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The Berlin Wall in Femando Pérez's La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words): Refiguring Belonging in Precarity
- Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 54, Number 4, November 2018
- pp. 456-474
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Renowned Cuban filmmaker Fernando Pérez's films are known for capturing the pulse of street-level life in Havana. Produced independently of the Cuban Film Institute, La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words) (2014) expresses the im/possibilities and necessity of communication in precarity. The lyrical, gritty feature depicts multiple practices of being and interdependence in conditions of vulnerability. The Berlin Wall ciphers impoverished interaction and stasis as impediments that in turn engender situational privation and limit human potential and engagement. Valorizing change, La pared deploys the Berlin Wall to speak about straitened conditions in the Heimat of Cuba and by extension in society today.