Latin American Cinema Research Articles

Libre Acceso. Latin American Literature and Film through Disability Studies ed. by Susan Antebi and Beth E. Jörgensen

Reviewed by: Libre Acceso. Latin American Literature and Film through Disability Studies ed. by Susan Antebi and Beth E. Jörgensen Etna Ávalos Antebi Susan and Beth E. Jörgensen, eds. Libre Acceso. Latin American Literature and Film through Disability Studies. New York: SUNY P, 2016. 278 pp. ISBN: 978-14-3845-967-7. Los cuerpos fragmentados, los sentidos ausentes, las enfermedades y las mentes que operan con una lógica distinta a la establecida socialmente son condiciones que se conciben como barreras o limitantes que en el ámbito médico se han agrupado bajo el término discapacidad. Como respuesta a tal perspectiva, los teóricos del campo de estudios sobre la discapacidad proponen romper con los paradigmas de normalidad para crear una sociedad más inclusiva. Bajo este lente, los trece ensayos compilados en Libre Acceso buscan desentrañar la función narrativa y conocer las construcciones culturales que nacen de la representación de la discapacidad en diversos textos y obras fílmicas latinoamericanas. A lo largo del libro se analiza la función de la discapacidad como metáfora y alegoría de raza, de género y de condiciones históricas, económicas y políticas que caracterizan a distintas comunidades de América Latina. Las contribuciones que encontramos en Libre Acceso se encuentran divididas en cuatro secciones. La primera parte titulada "Disability Life Writing and Construction of the Self" reúne tres capítulos que estudian obras escritas desde la discapacidad. En el primer ensayo Lina Meruane habla de su libro Sangre en el ojo (2012), cuya historia gira en torno a una ceguera temporal. La autora analiza el ocularcentrismo desde una perspectiva de género y de manera atinada subvierte la noción de enfermedad al otorgarle un valor positivo en la toma de consciencia del individuo. En "La cara que me mira," Kevin Goldstein se ocupa de la retórica de la ceguera en Borges. Para él la paradoja en la obra del escritor argentino estriba en que el propugnar por una visión interior vuelve constantemente al cuerpo ciego, reafirmando el vínculo entre la ficción y la corporalidad humana. Por su parte, Beth E. Jörgensen analiza los textos biográficos de dos escritoras con parálisis cerebral: Gabriela Brimmer y Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez. La autora propone de forma acertada que los escritos elaborados por personas discapacitadas constituyen una alternativa a las representaciones tradicionales de la discapacidad e invitan a redefinir los valores sociales para construir una geografía de la inclusión. Cuatro capítulos integran la segunda parte titulada "Global Bodies and the Coloniality of Disability," donde se examina el entrecruce entre la representación de la discapacidad, la geopolítica y la identidad cultural. Ryan Prout analiza la película Las buenas hierbas (2010) de María Novaro y propone que el Alzheimer de la protagonista funciona paradójicamente como vía para recuperar el conocimiento ancestral de su cultura. Por su parte, Susan Antebi estudia el film Japón (2002) de Carlos Reygadas, fijándose en la posición central que la discapacidad adopta en el proceso de comunicación cinematográfica. Y es que a partir de los elementos narrativos y técnicos el espectador alcanza una experiencia sensorial que lo identifica con el personaje discapacitado. Tanto Victoria Dickman-Burnett como Victoria L. Garrett analizan en sus ensayos el papel de la violencia; la primera en 2666 (2004) de Roberto Bolaño, y la segunda en las películas El violín (2005) de Francisco Vargas y La teta asustada (2009) de Claudia Llosa. Ambas autoras muestran cómo el sistema [End Page 293] colonial y el capitalismo moderno producen cuerpos subalternos, alegorías de un sistema social sometido por la violencia. La tercera parte del libro se titula "Embodied Frameworks: Disability, Race and Marginality" y está compuesta por cuatro capítulos que estudian la metáfora de la discapacidad como indicador de las diferencias raciales en el marco del capitalismo global. Valéria Souza estudia la obra Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956) de Joao Guimarães Rosa, la cual evidencia la función de la lepra como agente desestabilizador de las...

Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema ed. by Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet

Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema ed. by Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet

Deterioration as Documentation: Fashioning the Cinematic Artifact in the Documentary

There is an that, according to Hal Foster, seeks to transform the no-place of the archive into the no-place of a utopia.1 Through an engagement with archival materials, this art aims to recuperate and revive failed visions as possible scenarios of alternative kinds of social relations. The possibility of calling upon archival material as the point of departure for imagining social relations necessarily alludes to the history of how notions of the material are entangled with the social, with its evolution and transformation, and inevitably with their roles in shaping perceptions and ideas of the past.2 Michel Foucault, furtiiermore, has described inversely how the archive, the material it contains, and its organization manage to shape the very contours of knowledge and how it is produced and recorded, a formation and inscription made in anticipation of its potential or eventual incorporation.3 In particular, the archived film hosts an opportunity to reflect further upon these two dimensions, as the material features of a medium botii embody and respond to the specific material and historical conditions that gestate and shape it, along with the precariousness and unpredictability of its storage and presentation. Arguably, tiiis multifaceted materiality of cinema has constituted a central concern of a significant body of works comprising diverse approaches to the archived cinematic object, making films that explore the porous boundaries between the documentary on one side and, on the other, diose experimental or aesthetic explorations that shun narrative or exegesis to emphasize form and texture. William Wees described these found footage films as calling upon cinema's leftovers and therefore as scavenging upon history's waste, upon its forgotten and disregarded past, constituting, then, an inversion or reconfiguration of historical and tiius archival priorities.4Cinema in Latin America, however, has a distinct history of engaging with these material conditions, even making their impact and effects the central premise of a production that sought to foreground these conditions and tiius elaborated in contrast to tiiose other cinematic approaches whose production values permitted techniques that actively obfuscate any contradictions in their context or otherwise wipe away any of the otiier residues of history. Whether Glauber Rocha's notion of an aestiietics of hunger, Garcia Espinosa's call for an imperfect cinema, or Rogerio Sganzerla's celebration of an aestiietics of garbage, an exploration of marginality, disfigurement, and refuse has an established trajectory at the center of Latin American cinema as a deliberate engagement with its historicity and materiality.5 The Latin American documentary, moreover, has played an influential role in shaping the truth criteria for cinema as a whole in the region, defining, as it were, important approaches to visual evidence and its relationship to the historical.6This essay, then, explores some uses of archival footage in the documentary in a few Latin American cases. By situating precisely the uses of frequently degraded or damaged archival material in the conditions and are of some of the central tendencies in filmmaking in Latin America, tiiis essay suggests how the multiple dimensions of cinema's materiality work to botii reinforce and build upon some of the central critiques of the archive while exploring alternative notions of temporality and historicity in film.Documentation as ArtifactTo enter into an archive is to occasionally confront the taxonomic and organizational crisis created by some of its materials: incomplete indices and catalogs, records lost or corrupted in the transfer from analog to digital systems, and variants in the transliteration of non-Latin alphabets. Part of that crisis, beyond being organizational, involves these materials' fragility. For example, 78-rpm shellac records are brittle and can shatter and chip like glass if bumped or dropped. …

¡Accion! Filmmaking in Spanish

¡Accion! Filmmaking in Spanish Bridget Franco “Soy un ojo. Un ojo mecánico. Yo, la máquina, les muestro un mundo del único modo que puedo verlo. Estoy en constante movimiento. Me aproximo a los objetos y me alejo de ellos . . . Libre de las fronteras del tiempo y del espacio coordino cualquiera y todos los puntos del universo. Mi camino lleva a la creación de una nueva percepción del mundo. Por eso explico de un modo nuevo el mundo desconocido para nosotros.” Dziga Vertov, Manifiesto del cine-ojo (1924) Course Description Through a hands-on learning approach to the art of filmmaking, students will explore and experiment with the core components of cinematographic production: screenplay writing, directing, lighting, sound engineering, camera technique, and digital editing (conducted entirely in Spanish). As a focused language course, the class is designed to introduce students to the artistic and technical terminology employed in Spanish and Latin American film production. Moreover, students will purposefully use this language as they write, design, create and edit film projects of their own. To this end, each week of class will be divided into two parts: (1) learning the specific terminology associated with particular aspects of filmmaking through film screenings, movie reviews, textbooks, and online resources; and (2) using this focused language in a direct, applied manner through film analysis, cinematographic productions and digital movie editing. Finally, this course includes a Community-Based Learning component in which students will consult and collaborate with a local organization that serves Spanish-speakers to create and produce a short film that serves the community partner’s needs. Prerequisites: SPAN 301 or 302. This course fulfills the “Focused Language” area requirement or an elective for the Spanish major (it does not fulfill the “Culture and Cinema” area). Technology “Acción! Filmmaking in Spanish” is a technology-facilitated course. Upon signing the requisite contract, students will be loaned an iPad for which they will be responsible for the duration of the semester. Students will not be able to purchase the iPad at the end of the semester. [End Page 316] Required Textbooks & Digital Technology 1. La imagen: Análisis y representación de la realidad by Roberto Aparici. Gedisa Editorial: Barcelona, Spain, 2009/2010. ISBN: 978-8497842082. 2. El lenguaje cinematográfico by Robert Edgar-Hunt, John Marland, Steven Rawle. Parramon Ediciones: Barcelona, Spain, 2011. ISBN: 978-8434237803. 3. CINEGLOS: http://sites.holycross.edu/cineglos/ 4. iPad Air (loaned by Center for Teaching & ITS) Learning Goals – to learn and master the language and terminology of cinematography in Spanish through active immersion in film productions and firsthand experience with digital movie editing – to further develop oral and written communicative skills in Spanish – to hone film analysis skills by learning how to articulate the relationship between content and cinematographic form – to find meaningful connections between students’ academic work and issues in the local Latino/Latin American community Community-Based Learning Project This course has a mandatory Community-Based Learning component in which you will collaborate with one of our local partners to design, create, produce and edit a short promotional, documentary or fictional film that will serve the needs of the organization’s Spanish-speaking clients. This aspect of the course will expose you to the diversity of Latino & Latin American populations in the community, help you perfect and gain confidence in your speaking and listening skills in a real life setting, and deploy your intellectual knowledge to create a tangible product that will benefit the local community. Surveys and reflection papers from past students clearly point to the ways in which Community-Based Learning broadened their perspective on life beyond the gates of Mount St. James and deepened their understanding of Latin American and U.S. Latino culture. Please note that the CBL component of this course is mandatory and will require regular trips to the local Worcester community. Course Content Students’ performance in the class will be measured by quizzes on film terminology, written and digital homework assignments, a midterm film project, classroom grade, and a complete CBL portfolio including the final iMovie project for each team’s community partner. 1. Homework Assignments: 10% 2. Quizzes (5): 20% 3. Midterm Film Project...

Sci-Fi-ing Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border: An Interview with Filmmaker Alex Rivera

Sci-Fi-ing Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico BorderAn Interview with Filmmaker Alex Rivera Javier Ramirez (bio) Alex Rivera’s first feature length film, Sleep Dealer, was released theatrically in 2008 in over thirty cities across the United States. Audiences were introduced to a futuristic vision of society that today, just seven years later, is not some far-fetched dreamscape but an uncanny depiction of the present. Rivera’s science fiction film depicts the future as a place where borders are closed and militarized, and where drones and elaborate forms of surveillance protect against the threat of aqua-terrorists. Workers remotely perform labor in distant lands—in the U.S., Europe, and other so-called first world countries—by connecting themselves to a global digital network. In his radical and groundbreaking film, Rivera invites viewers to consider the complexities of globalization and technology, and the roles they play in exploiting and oppressing immigrants. Debates concerning immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border are nothing new, especially in our post-9/11 society. The 2016 presidential race has prompted renewed calls to fight terrorism, both foreign and domestic, and to curtail or prevent undocumented immigration. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, talks of militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border (as if the Department of Homeland Security had not already done so) and building a Great Wall there at Mexico’s expense. This discourse resembles something akin to a Hollywood science fiction film, like Roland Emmerich’s 1996 hit, Independence Day, in which aliens invade the U.S. and seek to destroy all things American. However, unlike Independence Day or, for that matter, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) or Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), Sleep Dealer resonates with the present and future by engaging the varied experiences of Latina/o communities, human movement or restriction, labor, race, and technology in the age of globalization. [End Page 95] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The baseball stadium of Boquerón, Mexico, was paid for entirely by people from the town who live and work in upstate New York. “New York” is painted next to the name of the town entrance. Photo by Rodolfo Valtierra during the filming of The Sixth Section (2003). Courtesy of Alex Rivera. A digital media artist based in New York, Rivera has always engaged these issues. In his first film, Papapapá (1995), Rivera combines elements of surrealism, animation, and documentary techniques to explore the Peruvian origins of the potato, and his father. This whimsical film investigates immigration and uses the concept of “virtual reality” and information technologies as a platform to represent the “third reality” that his dad inhabits. Rivera’s second and fourth films, Animaquiladora/Why Cybraceros? (1997) and The Sixth Section (2003), respectively, continue the trajectory of exploring the impacts of technology on labor and immigration. Rivera’s ingenious use of audio and visual landscapes makes discussions of complex issues accessible to the public. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Sleep Dealer, with its sci-fi-ing of immigration and the border. His innovative deployment of science fiction encourages us to question our present reality, by projecting into the future. What our future will look like depends directly on who “we” are; the future can entail a utopia, a dystopia, or both. Rivera’s works have appeared in numerous national and international film festivals, which include the San Francisco International Film Festival, the American Film Institute (AFI) Latin American Film Festival, the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival, the New York International Latino Film Festival, and screenings at the Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Lincoln Center. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Sundance Institute and [End Page 96] the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as of grants from USA Artists, the MacArthur Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Among the various awards Sleep Dealer has won are: a Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award, both at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; the Amnesty International Award at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival; and the Best of Festival at the 2008 Neuchatel International Fantasy Film Festival. In...

Affect, Bodies, and Circulations in Contemporary Latin American Film

espanolEl giro afectivo, o mejor dicho, el enfasis en la emocion y el afecto se ha erigido—a comienzos del siglo XXI—como un punto de entrada para analizar contextos y sitios de experiencia. Los estudios cinematograficos ejemplifican este cambio, donde una serie de investigadores—siguiendo los planteamientos teoricos de Gilles Deleuze—han explorado la presencia e importancia del afecto en el cine. Vivian Sobchack, Laura Marks, Jennifer Barker, Eugenie Brinkema y Elena del Rio son algunos de los nombres destacados en este corpus teorico que ha hecho hincapie en el afecto como sistema de conocimiento, y ha incluido la subjetividad (colectiva, individual y fragmentada) y las circulaciones como puntos de partida productivos en el estudio del cine global. Este giro, sin embargo, ha sido lento en el campo del cine hispano. Aparte de unos escasos estudios monograficos y una serie de articulos, el analisis afectivo en nuestro campo se define por su rareza. Esta introduccion examina el estado de las teorias del afecto en los estudios de cine latinoamericano, presenta los ensayos que siguen y muestra la manera en que la investigacion en este campo podria nutrir las teorias cinematograficas de afecto y fenomenologia. EnglishThe affective turn, or a critical focus on emotion and affect as a gateway into understanding contexts and sites of experience, has come into vogue in the early twenty-first-century. Cinema Studies is an example of a field that has undergone this shift, as scholars, following Gilles Deleuze's meditations on cinema, have explored the presence and import of affect in the moving image. Vivian Sobchack, Laura Marks, Jennifer Barker, Eugenie Brinkema, and Elena del Rio have furthered this inquiry into affect and embodiment as a means of knowing, and have included bodily experience (collective, individual, and in pieces) and circulations as a productive point of entry into global cinema. This shift into affect, however, has been slow to take shape in the research of Hispanic cinemas: aside from several key monographs and a series of articles, the methods and hermeneutics of affect-based analysis is a largely untapped field. This introduction examines the state of affect theory within Latin American cinema studies, presents the essays that follow, and seeks to elucidate how the scholarship in this field may nourish film theory on affect and phenomenology.

Un cine sin espectadores: La teorización sobre el público en el Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de los sesenta

El Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de los años sesenta ha proporcionado un vasto y rico panorama de estudios sobre su carácter ideológico (un cine militante), estético (un cine de la pobreza) o formal (un cine imperfecto). Este artículo se propone rescatar uno de los aspectos quizás menos estudiados del llamado Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano: la teorización sobre el público. A través de una lectura crítica de algunos textos fundamentales (manifiestos, entrevistas, films), se expondrá el carácter original que presenta la nueva concepción de público propuesta por los cineastas, a partir de un espectador definido como un actor imprescindible en los procesos de cambio gestados en la región desde la revolución cubana. En definitiva, un espectador alejado de la butaca y más cerca de su tiempo histórico.

O Cinema Musical na América Latina: uma cartografia.

<p>O presente trabalho visa fazer um breve mapeamento cinema musical de ficção na América Latina, de modo a compreender como as diferentes cinematografias latinas se apropriaram do formato do musical e como este dialogou com as tradições culturais locais, em especial do cinema e da música popular, para se desenvolver. Buscaremos, pois, tratar de como o musical de ficção está ligado à história do cinema latino americano e das questões de identidade nacional e cultural que constantemente emergem das obras.</p>

Notas para um estudo sobre a Unión de Cinematecas de América Latina

<p>O presente artigo visa lançar as bases para uma análise da formação da <em>Unión de Cinematecas de América Latina</em> (UCAL). Criada em 1965, a UCAL visa dar visibilidade e articulação às jovens cinematecas latino-americanas. Por sua vez, a segunda metade dos anos 1960 pode ser interpretada como a consolidação ideológica do <em>Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano</em> (<em>NCL</em>), o que também põe em questão o papel de uma cinemateca em nosso subcontinente.</p>

Cinema in the borders of the world: economic reflections on Pathé and Gaumont film distribution in Latin America (1906-1915)

Ever since the first theoretical reflections on Latin American Film History, a central role has been given to foreign economic agents. Curiously, very few researches advanced in the comprehension of the effective role performed by these social actors. This article wishes to understand some of the methods employed by the hegemonic film industries Pathé Frères and Société des établissements Gaumont to enter and conquer Latin American markets at the dawn of the 20th century. By analysing commercial data gathered from international archives, we intend to revisit some of the debates over the peripheral and/or dependent condition of the Latin American cultural sector.

Latin American cinema

Latin American cinema

Algiers-Buenos Aires-Montreal: Thirdworldist links in the creation of the Latin American Filmmakers Committee (1974)

In terms of the New Latin American Cinema, the documents and audiovisual records of the Rencontres international pour un nouveau cinéma provide insight into this period of organization of filmmakers in the region. In the most common accounts of this historical moment, three key aspects revealed in the Montréal Documents are often ignored or attributed little importance: a) the fact that during the Rencontres, Latin American filmmakers had given shape to an initial group that is the immediate predecessor of the renowned Latin American Filmmakers’ Committee created in September that same year (1974); b) that the political relations among the most well-known Latin American figures (like Solanas, Pallero, Achugar, Littin, García Espinosa) were wrought with tensions and conflict; and c) that within the goal of organizing and forming a group of Latin American filmmakers, the Third Worldist trends seen in the gatherings in the Third World Cinema Committee meetings of Algiers (December 1973) and Buenos Aires (May 1974) and (in some way also) Montréal (June 1974) were aimed at forming a Latin American Filmmakers Federation (FELACI) that would operate under or follow the example set by FEPACI (the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers). This article focuses on these questions, which have been largely ignored in the film historiography of political cinema in the world.

A Writing Haunted by Cinema: The Film Theories of Three Latin American Fictions

A Writing Haunted by Cinema: The Film Theories of Three Latin American Fictions Felipe Pruneda Sentíes (bio) Ontology’s Outsiders The film-theoretical work of Latin American writers is far from absent in anglo- and francophone film studies. Perhaps the most anthologized text that appears alongside canonical names like Bazin, Bordwell, and Mulvey is Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s manifesto “Toward a Third Cinema.”1 Joining these Argentinian filmmakers behind the classic documentary La hora de los hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino, Fernando E. Solanas, AR, 1968) is Brazil’s Glauber Rocha, who contributed to the search for a film praxis that both stood outside and opposed Hollywood’s imperialism with pieces like “Aesthetic of Hunger” and films like Antonio Das Mortes/Black God, White Devil (FR/BR/DE, 1969). Two similarities between these writings, besides their contemporaneity and resonance with the events of May 1968, stand out: they were written by filmmakers with an eminent body of work and they are about Latin American cinema. These common features are indicative of certain tendencies within the context of European and North American academic film studies. Hispano- and lusophone writings on the nature of cinema from Latin America are usually relevant to the hegemonic centers of the field when filmmakers whose work is already under study wrote them, or when they supply inroads to understanding Latin American cinema itself.2 Film theory from the region is thus quickly folded into area-specific cinematic research, and while it would be counterproductive to object to those approaches, it is impossible to shake a growing sense of territorialization. Solanas, Getino, and Rocha are what Francesco Casetti would call “field theorists” of film, [End Page 414] or public intellectuals whose theoretical work is inseparable from their political and cultural criticism.3 Insistently tasking these writers with representing the cultural particularities of their regional cinema obstructs the realization that their writings might also strive for sharable, cross-cultural generality. Like Fredric Jameson’s suggestion that “all third-world texts are necessarily allegorical” because they always seek to complete, through storytelling, an unformed national identity (a remark that Jameson himself acknowledges as “sweeping”),4 there is a tacit exclusion of Latin American voices from certain domains of theoretical thinking. In the case of film studies (to continue with Casetti’s categories), the voices are excluded from the realm of ontological theory, where they could construct conceptual “models of the unobservable underlying reality.”5 Their absence involves more than one kind of language barrier. Looking for texts that establish frameworks to define cinema’s existence and reconstructing them through a close reading and a careful translation is a necessary step in repairing the gap. Here, however, I want to locate theories of cinema within genres of writing that do not replicate the structures and methods of the canonical texts, and to suggest that the relative dearth of paradigms of film ontology from Latin America has been not only a matter of linguistics, differing modernities, and unbalanced power dynamics between geopolitical entities, but also one of approach to the very task of theory-creation. To identify these diverging methodologies, Christian Keathley lays out a useful distinction when he proposes a form of film writing (the “cinephiliac anecdote”) that attempts to overcome the conundrum most eloquently delineated by Roland Barthes: Either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history, and ideologize; or . . . to posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible, and, in this case, poeticize. . . . We constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state that is still mystified.6 Hence Keathley diagnoses the state of cinema studies at the turn of the 21st century and sees the balance unmistakably tilted within Barthes’s tension between ideologizing and poeticizing. “At present,” says Keathley, “scholarship in the discipline of film studies is dominated by the former critical method, one in which the scholar produces knowledge about the object of study; more importantly, film scholars are suspicious about the latter...

Adolescent Same-Sex Romance and Non-Traditional Masculinity in Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho and Do Começo ao Fim

The representation of adolescent same-sex love in Daniel Ribeiro’s Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (2014) and Aluizio Abranches’s Do Começo ao Fim (2009) stands out from other treatments of adolescence and homosexuality in Brazilian/LatinAmerican cinema. The movies’ setting within an urban upper-class environment allows for a conception of adolescence as a prolonged period of carefree exploration. By intertwining the experience of adolescence with the discovery of emergent sexuality, the movies develop a model of sensual, gentle masculinity and a reciprocal concept of homosexual love, thus undermining the paradigmatic juxtaposition of active masculinity and passive femininity that has dominated cinematic representations of homosexual characters and same sex-encounters in Latin-American cinema.

Rupture and reparation: Postmemory, the child seer and graphic violence in Infancia clandestina (Benjamín Ávila, 2012)

Abstract Although films representing violence through a child’s eyes have become increasingly commonplace in Latin American cinema of the last three decades, this article proposes that Bejamín Ávila’s 2012 Infancia clandestina provides an innovative approach. The film emphasizes ruptures – aesthetic, thematic and spectatorial – as well as gestures towards their repair in an attempt to represent the child’s perspective and engage the viewer in approaching the nation’s violent past. These forms of rupture and reparation, along with oscillations between identification with and distance from the protagonist’s perspective, draw attention not only to the complexities of representing the child’s subjective viewpoint but also of representing the violence of state repression. After examining the film’s treatment of postmemorial generational rupture, the article explores the mechanisms by which the film aligns the viewer with the perspective of its child protagonist while refusing complete identification with his subject position. Finally, it demonstrates how the child’s perspective of violence is cast as unique – underscoring his difference and questioning the possibility of representing ‘realistically’ the violence of the Dirty War years.

Reordering (social) sensibilities: Balancing realisms in Neighbouring Sounds

Abstract This article treats the film O Som Ao Redor/Neighbouring Sounds (Mendonça Filho, 2012), one of the most innovative Brazilian films in recent years. The film is examined as an example of a Latin American film that renovates film form and contributes to new debates concerning conceptual and sensorial realism. The film intervenes at sensory thresholds, combining realist and surrealist strategies and a hypo-real soundscape to reflect on deep social disjunctions and an uncertain social landscape. Neighbouring Sounds appears to portray the everyday activities of residents in an upper-middle class neighbourhood in Recife but it subtly reveals feelings of ennui and fear to offer a broader reflection on tensions between interdependent social classes and debates concerning contemporary social transformation. In its reflection on changing social sensibilities, Neighbouring Sounds develops a particular aesthetic and political liminality and plays on tensions between the visible and invisible.

(In)visible cinemas: Reusing archival footage in Latin American cinema

Abstract

Experimental Latin American Cinema: History and Aesthetics

A partir de un análisis inteligente de un conjunto de películas realizadas en Argentina, Brasil, Cuba, México, Paraguay y Perú entre 1998 y 2010, Cynthia Tompkins nos presenta en este libro una visión panorámica de la producción cinematográfica latinoamericana reciente. El común denominador de estas cintas es que poseen una narrativa poco convencional, que no se apega a las normas del cine comercial. Sin embargo, todas fueron exhibidas en festivales y cines con una buena recepción por parte de la crítica — unque no siempre por la taquilla — . Ese carácter innovador del lenguaje cinematográfico, así como su vocación por romper los géneros narrativos tradicionales, permiten a la autora definir a su conjunto como “experimental”, aunque una mirada más ortodoxa se hubiera limitado a nombrarlo como cine de autor. De manera que el lector no encontrará en este libro una historia extendida sobre cómo se experimentó en el cine latinoamericano (un texto que sin duda sigue haciendo falta), sino un análisis concentrado de cómo se ha innovado en la producción del siglo XXI, a pesar de que muchas veces Tompkins busca y explica las raíces de tal experimentación primero en las vanguardias de los años veinte del siglo XX y en las de los años sesenta y setenta después.La autora se sirve de la teoría cinematográfica de Gilles Deleuze para analizar el cine latinoamericano contemporáneo en la medida en que encuentra que las ideas del filósofo francés se adaptan bien al análisis de películas que — como las que forman parte de su corpus de investigación — aspiran a romper convenciones narrativas. Categorías como tiempo, movimiento e intervalo y nociones como imagen-movimiento estarán presentes a lo largo del libro y se convertirán en herramientas fundamentales para la comprensión de películas concretas. Uno se pregunta si la producción cinematográfica de las vanguardias latinoamericanas no merecería un marco teórico original para estudiarla, pero en todo caso ese tema forma parte de un debate más amplio.Tompkins estructura su estudio en torno a los géneros establecidos, precisamente porque esto le permite rastrear la manera en que las películas estudiadas los subvierten: neonoir, road movies, drama, experimentación autoral, experimentación autoral e intertextualidad y pseudo documental experimental. En cada uno de los apartados se agrupa el análisis de un total de 16 películas latinoamericanas contemporáneas, entre las que destacan El aura (2005) de Fabián Bielinsky, Central do Brasil (1998) de Walter Salles, El camino de San Diego (2006) de Carlos Sorín, la trilogía del director mexicano Carlos Reygadas (Japón, 2002; Batalla en el cielo, 2005; y Stellet licht, 2007) o La hamaca paraguaya (2008) de Paz Encina. En la introducción la autora traza un esbozo general sobre las tradiciones cinematográficas de los países en cuestión, que contribuye a fortalecer un sentido de unidad que prevalece sobre la diversidad de películas estudiadas y le permite lanzar una formulación acerca de las razones que explican las similitudes estéticas entre las películas que analiza. Tompkins traza una historia compartida del cine latinoamericano, que parte de la llegada del cine a fines del siglo XIX, para entender el momento de enunciación de los cineastas contemporáneos. La autora toma en cuenta la historia de la producción cinematográfica local para trazar un panorama histórico común: el de los avatares de los productores en su intento por consolidar una industria y el de los diálogos que los directores latinoamericanos tuvieron con vanguardias y corrientes cinematográficas como el neorrealismo. Además, Tompkins es sensible a la orientación política y social que las películas estudiadas en el libro tienen hacia el contexto actual, y encuentra una crítica reiterada hacia la aplicación de medidas económicas neoliberales y la desigualdad social prevaleciente en la región.Así, el trabajo de Tompkins realiza una indudable contribución al estudio de las vanguardias cinematográficas desde una perspectiva general latinoamericana, un tema que ha sido esbozado en trabajos de académicos como el del brasileño Arlindo Machado, o que ha estado presente en compilaciones como el DVD Cine a Contracorriente, coordinado en Barcelona por el español Antoni Pinent, pero del que todavía no existen libros específicos. Quedan preguntas pendientes por resolver en futuros trabajos: ¿existen redes latinoamericanas que puedan establecer un vínculo entre las experiencias aisladas de cada uno de los países?, ¿cuál sería el marco teórico adecuado para entender la originalidad de estas producciones sin un enfoque que subraye únicamente la relación de parecido con las vanguardias de las metrópolis culturales del mundo contemporáneo?, ¿es lo mismo experimentar desde Latinoamérica que en Europa o Estados Unidos? Y si no, ¿cuál es la diferencia?, ¿es narrativa, formal, política?, ¿no sería bueno abrir comparaciones, como hacía el historiador español Alberto Elena, con otras tradiciones cinematográficas extra metropolitanas? Son preguntas que deberán resolverse en los próximos estudios académicos sobre el tema: un camino en el cual, con este libro, Cynthia Tompkins da un primer paso firme.

Latin American cinema in the Cold War Historiographical construction in the film story of the Cuban Revolution

Latin American cinema in the Cold War Historiographical construction in the film story of the Cuban Revolution Clobas Maggi, Mariano Daniel; Mengo, Renee Isabel; Tenaglia, Pablo Ruben Abstract The "Cold War" means the long, open rivalry that pitted the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with their respective allies since the end of World War II in 1945 until the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1991. In Latin America, the tension of the period, materialized in one of the political and revolutionary landmarks of the continent, known as the Cuban Revolution of January 1, 1959. In this essay, compares and describes the construction of historiographical account of the occurrence of this revolution as the most important Latin American historical event period. Made more than fifty years have happened, continues to arouse interest in interpretation, in this particular case from the perspective of two selected films: "Memories of Underdevelopment" Cuban director Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1966, categorized as one of the 100 best films of Latin American cinema and "Before Night Falls" by US director Julian Schnabel, 2000, which deals with the life and work of Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in and out of the Revolution. Film and history converge in the historiographical construction of an event. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/rhps.v3n2a7

A Writing Haunted by Cinema: The Film Theories of Three Latin American Fictions

Ontology's OutsidersThe film-theoretical work of Latin American writers is far from absent in anglo- and francophone film studies. Perhaps the most anthologized text that appears alongside canonical names like Bazin, Bordwell, and Mulvey is Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's manifesto Toward a Third Cinema.1 Joining these Argentinian filmmakers behind the classic documentary La hora de los hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino, Fernando E. Solanas, AR, 1968) is Brazil's Glauber Rocha, who contributed to the search for a film praxis that both stood outside and opposed Hollywood's imperialism with pieces like Aesthetic of Hunger and films like Antonio Das Mortes/Black God, White Devil (FR/BR/DE, 1969). Two similarities between these writings, besides their contemporaneity and resonance with the events of May 1968, stand out: they were written by filmmakers with an eminent body of work and they are about Latin American cinema.These common features are indicative of certain tendencies within the context of European and North American academic film studies. Hispano- and lusophone writings on the nature of cinema from Latin America are usually relevant to the hegemonic centers of the when filmmakers whose work is already under study wrote them, or when they supply inroads to understanding Latin American cinema itself.2 Film theory from the region is thus quickly folded into area-specific cinematic research, and while it would be counterproductive to object to those approaches, it is impossible to shake a growing sense of territorialization. Solanas, Getino, and Rocha are what Francesco Casetti would call field theorists of film, or public intellectuals whose theoretical work is inseparable from their political and cultural criticism.3 Insistently tasking these writers with representing the cultural particularities of their regional cinema obstructs the realization that their writings might also strive for sharable, cross-cultural generality. Like Fredric Jameson's suggestion that all third-world texts are necessarily allegorical because they always seek to complete, through storytelling, an unformed national identity (a remark that Jameson himself acknowledges as sweeping),4 there is a tacit exclusion of Latin American voices from certain domains of theoretical thinking. In the case of film studies (to continue with Casetti's categories), the voices are excluded from the realm of ontological theory, where they could construct conceptual models of the unobservable underlying reality.5Their absence involves more than one kind of language barrier. Looking for texts that establish frameworks to define cinema's existence and reconstructing them through a close reading and a careful translation is a necessary step in repairing the gap. Here, however, I want to locate theories of cinema within genres of writing that do not replicate the structures and methods of the canonical texts, and to suggest that the relative dearth of paradigms of film ontology from Latin America has been not only a matter of linguistics, differing modernities, and unbalanced power dynamics between geopolitical entities, but also one of approach to the very task of theory-creation.To identify these diverging methodologies, Christian Keathley lays out a useful distinction when he proposes a form of film writing (the cinephiliac anecdote) that attempts to overcome the conundrum most eloquently delineated by Roland Barthes:Either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history, and ideologize; or . . . to posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible, and, in this case, poeticize. . . . We constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state that is still mystified.6Hence Keathley diagnoses the state of cinema studies at the turn of the 21st century and sees the balance unmistakably tilted within Barthes's tension between ideologizing and poeticizing. …