The Other Theaters: Cinema Built in Plazas, Museums, and Schools of the Mixteca | Oaxaca Blog · Qué Onda Oaxaca
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Foto: cortesía Cine Mixteca
Blog8 min de lectura4 de noviembre de 2026
The Other Theaters: Cinema Built in Plazas, Museums, and Schools of the Mixteca
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Cine Mixteca brings free Mexican cinema to plazas, museums, and schools in over 20 Mixteca communities. Their story, challenges, and how to support them.
In the Mixteca, a film screening starts long before the lights go down. It starts when someone from the community shows up with a pot of homemade popcorn, when an older man helps arrange chairs in the plaza, when a group of kids sits on the floor up front. Nobody says it out loud, but their presence makes it clear: this screen is theirs too.
That's Cine Mixteca, also known as the Muestra de Cine de la Mixteca (Mixteca Film Festival): a project that since 2022 has been bringing Mexican, independent, and Oaxacan cinema to places never designed as movie theaters. Plazas, cultural centers, museums, schools, even restaurants. They call them "the other theaters."Cine Mixteca screening outdoors in a public space, with the audience seated facing the screen. Photo: courtesy Cine Mixteca
An oasis in one of Mexico's most forgotten regions
It has to be said plainly: Oaxaca is a state with deep structural inequalities, and the Mixteca is one of the poorest regions in the country. Here, culture is almost never on anyone's priority list.
In Huajuapan de León, the region's largest city, for years there was a single movie theater, and even its programming lagged behind. For Noli, co-founder of Cine Mixteca, seeing a new release as a child meant three or four hours on the road to Oaxaca City, or a little less to Tehuacán. That distance was more than kilometers — it was a wall.
I know that feeling a bit myself. I spent time in the Mixteca studying at the UTM, just outside Huajuapan, and yes — if you wanted cinema, there was one place, with a poor, entirely commercial lineup. Oaxacan cinema, never. Latin American, nope. Independent? Forget it. My cinephilia back then was built on Cuevana and Russian websites where you were more likely to catch malware than find a Mexican independent film. So it means something to know that Acatlima has since been a Cine Mixteca venue.
Noli puts it well: there's an assumption that people in small towns aren't interested in independent or auteur cinema. Cine Mixteca has spent four years proving otherwise. Of course they can't be interested in something they've never had access to. That's exactly why a project like this is an oasis — not the kind that appears in a photo and vanishes from your feed, but one that returns every year, strengthening the social fabric one screening at a time.
A library, a VHS, and a grandmother with pirated movies
The story starts in the children's room of the Huajuapan Municipal Library, where Noli's mother worked and where she'd leave Nohelí Morales while she was on shift. The library rented VHS tapes; when the catalog ran out, they'd go to the video store, and once or twice a year, if they were lucky, they'd travel to see a new release. Then the grandmother arrived from Mexico City with pirated movies, and Noli would watch them with her cousins and friends so they could talk about them afterward.
"Without really knowing that all of this would have a name one day," Noli says.
Leaving and coming back
At 18, after her cousin was murdered, Noli broke with Huajuapan. She left for Mexico City without a plan, through a lot of financial struggle, to study university — left as if she didn't want to return. She spent nine years there, worked, studied communications, and started watching a lot of Mexican independent cinema.
She came back during the pandemic, and something healed. Before returning, she had watched Banda, a documentary by Carlos Armella about the dilemma of leaving to pursue your dreams versus staying where you grew up, at the Cineteca Nacional. She felt that film needed to be seen in Oaxaca. Around that time she got involved with Verano Cine and grasped something key: you don't need a theater or 5.1 surround sound to show a film.
She arrived back in Huajuapan and found there was still only one cinema. So she asked herself what would happen if she just brought a couple of movies, with no budget, with barely enough for printing, photocopies, and banners.
"Coming back is feeling that something that walked with me might have a small chance of changing something in someone."
From five screenings to over 20 municipalities
The first festival was in December 2022, entirely self-organized. The open call received 97 films, mostly shorts. There were five screenings — including Banda — and over 200 people. There was an audience hungry for a different kind of cinema.
▸2023: eight municipalities, 10 feature films, 22 shorts, and three workshops. Programming almost entirely Oaxacan, with films in Spanish, Mixtec, and Mixe, and half the features directed by women. In Teposcolula they held a cinema-concert that was so well-received that Tamazulápam wanted to replicate it with its own band.
▸2024: 12 municipalities and 100% Mexican cinema, with a cinema-concert of archival Oaxacan footage with live musical accompaniment. Venues included Huajuapan, Tlaxiaco, Teposcolula, Nochixtlán, Tamazulápam, Chazumba, and Tehuacán.
▸2025: the fourth edition opened in Tehuacán with No nos moverán, by Pierre Saint-Martin, about 1968, then moved through Acatlima, Santiago Chazumba, Corral de Piedra, La Junta, San Andrés Dinicuiti, Santo Domingo Tonalá, Tamazulápam, Teposcolula, and Huajuapan. There was a seminar on Indigenous peoples' cinema and a workshop with a name that says it all: "Making Cinema with What You Have."
▸2026: fifth edition. If you missed it (like we did — oops), mark your calendar for the sixth.
Between editions, the project doesn't go dark. They participated in the opening of Cinema 1812 in Huajuapan, with free screenings through 2024. Today they maintain a biweekly cineclub at theRegional Museum of Huajuapan (MureH), and a new offshoot has sprouted: Pitaya Cine, carrying screenings beyond the region. In total, Cine Mixteca has reached over 20 municipalities — and everything is free.
Film screening at the Regional Museum of Huajuapan (MureH), home of the biweekly cineclub. Photo: courtesy Cine Mixteca
"I don't know what tree grows horizontally," Noli has said, "but I do believe Cine Mixteca is growing — horizontally, and with great care."
What gets screened (and what doesn't)
Behind every screening there's a principle that's almost a manifesto: avoid narratives of explicit violence and choose stories that speak to the realities of these communities. Like Ãaa' ñuudoo' naa (Mujer que es escuchada / Woman Who Is Heard), a short made by a group of women in a Mixtec community video workshop about the inequalities women in the region face. Or shorts in Mixtec, Oaxacan documentaries, and Mexican films that circulate in festivals but would never make it onto a commercial screen in the region.
And yes, sometimes not everyone loves everything. Once they screened El prototipo, an experimental film by Bruno Varela that won at the UNAM film festival, and some people got up and left. For Noli, that's fine too: for one person that mix of images and sounds can feel like "a brain massage" and for another it's chaos that overwhelms them, and they have every right to leave. What matters is the conversation that follows.
Her favorite thing to hear after a screening — the line that makes it all worth it: "I had never seen anything like that."
Building community, not just showing a movie
At one of the first screenings, Noli announced: "We're going to watch five short films." Someone raised their hand: "I don't know what a short film is." From then on, the team stopped using words that widen the gap between cinema and the audience. They explain what they do and why they do it — no festival-speak, no pretension.
Because that's what Cine Mixteca is: not a team that shows up, plays a video, and leaves. They also run workshops for children, young people, and general audiences, because building audiences means opening the possibility of imagining different stories and, someday, telling your own. "There was a time when we needed translations for what was being said about us," Noli has said. "Today we can narrate our own stories."
Children at a Cine Mixteca screening inside a school. Building audiences is also opening new ways of seeing. Photo: courtesy Cine Mixteca
What she enjoys most about the project is "the intangible." A lot of people don't say anything when they leave a screening, but they say it in other ways: by arranging chairs, bringing popcorn, even traveling from one community to another to catch the next one. "There's a genuine sense of gratitude and ownership of the project — not expressed in words, but in actions."
That's the most important thing the communities have taught them: that to keep walking, you have to share.
The hard part
The hardest thing hasn't been the distances or the equipment. It's been municipal governments. Cine Mixteca doesn't ask for much: a space to screen. Even so, interest is low and there have been active obstacles. "When there's no spotlight on them, they're not interested. Culture is rarely on their agenda."
Add the usual: a small team, volunteers, resources that just barely cover getting to each community once a year, and the fear that at every screening, people won't show up. Support from FOCINE and IMCINE has been critical for growing without charging admission, because any economic barrier — no matter how symbolic — is one more obstacle. And nobody's getting rich here: "I don't live off this and I don't think I'd want to," Noli has said. "What makes this project so rich is the team's genuine interest in sharing cinema."
Nohelí Morales with the volunteer and collaborator team of Cine Mixteca. Photo: courtesy Cine Mixteca
A free project, traveling to municipalities without a single proper theater, building audiences and running on pure will — it shouldn't have to fight for a plaza.
What Cine Mixteca dreams of
Being a window not just to Mexican cinema but to Latin American cinema too. Reaching more municipalities. Having communities take ownership of the project. Closing the distance between cinema and those who watch it. And, despite the system, always finding time to keep it going.
"Cine Mixteca is a root that germinates. We haven't run out of desire to keep doing this, and culture should be on the agenda of every government body."
We get it, from here
At Qué Onda Oaxaca, we know something about what this costs. Years ago I started Cinema Yëk Uk, a cineclub that eventually became something else; it's still alive today, as a space for short film reviews. Later, in Atzompa where I live, Cine Poo was born — a new attempt to organize small screenings with what's available: a wall, a screen, some old speakers, the help of friends and family, and a lot of passion. It's sporadic, because this project takes up most of my energy, alongside everything else I do to get by. I do it whenever I can. I wrote about how it all started in How Qué Onda Oaxaca Was Born.
That's why I know a project like Cine Mixteca doesn't survive on applause alone. Showing cinema in a community means pulling a lot of threads at the same time: permits, equipment, transportation, programming, outreach, volunteers. And in the end it's not about projecting a film and leaving — it's about adding a small thread to the social fabric of a place.
At Qué Onda Oaxaca, we believe stories and projects like this deserve more than just applause. They deserve to be supported.
How to support Cine Mixteca
Five editions in, Cine Mixteca is still standing — and in the Mixteca, that already says a lot. But every edition starts almost from scratch: finding venues, convincing authorities, moving equipment, gathering volunteers. Whether there's a sixth edition depends partly on people finding out, showing up, and making it their own.
So from here: respect to Cine Mixteca, and see you at the next one.
▸Follow them onFacebook to hear about the next edition and the biweekly MureH cineclub.
▸Go to a screening and bring someone. They're free, and nothing says more to a project like this than a full plaza.
▸Share this. If you have family or friends in the Mixteca, send them this article.
▸If you live in the region and have a space (a plaza, a school, a cultural center), reach out to them so they can come to your community.
▸If you're a municipal authority: help them out by lending a space — it's the only thing they ask.
Frequently asked questions
What is Cine Mixteca?
It's the Muestra de Cine de la Mixteca — a project that since 2022 has been bringing Mexican, independent, and Oaxacan cinema to plazas, schools, museums, and cultural centers in the Mixteca. It has reached over 20 municipalities.
Are Cine Mixteca screenings free?
Yes. All their screenings and workshops are free.
Where can I watch films with Cine Mixteca outside the festival?
By going to their screenings, sharing their programming, and — if you live in the Mixteca — offering a space for them to come to your community.
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— mish Dary :)
I'm Mish Dary — 'Dary' in the Mixe language — from San Juan Juquila Mixes, a small mountain village in Oaxaca. I was on track to become a priest, ended up as a mechatronics engineer and total nerd, and somehow landed here writing about mole, calendas, and concerts in borrowed courtyards. I built Qué Onda Oaxaca with my own hands — a meeting point and a little bridge so everyone can enjoy this land. No curated culture for the few: I'll tell you about an opening with free wine just as gladly as a mayordomía at 3 a.m. Passionate about cinema (@cineyekuk), making videos, parties, and mezcal.
