The Vengeance of Pancho Villa (1935): Commemoration of the Mexican Revolution November 20, 2008

Cervantes Center of Arts & Letters
and the Mexican Film Institute presents

A rare screening of the restored silent film
"The Vengeance of Pancho Villa" (1935)

A compilation about the life and exploits of the Mexican revolutionary leader General Francisco "Pancho" Villa produced from newsreels and fictional footage assembled and edited by itinerant exhibitors Felix and Edmundo Padilla, who traveled and presented films extensively throughout the Mexico-U.S. border between 1925 and 1937.

The Padillas were based in Cudad Juarez (Mexico) and later moved to El Paso (Texas). Felix collected and exhibited many films that had the Mexican Revolution as a background. To edit the film the Padilla’s drew footage from fiction films and newsreels featuring the real Pancho Villa who had a film contract with Mutual Film Corporation.

Some of these film sources included:
Liberty (Universal Film Manufacturing Co. 1916),
Lieutenant Danny, U.S.A (Triangle Film Co, 1916),
The Life of General Villa (Mutual Film Co, 1914) and
“Historia de la Revolución Mexicana” (Producciones Julio Lamadrid, 1928).

Felix Padilla wrote and filmed bi-lingual intertitles for the film, and in 1930 shot several sequences in El Paso, including a recreation of Villa’s assassination, using local actors. The Padilla’s created their own lobby cards, poster advertisements, and hand-cranked phonograph musical accompaniment for the film, which was presented in the form of different versions that were often screened to the same audiences.

The earliest of these were La Venganza del Guerrillero, (The Vengeance of the Guerrilla Fighter) or El Vengador de la Raza, (The Common People Avenger). When Felix Padilla died in 1935, his son Edmundo continued his father’s project, re-editing the film to its present form as La Venganza de Pancho Villa (Pancho Villa’s Revenge).

The six reels comprising this film were discovered in a vault at the University of Texas, El Paso in 2001 by filmmaker Gregorio Rocha. The original nitrate positive print donated to UTEP by Edmundo’s daughter, Magdalena Arias of El Paso, Texas, has been restored and English intertitles have been inserted where only Spanish intertitles were present.

Closing credit : AFI/Edmundo Padilla Collection, El Paso, Texas. Preserved by the American Film Institute at L’Immagine Ritrovata Film Lab, Bologna, Italy.

Funding provided by the Film Foundation.

http://www.milliondollartheater.com/PanchoVilla.html

Official Website: http://www.milliondollartheater.com/PanchoVilla.html