The Maya Connection

For Maya’s founder Moctesuma Esparza, the cinema experience is a time to spend with family and friends while enjoying the richest and most immersive art form ever created. This belief started for Moctesuma when he was a child in Boyle Heights during the explosion of American cinema and, in particular, Mexican-American cinema.

These rich childhood memories led Moctesuma to a long career as a Hollywood film producer. In his tenure, Moctesuma produced motion pictures such as Selena, Gettysburg and the Milagro Beanfield War, to name just a few. During this time, Moctesuma brought these films on multi-city premier tours hoping to expose his films to a wide audience in an attempt to show them to Mexican-American audiences. While on this venture he began to notice that there were no cinemas in Mexican-American populated urban areas despite the fact that the Latino community has consistently been the highest per capita patronage of cinema. This is where the seed was sowed.

Moctesuma embarked on a mission to target Latino communities that were dramatically underserved with cinemas. After identifying the right community, he purchased land so that he would be vested. Moctesuma then set out to create beautiful movie theaters that could be a cornerstone for generations to come.

Today this mission continues. Moctesuma and his team at Maya are realizing the vision and love of a boy immersed in the Mystery, Magic and Myth of the Movies years ago in down town Los Angeles surrounded by friends and family sharing an incredible experience!