Marginalized Groups in the Cinema of Latin America

Dear Colleagues,

Film production in Latin America has a long history of focusing its lens on marginalized social groups. From the beginning of the 20^th century in both documentary and fiction, the cinema echoed marginality. In fact, one of the first pornographic industrial production films in the history of cinema was shot in Argentina “El satario”, probably filmed in Buenos Aires between 1907 and 1912 (Williams 1989, 61), was one of the films of this production. In Argentina, intuitively José Agustín Ferreira was the first to portray the lower-class family drama with films such as “La muchacha del arrabal” (1922) and “La costurerita que dio aquel mal paso” (1926), among others. Later in 1939 comes “Prisioneros de la tierra” by Mario Soffici, probably the first film of the cinema of social denunciation. Brazil, for its part, produced films such as "Deus e o Diabo na terra do sol" (1964) by Glauber Rocha, but “Pixote, a lei do mais fraco” (1981) by Héctor Babenco is the film that marks a change in Brazilian production. "El automovil gris" (1919), "Nosotros los pobres (1947), and "Los olvidados" (1950) by Luis Buñuel are the most representative examples of this theme in Mexico. Out of these three countries, we have to mention “Ukamau” (Bolivia, 1966) and “Memorias del subdesarrollo” (Cuba, 1968). Recently, ¿Caluga o menta? (Chile, 1990), Lolo (Mexico, 1992), Pizza, birra, faso (Argentina, 1998), La vendedora de rosas (Colombia, 1998), and Cidade de Deus (Brazil, 2002) are among the most awarded films that explore social marginalization.

The cinema of marginality defines a new paradigm that has emerged strongly in the last two decades as a new breath for Latin American cinema. It proposes a unique combination of fictional narrative and documentary procedures by reconstructing the point of view of the marginal subject beyond the narratives of capitalist rationality. It tries to make the invisible visible by proposing novel readings to neglected social problems. Although this cinema proposes themes related to the subjects and subcultures excluded from social institutions, this visibility of the marginal world, far from a redemptive image, shows the violence of the habitat in which the subaltern subject lives, thus challenging cinematographic narrativity and audience expectations.

This project shares the basic premise that the emergence of marginalized cinema in Latin America in the last two decades has an intrinsically political and idiosyncratic source of inspiration. This volume shall consider all works that address the issue of marginalization approached by the Latin American cinema from any academic perspective.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kapur, Jyotsna, and Keith B. Wagner. 2011. Introduction: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics, and New Forms of Resistance. In Neoliberalism and Global Cinemas. Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique. Edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner. London: Routledge, 1–16.

Podalsky, Laura. 2011. The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schroeder Rodriguez, Paul. 2016. A Comparative History of Latin American Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Williams, Linda. 1989. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "frenzy of the Visible". Oakland: University of California Press.

Dr. Hernan Fernandez-Meardi
Guest Editor

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• Latin American cinema
• marginality
• subaltern groups
• film review
• social exclusion