Cineteca Nacional
Av. México Coyoacán 389, Xoco, Benito Juárez, 03330 Ciudad de México, CDMX
55 4155 1200
https://www.cinetecanacional.net
If you’re visiting from out of town and are scouting around Mexico City for cultural and exciting things to do, going to see a movie might not sound like an ideal part of your schedule, after all, you can go to the movies back home, right? But a trip to the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City is more than just going to watch a movie. There’s the amazing architecture for starters, a futuristic honeycomb-like structure that covers the main garden and was part of architect Michel Rojkind’s renovation in 2012, which cost $387 million pesos. There’s the courtyard of the Cineteca that has restaurants and a couple of shops that sell movie T-shirts, posters, and DVD’s, as well as every type of puzzles and board games. Recently, the Cineteca has added La Terraza to its repertoire of establishments, La Terraza is a bar on one of the second floors that serves alcohol and plays jazz music, presumably while you wait for your movie to start, of to have yourself a nightcap after your movie has ended. The Cineteca Nacional has tried to make the movie-going experience as pleasurable as possible.
Then there are the movie screenings, which are not your normal corporate multiplex regular movie fare, but a carefully curated selection that presents the most innovative and cutting-edge cinema from around the world. The Cineteca is known to also present movie collections based on a country or genre. It features the year’s art and indie cinema new releases but also shows old classics or retrospective collections about a specific filmmaker, like projecting in pristine video and audio the works of Martin Scorsese, or David Lynch. The Cineteca Nacional is designed to be enjoyed even if you’re not an indie film nut, but if you are then it really increases your enjoyment of this place, some of the movies it shows are hard to find anywhere, even online. There are 10 theater rooms on location (11 if you count the open-air movie projection space) and all of them are equipped with the best video and audio technology in order to be able to compete with the other multiplexes like Cinépolis and Cinemex. Tickets cost $60 pesos.
The Cineteca Nacional is also known for its archive and restoration work of old historical film works, it’s the only Digital Restoration Laboratory in Latin America and holds in its power more than 15,000 titles from around the world and 330,000 cinematic artifacts. The Cineteca is truly dedicated to preserving and promoting cinema in Mexico, there’s a good chance that anybody will have a wonderful time when they visit this mecca of world cinema.
