The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

By (author) María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez

Publication date:

28 November 2018

Length of book:

222 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498553025

The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema responds to the renewed interest in class within and outside academia by examining the aesthetics and politics of class in a representative selection of films from the contemporary cinemas of Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. It explores the relationship of cinematic practices to conflicting socio-political transformations taking place in these five countries such as the intensification of neoliberalism, the Turn-to-the-Left, and the growth of the middle classes in the period from 2003 to 2015. Utilizing a critical comparative method , it sheds a critical light on the presumed depoliticization (or new, aestheticized politicization) of contemporary Latin American cinema. The combined textual and industrial analyses of films from strikingly different cinemas and directors through the lenses of class allows for a contextualization of this trend and the observation of its limitations. Furthermore, this book distinguishes cinematic figurations that correspond to new conceptualizations of class introduced in social studies from figurations of class that have yet to be conceptualized.

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Class and Romance in Socialism

2. Space Defining Class: Middle-class Cinemas: Post-Tenebras Lux and Que horas ela volta?

3. Class and the State: State Institutions: Slum Pacification and Prison Riots in Brazil

4. The Return of the People: Wrestling with the State: “Up with Populism!” in Venezuela

5. The Globalization of Class on Screen: Amat Escalante’s “Engaged Visuality”

6. Class and Race: Exploring New Class Figurations in Asian-themed Films Produced in Latin America

Conclusion

References

Index

About the Author

Vázquez Vázquez (Univ. of Hong Kong) employs close textual analysis of selected Latin American fiction feature films produced from 2003 to 2015 to study the dynamics of class relations in cinema in terms of both aesthetics and politics. In addition, she analyzes issues of class in extratextual areas such as governmental cultural policies, modes of production, national and transnational funding schemes, distribution, and reception. Taking a multinational approach, the author examines films from Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela—countries characterized during this particular period by a major shift to the left of the political spectrum (the “Turn-to-the-Left”)—and also films from Cuba and Mexico, where long-established socialist and neoliberal programs, respectively, prevailed. Celebrated works by global auteurs (e. g., Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux) are studied, as are obscure features such as Yu Lik Wai’s Hong Kong–Brazil–France–Japan coproduction Plastic City. . . Vázquez Vázquez's research is in-depth, up-to-date, and appropriately documented in extensive notes and a bibliography. This book breaks new ground in the study of contemporary Latin American cinema.

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.