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Virtual Exhibit Hall
Confounding expectations? Indigenous filmmaking, language politics and the (re)constitution of Latin American Film
Mon, May 27, 2:15 to 3:45pm, TBAAbstract
Discussions of indigeneity in recent Latin American film, prompted by the release of Birdwatchers (Bechis, 2008), La teta asustada (Llosa, 2009), El abrazo de la serpiente (Guerra, 2015) and Ixcanul (Bustamante, 2015), among other productions, have afforded an exciting critical juncture in which to rethink language and the constitution of Latin American cinema in connection with aesthetics, funding and distribution practices, and the politics of naming. The celebration of these transnationally-produced and circulated works has tended to eclipse the influence of Indigenous-authored productions in the region which, for multiple reasons, are often not able to reach the same ‘global’ audiences, principally owing to material, linguistic and aesthetic reasons that confound expectations of how hegemonic film practice considers indigeneity should be projected on screen.
Moreover, the relationship between Spanish or Portuguese and the development of Latin American Film Studies, so instrumental to the discipline’s emergence as part of Modern Languages degree programmes, sits uncomfortably with films produced by Indigenous directors in the region, and the languages which broker production and distribution agreements. Some films are produced in Indigenous Spanish and Portuguese, while others are delivered entirely in Indigenous languages, making the field highly complex in terms of language politics, circulation and its challenge to the construction of Latin American cinema as an overtly non-Indigenous category of film production. This paper aims to consider these questions in light of research conducted during the FICMayab’ Festival Internacional de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas/Originarios, held in Guatemala in October 2018.