The New Latin American Cinema
The New Latin American Cinema
A Continental Project
During the 1967 festival of Latin American Cinema in Viña del Mar, Chile, a group of filmmakers who wanted to use film as an instrument of social awareness and change formed the New Latin American Cinema. Nearly three decades later, the New Cinema has produced an impressive body of films, critical essays, and manifestos that uses social theory to inform filmmaking practices.
This book explores the institutional and aesthetic foundations of the New Latin American Cinema. Zuzana Pick maps out six areas of inquiry—history, authorship, gender, popular cinema, ethnicity, and exile—and explores them through detailed discussions of nearly twenty films and their makers, including Camila (María Luisa Bemberg), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), and Frida (Paul Leduc). These investigations document how the New Latin American Cinema has used film as a tool to change society, to transform national expressions, to support international differences, and to assert regional autonomy.
This work takes Latin American film scholarship to a new level of critical, conceptual, and methodological sophistication. Zuzana Pick frames key questions through a judicious, even inspired choice of films. Her interpretations are superb. Perceptive, analytically broad-ranging, critically compelling, they set a new standard for the field.
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction. The New Latin American Cinema: A Continental Project
- 1. Convergences and Divergences
- History and Institutions
- Pioneers and Early Manifestations
- Birth of a Movement
- State Intervention and Growth
- Turning Point and Consolidation
- 2. Creativity and Social Intervention
- Authorship and Cultural Militancy
- The Discovery of Self and Other: The Brickmakers
- The Authority of Daily Life: Up to a Point
- The Collective and the Nation: The Hour of the Furnaces
- 3. Gendered Identities and Femininity
- Women Filmmakers and Representations of Gender
- Machismo and Gender: A Man, When He Is a Man
- Experiences of Femininity: Mujer transparente
- Reviewing Women’s History: Camila
- Identity and Representation: Frida: Naturaleza viva
- 4. Popular Memory and the Power of Address
- Popular Cinema and Social Class
- Social Inquiry and Los inundados
- The Sertao and Cinema Nôvo: The Guns
- Popular Memory and The Courage of the People
- 5. Cultural Difference and Representation
- Ethnicity and Mestizaje
- The Dialectics of Race and Class: One Way or Another
- Metaphor and Difference: Iracema
- The Aesthetics of Carnival: Quilombo
- Immigration and Identity: Gaijin: The Road to Liberty
- 6. Exile and Displacement
- Exile: Discourse and Representation
- The Politics of the Personal: Unfinished Diary
- Spectacle and the Displaced Body: Tangos: The Exile of Gardel
- Phantasmagoria and Displacement: The Three Crowns of the Sailor
- Conclusion. The New Latin American Cinema: A Modernist Critique of Modernity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
