In January 1914, Pancho Villa became Hollywood's first Mexican superstar when he signed an exclusive contract with the Mutual Film Corporation. In return for $25,000, he agreed to keep other film companies from his battlefield, to fight in daylight whenever possible, and to reconstruct battles if the footage needed reshooting.
Now the subject of an HBO film starring Antonio Banderas (And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself), Villa is one of the main protagonists in Margarita de Orellana's vivid account of the American movie industry's fascination with the events of the Mexican Revolution. Through memoir accounts, newspaper reports, and analysis of the films themselves, Filming Pancho reveals much about how Mexico was constructed in the American imagination and how the film images reinforced and justified American expansionism and racial and social prejudices....
