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  • Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections ed. by Nayibe Bermúdez Barrios
  • Christine Forster (bio)
Nayibe Bermúdez Barrios , editor. Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections. University of Calgary Press. x, 334. $34.95

The Latin American film industry, like Latin American politics, is an ever-changing entity that reflects the advances and subsequent upsets of a complex economic and social environment. Despite this turbulent history (or perhaps precisely on account of it), scholarly activity on the art of film has been on the increase since the turn of the millennium. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000), together with new films by other directors like Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, have catapulted Latin American cinema onto the world scene. In 2008, Pablo Trapero (with Leonera) and Lucrecia Martel (with La mujer sin cabeza) were both nominated for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Argentina the only country after France and the United States to have two films nominated at once; and in 2009, Argentina’s Juan José Campanella won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards for his submission, El secreto de sus ojos. However, Nayibe Bermúdez Barrios, editor of Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections, chooses not to dwell upon these new ‘hits,’ but rather to highlight some lesser-known films through a collection of essays that provide the reader with a broad analysis of some of the main themes in Latin American cinema today – gender issues, class relations, stereotypes, globalization, and economic crisis, to name but a few.

Starting from the colourful front cover of the book, we understand the diversity of themes that will be discussed in its content. A collage of stills, all focusing on human subjects, delights the reader’s visual field with a variety of cinematographic images representing sexual, racial, and class identity in different places and times. The book is divided into three parts, and in each one Bermúdez Barrios surprises us with a focus on female film-makers like Lucrecia Martel, Lucía Puenzo, and Marisa Sistach. The vast majority of contributors to the book are women, and the themes developed are in large part related to the family, women’s roles in community and politics, sexuality, rape, body image, and female identity. Since the Latin American film industry has traditionally been dominated by male directors, producers, and ‘superstars,’ this feature in itself makes this publication revolutionary.

A fairly obvious omission is any essay touching on Cuban cinema, a characteristic that renders the book a difficult choice for a classroom textbook on Latin American film in general; neither are young Chilean film-makers like Andrés Wood or Pablo Larraín mentioned at any point. [End Page 592] After years of dictatorship, censorship, and lack of funding, Chilean cinema is finally taking off. The only Latin American nomination to make the shortlist for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, for example, is Larraín’s No, a pivotal production in the understanding of Chilean society, dictatorship, and the transition to democracy. (Of course, the nature of the publishing and printing industry is such that keeping up with the booming Latin American film industry is a constant and unavoidably fruitless challenge.)

Overall, Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections provides the reader with a well-organized compilation of essays that document the broad impact, both local and international, that a diverse selection of Latin American film-makers have had on contemporary culture. Although perhaps not complete enough to be used as the sole textbook for an introductory course on Latin American film, it is an invaluable reference tool for any student, instructor, or cinephile.

Christine Forster

Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, University of Victoria

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