Editors:
- Offers new contributions to current debates around Latin American documentary film
- Examines continuities and ruptures between the militant “Third Cinema” of the 1960s and 1970s and the more subjective, experimental, and subtly political films of the 1990s and beyond
- Analyzes the ethics of “encounters” between filmmakers and their documentary subjects
- Highlights the performative aspects of memory and truth-telling in Latin American documentary films that have emerged after dictatorship and civil conflict
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Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Subjective Turn and Beyond
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Front Matter
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The Ethics of Encounter
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Front Matter
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Performing Truth: Memory Politics and Documentary Filmmaking
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Front Matter
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About this book
Nearly two decades into the new millennium, Latin American documentary film is experiencing renewed vibrancy and visibility on the global stage. While elements of the combative, politicized cinema of the 1960s and 1970s remain, the region’s production has become increasingly subjective, reflexive, and experimental, though perhaps no less political. At the same time, Latin American filmmakers both respond to and shape global tendencies in the genre. This book highlights the richness and heterogeneity of Latin American documentary film, surveys a broad range of national contexts, styles, and practices, and expands current debates on the genre. Thematic sections address the “subjective turn” of the 1990s and 2000s and the move beyond it; the ethics of the encounter between the filmmaker and the subject/object of his or her gaze; and the performance of truth and memory, a particularly urgent topic as Latin American countries have transitioned from dictatorship to democracy.
Reviews
“Arenillas and Lazzara’s book traces a commendable and up-to-date cartography of Latin American documentary film’s regional, thematic, and stylistic variations, placing these in dialogue with their respective sociocultural and political contexts. A key reference work, this volume not only explores how documentary film engages the challenges of our times—legacies of dictatorship; obstinate memories; social, ethnic, and cultural conflicts; or struggles for identity and rights—but also how it does so in ways that are artistically experimental and that once again point to the complex interfacing of aesthetics, ethics, and politics.” (Leonor Arfuch, University of Buenos Aires and author of “El espacio biográfico: dilemas de la subjetividad contemporánea”)
“Latin American documentary filmmaking is mostly know to international audiences as a politically-committed and ideologically charged cinema that references the major sociohistorical processes of the twentieth century: the Mexican Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, dictatorships, and uprisings for social justice. In the new millennium, however, tightly-controlled and often vast-scaled projects have given way to a subjective turn in which subaltern subjects speak in their own voices, the pretense of master narratives disappears, and experimentalism reigns. Arenillas and Lazzara’s sophisticated and theoretically-grounded book draws out the rich textures and human experiences captured in these films.” (David William Foster, Arizona State University and author of “Latin American Documentary Filmmaking: Major Works”)
Editors and Affiliations
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Northern Michigan University, Department of Modern Languages and Liter, Marquette, USA
María Guadalupe Arenillas
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Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California Davis, Davis, USA
Michael J. Lazzara
About the editors
Michael J. Lazzara is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, USA. He is the author of Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence (2011), Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory (2006), and numerous articles on literature, politics, and film. He is also co-editor, with Vicky Unruh, of Telling Ruins in Latin America (2009).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium
Editors: María Guadalupe Arenillas, Michael J. Lazzara
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49523-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-49522-8Published: 08 July 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-49523-5Published: 23 June 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 302
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 14 illustrations in colour
Topics: Latin American Politics, Latin American Cinema and TV, Latin American Culture, Documentary, Cultural Studies, Latino Culture