinflas", the Mexican Columbia Picture movie star, married Valentina Ivanova Zubareff, a Circus dancer and actress of Russian ethnicity, on October 27, 1936, and remained with her until her death in January 1966. During their marriage they both parented through adoption Mario Arturo Moreno-Ivanova, only son of the Actor. In August 2011 the Journalist Mario Palmieri revealed in an article that Mario Moreno-Ivanova, that was long time believed to be adoptive son of Mario Moreno was indeed extramarital son of him with the Texan actress Marion Roberts.

On December 1981, some friends offered a special dinner to the legendary Mexican Diva of the French Movie industry Maria Felix, in Paris, where she met Antoine Tzapoff, descendent of Russian immigrants and 20 years younger than her. With him she shared the last years of her life. Maria and Antoine traveled together all along the Mexican Republic. He made painting exhibitions about the Mexican Indians, they also traveled to Valencia, España and on March 13, 1997, his paintings were exhibited at Paris under the name "When dance becomes a Rite"

In 1988 Sergio Olhovsky, elder son of the Engineer, a movie director, clearly inspired in Einseinstein Mexico's tour work, but that also received a lot of influence from the work of the Spanish Director Luis Buñuel, also exiled in Mexico at the end of 1930s, became awarded with his film "Esperanza" (Hope), a Mexican Russian production about the life of his father.