Visual Synergies in Fiction and Documentary Film from Latin America

258 Pages·2009·3.275 MB·English

by  Miriam Haddu, Joanna Page (eds.)

STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS
edited by
James Dunkerley
Institute for the Study of the Americas
University of London
School of Advanced Study
Titles in this series are multi-disciplinary studies of aspects of the societies of the hemisphere,
particularly in the areas of politics, economics, history, anthropology, sociology, and the envi-
ronment. The series covers a comparative perspective across the Americas, including Canada
and the Caribbean as well as the United States and Latin America.
Titles in this series published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Cuba’s Military 1990–2005: Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times
By Hal Klepak
The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America
Edited by Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell
Latin America: A New Interpretation
By Laurence Whitehead
Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina
By Arnd Schneider
America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism
Edited by Gary L. McDowell and Johnathan O’Neill
Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives
Edited by Jens R. Hentschke
When Was Latin America Modern?
Edited by Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart
Debating Cuban Exceptionalism
Edited by Bert Hoffman and Laurence Whitehead
Caribbean Land and Development Revisited
Edited by Jean Besson and Janet Momsen
Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic
Edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece
Democratization, Development, and Legality: Chile, 1831–1973
By Julio Faundez
The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820–1880
By Iván Jaksic´
The Role of Mexico’s Plural in Latin American Literary and Political Culture: From Tlatelolco
to the “Philanthropic Ogre”
By John King
Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico
Edited by Matthew Butler
Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930
By Nicola Miller
The Republican Party and Immigration Politics: From Proposition 187 to George W. Bush
By Andrew Wroe
The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the
Americas
Edited by Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen
Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies
Edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies
Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Local and Universal Views Confronted
Edited by James Copestake
The Federal Nation: Perspectives on American Federalism
Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip J. Davies
Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967
By Steven High
Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads
Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts
Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals
By John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman
Visual Synergies in Fiction and Documentary Film from Latin America
Edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page
Visual Synergies in Fiction and
Documentary Film from
Latin America
Edited by
Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page
vISUAL SYNERGIES IN FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY FILM FROM
LATIN AMERICA
Copyright © Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page, 2009.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-60638-8
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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 785998, 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 978-1-349-37364-2 ISBN 978-0-230-62215-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230622159
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visual synergies in fiction and documentary film from Latin America /
edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page.
p. cm.—(Studies of the americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Documentary-style films—Latin America—History and criticism.
2. Motion pictures—Latin America—History and criticism. 3. Motion
pictures—Social aspects—Latin America. I. Haddu, Miriam, 1971– II. Page,
Joanna, 1974–
PN1995.9.D62V57 2009
791.430982—dc22 2008049762
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2010
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Part I Latin American Perspectives
1 Introduction: Fiction, Documentary, and Cultural Change in
Latin America 3
Joanna Page
2 The Space between Fiction and Documentary in Latin American
Cinema: Notes toward a Genealogy 15
Michael Chanan
Part II Revolution and Its Specters
3 On the Margins of Reality: Fiction, Documentary, and
Marginal Subjectivity in Three Early Cuban Revolutionary Films 27
Dylon Robbins
4 Cuban Documentary: Synergy and Its Discontents 49
Alexandra Anderson
5 O sertão nao virou mar: Images of Violence and the Position of
the Spectator in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema 67
Edgardo Dieleke
Part III Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres
6 Cofralandes: A Formative Space for Chilean Identity 87
Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi
7 Aunt Juana’s Shop, or Reality as Metaphor, in María Novaro’s
El jardín del Edén 105
Maximiliano Maza Pérez
vi CONTENTS
8 Mockumentary as Post-nationalism: National Identity in
A Day without a Mexican by Sergio Arau 119
Armida De la Garza
Part IV Performance and Reflexivity in
the Contemporary Documentary
9 Between Image and Word: Minority Discourses and Community
Construction in Eduardo Coutinho’s Documentaries 133
Mariana A. C. da Cunha
10 Characters and Conflict: Dramatic Structure in
Three Mexican Documentaries 151
Cristina Cervantes
11 Whodunnit?: In Search of the Real/Reel (and Imagined) Aro
Tolbukhin in Aro Tolbukhin: En la mente del asesino 163
Miriam Haddu
Part V Questions of Reference
12 Filming Psychoanalysis: The Documentation of Paranoia and the
“Paranoid Gaze” in Luis Buñuel’s Él 179
Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla
13 Digital Mimicry and Visual Tropes: Some Images from Argentina 197
Joanna Page
14 D ereferencing the Real: Documentary Mediascapes in
the Films of Carlos Marcovich (¿Quién diablos es Juliette?
and Cuatro labios) 219
Geoffrey Kantaris
15 Documenting Urban Fictions in Contemporary Argentine Film:
Notes on Pablo Trapero’s El bonaerense 237
James Cisneros
Index 251
Figures
3.1 The mirror above the bar in P.M. 32
3.2 Moncada headlines seen while Memorias soundtrack is
heard in Desde la Habana ¡1969! recordar 40
3.3 The director as blind sequence in
Desde la Habana ¡1969! recordar 41
5.1 Rocket in City of God finds himself trapped between the
traffickers and the police 74
5.2 At the start of the film, Madame Satã is presented to
the spectator from the police officer’s perspective 78
5.3 Offstage, Madame Satã performs to an imaginary audience 79
6.1 Folklore as ruin. Raúl Ruiz directs Isabel Parra during the
filming of the fourth part of Cofralandes, Chilean
Rhapsody (2002) 93
6.2 The ludic capacity. Ruiz coordinates a game of “Luzifer
Matches” during the filming of the fourth part of
Cofralandes 94
9.1 Boca de lixo 135
9.2 Babilônia 2000 141
9.3 Cabra marcado para morrer 145
13.1 El árbol recalls earlier visual technologies by
experimenting with backlighting and projection 202
13.2 Superimposition in La orilla que se abisma creates
thick textures and flashes of light, mimicking the grainy,
flickering, decayed images of old film 208
13.3 The skyline of Buenos Aires in La sonámbula contains a
collage of identifiable city landmarks 211
14.1 Yuliet cleans the screen: Mock transparency in
¿Quién diablos es Juliette? 223
14.2 W hat counts as “Nature?” OV7 spelled out in
flowers floating on water 227
14.3 V isual dereferencing: Fabiola “an inch away from
the real thing” in ¿Quién diablos es Juliette? 230
Notes on Contributors
Alexandra Anderson is Associate Professor of Documentary Production
and History at the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto,
Canada. Areas of interest include Latin American film, documentary in the
margins, and film preservation.
Cristina Cervantes is Professor of Scriptwriting at the Instituto Tecnológico
de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. With Maximiliano Maza
Pérez she has written the Guión para medios audiovisuales, a textbook on
scripting for audiovisual media. At present she is a doctoral candidate in
Humanities, and is working on a dissertation regarding the translation/
adaptation of literary texts into film scripts.
Michael Chanan is a documentary filmmaker, author of books on both film
and music, and Professor of Film and Video at Roehampton University,
London. He has written a history of cinema in Cuba, of which the second
edition came out in 2004 under the title Cuban Cinema (University of
Minnesota Press), and his latest book is The Politics of Documentary (BFI,
2008). In the 1970s he made a couple of films on music for BBC, and in the
1980s, a number of films shot in Cuba and Latin America, most of them for
Channel Four. His last film was Detroit: Ruin of a City (2005) and he is cur-
rently at work on a film called The American Who Electrified Russia.
James Cisneros is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures at the Université de Montréal, where he teaches
courses on Latin American Film, Literature, and Cultural Studies. His cur-
rent research focuses on literary and filmic representations of Latin America’s
megacities. He has published articles in Nuevo texto crítico, Journal of Latin
American Cultural Studies, Hispanic Issues, and Intermédialités.
Mariana A. C. da Cunha teaches Brazilian Portuguese Language and
Culture at Queen Mary, University of London. She has an MA in Cultural
and Critical Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, and is
now developing a PhD thesis at the same institution, specializing in the rep-
resentation of migration and landscape in contemporary Brazilian cinema.
She is also a freelance Film Programmer for the Discovering Latin America
Film Festival in London.
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Edgardo Dieleke is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese at Princeton University. For his dissertation he is working on
current representations of violence in Argentine and Brazilian literature and
cinema. He has published several essays on Latin American cinema. He is
also the editor, with Claudia Soria and Paola Cortés-Rocca, of the forthcom-
ing Políticas del sentimiento: El peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina
moderna (1946–2006).
Armida De la Garza is a Lecturer in International Communication at the
University of Nottingham, currently teaching film at the campus in Ningbo,
China. In 2007 she was awarded a University of Nottingham Research Grant
to pursue the project entitled Transnational Cinema in Globalising Societies:
Asia and Latin America with partners in Mexico and China. Her book enti-
tled Mexico on Film: National Identity and International Relations was pub-
lished in December 2006.
Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla is a Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American
Film at Newcastle University. His research interests are in Spanish and Latin
American cinema, gender studies, and psychoanalysis. Recent publications
have appeared in the Hispanic Research Journal and in Angelaki: A Journal
of the Theoretical Humanities. His book, Queering Buñuel: Sexual Dissidence
and Psychoanalysis in his Mexican and Spanish Cinema, has recently been
published with I. B. Tauris.
Miriam Haddu is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at Royal Holloway,
University of London. She is an active researcher in the field of Mexican Visual
Cultures and author of Contemporary Mexican Cinema (1989–1999): History,
Space and Identity, published by Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. She has published
articles on Mexican cinema and photography in journals and edited volumes.
Her current book project focuses on analyzing recent Mexican filmic outputs.
Geoffrey Kantaris is Director of the Centre of Latin American Studies in
the University of Cambridge and Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese. His current research is on contemporary urban
cinema from Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, and he has published several
articles and essays in this area. He has also worked extensively on women’s
writing and dictatorship in Argentina and Uruguay.
Maximiliano Maza Pérez is Professor of Mexican Cinema and Media
Culture at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey,
Mexico, where he is Director of the Department of Communication and
Journalism. He is the author of Más de cien años de cine mexicano, a Spanish
language Internet resource on Mexican Cinema. In 2001 he joined the Jury
of the Guadalajara Film Festival. He has published a number of articles on
Mexican film history.
Joanna Page holds a lectureship in Latin American Cultural Studies at the
University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie in the field of contempo-
rary Argentine literature and film, and she has published a number of articles