The Guadalajara International Film Festival starts Friday, March 12. Here's a rough guide.

Canadian superstar Nelly Furtado will be making her debut performance in Guadalajara on March 13.

In a surprise – and sudden – move, the director of Guadalajara’s Instituto Cultural Cabañas, Maria Ines Torres, has been replaced less than a month before the opening of one of the most important exhibitions in the institution’s history.

Last Saturday, Zapopan’s Telmex Auditorio finally witnessed the triumphant arrival of Massive Attack from Britain. Announced nearly a year ago, the concert was postponed in October and finally rescheduled for this February, although rumors persisted that it would never take place. It was a case of better-late-than-never for the crowd, who greeted them like conquering heroes and knew the songs far better than might be expected for this UK collective in such an incongruous setting as Mexico.

Massive Attack were stalwarts of Bristol’s trip-hop scene during the 1990s, which also included Portishead and former-member come solo artist, Tricky. First achieving fame with 1991’s “Blue Lines”, they blazed a trail through the musical landscape with the equally successful “Protection” (1994) and the darker experimentation of “Mezzanine” (1998). Having defined alternative British pop for the past 20 years, they have just released their long-awaited fifth album, “Heligoland”, seven years after their last record “100th Window”.

Credited with practically inventing their own musical genre, the band mix traditional soul with hip-hop beats, screeching guitars and hints of reggae. Famed for working with a host of collaborators, their latest album features contributions from Damon Albarn, the lead singer of Blur and the driving force behind the animated Gorillaz project. Although he wasn’t present on the night, the core duo of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall were joined onstage by an ensemble cast of vocalists, including the soul singer Yolanda Quarty, and the veteran roots reggae artist Horace Andy.

Rumbling along with cavernous dub bass lines, the music was accompanied by a pulsating light show and some stunning visual effects. At one point the big onstage screens transformed into an airport-style departure board, listing the destinations of “extraordinary rendition” flights. This was real protest art for the 21st century. Famously politically outspoken, the band have campaigned against the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and were heavily involved in the protests against Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War. Yet they were careful to avoid alienating their audience through the language barrier, displaying onscreen Spanish translations of quotes by the likes of Cesar Chavez, George Orwell and Malcolm X. They also wished the crowd a happy bicentenary, declaring “¡Viva Mexico Cabrones!” to rapturous applause.

The band pulled out nearly all the classics, including a fragile “Teardrop”, a climatic “Unfinished Sympathy” and an electrifying rendition of “Angel”. Of the new songs, the organ-driven “Splitting the Atom” and a hypnotic encore of “Atlas Air” stood out best. Other highlights included an extended "Safe from Harm" and the epic set-closer “Karmacoma” – on which they were joined by a local musician for a Mariachi-style trumpet solo. For the thousands in attendance it had certainly been worth the wait.