What is "cantinflas"

Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno-Reyes, known casually as Mario Moreno, and known professionally as Cantinflas (12 August 1911 – 20 April 1993), was a Mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter and an iconic figure in Mexico and Latin America. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin. The character came to be associated with the national identity of Mexico, and allowed Cantinflas to establish a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin once commented that he was the best comedian alive, and Moreno has been referred to as the "Charlie Chaplin of Mexico". To audiences in the United States, he is best remembered as co-starring with David Niven in the Academy Award winner for Best Picture film Around the World in 80 Days, for which Moreno won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

As a pioneer of the cinema of Mexico, Moreno helped usher in its golden era. In addition to being a business leader, he also became involved in Mexico's tangled and often dangerous labor politics. Although he was a political conservative, his reputation as a spokesperson for the downtrodden gave his actions authenticity and became important in the early struggle against charrismo, the one-party government's practice of co-opting and controlling unions.

Moreover, his character Cantinflas, whose identity became enmeshed with his own, was examined by media critics, philosophers, and linguists, who saw him variably as a danger to Mexican society, a bourgeois puppet, a kind philanthropist, a transgressor of gender roles, a pious Catholic, a verbal innovator, and a picaresque underdog.

Cantinflas is a 2014 Mexican film directed by Sebastián del Amo. Based on the life of actor and comedian Cantinflas, the film stars Óscar Jaenada as Cantinflas, Michael Imperioli, Ilse Salas, Bárbara Mori, Ana Layevska and Adal Ramones. It premiered on September 18, 2014 in Mexico. In the United States it was released on August 29, 2014. It was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

On December 12, 2014, José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, gave a recognition to Producer Vidal Cantu and Director Sebastian del Amo in a special screening of Cantinflas in the Hall of the Americas in Washington, D.C. Ambassadors from the 34 countries members of the OAS were present in the event.