Diasporic Ecuadorians in Italy and Spain: Filmic Representations

• In Event: Politics and Aesthetics: The Filmic Body and Moving Image

Abstract

Diasporic Ecuadorians in the European Union have often been object of social science research within migration and policymaking studies. Their cinematic representations, however, have barely interested academics. I discuss the different narrative strategies, styles, and thematic concerns of Spanish, Italian, and Ecuadorian filmmakers in their representation of Ecuadorian migrants and diasporic communities in Spain and Italy. Through fictional films and documentaries, directors have engaged in the (re)articulation of homeland, national identity, ethnicity, otherness, and journey, as well as transnational subjectivities and counter-narratives of dominant immigration discourses in Spain and Italy, where the second and third largest communities of diasporic Ecuadorians, respectively, live, following the U.S. As most world cinema today, the filmic representations of Ecuadorian diasporas are often the result of transnational collaborations that involve the films’ production, locations, casting, distribution, and diasporan directors.

I contextualize my analysis by providing a brief overview of Spanish and Italian representations of immigrants/citizens of nation-states considered outside or not belonging to the European Union, followed by an examination of several films that directly or indirectly feature Ecuadorian migration and diasporic communities in Spain and Italy. I center my discussion on Fernando Mieles’ Prometeo Deportado (2010) as a text that illustrates how at the turn of the current century transnational migration, particularly to the European Union, became a national narrative in Ecuador, involving all social classes and all geographical regions, and through satire the film presents a critique to global contemporary systems of migration control and dehumanization of people from the global South.

Author

• Esther A Cuesta, University of Massachusetts/Amherst