Celluloid Chic.

Mexico's top film studios gear up for another golden age.

FOR A FAMOUS FILM DIRECTOR, EATING in the studio canteen with cast and crew might be considered a friendly gesture. Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez undermined any sentimental interpretation by invariably being drunk on tequila and placing a gun on the table in front of him.

No one joined him for meals.

Fernandez, one of the leading lights of Mexican cinema's fabled Golden Age of the 1940s and early 1950s, was also fond of waving his revolver around the set during the dozen or so films he directed in Mexico City's Churubusco Studios. He is said to have even fired it on one occasion, although nobody was hurt.

"Everyone was scared of him. It was not a comfortable experience working for El Indio," recalls Gonzalo Latapi Ortega, head of marketing at Churubusco, which has stood as Latin America's foremost movie-making complex since its formal opening on Sept. 16, 1945.

When the Mexican Golden Age faded so, too, did the fortunes of Churubusco. Now the studios are retaking center stage, thanks to a resurgence of the country's film industry.

Although many of new films are shot on location, the fierce political satire La Ley de Herodes (Herod's Law) was partly filmed here. Churubusco's technical laboratories were used for Mexico's two biggest recent hits, the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch) and Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears). TV commercials, telenovelas--Mexica's world-famous soap operas--and music videos are also made here.

Triple alliance. Churubusco was founded by the triumvirate of Harry Wright, the U.S. owner of the Country Club golf course, Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta. founder of the Televisa broadcasting empire, and Hollywood's RKO studio. Its design was based on Warner Brothers' Hollywood studios, among the largest and most modern of the era.

Language barriers hampered the appeal of RKO's biggest stars to the large Latin American audience. So the studio decided to invest in the cost-effective Mexican film industry and export those movies across the region. Azcarraga Vidaurreta saw the savvy in the strategy. Wright provided the land.

When the studios opened, the Country Club, as the surrounding neighborhood is known, was little more than wooded countryside with an eponymous golf course just south of Mexico City. The comings and goings of stars made it a glamorous landmark. A pleasant middle-to-upper class suburb grew around it in the 1950s.

In 1956, Churubusco went bankrupt after outliving all its Mexican rivals. It first merged with the Azteca studios, then, in 1960, was nationalized and reopened as the country's only movie studio complex.

Today there are nine studios at thriving Churubusco, which is named after a river that runs nearby. Eight of them each take up 1,800 square meters of space, making them Latin America's largest by far, thriving Churubusco also has ultra-modern THX-standard digital and analogue sound laboratories, putting it on a par with anything in Hollywood.

Hopkins cracks the whip. No wonder, then, that besides being the scene of hundreds of Mexican movies, Churubusco has also played host to U.S., French and British productions. Entertainers who have passed through its studios run the range from Jean-Paul Belmondo and the Rolling Stones to Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Recently, Salma Hayek was busy in Studios Four and Five shooting Frida, a movie about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

During the filming of The Mask of Zorro, which starred Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins practiced his whip techniques in the parking lot. "He was always there, smiling and trying to crack the whip," says Jose Rodriguez Lopez, technical director at the complex. "Even once he had mastered it, he carried on. People would come up to him and then he would teach them how to do it."

Churubusco, "the dream factory," is living the sequel to its original Golden Age. A 1994 facelift has given the studios a distinctly more modern feel. Purple cement and glass extensions proliferate now. With a resurgence in Mexican film in the past couple of years, and the tandem chorus of critical acclaim, moviegoers are now lining up to fill Mexico's once empty theatres. Mexican movies are getting attention outside the country, too. Just in time to keep the factory in business, perhaps, for another 50 years.