Sex, texts and money, funding and Latin American queer cinema: The cases of Martel's La niña santa and Puenzo's XXY

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough a focus on La niña santa/The Holy Girl by Lucrecia Martel (2004) and XXY by Lucía Puenzo (2007), this article examines the relationship between texts, sex and money. It considers theoretical approaches to European funding programmes and world cinema, and argues that a number of European production companies have created spaces for queer cinema that has proven beneficial to a range of Latin American films and has coincided with a boom in films directed by women. The article focuses on two new powerful protagonists, Amalia, Martel's holy girl, and Puenzo's Alex, an intersex teenager, who both bring new gazes and new forms of representation to global screens. The study is concerned with the ways in which certain film languages can be used to address an implied international art cinema spectator to make queerness part of our filmic conversation with texts, and the ways in which these languages engage with new modernities emerging through the reconfigurations of new queer families.