Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds ed. by Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds ed. by Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow Nayibe Bermúdez Vich, Cynthia, and Sarah Barrow, eds. Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds. Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020. 356 pp. ISBN 9783030525118. The vibrancy of Peruvian cinema of recent years has produced energetic waves that are slowly but gradually changing the national film scene on several fronts. Peruvian film has seen an increase in the sheer variety of narrative content and places of enunciation, numerous cinematic forms and formats, and wider alternative spheres of circulation, distribution, and consumption. Moreover, in the consecration of "Peruvian regional cinema," which has started to disrupt the Lima bubble as arbiter of film and cultural production in the country, Peruvian cinema is making large strides towards a healthier positioning in the national and global imaginations. These vibrant waves splash also onto the academic field as reflected in Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow's anthology, Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds, which succeeds in its goal to frame the country's cinematic landscape with rapport to the social, economic, and political context of neoliberal Peru. There is no need to rehearse here the dearth of research leading to wide-ranging anthological analyses of the cinemas of Peru. Suffice it to say that along articles disseminated in journals, magazines, chapters in global film books, online and in other media, only a nascent history of specialized research in English has scratched the surface of the field, as exemplified in Jeffrey Middents' Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru (2009) and Sarah Barrow's monograph, Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen (2018). For those conversant in Spanish, Vich and Barrow's book complements and is complemented by the writings of leading experts such as Ricardo Bedoya and Emilio Bustamante, whose most recent books, El cine peruano en tiempos digitales, 2015 and Las miradas múltiples: el cine regional peruano, 2017, respectively, attest [End Page 163] to the achievements of film criticism in Peru and the new heights of Peruvian cinemas. As the first English-language compilation, and through its focus on the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Vich and Barrow's Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds comes as a fresh breath of air into Northern scholarship on Peruvian cinema and global analyses of the cinemas of Latin America. In the introduction to their edited compilation, Vich and Barrow tie the significant upsurge in Peruvian film production to the end of the war (1980-2000) between the Peruvian State and the guerrilla forces of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). As one of the book's stated goals, they pinpoint the showcasing of "films that, highlighting the wide spectrum of contemporary experience, lie at opposite ends of the ideological positioning toward the realities of the Peruvian nation as reinvented through neoliberalism" (6). Indeed, the editors frame their approach through a national lens that connects cinema to the diversity of Peruvian voices coming through from different cultural, gender, and socio-economic identities, to developments in the film sector, and to political and economic trends. This framework allows for the conceptualization of the cinemas of Peru as cultural artifacts that participate in and promote decentralization, diversification, and the inclusion of Indigenous cultures and languages into national dynamics. Towards this end, the collection seeks to address the relationship of production and target audience with market dynamics, while also identifying the myriad of accomplishments and the levels of precariousness that continue to plague Peruvian cinema in all areas. Under such parameters, Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds is organized in two overarching categories, the first of which, "The Market Dynamics of Peruvian Cinema," comprises three sections: 'Big budget production for local entertainment,' comprising 2 articles; 'Regional low budget drama,' consisting in 3 articles; and 'Art film for festival circuits,' which constitutes the bulk of the discussion with 8 articles. What connects these pieces is the study of films whose production and consumption modes depend on market forces; while, what differentiates the contributions are the production...