Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century World ed. by Vania Barraza and Carl Fisher

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century World ed. by Vania Barraza and Carl Fisher Fernanda Righi Barraza, Vania, and Carl Fisher, editors. Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century World. Wayne State UP, 2020. Pp. 375. ISBN: 978-0-8143-4682-2. Over the last twenty years, Chilean films have received praise and prizes at international film festivals and awards ceremonies, drawing the attention of critics and the public all around the [End Page 304] world. During this time, the incipient local productions of the post dictatorship period have improved in quality and presented a wide variety of topics and aesthetics. This diversity makes putting them into a single category (other than country of origin) difficult. Indeed, even the “Chilean” label has proven problematic, as some films are set abroad and/or feature foreign actors, making their “Chileanness” a somewhat flexible notion. While acknowledging the role the state played in the development of a Chilean cinema, Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century World (2020), edited by Vania Barraza and Carl Fisher, focuses on the tension between local and international, political and personal in Chilean films of the twenty-first century. In the introduction of the volume, the authors address this opposition between the political and the personal. On the one hand, some films focus on local, political issues affecting the wider Chilean society, from issues of memory connected to the dictatorship, to LGBTQ+ struggles. On the other hand, films that sidestep a clear political statement and focus on personal dramas and everyday life, as well as genre pieces like horror and action films, can offer innovative aesthetics—such as the so-called Novisimo generation. Considering this tension and the limited local distribution and audience, the editors ask a central question: “what choices do filmmakers have to make in order to make domestic issues intelligible to global audiences?” (2). Working at the intersection of aesthetics and content, local and global audiences, the book is divided into five sections dealing with fiction and documentary films. The first section, entitled “Mapping Theories of Chilean Cinema in the World,” examines the markets, distribution, and exhibition of Chilean films around the world. Then, “On the Margins of Hollywood: Chilean Genre Flicks” considers the political aspects of both horror and martial arts cinema. The third section, “Other Texts and Other Lands: Intermediality and Adaptation beyond Chile(in Cinema),” focuses on film adaptations in transnational contexts. “Migrations of Gender and Genre” looks at how Chilean films enter into the transnational debate on sexual dissidence, and “Politicized Intimacies: Debating (Post)Memory and History” debates how different filmmakers address the issue of memory. With the exception of the last section, which contains four chapters, each section comprises two or three chapters, allowing the reader to explore a variety of creative analysis and connect different films around a common topic. One argument that connects the sections of the book, and strives to provide a resolution to the discussion of personal versus political, is an expanded definition of politics. Indeed, many authors consider that historical topics can be addressed from a personal perspective, as Camilo Trumper analyzes in the chapter “Displacement, Emplacement, and the Politics of Exilic Childhood in Sergio Castilla’s Gringuito.” Here, the author discusses exile from the perspective of the child. The authors also agree on the political potential of films that explore intimate worlds and do not explicitly narrate any urgent social issue. Chapters such as “Films of Loss and Mourning: Bridging the Personal and Collective” by María Helena Rueda show how fictional films like Una mujer fantástica (2017) connect the mourning of Marina, the protagonist, to the relatives of desaparecidos who were unable to have funerals for their loved ones during (and after) the dictatorship, posing the question of who has the right to say goodbye. The chapter “Intimacies and Global Aesthetics in Vida de familia by Alicia Scherson and Cristián Jiménez,” written by Vania Barraza, explores how Vida de familia (2017), in which the aesthetic seems to be the priority, indirectly touches on issues of narratives of memory. While arguing that this film can connect to both local and global audiences, the author analyzes how the intimate...