New Latin American Cinema

During the historic 1967 festival of Latin American Cinema in Vina del Mar, Chile, a group of young filmmakers who wanted to use film as an instrument of social awareness and change formed the New Latin American Cinema. Nearly three decades later, the New Cinema has produced an impressive body of films, critical essays, and manifestos that uses social theory to inform filmmaking practices. This book explores the institutional and aesthetic foundations of the New Latin American Cinema, giving equal recognition to the self-defining consciousness of the movement and to the social, political, and cultural conditions that made its growth possible. Zuzana Pick maps out six areas of inquiry - history, authorship, gender, popular cinema, ethnicity, and exile - and explores them through detailed discussions of nearly twenty films and their makers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico - including Camila (Maria Luisa Bemberg), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), and Frida (Paul Leduc). From these investigations, she traces the complex interrelation between the supranational goals of the movement and the national tendencies that have also shaped the movement's ideology. She documents how the New Latin American Cinema has effectively used film as a tool to change society, to transform national expressions, to support international differences, and to assert regional autonomy.