Postwar Cinemas in Latin America
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~ most postwar cinema movements in Latin America were committed to the indictment of systemic poverty (of ethnic minorities, of peasants, of landless laborers) and the legitimation of sociopolitical protest through film
~ documentary film school (Argentina)
~ cinema novo (Brazil)
~ film institute (Cuba)
~ the term "Nuevo cine latinoamericano" (New Latin American Cinema) was officially coined at a festival of 8 and 16mm filmmakers in Vina Del Mar, Chile in 1967
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~ several Latin American film cultures in the postwar period shared affiliations with European art cinema, especially the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism
~ film societies began to form at theaters and cafes across Central and South America
~ publication and circulation of film magazines increased
~ Peru... hablemos de cine
~ Venezuela... cine al dia
~ like France's Cahiers du Cinema, these publications ser
Brazil & Cinema Novo
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~ many postwar Latin American filmmakers studied in Rome during the 1950s and adopted the principles of Italian neorealism upon returning home
~ documentary-style location shooting
~ use of non-professional actors
~ hand-help cameras
~ understated dramatic moments
~ ambiguous leaps between fantasy and reality
~ within Italian neorealism, Latin American filmmakers saw a cinema of underdevelopment that was by and for "the humble and the offended
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~ regardless of genre, Cinema Novo films consistently achieved an allegorical register that became a distinguishing feature of the movement
~ the ability to articulate subjects on more than one level at the same time, often questioning oppositions
~ the present vs. the past
~ politics vs. religion
~ history vs. myth
~ personal obsessions vs. social problems
~ documentary realism vs. surrealis
~ Cinema Novo's allegorical character eventually left neorealism behind to match the "big idea" qualities of the movement's subject matter
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TROPICALISM
~ a carnivalesque celebration of indigenous popular culture and folklore that rejected Cinema Novo's insistence on the "backwardness" of rural life and treated folk culture as brimming with vitality and wisdom
~ the stylistic and political differences between Cinema Novo filmmakers reveals the transnational influence of European auteur theory
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~ Glauber Rocha (1939-1981)
~ politicizes the politique des auteurs to place the author at the center of an oppositional film practice
~ "The Aesthetics's of Hunger" (1965)
~ people for whom "hunger" is a normal condition suffer the violence of a social system that made them so
~ "w