Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium

Nearly two decades into the new millennium, Latin American documentary film is experiencing renewed vibrancy and visibility on the global stage. While elements of the combative, politicized cinema of the 1960s and 1970s remain, the region-s production has become increasingly subjective, reflexive, and experimental, though perhaps no less political. At the same time, Latin American filmmakers both respond to and shape global tendencies in the genre. This book highlights the richness and heterogeneity of Latin American documentary film, surveys a broad range of national contexts, styles, and practices, and expands current debates on the genre. Thematic sections address the -subjective turn- of the 1990s and 2000s and the move beyond it; the ethics of the encounter between the filmmaker and the subject/object of his or her gaze; and the performance of truth and memory, a particularly urgent topic as Latin American countries have transitioned from dictatorship to democracy.

María Guadalupe Arenillas is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Northern Michigan University, USA. She has published articles on contemporary Argentine documentary film and literature. She is co-editor of the book series Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Michael J. Lazzara is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, USA. He is the author of Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence (2011), Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory (2006), and numerous articles on literature, politics, and film. He is also co-editor, with Vicky Unruh, of Telling Ruins in Latin America (2009).

Introduction: Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium; María Guadalupe Arenillas and Michael J. Lazzara.-1. What Remains of Third Cinema?; Michael J. Lazzara.-2. Andrés Di Tella and Argentine Documentary Film; Jorge Ruffinelli.-3. Displacing the "I": Uses of the First Person in Recent Argentine Biographical Documentaries; Antonio Gómez.-4. The "Mobility Turn" in Contemporary Latin American First-Person Documentary; Pablo Piedras.-5. The Politics-Commodity: The Rise of Mexican Commercial Documentary in the Neoliberal Era; Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado.-6. Where Are the "People"?: The Politics of the Virtual and the Ordinary in Contemporary Brazilian Documentaries; Gustavo Procopio Furtado.-7. Ethnobiographic Encounters and Interculturalism: New Modes of Reflexivity in Contemporary Documentaries from Argentina; Joanna Page.-8. Performance, Reflexivity, and the Languages of History in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary Film; JensAndermann.-9. A Common Gaze: Reflections on New Documentary Practices in Peru; Talía Dajes and Sofía Velázquez.-10. Audiovisual Affect: Sexuality and the Public Sphere in the Work of Colombia's Escuela Audiovisual al Borde; Marta Cabrera.-11. Capturing the "Real" in Panama's Canal Ghettos; Emily F. Davidson.-12. Beyond Autobiography: Rethinking Documentary Production by the Children of the Disappeared; María Laura Lattanzi.-13. Caught off Guard at the Crossroads of Ideology and Affect: Mothers and Daughters in Contemporary Argentine and Chilean Documentaries; Bernardita Llanos.-14. Filming Responsibly: Ethnicity, Community, and the Nation in Ana Lucía Cuevas's El eco del dolor de mucha gente; Valeria Grinberg Pla.-15. Toward a Nondiscursive Turn in Argentine Documentary Film; María Guadalupe Arenillas