Latin American Documentary Filmmaking: Major Works by David William Foster (review)

In latin american documentary filmmaking: Major Works, David William Foster presents a series of critical readings of documentary films that grapple with a wide range of Latin American sociopolitical events and issues, covering a range of time periods from the early documentation of the Mexican Revolution to more recent filmic critiques of neo-imperial development and exploitation at the turn of the millennium. The collection demonstrates the need to examine the importance of documentary filmmaking to both the development of cinema in Latin America and the region’s history of leftist political movements. Foster suggests that documentary film is more than a footnote in Latin American film history or a regional offshoot in a more generalized development of documentary filmmaking, as has been written in many other English-language anthologies. The book’s most significant intervention is Foster’s validation of the unique character and importance of documentary film for the region, examining in each chapter the strategic use of documentary film texts to disrupt repressive discourses, mobilize political action, act as commentary on society or political regimes, and (re)write history.

Foster begins Latin American Documentary Filmmaking: Major Works by setting boundaries around what his book is and what it is not, a much-needed explanation for a work that tackles such a broad subject. Foster does not intend to make generalizing claims about the nature or character of Latin American documentary filmmaking, nor is the book intended to be a comprehensive historical periodization. Rather, the chapters work together as a set of specific and detailed case studies of particular films that Foster considers to be “major” due to their social, political, and historical importance. “Latin American” is an appropriate label for Foster’s group of films, which all share either a pan–Latin American revolutionary ethos (such as La hora de los hornos, which calls for Latin American opposition to US-led neocolonialism), regional implications (México, la revolución congelada uses Mexico as a model to critique the failures of revolution), or transnational considerations or critiques (Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita extraviada examines localized violence while drawing connections to issues of globalization and human rights). Even if these linkages are not immediately evident in the subject of the films themselves, Foster carefully fleshes out the broader regional and transnational importance of each of the films he examines. The result is a collection of film analyses that, while not trying to generate a categorical mapping or typology, gives a sense of some major themes and subjects woven throughout the history of Latin American documentary filmmaking and how these films have reverberated beyond their national contexts.

The book is organized into four parts, with each chapter focusing on a particular film. Part 1, “Filming the Socially Absent,” is concerned with films that give voice to subjects who are excluded from speaking socially, politically, and/ or economically. Although most of the films included in this book at least indirectly deal with marginalized peoples, Foster foregrounds issues of representation and authorial voice in this section. This is characteristic of Foster’s overall organizational principle, which primarily groups the films together according to his analytical themes rather than the topics or locations of the films themselves. The chapters in this section include discussions of Fernando Birri’s Tire dié (1960), about train station beggars in Argentina, and Eduardo Coutinho’s Boca de lixo (1992), about the lives of scavengers in a Brazilian garbage dump. Foster also looks at the isolated world of the infamous Mexican Lecumberri prison in Arturro Ripstein’s El Palacio Negro (1977). The final chapter in part 1 examines Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita extraviada (2001), which takes a critical look at the devastating impact of the systematic disappearances and murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Foster rightly highlights Portillo’s inventive strategies for respectfully representing the horrific deaths of the women; however, the complexities of and vast body of work written about the Juárez femicide seem...