Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century World (review)

In the past decade, Chilean cinema has been internationally acclaimed as one that portrays intimate and personal stories that connect with a global audience. Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman (2017) won the Best International Feature Film Academy Award and, before that, Gabriel Osorio's Bear Story (2015) made history as the first Chilean animated short film to win in that category. More recently, Maite Alberdi's The Mole Agent was nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Despite receiving such recognition, Chilean cinema has struggled to reach a larger global audience, both academic and non-academic, particularly when compared to other Latin American film industries such as Mexico, Argentina or Brazil. Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-Frist Century World aims to offer readers a critical analysis of contemporary Chilean films to establish it as a reference in the public debate. As editors Vania Barraza and Carl Fischer point out in the introduction, "this book thinks about Chilean cinema in the context of its own national development, even as it also addresses the ways in which it has positioned itself internationally." (20)

The national/international, local/global dynamics are the common denominator. Production, distribution, film festival, and audiences are examined throughout the book as they define Chilean cinema's standing in today's world. Maria Paz Peirano's "Learning to be "Global": Chilean Filmmakers at International Film Festivals" reflects on Chilean cinema as it consolidates its presence in the film festival circuit. She argues that, even though international festivals still act as "gatekeepers for contemporary world cinema" (38) they have become a source of "social, cultural, and symbolic capital" for some Chilean filmmakers. As the first article of the section "Mapping "Mapping Theories of Chilean Cinema in the World" and of the book itself, Peirano's article provides a good starting point to delve into the past and future of Chilean cinema. The other four sections touch on genre, aesthetics, gender and memory. However, the editors implicitly acknowledge in the introduction that they could have organized the book based on the four principal currents of cinema since 1990s: genre film, the Generation of 2005, current filmmakers with a political albeit more personal approach, and highly political films. The actual organization, though, showcases the seeming influence of affects as a theoretical framework that underpins most of the critical approaches that examine the local/global dynamics of Chilean cinema.

Chilean drama and documentaries, particularly those reflecting on political issues, have gotten the most attention internationally. However, Chilean horror and martial arts movies have as well inserted themselves in the global market. Jonathan Risner's "The Reach of Genre. The Emergence of Chilean Horror Cinema" describes how festivals and specialized websites have become a reliable distribution platform for Chilean horror movies. As Risner states, "one must account for both the international horror cinema that is consumed in Chile and the Chilean horror films that are consumed domestically and abroad" (109). Along those lines, Moisés Park examines Marko Zaror's successful career in martial arts films in "The Latin Dragon Going Global. Marko Zaror, Martial Arts, and Stardom." Zaror, an Arab-Chilean actor, has been usually cast in various roles due to his mixed racial background which has also allowed him to participate in international productions. His stardom, Park suggests, "mirrors Chile's humble but steadily growing global neoliberalism as a developed country" (131). His Greek-god-like body has also incarnated a "gay-seeing" masculinity that has helped him reach a larger audience.

This circumstance serves as a perfect segue into the next section of the book, "Other Text and Other Lands. Intermediality and Adapation Beyond Chile(an Cinema)" whose focus is aesthetics. Probably, the article that more clearly embodies the intersection between genre, aesthetics and gender is Arturo Márquez-Gómez's "Video Built the Cinema Star. Alex Anwandter's Nunca vas a estar solo." Back in the 1990's, MTV managed to turn music videos into a...