Notes Introduction 1. Data compiled from http://sinca.cultura.gov.ar/archivos/tablas/Cine_Cantidad _de_titulos_estrenados_segun_origen_del_film_Argentina_1994a2010.xls (accessed July 9, 2011). 2. Data compiled from www.ancine.gov.br/media/SAM/2009/SerieHistorica /1116.pdf (accessed August 4, 2010). 1 National and Transnational Film Studies: The Argentine and Brazilian Cases 1. Data compiled from www.ancine.gov.br (accessed December 4, 2009). 2. Data compiled from http://www.recam.org (accessed May 7, 2010). 3. The number of Latin American countries varies according to different defini- tions. Here the term is taken as meaning a region in the American continent that encompasses countries whose official languages are Romance languages. 4. “La noción de espacio cultural latinoamericano abre, asimismo, el territorio llamado América Latina a los millones de latinoamericanos que migraron a los Estados Unidos, España y otros países” (García-Canclini, 2005). Available at http://www.comminit.com/infancia/node/195442 (accessed November 28, 2011). 5. “Afirmar a América Latina como espacio cultural está muy lejos de ser un invento arbitrario o un gesto voluntarista, puesto que hay muchos rasgos que ya forman parte de lo que hoy podríamos llamar el patrimonio de este espa- cio, más allá de la dimensión geográfica. Por ejemplo, la lengua, ciertos hitos históricos que prácticamente todo el conjunto de países de la región ha vivido, el déficit de racionalidad instrumental, el papel del Estado y la política en la con- formación de nuestras sociedades” (Garretón, 2003). Available at http://www . revistatodavia.com.ar/todavia21/6.garretonnota.html (accessed June 7, 2010). 164 Notes 6. See “Qué es la RECAM?” available at http://www.recam.org/?do=recam (accessed October 9, 2010). 7. “[ . ] políticas de integração, que falam em diversidade de vozes, conteúdos e formatos na produção cinematográfica, quando, pelo contrário, o consumo dessa produção se dá num contexto cada vez mais determinado e limitado pelo entorno comercial dos shoppings” (2006: 25). 8. Data compiled from http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/SAM/2010/Salas Exibicao/208.pdf (accessed March 13, 2011). 9. UK Film Council Statistical Yearbook 2009, p. 74. Available at http://www .ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/media/pdf/2/p/2009.pdf (accessed March 20, 2011). 10. Data compiled from http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/SAM/2010/Salas Exibicao/208.pdf (accessed March 13, 2011). 11. “É evidente que a perversa concentração restringe o número de salas e especta- dores. Tomados em conjunto, os brasileiros vão uma vez ao cinema a cada dois anos. Mas as pesquisas feitas pelo exibidores confirmam que, na verdade, dez milhões de brasileiros freqüentam as salas oito vezes por ano” (Dahl, 2002). Available at http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/LEITURAS/arte_ou_industria .pdf (accessed January 3, 2010). 2 Home: National Crisis, Fragmented Family, and Death 1. Drawing on David Harvey’s notion of “time-space compression,” Zygmunt Bauman argues that the economy in a globalized context is subject to the velocity of the electronic signal, which “is practically free from constraints related to the territory inside which it originated” (1998: 55). As a conse- quence, “financial flows are largely beyond the control of national govern- ments” because of a “growing supra-national influence” (1998: 56). In this regard, G. H. von Wright argues that the nation-state, it seems, is eroding or perhaps “withering away” (von Wright in Bauman, 1998: 56). 2. Minhocão translates as “big earthworm” and is so called because of its shape. 3. “Bueno, si voy a ser abogado y acabar de taxista, mejor me dedico a ser músico, por ejemplo, y ser taxista; o, con suerte, me dedico a ser músico y acabo vivi- endo de la música.” Pablo Trapero interview by Pablo de Cima, http://www .jgcinema.com/single.php?sl=213 (accessed March 12, 2011). 4. 18-J consists of ten short films directed by Adrián Caetano, Daniel Burman, Lucía Cedrón, Alejandro Doria, Alberto Lecchi, Marcelo Schapces, Carlos Sorín, Juan Bautista Stagnaro, Adrián Suar, and Maurício Wainrot. 5. J. Gorodischer (2005), “Con la mirada puesta más lejos del Once,” http: //www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/espectaculos/6-53732-2005-07-16.html (accessed August 10, 2010). 6. C. Sosa (2004), “Los tres mosqueteros,” http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario /suplementos/radar/9-1315-2004-03-21.html (accessed October 6, 2010). Notes 165 3 Europe as Destination and Point of Departure 1. According to historian Jose Moya, more than six million Europeans migrated to Argentina and more than four million to Brazil between 1820 and 1932. These flows, originating mainly from Spain, Italy, and Portugal, lasted for several decades. Other Europeans such as Germans, Poles, and Ukrainians, migrated as well, although in smaller numbers (Moya in Padilla and Peixoto, 2007). 2. The term “diaspora” in this chapter is used to refer to the dispersion of the Jews in the context of World War II, and the films in question are made by Jewish filmmakers who explore a collective memory of persecution and displacement. It is worth mentioning that the term “diaspora” has expanded in relation to globalization theory. Ritzer argues that “diasporazation and globalisation are closely linked today, and since the latter will continue to develop and expand, we can expect more and more dispersals that are, or at least are called, diasporas” (2010: 322). 3. An analogy with similarities to “Fortress Europe” is that of the “wall around the West” (Andreas and Snyder, 2000), which emphasizes how new borders have been replacing the old ones. 4. While the European Union opened internal barriers within the Schengen area, its immigration policies created new external borders, strengthening dis- courses that divorce European identity from its “others.” 5. Bauman in Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998) argues that travel- ling has increasingly become a commodity. However, as consumer society is stratified, there exist “degrees of mobility”: those who are “high up” (cosmo- politan elite) enjoying much greater mobility than those who are “low down” (refugees and people from poorer countries that are not easily granted a visa). 6. As well as the experimental work in video and installation art for which Kogut is best known, she also directed the film Mutum (2007), which closed the Directors’ Fortnight program in Cannes in 2007. 7. McDonaldization is also concerned with global cultural homogenization, as fast-food restaurants have become increasingly global. 8. Here America is understood within the context of Italian immigration dur- ing the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The expression “fare l’America” is a well-known phrase used by Italian immigrants in order to say they would make it in the Americas. 9. “Deixando sua pátria em busca de melhores dias, grandes levas de imigrantes italianos dirigiam-se à distante América na segunda metade do século passado. Uma considerável parcela desses aventureiros aportou no extremo sul do Brasil, onde eles, seus filhos e netos, construíram uma sociedade próspera, baseada na pequena propriedade rural e, posteriormente, sobre o comércio e a indústria.” 10. La narrativa, el teatro y el cine han provisto cantidades numerosas de estos inmigrantes que se enorgullecen de ser argentinos y se identifican 166 Notes completamente con esta nación que los acogió y les permitió prosperar. Esta corriente ha empezado a cambiar en los últimos años, especialmente en el cine donde encontramos un número, cada vez creciente, de películas que revisan la presentación del inmigrante que llega al país, se establece, triunfa, se “argenti- niza” y vive feliz para siempre (2007: 103). 11. “cuando ser argentino no significa ni trabajo, ni comida, ni tiempo, vale poco ser argentino. La nacionalidad no es sólo imaginaria. Se arraiga en su inscrip- ción material sobre los cuerpos” (2001:18). 12. This definition of Ibero-American also includes Portugal and Spain. 13. Brazilian history has been marked by very different waves of migration from Europe, including that of the European explorers in the colonizing process of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and those of the European migrants that went to South America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is these more recent waves of migration that are relevant to some of the charac- ters presented in other chapters of this book, including, for instance, Olinda (Inheritance), Johann (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures), Kogut’s and Ariel’s grandmother (The Hungarian Passport and Lost Embrace) and, in the context of this chapter, Paco’s mother. More information about the later migration wave such as the estimated numbers and country of origin are provided in this chapter. 14. The term “lost decade,” according to Márcio Moraes Valença, refers to the “less-advantaged” and indebted countries that, subject to the structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the erosion of financial support, saw their problems—economic and social— aggravated throughout the 1980s. In regard to the Brazilian context, Valença states that the term was used to refer to the “country’s economic stagnation and mounting social problems” and that “the government of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–92) incorporated the expression into its rhetoric in order to make it clear that the ‘problems’ had been inherited from past administra- tions, especially that of Jose Sarney, whose administration immediately pre- ceded Collor’s” (1998: 1). 15. Although Salazar left his prime ministerial duties in 1968, the fall of his regime, known as the Estado Novo (translated as “New State”), occurred in 1974. 16. In the English subtitles “H” (Hache) is translated as “J” (Jay) the first letter of “Junior.” 17. As a character in Wim Wenders’s Kings of the Road (1976) states: “the Yanks have colonised our subconscious.” 18. McLeod argues that it is more accurate to talk of colonial discourses rather than “colonial discourse” “due to its multifarious varieties and operations which differ in time and space” (2000: 18).