An exciting generation of young filmmakers is drastically changing how Mexicans see and represent themselves on the big screen, and challenging traditional notions of Mexican culture and identity.

A festival of works by Mexican producers and directors, especially newcomers to the international film scene, will be featured exclusively at the eighth annual Tucson Cine Mexico, March 20-24.

All screenings will be Arizona premieres, and the closing night film, documentary Teatro Penitenciario-Libertad Desde la Sombra, about penitentiary theater in Mexico, will be a United States premiere.

The festival is free and open to the public, and all films are in Spanish with English subtitles. A complete guide can be found at TucsonCineMexico.org.

The 2013 Tucson Festival of Books, March 9-10, promises to be another best seller with 400+ authors, 275 exhibitors, and hundreds of presentations, panel discussions, and book signings.

Participants include such best-selling authors as Diana Gabaldon, Jodi Picoult, and John Sayles as well as children/youth authors Susan Lowell, Conrad Storad, R.L. Stine. To mark this free event’s fifth year, two programs have been launched that recognize and develop great writing: the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards writing competition and Masters Workshop. Details, including a full list of attending authors, are available on TucsonFestivalofBooks.org.

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Photo: MOCA Tucson

Peter Young: Capitalist Masterpieces, an exhibition of large-scale paintings by noted painter Peter Young opened last month at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in downtown Tucson.

Young, who emerged in New York in the 1960s and quickly rose to prominence on the global art scene, has lived in Bisbee since 1972. His paintings, which examine a range of experiments in abstract painting from the 1960s to today, can be seen in the permanent collections of the MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, and many others.

MOCA Tucson will re-open from holiday hiatus on January 9. Normal hours are Wednesday-Sunday 12-5pm; admission is free on the first Sunday of every month. For more information, visit moca-tucson.org.