New Documentaries in Latin America

Transcription

1 New Documentaries in Latin America

2 GLOBAL CINEMA Edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Anikó Imre, and Áine O Healy The Global Cinema series publishes innovative scholarship on the transnational themes, industries, economies, and aesthetic elements that increasingly connect cinemas around the world. It promotes theoretically transformative and politically challenging projects that rethink film studies from cross-cultural, comparative perspectives, bringing into focus forms of cinematic production that resist nationalist or hegemonic frameworks. Rather than aiming at comprehensive geographical coverage, it foregrounds transnational interconnections in the production, distribution, exhibition, study, and teaching of film. Dedicated to global aspects of cinema, this pioneering series combines original perspectives and new methodological paths with accessibility and coverage. Both global and cinema remain open to a range of approaches and interpretations, new and traditional. Books published in the series sustain a specific concern with the medium of cinema but do not defensively protect the boundaries of film studies, recognizing that film exists in a converging media environment. The series emphasizes a historically expanded rather than an exclusively presentist notion of globalization; it is mindful of repositioning the global away from a US-centric/Eurocentric grid, and remains critical of celebratory notions of globalizing film studies. Katarzyna Marciniak is a professor of Transnational Studies in the English Department at Ohio University. Anikó Imre is an associate professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Áine O Healy is a professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Prismatic Media, Transnational Circuits: Feminism in a Globalized Present By Krista Geneviève Lynes Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture Edited by Russell Meeuf and Raphael Raphael Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around the World Edited by Daniel Biltereyst and Roel Vande Winkel The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Australia, and Asia Edited by Mette Hjort The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas Edited by Mette Hjort Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures Edited by Petr Szczepanik and Patrick Vonderau New Documentaries in Latin America Edited by Vinicius Navarro and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

3 New Documentaries in Latin America Edited by Vinicius Navarro and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

4 NEW DOCUMENTARIES IN LATIN AMERICA Copyright Vinicius Navarro and Juan Carlos Rodríguez, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New Documentaries in Latin America / edited by Vinicius Navarro and Juan Carlos Rodríguez. pages cm. (Global cinema) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Documentary films Latin America History and criticism. I. Navarro, Vinicius, 1967 editor of compilation. II. Rodríguez, Juan Carlos, 1975 editor of compilation. PN D6N dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: May

5 Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments vii ix Introduction 1 Vinicius Navarro and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Part I Aesthetics and Politics 1 A Poetics of the Trace 25 Ana M. López 2 First-Person Documentary and the New Political Subject: Enunciation, Recent History, and the Present in New Argentine Cinema 45 Antonio Gómez 3 Under the Surface of the Image: Cultural Narrative, Symbolic Landscapes, and National Identity in the Films of JorgedeLeónandArmandoCapó 59 Ruth Goldberg 4 Performance in Brazilian Documentaries 75 Vinicius Navarro 5 Narrative, Visibility, and Trauma in Bus Cecilia Sayad 6 Residual Images and Political Time: Memory and History in Chile, ObstinateMemory and City of Photographers 107 José Miguel Palacios Part II Community and Indigenous Media 7 Reenact, Reimagine: Performative Indigenous Documentaries of Bolivia and Brazil 123 Amalia Córdova 8 An Other Documentary Is Possible: Indy Solidarity Video and Aesthetic Politics 145 Freya Schiwy

6 vi CONTENTS 9 Chilean Political Documentary Video of the 1980s 167 Antonio Traverso and Germán Liñero Part III Local, National, and Transnational Dialogues 10 Bolivia in View 187 Michael Chanan 11 Intimate Spaces and Migrant Imaginaries: Sandra Gómez, Susana Barriga, and Heidi Hassan 199 Susan Lord and Zaira Zarza 12 Documentary on Wheels: Car Culture in Karen Rossi s Isla Chatarra 219 Juan Carlos Rodríguez 13 Rasquache Mockumentary: Alex Rivera s Why Cybraceros? 235 Debra A. Castillo Notes on Contributors 251 Index 255

7 Illustrations 1.1 The static, distant framing in Santiago (2007) Santiago exercising his hands (Santiago, 2007) Ad announcing a casting call for women who have stories to tell (Jogo de cena, 2007) Reenactment in Jogo de cena (2007) Nilza s surprising revelation in Jogo de cena (2007) Planning for unexpected events: framing in Alamar (2009) Natan acknowledges the camera (Alamar, 2009) and 5.2 The sniper s assault on Sandro and Geísa shown from different perspectives (Bus 174, 2002) In Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), Carmen Vivanco sits next to an image from The Battle of Chile ( ), Patricio Guzmán s landmark documentary Public demonstration in Tatiana Gaviola s No me olvides (1988). Courtesy of Ocho Libros Editores Carmen Gloria Quintana, a well-known victim of the Chilean military s atrocities, in the protest documented in No me olvides.courtesy of Ocho Libros Editores Collector holding a toy car in Isla Chatarra (2007) Woman driver putting on makeup (Isla Chatarra, 2007) Crane lifts a junk car in a dump (Isla Chatarra, 2007) 231

8 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 13.1 Mock-industrial webpage: Cybracero site. Courtesy of Alex Rivera Cybraceros 1997 video. Courtesy of Alex Rivera Cybraceros 2003 video. Courtesy of Alex Rivera 246

9 Acknowledgments A book on contemporary Latin American documentaries calls for a variety of approaches on a wide range of topics. In many ways, this could only be a collective project, a gathering of different voices and perspectives. We are most grateful to our contributors for helping us start mapping the extraordinarily rich landscape of recent nonfiction filmmaking in Latin America. We thank our friends, colleagues, and fellow documentary scholars for their guidance and support, in particular Idelber Avelar, Angela Dalle Vacche, Héctor Fernández L Hoeste, Jane Gaines, Vicki Galloway, José Quiroga, Michael Renov, Raquel Rivera, Isis Sadek, Jay Telotte, and Anastasia Valecce. Thanks as well to those who showed interest in our workandencouragedustopursuethisproject:hectoramaya,patricia Aufderheide, Alfredo Dias D Almeida, Claudia Ferman, Alessandro Fornazzari, Manuel Pérez-Tejada, Laura Podalsky, Dylon Robbins, Robert Stam, Ann Marie Stock, Juana Suárez, Jason Weidemann, and Ismail Xavier. Marcelo Krasilcic helped us with the images, and we are grateful for his patience, generosity, and technical expertise. Thanks as well to David Robinson at Tulane University for handling the pictures in Chapter 1. Juan Carlos Rodríguez is grateful to the Office of the Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, at Georgia Tech, for supporting his field research trip to Argentina, Chile, and Brazil in 2009, with funds provided by the Georgia Tech Foundation s Small Grants for Research Program. We thank Ocho Libros Editores for allowing us to translate and reprint sections from Germán Liñero s book, Apuntes para una historia del video en Chile, and for permission to use images from that same book. Our gratitude also goes to Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/The Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group for letting us use excerpts from Antonio Traverso s essay Nostalgia, Memory, and Politics in Chilean Documentaries of Return, published in Patricia Swier and Julia Riordan-Goncalves s Dictatorships in the Hispanic World: Transatlantic and Transnational Perspectives. We thank María Caridad Cumaná and Manchester University Press for permission to use portions from Susan Lord and María Caridad Cumaná s Deterritorialised Intimacies: The

10 x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Documentary Legacy of Sara Gómez in Three Contemporary Cuban Women Filmmakers, originally published in Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theories, Practice and Difference, edited by Parvati Nair and Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla. And we thank Alex Rivera for allowing us to reproduce images from his Cybracero website and from his video Why Cybraceros? At Palgrave Macmillan, we would like to thank Robyn Curtis, Erica Buchman, Rachel Taenzler, and Desiree Browne for their careful handling of our project. We are also grateful to our reviewers for their suggestions and their constructive criticism. Special thanks go to Cynthia Román-Hernández for her loving support and patience in the course of this process.