Screening Minors in Latin America Cinema ed. by Carolina Rocha, Georgia Seminet (review)

Distinct from their first volume on youth in cinema, Representing History, Class, and Gender in Spain and Latin America: Children and Adolescents in Film, in this new book Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet narrow the scope to Latin America, including Brazil, and compile an anthology of varied critical approaches and research findings. Presented across four thematic sections are twelve chapters written in English that treat films spanning from 1976 to 2013.

The theory which binds the compendium of articles is the youth protagonist’s construction of subjectivity and agency on screen. While children and adolescents are frequently examined as “others” in film, drawing on Ann E. Kaplan, Robyn McCallum and Lisa Cartwright’s scholarship, Rocha and Seminet propose that the adult gaze can be reversed so that “the look” is a relational or intersubjective process. Accordingly, as the contributors show, the filmmakers’ recasting of the juvenile protagonist’s alterity moves away from the representation of children and adolescents as the object of adult gaze and moves towards empowering them by giving them voice and selfhood. Cinematic techniques as well as plot devices and sequences support the theses. However, the last section does not conform to this method because it focuses on documentaries whose making and viewing experience are dissimilar. Although Caribbean film is notably absent, each article provides a clear sociohistorical context for the film(s) examined. The social and political milieu is frequently the object of critique through the lens of the young character’s agency.

Agency without resort to language is explored by several authors. Rocha argues that the camera focalizes the child’s view in Mutum (2007) because the young character does not have full access to language. Sophie Dufays proposes that La rabia (2008) privileges visual and sound effects to connect with narrative relationships between parents and children in the absence of language. Alejandra Josiowicz discusses girlhood and non-normative sexualities as a form of political activism. In a long discussion on La rabia, and referring to Cartwright’s theory of empathetic identification, Josiowicz shows how the autistic protagonist develops agency through tactile and aural expressions as well as making drawings.

Several articles delve into the frontier between the child’s world and the adult sphere. Examining Marisa Sistach’s films, and introducing her study with Amy Hinterberger’s philosophy, Traci Roberts-Camps defines agency as a means to resist, negotiate and transform power. That she proposes the characters’ lack of agency may complicate the anthology’s overall thesis on youth empowerment. However, Roberts-Camps, who is widely published, deftly explores adult complicity, and institutional neglect, in the gender-based violence experienced by the female adolescent characters in Perfume de violetas (Nadie te oye) (2000) and La niña de la piedra (Nadie te ve) (2006). In Postcoup Chile, the film, Julio comienza en julio (1976) demonstrates that children are not exiled from history according to Walescka Pino-Ojeda, who states that through youthful rebellion, the characters embody continuity of order and the promise of change. Set in 1980s Peru, Las malas intenciones (2011) brings the adult spectator into the child’s interior world through the juvenile character’s imaginative practice. In this film Sarah Thomas effectively shows that the protagonist, although frail and powerless in the adult world, is an agent in the imaginative realm.

Child’s play is the focus of Amanda Holmes study on Lola (1989). She examines child’s play, via the analysis of camerawork, as a means for the daughter to construct a deepening relationship with her mother in the context of Post-earthquake Mexico City.

Creatively, Laura Senio-Blair analyzes two well-known road films, La misma luna (2007) and Sin nombre (2009), against the Hollywood genre to discover that the youth protagonists crossing the U.S./Mexico border are not narcissistic escapists but rather agents of innocence, optimism and vulnerability.

Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema is Rocha’s fourth co-edited volume on Latin American film, and Seminet’s second. It is...