Nation and post-nationalism: the contemporary modernist films of Carlos Reygadas

Abstract

Art cinema has been categorized as international in terms of its influences and reach. Set in opposition to Hollywood and to commercial cinema in general, art cinema simultaneously embodies the idea of the national and the international. It historically figures in discussions of high versus low art, commercial versus non-commercial, and international versus national cultural production. Recent scholarship on art cinema reconsiders the aesthetic, economic and geo-political assumptions of this category in response to its contemporary resurgence among filmmakers working in Taiwan, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, China, Japan and Hong Kong. This article considers two feature films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas – Japón (2002) and Stellet Licht (2007) – as examples of contemporary art cinema, a category whose meaning is interrogated in relation to questions of nationalism and globalization as well as national histories of film aesthetics. Specifically, I ask how we might consider the relationship of modernist films to the concepts of the nation, national belonging and of national cinema in the context of post-nationalism through an analysis of Reygadas’ indebtedness to classical Mexican cinema.