Guanajuato, Gto., June 9, 2016.- To recognize his valuable contributions to divulgation, knowledge and analysis of cinema in Mexico and the professionalization of the Movie Club from the University of Guanajuato, the Institution will celebrate on August this year, an homage to the master Jorge Rogelio Pantoja Merino, who coordinated that university instance from 1979 to 1988.
Deceased on past April 21st, with a renowned trajectory at a national level as a film curator, cinematographic critic, college professor and animator of uncountable promotion projects from the "Seventh Art", master Pantoja Merino made his life a consecrated one to art movies and author, also known for the "transcendental cinema", in reference to what serves a vehicle of a vision of the world and transforms the fundamental conceptions of who watches.
Aficionado and amateur (lover) of the movie in the highest sense of such terms, Pantoja Merino, carried however, his movie dedication in a high professionalization level, in effect of which, he studied Cinematographic Appreciation in the Columbia University, New York; Film Critic in the University of California in Los Angeles; and movie translation in BBC, formation to which he joined studies of Law, German and Spanish Language and History.
Convinced –how he asserted in one of his allocutions—that "after all, you don't love what you don't see, but you see that you love", Pantoja Merino imposed throughout his life to a thorough personal program of vision and study of film in all geographies, styles and esthetic proposals, for which he dedicated throughout the years to frequent cinemas, institutions and film festivals in Europe, United States and Mexico, program through which (according his testimony) managed to watch 200 movies a year.
Born in the city of Irapuato, Pantoja Merino was linked to the University of Guanajuato in first term as a professors of the High school in this city, where in mid-60s of the past century, founded a Movie Club where he was later anointed honorary coordinator. As for the Movie Club of the University, which he coordinated in 1979, the "network of complicities" created by master Pantoja Merino with international distributors and accredited Embassies in our country, as well as the value of his personal collection of films, allowed this cultural instance to be renowned in and outside the country, as his integration testifies, in the quality of life member, to the Federation Internationale du Film d'Art et d'Essai and the National Network of Cinematographic Exhibition.
In a parallel and posterior way, master Pantoja contributed to the diffusion of the cinema in other institutions, for example, while functioning as a general coordinator of the film area in the "Festival Internacional Cervantino" (FIC); as director of the programming, of film and International Relations from Canal Once; as General Director of the Unit of Television of Guanajuato (UTG)M and as cinematographic selector for diverse edition of the International Show and the Forums of the "Cineteca Nacional de México", among others.
Likewise, master Pantoja Merino settled his vast knowledge and film passion in a series of books at the same time acute, erudite ad of excellent writing, among those titles, stand out "Hojas de cine a vuelapluma", "Alfaguara del cine silente", "De cinefilia, cinefagia y cinenáutica", "Placeres culposos" and "Trasuntos de cine", four of them edited by the University of Guanajuato, where they are still available for the current and future generations, willing to enrich with his legacy.
