Mexican Cinema Luminaries

Mimi Derba was one of the great divas of revue in Mexico. When Mexican cinema was taking its first steps towards industrialization, she founded the production company Azteca Films together with the filmmaker Enrique Rosas and the revolutionary general Pablo González. 

That same year, she produced, directed and starred in La Tigresa, thus becoming the first female film director in Mexico. Later, she resumed acting, having unforgettable appearances in some of the most important films in Mexican cinema.

Matilde Soto Landeta joined the Mexican cinema as a "script girl" in the 1930s and worked as an assistant to directors such as Emilio el Indio Fernández, Julio Bracho and Roberto Gavaldón. 

She joined television and continued to work in films as a screenwriter; in 1957 she won an Ariel for the screenplay for El camino de la vida (Alfonso Corona Blake). She was only able to direct again until 1991, when she brought the film Nocturno a Rosario to the screen.

Janet Reisenfield made her debut in Mexican cinema in 1938, participating in a musical number in the film Una luz en mi camino (José Bohr) and the following year she obtained a role in the film Café Concordia (Alberto Gout). 

Later, she stood out as a screenwriter and adapter in more than eighty films, including those by director Luis Buñuel: El gran calavera (1949) and La hija del engaño (1951).

She is the most famous comic book author in Mexico thanks to her famous Memín Pinguín and the popular Lágrimas y risas. For years, she was the most widely read Mexican writer with works that she adapted into film and television scripts such as: María Isabel, Yesenia and Rubí.

Vargas Dulche was part of the cinema union in the Authors and Adapters branch, she was a scriptwriter for films such as: Idilio, Ladronzuela y Cinco rostros de mujer, an Ariel-winning film in 1948.

Consuelo Velázquez was a great composer and pianist from Jalisco, famous for the international hit Bésame mucho. 

She was part of the National Symphony Orchestra and joined the Mexican cinema as a composer of many popular songs such as the funny Yo no fui, interpreted by Pedro Infante in the movie ¡A.T.M.! (Ismael Rodríguez, 1951).

Gloria Schoemann is, without a doubt, the most important film editor of the "golden age" of Mexican cinema, far surpassing the 15 male colleagues with whom she shared the profession, according to the union registry. 

She entered the cinema in 1938 and was responsible for the assembly of more than two hundred films, including: María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943), Distinto amanecer (Julio Bracho, 1943), Dos tipos de cuidado (Ismael Rodríguez, 1953) and Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1959).

Dolores Camarillo was an important supporting actress and film makeup artist, being one of the pioneers in this profession in Mexico, accumulating more than one hundred titles behind the camera between 1935 and 1980. 

As an actress, she surpassed 120 films in this same period, also dabbling in the nascent television. One of his most memorable appearances was alongside Mario Moreno Cantinflas in Ahí está el detalle (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1940).

Antonia Cortés worked in the Mexican cinema as Head of Costume since 1944. Even this department in the union was occupied, for the most part, by men, with only four women out of twelve professionals. 

Antonia was responsible for dressing the most important stars of our cinema and was responsible for dream outfits such as those made for Jorge Negrete and Gloria Marín in Una carta de amor (1943) or those made for Mapy Cortés and all the cast of  El globo de Cantolla (1943).

Little is known about this pioneer still photographer in Mexican cinema. In 1966, she became the first woman with this screen credit in El imperio de Drácula (Federico Curiel). 

In other words, women could not work as cinematographers, lighting designers, assistants or camera operators, nor as still photographers.