New Approaches to Latin American Cinema

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing number of publications dedicated to Latin American cinema. These publications have focused either on national media histories in the Latin American context or have taken thematic approaches to filmmaking in the region. This workshop brings together recent scholarship that departs from this stance to engage with key theoretical and critical concerns from film studies and how they are manifested in the Latin American context.

In her new book, Foundational Films. Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil, Maite Conde explores how discussions from early cinema, especially its perceived inextricability from the invention of modern life, developed in Brazil. In his monograph Mock Classicism: Latin American Film Comedy 1930-60, Nilo Couret traces the popularity of film comedies from the transition to sound through the industrial studio period in order to reconstruct how Latin American cinema became classical; and in their new edited collection Ism, Ism, Ism / Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, Jesse Lerner and Luciano Piazza survey a range of experimental films emerging from the intersections of radical politics, anthropology, experimental documentary, the critique of third cinema, avant-garde performance and other art genres.

This scholarship covers different film historical periods (e.g., early cinema, studio cinemas) and diverse cinematic practices (e.g., experimental cinema, popular periodicals) to suggest new lines of inquiry for Latin American media history. Workshop participants explore the tensions between textual and media studies, regional and national frameworks, and popular and experimental cinemas.

Sub Track

• Film, Performance, and Culture

Session Organizer

• Nilo Fernando Couret, University of Michigan

Chair

• Maite Conde, University of Cambridge

Discussant

• Laura A Podalsky, Ohio State University

Presenters

• Jesse Lerner, Claremont Colleges

• Nilo Fernando Couret, University of Michigan

• Maite Conde, University of Cambridge