Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema

Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr. of Harlingen, Texas is a collector of Mexican movie materials and an expert on vintage cine mexicano materials. He is the owner and curator of the Agrasánchez Film Archive in Harlingen, the world’s largest private collection of its kind. The Agrasánchez Film Archive’s holdings include 1,400 movies, 2,000 posters, 12,000 lobby cards, and 60,000 still photographs originally produced and distributed by major Mexican film companies such as Azteca Films, Inc. and Clasa-Mohme, Inc. Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr. now holds the rights to many of these materials.

It was his father, Rogelio Agrasánchez, Sr., who introduced Agrasánchez, Jr. to the world of cine mexicano. His father worked in movie production and distribution in Mexico and Texas from the 1960s through the 1980s, and three of Agrasánchez, Jr.’s brothers were actors in many of the films their father produced. Late in his career, when independent film production in Mexico became difficult, Agrasánchez, Sr. began collecting and preserving the treasures of Mexican cinema. He started acquiring film negatives of many of the classic movies and transferring them to video to be shown on Spanish-language television stations. It was at this time that Agrasánchez, Jr. began to take an interest in his fathers work in Mexican cinema. As a graduate student at the University of Texas in the late 1980s, he started to appreciate his father’s preservation initiative as he watched the video copies of these classic films.

Agrasánchez, Jr. began collecting Mexican movie memorabilia while working on his Ph.D. in Latin American Studies, when he received a set of old Mexican movie posters from his younger brother Julio, an actor in several of the wrestler films produced by his father. As his brother brought him more posters the collection grew, and he decided to search for film publicity materials on his own. Agrasánchez, Jr. traveled to Mexico City to view the poster collection at the Cineteca Nacional (national film archive). He discovered that a 1982 fire had destroyed many of the materials there, and what was left was uncatalogued. While there Agrasánchez, Jr. spoke with the few poster artists who were still living, and they explained some of the design and production process to him. He also visited the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City and in their vault found piles of materials that had been sent there when Azteca Films closed their U.S. offices. He was told he could take what he wanted of the posters, lobby cards, stills, and scripts, thus adding to his growing cine mexicano collection.

While at U.T. Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr. also met Charles Ramírez Berg, a professor in the Department of Radio, Television, and Film, who was looking for material for his course on the history of Mexican cinema. Ramírez Bergpersuaded Agrasánchez, Jr. to turn his poster art collection into an archive, and the pair collaborated on two books showcasing hundreds of images of select samples of the cine mexicano posters, complete with narrative about the films’ plots, movie stars, and impacts on Mexican film history. Together they created Carteles de la epoca de oro del cine mexicano = Poster Art from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (published in 1997 by Agrasánchez himself in collaboration with the Universidad de Guadalajara and the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía) and Cine Mexicano: Poster Art from the Golden Age, 1936-1956 = Carteles de la época de oro, 1936-1956 (published in 2001 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco).

Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr. also authored several books on his own including: Mexican Horror Cinema: Posters from Mexican Fantasy Films = Cine mexicano de horror: carteles del cine fantástico mexicano (Agrasánchez Film Archive, 1999), Miguel Zacarias: creador de estrellas (Universidad de Guadalajara; Agrasánchez Film Archive, 2000), Beauties of Mexican Cinema = Bellezas del cine mexicano (Agrasánchez Film Archive, 2001), and Mexican Movies in the United States: a History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920-1960(McFarland and Co., 2006).

Works Referenced:

Agrasánchez, Rogelio. Cine Mexicano de Horror: Carteles del Cine Fantástico Mexicano. Harlingen, Tex.: Archivo Filmco Agrasánchez, 1999.

Agrasánchez, Rogelio and Charles Ramírez Berg. Cine Mexicano: Poster Art from the Golden Age, 1936-1956 = Carteles de la Época de Oro, 1936-1956. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.

Nafus, Charles. "Screens: Poster Art of Mexican Cinema." The Austin Chronicle, 9 Jul. 1998.