ABSTRACT
Following recent shifts in ecomedia studies, this chapter puts forth a panoramic reading of the material realities of Mexican cinema. It touches on the history of film funding and distribution in Mexico, the relationship of state-sponsored cultural production to oil extraction in a country that relies on a nationalized oil industry for 40% of its operating revenue, the rural–urban divide in access to film exhibition spaces, the class divide of the same, the increase in personal electronics and e-waste, and potential alternatives to traditional film distribution through the case of Cine Móvil ToTo. Along the way, it interrogates how cinema and oil might be disentangled, and how this unraveling necessitates the imagining and building of new forms of infrastructure for the post-oil era.
