Revised Proof

Contemporary Latin American Cinema

PROOF

REVISED Claudia Sandberg · Carolina Rocha Editors Contemporary Latin American Cinema

Resisting Neoliberalism?PROOF

REVISED Editors Claudia Sandberg Carolina Rocha School of Languages and Linguistics Department of Foreign Language and University of Melbourne Literature Melbourne, VIC, Australia Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Edwardsville, IL, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-77009-3 ISBN 978-3-319-77010-9PROOF (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939737

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information inREVISED this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.

Cover credit: Martín Turnes, www.martinturnes.com.ar Cover design by Emma Hardy

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Mariano Bertini (1993–2014)PROOF Irene Galberg and Elsbeth Guenter

REVISED Acknowledgements

This project owes much to Manuel Tejada’s initiative and intellectual contributions. In addition, we would like to thank other colleagues who are working on similar topics and who have inspired thisPROOF volume: Lucero Fragoso Lugo, Lucila Hinojosa, Sebastian Morales Escoffer, Alejandro Pedregal, Iván Pinto, Cacilda Rêgo and Juan Carlos Reyes Vázquez. The co-editors are grateful to all contributors for their work and energy, and timely meeting of deadlines. Special thanks go to photographer Martín Turnes who authorized us to use one of his stunning images for the book cover. We extend our gratitude to Juan Carlos Tarriba, editor of the open access journal Norteamérica for his advice on the permission to reprint Jacobo Asse Dayan’s chapter. Patricia Zline, of the Rowman and Littlefeld Publishing Group, kindly gave us permission to use María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez’s essay as part of our book. Many thanks to director Maximiliano Schonfeld who gave us access to his flms, as well as to director Anna Muylaert andREVISED producer Márcia Mayer who provided still shots. Carolyn Hutchinson and Pierre Trioli did fantastic editorial work. Victoria Vajda McNab kindly and professionally translated Andrea Molfetta’s essay from Spanish into English. Shaun Virgil has been a steadfast supporter of this project, which has been enriched by the suggestions of two anonymous read- ers. We thank Glenn Ramirez, another member of the Palgrave team, for his generous advice on all matters regarding the manuscript. The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the University of Melbourne have supported us in many ways. Special thanks go to our families, friends and colleagues for their encouragement along the journey of editing this volume.

vii Contents

1 Contemporary Latin American Cinema and Resistance to Neoliberalism: Mapping the Field 1 Claudia Sandberg PROOF

Part I Uneasy Neoliberal Narratives and Images

2 Southern Hegemonies and Metaphors of the Global South in También La Lluvia 27 Alfredo Martínez-Expósito

3 Neoliberal Masculinities in Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: Octubre and El Limpiador 43 RosanaREVISED Díaz-Zambrana 4 New Geographies of Class in Mexican and Brazilian Cinemas: Post Tenebras Lux and Que horas ela volta? 65 María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez

5 Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?: Challenging the Neoliberal in Mexican Cinema 83 Niamh Thornton

ix x Contents

Part II Neoliberal Film Policies and the Global Market

6 Güeros: Social Fragmentation, Political Agency and the Mexican Film Industry Under Neoliberalism 101 Jacobo Asse Dayán

7 Negotiating Neoliberal Demands on Contemporary Cinema: The Role and Infuence of the Socially Committed Film Producer in Peru 119 Sarah Barrow

8 Larraín’s No: A Tale of Neoliberalism 135 María Paz Peirano

9 Crowdfunding Images of Colombia and Ecuador: International Collaborations and Transnational Circulation in a Neoliberal Context PROOF 153 Carolina Rocha

10 Argentine Cinema in the Age of Digitization: Between Foreign Dominance and Discussion of Benefts 171 Andrea Morán Ferrés and Miguel Fernández Labayen

Part III Defant Actors and Marginal Spaces

11 Social Cinema in Neoliberal Times: The Macabre Baroque in the Films of Pablo Larraín 197 WalesckaREVISED Pino-Ojeda

12 Between Armed Confict, Social Awareness and the Neoliberal Market: The Case of Alias María 215 Carlos de Oro

13 Maximiliano Schonfeld’s Films of the Volga Germans in Entre Ríos: About the Neoliberal Devil in Argentine Cinema 231 Claudia Sandberg CoNTENTS xi

14 Community Film in Southern Greater Buenos Aires: Emerging Voices and the Economy of Film as Resistance to Neoliberalism 249 Andrea Molfetta

Index 265

PROOF

REVISED Notes on Contributors

Jacobo Asse Dayán is an independent researcher. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a Masters in FilmPROOF Studies from University College London (UCL) and a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). Sarah Barrow is Professor in Film and Media at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research on the relationship between cinema, state, society and violence in Peru has been published in a range of co- authored/edited collections, journal special issues, online platforms and encyclopedia entries. Sarah co-edited and authored 50 Key British Films (2008) and the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Films, a collection of 200 essays on world cinemas. Her most recent book is Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen (I.B. Tauris, 2017). Sarah recently coordinated a major Arts Council England-funded project engagingREVISED young people with arts and human rights. Carlos de Oro is Associate Professor of Spanish at the Southwestern University in Austin, Texas. His research interests include contemporary Latin American literature and flm. Additionally, he is interested in topics related to race, gender and cultural studies. He published in Imagofagia. Rosana Díaz-Zambrana is Professor of Spanish at Rollins College. She completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has co-edited Cinema paraíso:

xiii xiv Notes on Contributors

Representaciones e imágenes audiovisuales en el Caribe hispano (Isla Negra, 2010) and Horrofílmico: Aproximaciones al cine de terror en Latinoamérica y el Caribe (Isla Negra, 2012). In 2015, she published the anthology, Terra zombi: El fenómeno transnacional de los muertos vivientes (Isla Negra). Miguel Fernández Labayen is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He one of the two leading researchers in the projects “Transnational Relations in Spanish-American Digital Cinema: The Axes of Spain, Mexico and Argentina” and “Cinema of Mobility across the Hispanic Atlantic,” both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Recent articles have appeared in Transnational Cinemas, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Modern Language Review and in several edited collections such as The Routledge Companion to Latin American Cinema (Routledge, 2017). Alfredo Martínez-Expósito is Professor PROOFof Hispanic Studies and Head of the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Formerly, he was Head of the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He is Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He has published extensively on gender, sexuality, embodiment, nation and nation-branding in Spanish-language cinemas. His most recent monographs include Live Flesh: the Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2007, with Santiago Fouz-Hernández) and Cuestión de imagen: cine y Marca España (Academia del Hispanismo, 2015). Andrea Molfetta (Buenos Aires, 1965) holds a Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of Sao Paulo and is a writer and researcher at CONICET/Argentina.REVISED She is the founder and former president of AsAECA (www.asaeca.org). She has taught as a visiting professor at Argentine and Brazilian universities. She is the author of Arte eletrónica en Buenos Aires (1966–1993) (2013) and Documental y Experimental: los diarios de viaje de los videoartistas sudamericanos en Francia (1984– 1995) (2014). Andrea coordinates the research project “El cine que nos empodera: mapa, antropología visual y ensayos sobre el cine del Conurbano porteño y cordobés (2004–2014).” Andrea Morán Ferrés is pursuing her Ph.D. in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She Notes on ContributoRS xv is a member of the research group TECMERIN. Her ongoing doctoral thesis is titled “Changes of the cinematographic model with the digitalization of the movie theatres: the cases of Argentina and Spain.” She is part of the research project “Transnational Relations in Spanish-American Digital Cinema: The Axes of Spain, Mexico and Argentina” (www.uc3m.es/atcin- ema), and has extensive experience as a flm programmer and critic, collab- orating with flm periodicals such as Caimán. Cuadernos de Cine. María Paz Peirano is a Social Anthropologist from the Universidad de Chile, with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent. She holds postgraduate degrees in both Documentary Film and Film Studies, from Universidad de Chile and Pontifcia Universidad Católica de Chile respectively. Her research involves an ethnographic approach to flm as social practice, focusing on the construction of contemporary Chilean cinema in transnational settings. She is currently a Lecturer in Film Studies at Universidad de Chile and a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University, studying the political economy of international festivals and their impact on Latin American Cinema.PROOF Walescka Pino-Ojeda is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland. Since 2008 she has been the Co-ordinator of this program and also the Director of the New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies. She has published about female and gay writing, photography, flm and music in academic journals in Australia, Latin America and the United States. She is the author of the volumes Sobre Castas y Puentes: Conversaciones con Elena Poniatowska, Rosario Ferré y Diamela Eltit (2000) and Night and Fog: Neoliberalism, Memory and Trauma in Post- Authoritarian Chile (2011), both published in Chile with Cuarto Propio Editorial House. Carolina RochaREVISED is Professor of Spanish at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She specializes in contemporary Argentine and Brazilian literature. She is the author of Masculinities in Contemporary Argentine Popular Cinema (2012). In addition, she has coedited several volumes: Violence in Argentine Literature and Film (2010, with Elizabeth Montes Garcés), New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema (2011, with Cacilda Rêgo), Representing History, Class and Gender in Spain and Latin America: Children and Adolescent in Film (2012, with Georgia Seminet), Modern Argentine Masculinities (2013) and Screening Mirrors in Latin American Cinema (2014, with Georgia Seminet). She was a Fulbright Scholar in Liverpool, UK. xvi Notes on Contributors

Claudia Sandberg is a flmmaker and currently employed as Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research is concerned with relations between European and Latin American flm, and questions of exile and diaspora in cinema. She has published her work in academic journals such as Filmblatt, The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and the Journal of Contemporary European Studies. In 2016, Sandberg co-directed Peliculas Escondidas: Un viaje entre el exilio y la memoria, a feature-length documentary about Chilean émigré artists in East Germany, together with Argentine director, Alejandro Areal Vélez. She is co-editor of the German Cinema Book 2 (Bloomsbury, 2018). Niamh Thornton is Reader in Latin American Studies at the University of Liverpool. She is a specialist in Mexican flm, literature, and digital cultures with a particular focus on war stories, gendered narratives, star studies, cultures of taste, and distributed content. Her books include: Women and the War Story in Mexico: La novela de la Revolución (2006) and Revolution and Rebellion in MexicanPROOF Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2013), and several co-edited books including Revolucionarias: Gender and Revolution in Latin America (2007), International Perspectives on Chicana/o Studies: This World is My Place (Routledge, 2013) and Memory and Trauma in Mexican Visual Culture (Bloomsbury, forth- coming 2018). María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez is Lecturer and Honorary Assistant Professor in Spanish and Latin American and European cinemas at The University of Hong Kong. She has written the Oxford Bibliography on Latin American Cinema, and articles and book chapters on Venezuelan and Brazilian cinemas. She is the Head of the research subcommittee of the CommitteeREVISED on Gender, Equality and Diversity of the Faculty of Arts at HKU. She is currently fnishing her monograph The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema and she curates the annual Latin American flm series at The University of Hong Kong. List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Demonstration in front of the Cinema Gaumont in April 2017. © Martín Turnes 2 Fig. 3.1 The “family picture” taken at Clemente’sPROOF surprise birthday dinner in Octubre (Diego Vega and Daniel Vega 2010) 51 Fig. 4.1 Val and Jessica at the swimming pool in Que horas ela volta? (Anna Muylaert, 2015) 74 Fig. 5.1 Carmen and Alfredo in Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? (Mariana Chenillo, 2013) 90 Fig. 7.1 Cab driver Damien in Magallanes (Salvador del Solar, 2015) 125 Fig. 7.2 oliver watching out of the window in La deuda (Barney Elliott, 2015) 128 Fig. 9.1 Poster of Dirty Hands (Josef Wladytka, 2014) 162 Fig. 13.1 A pensive Brenda collects eggs in Germania REVISED(Maximiliano Schonfeld, 2012) 237

xvii List of Tables

Table 10.1 Number of cinema screens 174 Table 10.2 Number of spectators in Argentina (total) 175 Table 10.3 Theatrical releases in Argentina PROOF 176 Table 10.4 Theatrical releases of Argentine flms in Argentina 177 Table 10.5 Number of seats offered per flm 177 Table 10.6 3D flms in Argentina 179 Table 10.7 Releases of national flms—Gaumont cinema 183 Table 10.8 Gaumont cinema—spectators 184

REVISED

xix CHAPTER 1

Contemporary Latin American Cinema and Resistance to Neoliberalism: Mapping the Field

Claudia Sandberg PROOF

Buenos Aires, April 2017: On the opening night of the annual BAFICI flm festival, hundreds of people focked the entry of the Cine Gaumont. Rather than seeking entrance to the opening flm, they gathered to protest against proposed cutback measures which threaten the existence of the Argentine state-owned production company, INCAA (Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales). Under the center-right government of President Mauricio Macri, a number of employees were dismissed and the budget for cultural activities was cut. Film productions are at risk of being terminated because promised grants are not being paid out or belatedly so (Fig. 1.1). The deterioratingREVISED state of affairs in the Argentine cultural sector mirrors a situation familiar to flmmakers and flm personnel in other Latin American countries, where the responsibility of the state yields to the interests of private business and ownership. This essay investigates the impact of neoliberalism on Latin America flmmaking from the

C. Sandberg (*) School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

PROOF

Fig. 1.1 Demonstration in front of the Cinema Gaumont in April 2017. © Martín Turnes

1990s onwards, and serves as a framework for the case studies of the current volume. Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Resisting Neoliberalism? explores developments in flmmaking as a refection of neoliberal political and economic measures and the neoliberal zeitgeist of our epoch. Many nations ushered in neoliberal policies during the 1990s, which centered on austerity measures prompting Latin American states to take a less prominent role in the funding of their national cinemas. ThisREVISED reduction in state funding had a profound impact on the Latin American cinematographic landscape. Other national and international funding sources had to pick up from the lack of state funding. New types of producers emerged, and novel patterns of flm distribution, exhibition and consumption now shape and infuence the Latin American flm scape. With approaches to the subject such as flm industry studies, reception analyses and close flm readings, this book provides an overview of current flmmaking in Latin America with relation to neoliberalism tackling questions such as: Which impact did the privatizing of state-owned companies and dismantling of welfare systems have on funding opportunities, distribution and exhibition 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 3 arrangements, narratives and aesthetics of Latin American flm? In which ways does contemporary Latin American cinema resist, criticize but also beneft from neoliberal advancements? Have older flmmaking practices and traditions reemerged in new forms? Before drawing attention to the ways in which neoliberal tendencies infuenced the Latin American flm industry, I provide a brief outline of the political events that have determined the present flmmaking conditions in Latin America. The above mentioned Argentine case is an example of a reemergence of neoliberalism after two decades of alternate political and economic avenues (2001–2015) that resisted the neoliberal paradigm in Latin America. A progressive cycle of governments starting with the election of Hugo Chávez as Venezuelan president in 1998. Left-center governments in Bolivia (Evo Morales), Argentina (Néstor Kirchner) and Brazil (Lula de Silva) had implemented economic strategies in their countries that scholars cautiously identifed as post-neoliberal turn (Macdonald and Ruckert 2009, 2). These countries nationalized economic resourcesPROOF and implemented social reforms in order to offer lower social classes access to health, housing and education—effectively empowering poorer populations and bringing them into public visibility, eschewing international capital and reducing foreign investment (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012). The government acted against fscal defcits and promoted local and regional cooperation, even though it was never clear whether these “policy experiments” (Macdonald and Ruckert 2009, 2) established viable and sustainable alternatives or appealed to their populations (Roberts 2009, 1). The optimism about such politics and economic strategies as alternatives to a free-market economy has faded in recent years. Center and center to rightREVISED candidates have been selected in Argentina and Peru. The Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, who had fostered nationalization measures, was impeached because of alleged misuse of public funds, and Evo Morales’ government was defeated in the constitutional referendum to allow for the possibility of a fourth term. Right-of-center governments in Paraguay, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia have been following strict neoliberal courses as political leaders believe that there is no other choice (Belém Lopes 2017). Barry Cannon notes that in these countries “neoliberalism is so deeply embedded in national power networks that alternative policy options are extremely diffcult to implement without ferce elite 4 C. SANDBERG resistance” (2016, 59). Among them, Chile has a specifc relevance for the deployment of neoliberalism as governmentality. Chile has become shorthand for a radical free-market project, “to describe any logic of organization in which the market has a signifcant role, or in which individual economic incentives or an economic rationality prevail” (Venugopal 2015, 172). The concept of neoliberalism has been applied here as a set of economic measures that was hinged on repres- sive social and political measures of a violent regime. In the transformation from economic model to a worldwide hegemonic ideology, Chile set the parameters for a neoliberal model in Latin America as a contemporary form of neocolonial domination. This made Latin American countries increasingly dependent on powerful fnancial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Venugopal 2015, 175–76). A model that became implemented often in times of crisis, neoliberalism protects the interest of higher classes and promotes an accumulation of wealth, while converting citizens into consumers. In light of the ongoing neoliberal transformationPROOF of the Latin American political, economic and social landscape, it is high time to examine how neoliberalism had pervaded its cinemas.

The Latin American Film Industry in the Neoliberal Era The free-market philosophy has long reached the cultural spheres and has been fully adopted in the global flmmaking sector. Frederic Jameson states that notions of culture and economy as independent spheres collapsed in postmodern times (1991, 4–5). The cultural sphere has become an integral part of commodity production, so much so that JyotsnaREVISED Kapur and Keith B. Wagner point out in the introduction to their book Neoliberalism and Global Cinemas that “the production of culture is, after war, the second most important sector of the neoliberal economy” (2011, 1). These shifts guide a policy making that supports, “a production of cinema as an industry and commodity” (Kapur and Wagner 2011, 3). Films have become consumable products, always linked to their capacity to make profts in local and global markets. Despite the relevance and ubiquity of the matter, surprisingly few scholarly studies have investigated the nexus of contemporary cinema 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 5 and neoliberalism. Kapur and Wagner’s above-mentioned volume, conceived in the wake of the worldwide fnancial crisis of 2008 and drawing on Marxist critique of capitalism, was the frst extensive English- language study of this subject. Its contributions deal with flmmaking in Hollywood, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe, geographically organized to underline unequal divisions of power and resources which have defned centers and peripheries of global capital. Another recent book-length publication, Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen’s Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology, starts with the idea that “Cinema perfectly fts the idea of a neoliberal industry” (Mazierska 2018, 10). This volume consists of studies of the political economy of flm and covers topics such as flmmaking in post-socialist states, neoliberal genres, and matters of money, sex and consumption. While Kapur and Wagner’s and Mazierska and Kristensen’s books provide valuable insights into neoliberal transformations and their impact on cinemas worldwide, the relevance of our work rests on the particularities of the Latin American case. Contemporary Latin AmericanPROOF Cinema. Resisting Neoliberalism? examines flmmaking as a refection of the Latin American political, economic and social landscape and regimes of power that keep Latin American states dependent on European and American capitalism. In recent years, Latin America has become an active player in the global flm business. As Deborah Shaw notes, “directors and producers are more aware of the international market and have learned how to raise funds, create more audience-friendly flms, and market their fnished products” (Shaw 2007, 1). Produced with an eye on commercial success, flms such as Amores perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000), Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001), Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles, 2002), Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004), El REVISEDlaberinto del fauno (Guillermo del Toro, 2006), El secreto de sus ojos (Juan José Campanella, 2009) and No (Pablo Larraín, 2012) resonated with audiences worldwide, as they were “breaking away from art houses and into commercial multiplexes with great success and revenues” (Alvaray 2008, 49). The current volume aims to interrogate such accomplishments. At what costs did this “nouvelle vague of Latin American flms” occur (Alvaray 2008, 51)? How many and what kind of flms achieve a wide distribution, and against which other flms do they compete? How many independent cinemas had to close to make room for yet another multiplex? 6 C. SANDBERG

From the early 1990s onwards, flm became an integral part of efforts to create global media and telecommunication corporations and networks. Until then operating on regional and national levels and being at least partially protected by the state, the media landscape became one of private entities which developed an insatiable appetite for transnational expansion (McChesney 2001, 2). This on-going push to privatization and liberalization includes the flm sector in Latin America and elsewhere. Previously supported by direct forms of flm fnancing through loans and subsidies, national deregulation dynamics and free-trade economic policies eliminated direct fnancial assistance. In Latin America, such economic policy changes led to drastic budget cuts in its biggest flm nations; Brazil, Mexico and Argentina and devastated their local industries (Schroeder Rodriguez 2016, 245). The government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortaris in Mexico severely reduced the funding of IMCINCE (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía), which led to a dramatic drop of productions. In Brazil, President Collor de Mello disman- tled the state agency EMBRAFILME. Even inPROOF Cuba, the cut off political and economic support from the Soviet Union ended funding for the state-operated flm production company ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográfcos) in 1989. The annual output there fell by 50% in the 1990s, indicating that the changed political realities after the end of the Cold War in formerly socialist countries ushered in the rule of the market as anywhere else (Harvey 2008). Eventually, new state interventions revitalized local flm markets and provoked an increase of flmmaking activities in a number of Latin American nations from the mid 1990s onwards. In Brazil, law 8313 and 8586, passed in 1991 and 1993, respectively, included a tax incentive system that stimulated private businesses, local media companies and foreign distributors to investREVISED money in flm making projects that promised good returns (Rêgo and Rocha 2011, 3).1 This assisted a wave of new productions, known as Retomada. In Argentina, the aforementioned cultural institute, INCAA, was founded in 1994 to stimulate national flm and audiovisual arts through its competition schemes, credit lines, and a flm channel that broadcasts national productions. Box-offce revenues feed back into the system to fnance directors and producers. In Peru (1994), Chile (2004), Colombia (2003) and Venezuela (1993, 2005), similar policies regulated quotas for national flms, introduced taxes to support and fund indigenous flmmakers and granted tax exemptions to private investors. 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 7

The neoliberal economic policies were simultaneously aided to protect the indigenous flm industry and to maximize income from flmmaking activities by attracting foreign funds to fow into the Latin American domestic flm market. This supported alliances and mergers with European, United States and Latin American companies, inevitably inviting globally operating and domineering media conglomerates into local markets. Unsurprisingly, US production companies and distribution networks could take most advantage of the deregulation measures. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which unites members of the major Hollywood studios, opened Latin American offces in the 1990s and set up coproduction and distribution networks that served as international platforms for US made flm. From this point onwards, US-based exhibitors swept Latin America, attracting great audience numbers to and generating profts with their flms (Rocha 2011, 18). The concentration of foreign capital in Latin America became particularly noticeable in the distribution and exhibition sector with the creation of multiplex modelsPROOF that are typically located in or near shopping malls (see also Chapter 10; Andrea Morán and Miguel Fernandez Labayen’s study of the Argentine flm industry). Cinemark and Cinépolis are among the cinema distribution and exhibition giants that buy and sell to each other and belong to even bigger media conglomerates in an ever-changing corporate media landscape. As of June 2011, Cinemark operates 1250 cineplexes in twelve Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá and El Salvador (Picciau 2011). These companies market foreign big-budget productions by projecting large numbers of copies in a large number of movie theatres. Evermore expensive productions need to recoup their invest- ments internationallyREVISED and on multiple platforms—cinema, television, videogames, cable and video—with the aim of generating multiple revenue streams (Simis 2015; Arantes 2017). This is being helped by the digital turn, i.e. the material migration of flm to digital platforms and media, which the US majors use to their beneft. The streaming service Netfix is just one example of a digital business model that allows for individualized consumption of preselected video and flm material. With almost limitless resources and ideas of how to sell old and new flm content, the Hollywood industry keeps widening their leads into the Latin American market and creates entry barriers for smaller and independent regional companies. 8 C. SANDBERG

Massively funded US productions, an established distribution and exhibition network in Latin American flm markets, and aggressive advertising campaigns restrict screen spaces for and the visibility of local productions. Ticket prices are often way beyond the spending power of local populations, making cinema-going unaffordable for lower social classes. Most multiplexes are situated in urban centers, which disadvantage those living farther away and in lesser-developed areas. The omnipotent presence of Hollywood flm, as Néstor García Canclini notes, comes to determine popular audience tastes, if not promote cultural homogenization (García Canclini 1995, 10). Moreover, local flm businesses emulate Hollywood production, distribution and marketing strategies. This further drives homogenizing tendencies. The Chilean production company Chilewood uses US-style marketing, including branding strategies and product placement within the mise-en-scène of their flms, such as the Qué pena triology (Nicolás López, 2010–2012), which refects, in the words of Jonathan Risner, “how the language of advertisement as a symptom of neoliberalism seeps into ChileanPROOF popular culture” (606). In a similar way, the Brazilian network Globo utilises Hollywood-style business practices, which has resulted in their products dominating the national flm market. In an effort to counter trends of monopolization and homogenization of Latin American flm, initiatives at national, regional and pan-regional levels support and raise the visibility of Latin American flm. Yet, these efforts are also part of the pervasive political, economic and social neoliberal system. A number of European-funded programs protect and create spaces for Latin American flm at home and elsewhere. Author and flmmaker Antonio Skármeta wrote in 1997 that Europe could act as a fraternal partner for production and circulation of Latin American flm, by utilizing affnitiveREVISED networks and collaborations which were forged in the 1970s and 1980s, when in times of political repression many exiled Latin American flmmakers were closely associated to European flm institutions and collaborated with colleagues in Spain, France or Germany. The climate and the conditions for such efforts have decisively changed. In an era of neoliberal ideology, the transition between “flm as a national high cultural product in a rich subsidy system … to flm as popular entertainment circulating in a for-proft transnational network” (Halle 2010, 304), the interest for Latin American flm is guided by market demands. Programs such as Programa Ibermedia, FondsSud and Ventana Sur are for-proft initiatives, founded to strengthen the presence of Latin 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 9

American cinema on local and European flm markets. Ventana Sur, for example, acts as a platform for a Latin American flm market, a collaboration between the Argentine INCAA and the Marché du Film/Festival de Cannes. Created in November 2009 with the support of the European Commission, Ventana Sur is a meeting point for producers, distributors, Latin American flm and flm personnel. Established in 1998, Ibermedia promotes the distribution and exhibition of Ibero-American flms, and offers exchanges and training of audiovisual personnel, a most important initiative in which currently nineteen Latin American states participate. Eighty percent of Ibermedia funding is spent on coproduction funds (Falicov 2013, 70). In particular smaller flm industries beneft from this support. For example, Guatemala received over fve hundred million dollars to help coproductions on their way.2 The Ibermedia coproduction agreement also helped increase the annual output of feature flms in Peru (White 2015, 188–89). There are claims that Spain, as Ibermedia’s biggest partner, has greater decision-making power and makes profts from flm productions in countries with lower productionPROOF costs. Nevertheless, Tamara Falicov points out that “while Spain has an obvious agenda for their heavy involvement with Ibermedia, it has proven to the most benefcial and successful flm fnance pool the region has currently” (2013, 84). Ibermedia contributes to safeguarding the existence of Latin American flm, somewhat making up for fve hundred years of colonial history and economic exploitation. Film festivals have come to be of vital importance in the global flm network, because they are an exhibition platform and marketplace alike. Latin American flm festivals, such as Havana or Viña del Mar, with a rich and vibrant history of promoting political and experimental flm, compete against a plethora of new ones. Not able to evade pressures toREVISED make ends meet fnancially and satisfy sponsors, investors and audiences, their political and socio-critical profles have transformed into a branding strategy. As cultural venues with market-oriented agendas, a number of international flm festivals support Latin American flms through their sponsorship schemes, such as the Hubert Bals Fund (Rotterdam flm festival), the Berlinale World Cinema fund (Berlin Film Festival) and the Cannes Residence Fund (Cannes Film Festival). The Berlin Film Festival, with its preference for political and sociopolitical cinema, has in the recent past bestowed their highest prize, The Golden Bear, to Brazilian, Peruvian or Mexican flmmakers such as Walter Salles (Centro do Brasil, 1998), Claudia Llosa 10 C. SANDBERG

(La teta asustada, 2009) and José Padilha, (Tropa de elite, 2008). This certainly helped the directors and their pictures to gain attention in and beyond Europe. Argentine, Chilean or Bolivian productions have participated in various Berlinale competition streams. Filmmakers Daniel Burman (El abrazo partido, El rey del Once) and Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, Una mujer fantástica) have become darlings at the Berlin Film Festival. International flm festivals are venues that lend prestige to and boost the reputations of new directors, and which mark their entry to the international flm scene and facilitate their receiving support from other funding sources. Within the last few decades, “global auteurs” have emerged, as Ignacio Sánchez Prado calls them. As he notes, the successes of celebrity Mexican flmmakers Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñarritu, Alfonso Cuarón and lately, Carlos Reygadas, in many and diverse international flm circuits have much to do with their ability to make flms that negotiate universal themes while maintaining a preoccu- pation with distinctly national themes (SánchezPROOF Prado 2014b, 157–58). In the highly competitive feld of flmmaking, for the majority of younger, talented and aspiring Latin American flmmakers, it is a diffcult and lengthy endeavor to obtain the resources for a proposed flm project without an already established professional network and, moreover, a good sense of business. The flmmaking budget is usually a piecemeal affair, consisting of money from public, private and a number of foreign sources. Pressured by the business model in place, the vast majority of Latin American flms are being made as international coproductions. Hence, while Latin American cinema is praised as a post-national or eman- cipated cinema, its transnational character is in fact a product of neoliberal demands.3 According to Paul Schroeder Rodriguez, most Latin American flms are marketREVISED products “that facilitate the flms’ marketing to international audiences and help satisfy the differing economic and political interests of the coproducing parties” (2016, 247). Randall Halle warns us that such coproductions are being made for European audiences: “Under the guise of authentic images, the flms establish a textual screen that prevents apprehension of the complexly lived reality of people in not-to-distant parts of the world” (2010, 314). Funding conditions establish neoliberal forms of censorship. Production companies and business partners might dictate from the scriptwriting stages onwards what a flm should look like; exerting their infuence over themes and aesthetics, and facilitate clichéd and exoti- cized views of Latin American landscapes, cultures and people. 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 11

Yet, transnational ventures can also create opportunities to challenge stereotypes and widen audience bases. Bianka Ballina notes that coproduced flms allow for an elasticity of discourses. Aside from satisfying a global group of spectators, they may contain elements that require a “shared cultural and historical experience” between local audiences, which make such flms all the more meaningful on national terrain (Ballina 2017, 210). Smaller national cinemas, such as that of Uruguay, survive only if coproductions strike a balance between acceptance of a local audience and appeal to international spectators (Rocha 2017). Coproduced flms most often secure their circulation in several countries, increasing the potential of their exposure to different communities and groups. If it is subordinated to the ubiquitous command of the market, from which position can Latin American flm speak? Film scholar Joanna Page enquires with reference to Argentine flm: “What meanings, and conficts between meanings, are generated by mounting a critique of neoliberalism within a medium produced and distributed in the context of a world market dominated by neoliberal policies and PROOFpractices?” (2009, 4). David Hesmondhalgh reminds us that texts produced and circulated in the cultural industries “tend to orientate their audiences towards ways of thinking that do not coincide with the interests of capitalism or of structured domination by men over women or institutional racism” (2013, 5). In other words, within the spaces of commodifcation, there are loopholes and offcially sanctioned places which invite criticism and resistance to the neoliberal machinery. The ever-expanding funding scape offers opportunities to get flm projects off the ground. Crowdfunding is a particularly effective way to promote flm projects, tap into additional fnancial resources and reach audiences worldwide (see also Chapter 9: Carolina Rocha’s case study). Some sponsorship schemes are specifcally targeted to supportREVISED the projects of young, frst-time or female flmmakers. Julia Solomonoff, Icíar Bollaín, Claudia Llosa, Alicia Scherson, María Ramos, Paz Fábrega, Anna Muylaert, Mariana Chenillo or Laura Amelia Guzmán are just a few names belonging to a younger generation of flmmakers who strengthen Latin American cinema with uncomfortable views on social and economic tendencies and conficts. Female flmmakers observe and comment on neoliberal sensibilities and their historic and social dimensions in distinctive ways. Among them, Lucrecia Martel is perhaps the most provocative and articulate director. According to Patricia White, Martel’s uncompromising flms prevent “easy cross-cultural consumption of her explorations of class, race, and history” (White 2015, 187). 12 C. SANDBERG

In 2003, scholar Marvin d’Lugo articulated his hope for Latin American flm authors to see flmmaking as a chance for meaningful collaborations, “through collaborative practices that have as their ultimate goal not the erasure of the local but a meaningful relocation of it in the global community” (2003, 122). Within current communal, cross-cultural, regional North-South collaborations, frameworks and agreements, great responsibility rests with Latin American flmmakers themselves to use their voice, their talent and intuition, and despite economic pressures, preserve their national, cultural and artistic integrity and to carve spaces and acceptance for their work and that of their peers.

Neoliberal Sentiments Reflected, Resented and Resisted The term resistance echoes a longer history of flmmaking in Latin America. In regional offshoots from the 1950s and as a continental project known as New Latin American CinemaPROOF ten years later, it was a socially committed flmmaking with a documentary and experimental character that sharply criticized colonialism, political hegemony and economic dependence on the First World. Filmmakers wanted to inform, educate and emancipate Latin American audiences. Pronounced class differences, cultural domination, and racial and ethnic inequalities remain pressing problems. And in the claws of a market-oriented system and policy making, there are additional concerns that plague contemporary Latin American societies these days, such as environmental disasters, ever widening income gaps, deindustrialization processes and the disappearance of public spaces (see Amann and Baer 2002). Jameson maintains that “We cannot return to aesthetic practices elaborated on the basis of historical situations andREVISED dilemmas which are no longer ours” (1991, 50). He continues, arguing that “political art … will have to fnd a mode of representing this world space of multinational capital—in which we may begin to grasp our positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain capacity to act and struggle—a global cognitive mapping, on a social and a spatial scale” (54). Contemporary Latin American flm, in order to demonstrate, report on and resist neoliberal ideology, has to respond to flm-literate audiences and address subjectivities and sensibilities that have long since been shaped by neoliberal economic and political realities.4 Films magnify the ways in which contemporary Latin American communities and societies have been affected by neoliberalism: observing 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 13 how we live and feel, as individuals, as citizens and human beings, what our private relations and social networks are and our notions of private and public spheres. Neoliberal philosophy has changed relations and conditions especially in the workplace. The logic of competition produced a particular subjectivity which turned citizens into alert, mobile, competitive and isolated owners of their professional careers (Read 2009, 30). The availability and acquisition of goods and services makes citizens into consumers.5 Privately educated, technology-savvy, able to make money, earn money, spend money, the inexorable trend towards individualization is fed to new generations that value material goods and believe that they are able to steer their own destiny (Araujo 2017), while replacing attention for and solidarity with other members of the community— weakening bonds between social classes. Individualistic trends have modifed perceptions and shifted interests of flmmakers. An “identity-based frst-person cinema” (Lazzara 2016, 24) tends to smaller stories, about single characters, or about mundane, everyday issues related to isolated charactersPROOF from middle and upper-middle classes, Schroeder Rodriguez calls this a melorealist cinema that has an “intimist, realist and ultimately conformist” character (2016, 250). An inclination towards private spaces as confict territory and an emphasis on the microcosmos of the family can be observed in contemporary Chilean flms such as in La sagrada familia (Sebastián Lelio, 2005), La nana (Sebastián Silva, 2009), Las turistas (Alicia Scherson, 2009), the intimate pictures of Matias Bize’s En la cama (2005) and La vida de los peces (2010). Roberto Trejo remarks on the kind of protagonists that populate Chilean screens:

The hero or heroine in Chilean cinema is an individualist self-centered and narcissistREVISED character, amoral personalities who are born into a consumerist society. [There is] the ingenuous, hedonistic search for satisfaction, pleasure and desire. [These are] dematerialized individuals … who do not live in any recognizable place, [who are] dislocated, and psychologically imma- ture. (2014, 25)6

The tendency in Latin American documentary and feature flm to narrate experiences from a personal perspective is equal to deploying the “bourgeois I,” as Antonio Gómez calls it so poignantly, which refects developments towards individualism and self-fulfllment under a neoliberal 14 C. SANDBERG aegis (2016, 65). In fction flm, the emphasis on individual characters in middle-class milieus can be seen in affective formal properties, emotional modes of address and a preference for genres. The melodrama, as Sanchez-Prado notes, relates to conventions and heterosexual norms of the middle class, is often set in affuent neighborhoods or indoor settings that forego any social conficts or pressures, portraying aspirations and anxieties of highly educated and career-aspiring freelance-working protagonists, and celebrating the fragility of current labor agreements as virtue and freedom. The romantic comedy is another genre form “made available by neoliberalism … which provided middle and upper class audiences with the fction of a central role in a new, modern Mexico and which systematically excludes lower classes from its imagination of the social” (Sanchez Prado 2014a, 4). Besides, the increasing number of genre productions in commercial Latin American cinema are linked to the need to comprehend and market Latin American culture within universal genre conventions (2014b, 156–61). Then again, Latin American flms of the PROOFlast decades interrogate the conditions that have structured social life and created class boundaries, and portray those outside of the “golden club” of creative employment options and consumerist pleasures. Films such as Pizza, birra, faso (Adrián Caetano, 1997) or El bonaerense (Pablo Trapero, 2002), represent what was later termed New Argentine Cinema—a low-budget style of flmmaking that was born from a lack of resources. In flms as early as Nueve reinas (Fabián Bielinsky, 2000), anticipating and documenting the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina, money is a subject which refects their status as market commodity (Page 2009, 5). Money is a concern for and features in current flms throughout Latin America. O dolares de arena (Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, 2014), Magallanes (Salvador delREVISED Solar, 2015), La deuda (Barney Elliott, 2015), Soledad (Jorge Thielen Armand, 2017), Tambien la lluvia (Icíar Bollaín, 2010), Relatos salvajes (Damián Szifron, 2015) and El soñador (Adrián Saba, 2014) are narratives set in and between national, cultural and historical contexts, which in suspenseful atmospheres deal with uneven fnancial deals, scams, heists, or money laundering. Schroeder Rodriguez notes that the uncertainties that characters face, are being represented in the trope of suspense: “Suspense, with its focus on the immediate, [which] is especially well suited to exploring the political, economic, and social precariousness of the present historical moment”(2016, 289). 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 15

Genres such as the thriller, western or comedy frame the above mentioned and other Latin American flms and enable their commodifcation. But flmmakers also utilize their subversive potential to capture specifcally Latin American experiences and sensibilities, refecting on and criticizing neoliberal ideology, its middle-class social conventions and moral regimes.7 James Scorer examines Un oso rojo (Adrián Caetano, 2002) within conventions of an urban western that unfolds in contemporary Buenos Aires as a socially fragmented urban space populated by urban cowboys with an ambivalent moral code of justice (2010).8 The road movie is a critical genre that has found increasing scholarly interest. While internationally successful feature flms such as Y tu mamá también and Diarios de motocicleta (Walter Salles, 2004) express a utopia of freedom and mobility, border crossing and coming of age stories, other Latin American road movies are transformative journeys of emigration, exile and displacement that subvert tropes of mobility. In the introduction to their volume, The Latin American Road Movie, Verónica PROOFGaribotto and Jorge Perez note: “Whether celebrating, resisting, or conforming to neoliberal values, they [road movies] have staged a regional landscape that contrasts with the neoliberal discourse of progress, wealth, and success” (2016, 10).9 A number of flms made in Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, like Sin nombre (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2009) or La jaula de oro (Diego Quemada-Díez, 2013), are stories of crossing the border between Mexico and the United States, documenting a desire for a better life in the wealthier North, which often end in disillusionment, imprisonment and death. These flms use an affective register as aesthetic means to articulate individual experiences and criticism of neoliberalism (Podalsky 2011). Rosalind Galt,REVISED analyzing the flm Tan de repente (2002) by Diego Lerman, notes that a form of slowness deployed in its narrative and aesthetic structure is a refusal of a world order determined by productivity and effcacy (2013). Important interventions in the current Latin American flm scape in which affective affnities link aesthetics and politics, such as El Club (Pablo Larraín, 2015), La Teta Asustada or Magallanes, expose past violence resurfacing as repressed memories in the present, of meetings between victims and perpetrators pressured by current-day economic realities and fnancial pressures. To conclude, contemporary Latin American flms, while inextricably connected with global neoliberal circuits of production, distribution and 16 C. SANDBERG exhibition, nevertheless fnd ways to question these conditions. I would like to emphasize this idea with reference to one of the most powerful flms of recent years, El abrazo de la serpiente (Ciro Guerra, 2015). This Colombian-Argentine-Venezuelan production is a story about an Amazonian shaman, Karamakate, the last of his tribe, who generously shares his wisdom with two Western anthropologists, who travel with him on a boat through the Amazon with boxes full of equipment. In stunning black and white images, the flm chronicles neoliberal ideology as continuation of older forms of cultural and economic domination that led to the loss of local knowledge and distortions of native rites and traditions. The enigmatic fgure of Karamakate, who is the last of his tribe, is exemplary of resistance that is staged from his underprivileged and solitary position. Despite suffering setbacks, being deceived and screamed at, Karamakate makes his foreign companions let go of their belongings and teaches them to dream in his language. The wise man’s ways of perceiving the world in a fuidity of real events, dreams and memories leaves them perplexed. Most certainly, among the manyPROOF Latin American artists, flm companies and policymakers are those who utilize their spaces to reclaim local practices, symbols, sounds and images, tirelessly defending a cinema that counteracts present and persistent strategies of homogenization and commercialization.

Chapter Outline Junior and senior colleagues, teaching and researching in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, have contributed to this volume. Their case studies are based on shorts, features, documentaries and experimental flms made in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, REVISEDEcuador, Mexico and Peru since 2010, and together form an understanding of the diverse and contradictory relations between neoliberalism and contemporary Latin American cinema. The book is divided into three parts. The frst part, “Uneasy Neoliberal Narratives and Images,” observes encroaching neoliberal developments and sensibilities that have an impact on flmmaking practices, narrative and aesthetics, cast and crews alike. In the frst chapter, Alfredo Martínez-Exposíto examines Icíar Bollaín’s fctional docudrama También la lluvia (2010). A flm that is based on the events around the Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia, it is highly self-critical about flmmaking as part of a history of exploitative business practices and unequal 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 17

North-South power relations. Martínez-Exposíto argues that También la lluvia aligns confictive issues of decolonization and neoliberalism and is a text that contests “prevalent modes of neoliberal flm production and consumption in Latin America.” Rosana Diaz-Zambrana takes the Peruvian flms Octubre (Diego Vega and Daniel Vega, 2010) and El limpiador (Adrián Saba, 2013) as a lens to observe fractured and distorted personal relationships, an inability of the male protagonists of these features to form social bonds and handle memories of a traumatic past, as confgurations of the neoliberal society in Peru. The dystopic urban spaces that establish the mis-en-scénes to these flms align with spatial trajectories in Maria Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez’s chapter. Vázquez adds a fresh perspective to the idea that Latin American flm is increasingly interested in the realm of the middle classes. With a cross-cultural reading of the Mexican Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) and the Brazilian Que horas ela volta? (Anna Muylaert, 2015), the scholar fnds this tendency deployed in the use of cinematic spaces and linked to the middle-class background of the flmmakers themselves.PROOF Niamh Thornton also examines flmmaking linked to flmmakers as neoliberal subjects. With reference to the Mexican feature Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? (Mariana Chenillo 2013), Thornton observes a striving for the perfect Latina body on and off screen, a stereotype that female director and lead actress feel exposed to, pressured by neoliberal demands. The chapters of Part II, “Neoliberal Film Policies and the Global Market,” discuss demands of global players and their impact on local flm industries and revisit Latin American flmmaking in response to local, neoliberal-economic policies and regulations. This part starts with a contribution by Jacobo Asse Dayan who examines the state of the Mexican flm industry and its morphing to neoliberal ideology. His fndings frame an analysisREVISED of Güeros (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2014), a flm that bridges the 1999 student protests with the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. He comes to an interesting fnding: “The 1960s youth movement’s individualistic spirit played into the hands of neoliberalism, and, ironically, today’s paralysis might be, in some small part, the result of yesterday’s rebellion.” Sarah Barrow emphasizes the role of the producer as an arbitra- tor for flmmakers in a highly competitive funding environment. She studies the case of the Peruvian producer Enid “Pinky” Campos. As one of the few women in the feld, focused on socially committed flm projects, Campos’s work resonates with that of enigmatic fgures such as Lita Stantic. Barrow highlights the changed profle of a young generation of 18 C. SANDBERG flmmakers who needs soft power skills and market experience to negotiate the commercial aspects of flmmaking. Film anthropologist María Paz Peirano discusses Pablo Larraín’s No (2012)—a flm about the advertising campaign that facilitated the 1988 Chilean referendum to end Pinochet’s regime—as a catalyst for a hot political debate about the installment of economic neoliberalism during the Pinochet dictatorship. Peirano’s reception analyses reveal controversies about the flm which are a demonstration of the complex and contradictory relationship of the Chilean flm industry with neoliberalism. Carolina Rocha’s research into crowdfunding shows that flmmakers can beneft from the neoliberal flm market without surrendering their visions. She analyzes the crowdfunding initiatives of three recent flms: The Firefy (Ana María Hermida 2013), Dirty Hands (Joseph Wladytka 2015) and An Unknown Country: the Jewish Exiles of Ecuador (Eva Zelig 2015). Rocha highlights these ventures as a way to tap into fnancial resources worldwide, and an effective way of establishing a local and global flm audience about themes that are relevant in Colombia and Ecuador. PROOFAndrea Morán and Miguel Fernández Labayen contribute to this volume with a case study about the Argentine flm industry. They illustrate how transformations of the flm sector from analogue to digital extend theatrical exhibition space(s) and revenues for Hollywood products at the expense of national flm. The scholars discuss measures taken by the Argentine state with the aim of using digital technologies for the beneft of the local industry, some of which are controversial but are shown to be moderately effective. Part Three, “Defant Actors and Marginal Spaces,” is concerned with examples of contemporary flm and flmmaking practices that use innovative approaches to tackle geographical, cultural and social margins defned by neoliberal ideology. Walescka Pino-Ojeda’s essay about Pablo LarraínREVISED highlights the vital importance of Larraín’s work as neoliberal critique in the Chilean social context. Pino-Ojeda examines the narrative and aesthetic character of Larraín’s flms as “cynically affective” cinematic approaches. On the basis of her readings of Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), No (2012) and Neruda (2016), the scholar fnds that Larraín’s flms contain neoliberal and political criticism in commercial formats; they have an elusive quality that is somewhere between refecting, utilizing and criticizing the commercial character of contemporary cinema. Similarly using and productively “abusing” flmmaking conditions and regulations in Colombia that promote flm as a market product, Carlos de Oro discusses Alias María (José Rugeles 2015). The 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 19 flm beneftted from the neoliberal system of production and exhibition to promote its subject. Made in a participatory mode with children and adolescents who have gone through experiences of warfare in Colombia, the flm forms part of other activities that the flm crew organizes with affected groups and communities in remote areas. Claudia Sandberg, concerned with flmmaking ventures in rural spaces, analyzes the flms of Argentine director Maximiliano Schonfeld with and about the Volga German community in Entre Ríos. Given that only one-ffth of the Latin American population still live in villages and small towns, it is often overlooked that neoliberalism has majorly affected rurally based citizens and agricultural communities. Sandberg discusses Schonfeld’s Esnorquel (2006), Entreluces (2006) and Germania (2012) as comments about a people that has been affected by consumer culture and monopolizing tendencies in the agricultural sector. Andrea Molfetta’s chapter concludes this volume. She examines forms, themes and organizational structures of two communal, semi-autonomous flmmaking networks which are active in the outer suburbs of Buenos Aires.PROOF Molfetta reminds us of the vulnerability of these initiatives in a volatile political environment and changing sense of national culture in Argentina. With these neighborhood-based enterprises of flm making and flm viewing that happen in the spirit of sharing resources and exchange of experiences, social peripheries are regained as culturally vibrant centers. Here, cinema emerges as form of local expression and social empowerment, which is in essence what cinematic resistance to neoliberalism is all about.

Notes 1. Cacilda Rêgo and Carolina Rocha discuss flmmaking trends from 1995 onwards,REVISED when both Argentina and Brazil took legislative measures and went new economic pathways which had an impact on flmmaking in both countries (2011). 2. See Ibermedia news item on the following link: http://www. programaibermedia.com/nuestras-noticias/guatemala-reingre- sa-al-programa-ibermedia-y-anuncia-un-programa-de-fomento-a-la-realiza- cion-cinematografca, accessed August 23, 2017. 3. See for more positive accounts of the transnational and market-oriented nature of Latin American Cinema Deborah Shaw (2007), Anne Marie Stock (2006), and Luisela Alvaray (2008). Joanna Page (2009), Rosalind Galt (2013), and Gerd Gemuenden (2017) are critical about these developments. 20 C. SANDBERG

4. Claudia Sandberg’s reception study illustrates the lack of and sensibility of a current, young spectatorship in Chile towards ideas raised in progressive flm material from the 1970s and 1980s (2017). 5. See García Canclíni’s lucid discussion of consumption and citizenship in his infuential work, Consumers and Citizens. Globalization and Multicultural Conficts (2001). 6. The original quote reads: El personaje individualista, autocentrado y nar- cisista es “héroe” o la “heroína” del cine chileno. Personajes amorales que se construyen desde la sociedad de consume y la simple búsqueda hedon- ista de la satisfacción del placer y el deseo. Individuos desmaterializados, abstractos, que viven en ninguna parte reconocible, deslocalizados y psi- cológicamente infantiles. 7. See Barbara Klinger (1984) about the potential of genre flm as progressive texts and ideological criticism in relation to Hollywood cinema. More recently, Jonathan Goldberg (2016) added to these ideas a book-length account about the progressive potential of the melodrama. 8. See Rocha’s “Caballos salvajes and its critique of neoliberal culture,” for a reading of the Western genre in relation to the flm Caballos salvajes (Marcelo Piñeyro, 1995) in the context ofPROOF Argentine neoliberal policies under Menem’s government (2007). 9. A number of current publications deal with the Latin American road movie, such as Natalia Pinazza (2014) and Nadia Lie (2017).

Works Cited Alvaray, Luisela. 2008. “National, Regional, and Global: New Waves of Latin American Cinema.” Cinema Journal 47 (3): 48–65. Amann, Edmund, and Werner Baer. 2002. “Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (4): 945–59. Arantes, Joé Tadeu. 2017. “Globalization Concentrated Movie Exhibition Market inREVISED Latin America.” Agência FAPESP , January 27, 2017. http://agencia.fapesp.br/globalization_concentrated_movie_exhibition_market_in_latin_ america/22598/. Araujo, Kathya. 2017. “Sujeto y neoliberalismo en Chile: rechazos y apegos.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. http://nuevomundo.revues.org/70649. Ballina, Bianka. 2017. “Juan of the Dead: Anxious Consumption and Zombie Cinema in Cuba.” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinema 14 (2): 193–213. Belém Lopes, Dawisson. 2017. “Why is Neoliberalism Back in Latin America?” Aljazeera, July 15, 2017. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/ 2017/07/neoliberalism-latin-america-170711085354385.html. Cannon, Barry. 2016. The Right in Latin America. Elite Power, Hegemony and the Struggle for the State. New York and London: Routledge. 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 21

Davis, Robert E. 2006. “The Instantaneous Worldwide Release: Coming Soon, to Everyone, Everywhere.” In Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, 73–80. London and New York: Routledge. De Luca, Tiago. 2014. Realism of the Senses in World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality. London: I.B. Tauris. D’Lugo, Marvin. 2003. “Authorship, Globalization and the New Identity of Latin American Cinema. From the Mexican ‘ranchera’ to Argentinian ‘Exile’.” In Rethinking Third Cinema, edited by Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake, 103–25. New York and London: Routledge. Falicov, Tamara. 2013. “Ibero-Latin American Co-Productions: Transnational Cinema, Spain’s Public Venture or Both?” In Contemporary Hispanic Cinema. Interrogating the Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film, edited by Stephanie Dennison, 67–88. Croydon: Tamesis. Galt, Rosalind. 2013. “Default Cinema: Queering Economic Crisis in Argentina and Beyond.” Screen 54 (1): 62–81. García Canclini, Néstor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures. Translated by Christopher L. Chiappari and Soliva L. López. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. García Canclini, Néstor. 2001. Consumers andPROOF Citizens. Globalization and Multicultural Conficts. Translated by George Yúdice. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Garibotto, Verónica, and Jorge Pérez. 2016. “Introduction. Reconfguring Precarious Landscapes: The Road Movie in Latin America.” In The Latin American Road Movie, edited by Verónica Garibotto and Jorge Pérez, 1–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gemuenden, Gerd. 2017. “Un nuevo cine peruano? Recent Trends from Lima.” Paper given at the Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, Lima, April 2017. Goldberg, Jonathan. 2016. Melodrama. An Aesthetics of Impossibility. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Gómez, Antonio. 2016. “Displacing the ‘I’: Use of the First Person in Recent ArgentineREVISED Biographical Documentaries.” In Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium, edited by María Guadalupe Arenillas and Michael J. Lazzara, 63–78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Grugel, Jean, and Pía Riggirozzi. 2012. “Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and Reclaiming the State After Crisis.” Development and Change 43 (1): 1–21. Halle, Randall. 2010. “Offering Tales They Want to Hear: Transnational European Film Funding as Neo-orientalism.” In Global Art Cinema. New Theories and Histories, edited by Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, 303–19. New York: Oxford University Press. Harvey, David. 2008. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 22 C. SANDBERG

Hesmondhalgh, David. 2013. The Cultural Industries. 3rd ed. London: Sage. Jameson, Frederic. 1991. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press. 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, 1–16. London: Routledge. Klinger, Barbara. 1984. “‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’ Revisited: The Progressive Text.” Screen 25 (1): 30–44. Lazzara, Michael J. 2016. “What Remains of Third Cinema.” In Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium, edited by María Guadalupe Arenillas and Michael J. Lazzara, 23–42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lie, Nadia. 2017. The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. MacDonald, Laura, and Arne Ruckert. 2009. “Post-neoliberalism in the Americas: An Introduction.” In Post-neoliberalism in the Americas, edited by Laura MacDonald and Arne Ruckert, 1–20. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mazierska, Ewa. 2018. “Introduction.” In Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology, edited by Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen,PROOF 1–22. New York: Routledge. McChesney, Robert W. 2001. “Global Media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism.” Monthly Review 52 (10): 1–19. Page, Joanna. 2009. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentina Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Picciau, Kevin. 2011. “Cinemark Strengthens Its Position in South America.” Ina Global, November 7, 2011. http://www.inaglobal.fr/en/cinema/ article/cinemark-strengthens-its-position-south-america. Pinazza, Natalia. 2014. Journeys in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Road Films in a Global Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Podalsky, Laura. 2011. The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Read, Jason.REVISED 2009. “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity.” Foucault Studies 6: 25–36. Rêgo, Cacilda, and Carolina Rocha. 2011. New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Bristol: Intellect. Risner, Jonathan. 2016. “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Grudgingly Accept Product Placement: Nicolás López, Chilewood and Criteria for a Neoliberal Cinema.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25 (4): 597–612. Roberts, Kenneth M. 2009. “Beyond Neoliberalism: Popular Responses to Social Change in Latin America.” In Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads, edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts, 1–16. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 1 CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA … 23

Rocha, Carolina. 2007. “Caballos Salvajes and its Critique of Neoliberal Culture.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 26: 167–77. Rocha, Carolina. 2011. “Contemporary Argentine Cinema during Neoliberalism.” In New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema, edited by Cacilda Rêgo and Carolina Rocha, 17–34. Bristol: Intellect. Rocha, Carolina. 2017. “Developing a National Cinema through Co-productions”, Paper Given at the Latin American Studies Annual Conference, Lima, April 2017. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M. 2014a. “Regimes of Affect: Love and Class in Mexican Neoliberal Cinema.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 4 (1): 1–19. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M. 2014b. Screening Neoliberalism. Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbuilt University Press. Sandberg, Claudia. 2017. “‘Not Like the Stories I am Used to’: East German Film as Cinematic Memory in Contemporary Chile.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 26 (4): 553–69. Schroeder Rodriguez, Paul. 2016. A Comparative History of Latin American Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scorer, James. 2010. “Once Upon a Time in Buenos Aires: Vengeance, Community and the Urban Western.” JournalPROOF of Latin American Cultural Studies 19 (2): 141–54. Shaw, Deborah, ed. 2007. Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking Into the Global Market. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefeld. Simis, Anita. 2015. “Economía política do cinema: a exibição cinematográfca na Argentina, Brasil e México.” Versión – Estudios de Comunicación y Política 36: 54–75. Skármeta, Antonio. 1997. “Europe. An Indispensable Link in the Production and Circulation of Latin American Cinema.” In New Latin American Cinema. Volume One. Theory Practices and Transcontinental Articulations, edited by Michael T. Martin, 263–69. Detroit: Wayne University Press. Stock, Ann Marie. 2006. “Migrancy and the Latin American Cinemascape: Towards a Post-national Critical Praxis.” In Transnational Cinema. The Film Reader, REVISEDedited by Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, 157–66. London and New York: Routledge. Trejo, Roberto. 2014. “Cambios culturales, imaginarios colectivos y cine chileno actual.” In Audiovisual y política, edited by Claudia Barril, Pablo Corro, and José M. Santa Cruz G., 15–28. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Arcis. Venugopal, Rajesh. 2015. “Neoliberalism as Concept.” Economy and Society 44 (2): 165–87. White, Patricia. 2015. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. PART I

Uneasy Neoliberal Narratives and Images

PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 2

Southern Hegemonies and Metaphors of the Global South in También La Lluvia

Alfredo Martínez-Expósito

Contemporary transnational Latin AmericanPROOF cinema provides numerous instances of flmmaking praxis in which the hardly compatible agendas of neoliberalism and decolonization confict with each other. Walter Mignolo’s decolonial aesthetics and Siba Grovogui’s metaphoric geopolitics illustrate this confict particularly well as it confates in the geopolitical term Global South. Transnational flms such as Icíar Bollaín’s 2010 fctional docudrama También la lluvia often bespeak a plurality of overlaying and sometimes conficting “souths.” These are variously positioned in the matrix of subjugations alongside the inter- secting social categories of nationality, race, class or gender. Set against the historical contexts of Columbus’s frst contact with the Taino people and the 2000 Cochabamba Water War, También la lluvia mobi- lizes notionsREVISED of hegemony and exploitation while pondering the role of cinema as a tool for social justice in a globalized world of multiple, often unintelligible subjugations. Situated in the critical spaces between countries, eras, genders and races, También la lluvia contests in a highly original way prevalent modes of neoliberal flm production and consumption in Latin America.

A. Martínez-Expósito (*) University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Icíar Bollaín (b. Madrid, 1967) reached prominence in Spanish cinema with her early debut as a child actress in Víctor Erice’s iconic El Sur (1973). Her work as an adult actress has been generally well received; in 2001 she received a Goya Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in José Luis Borau’s Leo (2000). Bollaín became a flm director in the early 1990s with the short features Baja corazón (1992), Los amigos del muerto (1993) and Amores que matan (2000). Her frst long feature flm was the coming-of-age comedy Hola, ¿estás sola? (1995), which was followed by the social dramas Flores de otro mundo (1999), Te doy mis ojos (2003), Mataharis (2007), También la lluvia (2010), Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo (2011) and El olivo (2016). In the past decade Bollaín has also directed a documentary on Spanish migrants, En tierra extraña (2014). Most of her flms have been box-offce hits in Spain; they have enjoyed international distribution and have attracted critical acclaim in a number of A-list and independent flm festivals. With a budget of fve million euros, También la lluvia was Icíar Bollaín’s most costly flm thus far. It was coproducedPROOF by Morena Films and Vacas Films (Spain, 40%), Mandarin Cinéma (France, 40%) and Alebrije Producciones (Mexico, 20%), with additional funding from TVE, Canal Plus, AXN, ICAA and Eurimages. Contrary to Bollaín’s practice in previous flms, the script was not authored by the director herself but by her partner, Paul Laverty, who is perhaps better known for his scriptwriting collaborations with Ken Loach.1 Unambiguously aligned with a social-activist agenda, También la lluvia is dedicated to the late progressive historian and political scientist Howard Zinn, who died in 2010 shortly before shooting began. The flm enjoyed a positive reception: in 2011 it was selected by the Spanish Academy of Film Arts and Sciences to represent Spain at the American Academy Awards in the categoryREVISED of Best Foreign Language flm (a frst for a Spanish female director). Although También la lluvia did not progress to fnal voting in Hollywood, it fared very well in the Spanish Academy’s Goya Awards, garnering thirteen nominations and three awards (for original score, production supervision and supporting actor). In addition, the flm won six awards from Spain’s Cinema Writers Circle, as well as the José María Forqué award in the Best Actor category for Luis Tosar and the Best Score Award at the Spanish Music Awards.2 También la lluvia is a flm about the making of a flm. Shot on location at Cochabamba and Villa Tunari in Bolivia, it tells the story of Mexican flm director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal), his Spanish executive 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 29 producer Costa (Luis Tosar) and an international flm crew. Their flm is a historical drama about Christopher Columbus’s cruel subjugation of Caribbean indigenous peoples. Due to budget shortages, the producers of this fctional flm decide to shoot in Bolivia, where wages and costs are the lowest in the region. Costa’s expectation is that global audiences will fail to notice the difference between ffteenth-century Tainos and twenty-frst-century Quechuas. Sebastián casts Quechua Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri) in the role of rebel Taino leader Atuey. He does so without knowing that Daniel is among the leaders of anti-government protests over water privatization (the 2000 Cochabamba Water War). Costa and Sebastián try to persuade Daniel to cease his involvement with the civil protest until shooting of the flm is complete, but Daniel is adamant that water is more important than any flm. Eventually, Daniel is imprisoned. Costa bribes the police to secure Daniel’s temporary release from jail so as to shoot a last, crucial scene. Daniel seizes the opportunity and escapes, helped by Quechua flm extras. Tensions grow within the flm crew and plans are made to fee Bolivia if protests becomePROOF more violent. Daniel’s wife approaches Costa in desperation; her daughter has disappeared amid the protests and she begs him for assistance. Costa is faced with the choice between helping Daniel’s family or fnishing the flm shoot. Against Sebastian’s will, he chooses to help Daniel’s wife fnd her daughter. The story concludes with Daniel’s family happily reunited and the flm unfnished; the crew leaves the country; the Water War comes to an end. The main narrative of También la lluvia is punctuated by scenes that belong to the historical flm-within-the-flm. Inspired in pro-indigenous historical characters such as Bartolomé de las Casas (played by Carlos Santos), the period flm would seem to offer a narrative of the early days of the Spanish conquest that denounces the violent subjugation and the genocidal behaviorREVISED of conquistadors. As represented in Sebastián’s flm, examples of such violence include the crucifxion of indigenous leaders and mothers killing their newborn babies when threatened by Spanish invaders. With this content in mind, it seems well worth reiterating the point made by critic and cultural historian Duncan Wheeler, that También la lluvia “constitutes a milestone in that it is the frst major Spanish flm to depict a fesh-and-blood Columbus who is neither carica- tured nor idealised” (Wheeler 2013, 246). A third, subtler source of visual material in the flm is provided by María (Cassandra Ciangherotti), a young Mexican videographer. She is working on a “making-of” documentary of the Columbus flm as part 30 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO of the Mexican crew. With her handheld camera, María captures various behind-the-scenes incidents related to the shooting of the flm-within- the-flm, and to the civil unrest that surrounds the water confict. In addition to the main narrative, the flm-within-the-flm and videoclips from Maria’s camera, También la lluvia includes real footage of the 1999 Cochabamba riots. Far from serving as a background setting, the Cochabamba Water War represents one of the flm’s core narratives. The Water War erupted in 1999 when local authorities in Cochabamba agreed to privatize the water system; this was a consequence of the Bolivian government, pre- sided by General Hugo Banzer, having accepted a loan of 138 million US dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) aimed at boosting the national economy and controlling infation. Cochabamba’s water system was conceded to Aguas del Tunari, a multinational consortium controlled by US corporation Bechtel, in return for a total debt repayment and immediate infrastructure improvement works. As a frst measure, Aguas del Tunari raised the cost ofPROOF water supply to a level that outraged the local population. Simultaneously, General Banzer’s government passed legislation ensuring that Aguas del Tunari would monopo- lize all water resources in the Cochabamba region, including community resources that had never before been regulated. An extreme but legally possible application of the legislation would have allowed Aguas del Tunari to control and license the collection of rainwater from rooftops of private dwellings. Such a possibility exacerbated opposition to the foreign-led consortium—and generated the title of Bollaín’s flm. Real-life peasant and union leaders Omar Fernández and Oscar Olivera became the visible faces of the popular revolts that broke out in Cochabamba between December 1999 and April 2000. Both became involved in internationalREVISED actions of protest against the IMF, and contributed signif- icantly to Evo Morales’ electoral victory in 2006, just months after the Bolivian government and Aguas del Tunari agreed to a legal settlement over the Cochabamba water confict. The Cochabamba Water War was fctionalized in Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second flm of the James Bond franchise. Costing two hundred million US dollars and directed in 2008 by Marc Forster, this flm pitches the hero against a powerful organization that seeks to depose the president of Bolivia and replace him with a puppet dictator. The latter’s ultimate goal is to control the country’s most precious natural resource: water. Together with the global media presence of president 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 31

Evo Morales, the global reach of Quantum of Solace contributed to an effective rebranding of Bolivia as a resource-aware country; water scarcity came to fore in the global imagination regarding Bolivia and its stance on the exploitation of natural resources. Forster’s flm, however, does not pay attention to the people of Bolivia. Nor does it concern itself with the “Morales effect,” or with social and political aspects of eco-terrorism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it pays no attention whatsoever to indigenous people. The Cochabamba events were included very differently in other, contemporaneous international flms. Also in 2008, Eryk Rocha released his documentary Pachamama (2008), which, of these flms, offers the most proactive, rebellious representation of Mexican indigenous peoples. In the same year, Peter Joseph released Zeitgeist: Addendum. Joseph’s acclaimed Zeitgeist: The Movie had been released in 2007, originating in the leftist radical Zeitgeist movement. Zeitgeist: Addendum was the sequel documentary, and includes a brief mention of the Cochabamba popular revolt. También la lluvia continuedPROOF the trend, begun by these flms, of approaching the Cochabamba Water War as an instance of anti-hegemonic resistance from former colonized subjects to present-day neoliberal policies and neocolonial economic interests. These flms invoke a geopolitical divide between North and South that deserves closer scrutiny. Two conceptual paradigms prove particularly useful in an analysis of such neoliberal North/South tensions: Siba Grovogui’s metaphorical geopolitics, and Walter Mignolo’s decolonial aesthetics. Siba Grovogui bases much of his thinking about the Global South on a series of cartographic metaphors that are best illustrated by the confation of the 1974 Peters Projection world map with the traditional representations of the worldREVISED that exaggerated the true geographical size of the northern hemisphere. Grovogui points out that imperial cartographic practices were “mental, psychic, and ideological”; they were “encrypted in academic disciplines and justifed unequal treaties, forced or slave labor, colonization, formal imperialism, and colonialism” (Grovogui 2010, n.p.). The term “Global South,” therefore, is not a directional designation, or a geographical point due south to a fxed north, but “a symbolic designation of former colonial entities engaged in political projects of decolonization towards the realization of a postcolonial international order” (Grovogui 2010, n.p.). The geopolitical etymology that places the Global South within a series of terms such as Third World, the 32 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO

Non-Aligned Movement, and, more recently, globalization, should not detract attention from the fact that the Global South is, primarily, a cartographic metaphor of postcolonial decolonization. As a metaphor, the idea of the Global South refers to a broad range of postcolonial practices. It does not translate into a set of common practices or shared agendas; it is not, and does not aim to be, a political or geostrategic block beyond a shared rejection of imperial aspirations:

Besides the different legacies of colonial rule and the modern ideologies to which they variously adhered, these countries and territories are also characterized by different pre-colonial traditions of culture, politics, and economics. It is even the case that postcolonial entities must contend with internal dysfunctions and dissentions. (Grovogui 2010)

Shaun Grech cautions against the intellectual tendency in the Global North to conveniently reframe colonial and postcolonial experiences as “little more than abstract and dehistoricisedPROOF metaphors” (Grech 2015, 6). While Grech refers mainly to the feld of disability studies, his point has a much broader resonance. Metaphoric thinking plays an important role in Walter Mignolo’s decolonial aesthetics inasmuch as the program of decoloniality calls for epistemic disobedience and delinking (Mignolo 2011, 122–23). The colonial matrix of power (CMP)—an idea not unrelated to the intersectional matrix of oppression theorized by black fem- inists and later embraced by queer theorists—is indeed a fundamental pillar of the Western logic of modernity. The same logic sustains historical practices such as colonialism, imperialism and globalization. Having quickly become a cornerstone of decolonial thinking, the CMP can be described as a complex structure of management and control which perpetuates the inequalities and privileges of modernity/coloniality. Importantly,REVISED it is a concept that emerges from the Global South:

The concept was born out of theoretical-political struggles in South America, at the intersection between the academic and the public spheres. Driven by local critics of development, the CMP bears the impulse of liberation theology and emerged out of the limits of dependency theory in the seventies. These, of course, were also the years of the struggle for decolonization in Asia and Africa. (Mignolo 2016, 2)

It is not diffcult to see how the matrix of multiple subjugations that results from the metaphorical geopolitics of the Global South plays 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 33 out in También la lluvia, a flm in which different peoples and nation- alities come to embody specifc positions in a well-structured matrix of hierarchical relations. With reference to the lower end of the hierarchy, Tainos are massacred by Spanish conquistadors; current-day Quechuans are hired by Mexicans and Spaniards as cheap labor; flm producers are pressed by a presumably neoliberal flm industry to cut costs. Further, the real-life makers of También la lluvia (a Spanish director and a British scriptwriter) denounced the excesses of their ancestors in Latin America, while, simultaneously and paradoxically, their dependence on the US flm industry was ubiquitous—and obvious “in the excitement raised at home by [the flm’s] prospects at the Academy Awards” (Wheeler 2013, 248). At the top end, US-based commentators such as Roger Ebert and Stephen Holden denounced the possible hypocrisy of European flmmakers potentially exploiting Bolivian extras.3 The question of whether or not the indigenous Bolivian cast and crew were treated ethically throughout the making of the flm has been fagged by Wheeler as one that, by itself, could justify the flm’sPROOF self-refexivity and themes (Wheeler 2013, 251). The multilayered structure of También la lluvia confates at least three stories of economic subjugation: Tainos by Spaniards, Bolivians by a US corporation and Quechuans by a flm production company. At their most basic, these stories share a very obvious transnational content. Isabel Santaolalla has read También la lluvia as a polished example of transnational cinema. She put forward the idea that in the burgeoning space designated by trans-Atlantic coproductions between Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America Bollaín’s flm could be seen as exemplary. That is, as an international coproduction set in Bolivia, and involving an international crew, a Spanish director, a Scottish scriptwriter and REVISEDactors from Mexico, Bolivia and Spain, this flm constitutes “a perfect example of transnational flmmaking” (Santaolalla 2012, 200). Wheeler has pointed out the rather ambiguous presence of Spain in the flm where he describes También la lluvia as much “a transnational flm about Spain as it is a Spanish flm about transnationalism” (Wheeler 2013, 253). Tellingly, También la lluvia focuses on an instance of present-day transnational corporate business relations that to some extent “restages a much bloodier incident in Spain’s imperial past, inviting the viewer to recognize and interpret the parallels of two different but also related temporal and spatial contexts” (Santaolalla 2012, 202). As such, the flm is easily approached with reference to the three modes 34 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO of transnationalism in cinema as described by Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim: Santaolalla’s robust reading clearly sees También la lluvia as a paradigmatic instance of international industrial collaboration and, to some extent, as an investment in a shared cultural heritage. Together with most commentators on the flm, Santaolalla also provides suffcient arguments to consider it a critique of Western cultural practices “through representation and exposure of power relations between centre and mar- gin, insider and outsider” (Hibgee and Lim 2010, 9). The decolonialism paradigm offers a compelling perspective on ideas related to international flm industries and on the aesthetic aspect of transnational cinemas. Fabrizio Cilento has suggested that También la lluvia is a “moral tale about the division within the region and between Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula” (Cilento 2012, 249), pointing out that extras for the flm-within-the-flm are Bolivians, whereas the director is Mexican and the producer is Spanish. Here again, the matrix of hierarchies is obvious: Bolivia does not have a well-resourced flm industry, and many of the few flms itPROOF produces rely on Mexican funding. Yet Mexico “has established itself as a source of contemporary art flms and as a major market for distributors” (Cilento 2012, 249). Furthermore: “When an auteur such as Bollaín traverses the familiar territory of colonialism, one may question why Europeans, rather than Latin Americans, should make yet another flm on colonialism” (Cilento 2012, 249). Cilento convincingly argues that Bollaín’s flm, a Spain/France/Mexico coproduction, puts forward a deep and valuable interrogation of the global-local interface in relation to regional subjectivities by means of a “quasi-obsessive self-refexivity” (Cilento 2012, 251) embodied in María’s character as she works on a documentary about the flm-within-the-flm. This argument allows Cilento to concludeREVISED that También la lluvia “is not a straightforward defense of indigenous cultures, but a flm about how arduous it is to articulate such a defense” (Cilento 2012, 251). In the same vein, Wheeler points out that, despite its themes and aesthetics, the flm glances at the US—seeking the approval of the hegemon: “[a] social-realist aesthetic may be frequently construed as the antithesis of Hollywood flmmaking, but both Even the Rain and Sebastián’s flm-within-a-flm are the kind of prestige coproductions which paradoxically seek to counter North American hegemony whilst simultaneously courting its approval” (Wheeler 2013, 252). 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 35

It is hardly surprising that Mignolo’s decolonial epistemology has become a privileged perspective in critical readings of También la lluvia. The decolonial paradigm has been used, for example, to support a reading of the flm in terms of competing emotional epistemologies:

It is my contention that the western emotionology [is] frmly bound to the rationality of the capitalist market, whereas the frst people’s [emotions] are deeply rooted in their traditional spiritual connection as a community to the Pachamama (Earth). The emotions governed by distinct historical and cultural processes collide in the flm, in the same manner as the postmodern commercial and new cinema aesthetics do. Nevertheless, it is crucial to keep in mind that this is merely one perspective offered by a Spanish flmmaker on the topic of neoliberal policies and their effects on Latin American developing countries. (Bondi 2016, 276)

Luis Prádanos uses Mignolo’s decolonial framework to describe the relation between epistemological North and South in También la lluvia; importantly, he invokes Mignolo’s notion ofPROOF “border thinking” as any mode of knowledge that emerges from the subaltern edges of the modern/colonial system.4 Prádanos convincingly links flm structure to ideology by arguing that the use of multiple diegetic levels (metalepsis) helps to make manifest the colonial dark side of modernity, especially in relation to the character of Daniel-Atuey.5 Prádanos concludes that, through metalepsis, the flm succeeds in rendering visible the matrix of colonial power. Moreover, the flm reveals the existence of alternative epistemologies that are unlikely to be fully understood using only Northern modes of knowledge, which leads Prádanos to suggest that the choice of the new, plurinational Republic of Bolivia as a flm location is related to a resistance ethos from which to weave alternative systems of thought: “Will we everREVISED learn to listen, like Costa, or will we remain blind and deaf instead, like Sebastián?” (Prádanos 2014, 98).6 También la lluvia is striking in the way it incorporates different modes of realism, and decolonial epistemologies also help to explain this important aspect of the flm. Katarzyna Paszkiewicz (2012) has identifed epic cinema and social cinema as the two main realist genres that Bollaín’s flm engages with. The critical intention behind employing various modes of realism is to destabilize the way in which these modes ordi- narily function, by exposing their differences. For Paszkiewicz, También la lluvia illustrates historical tensions between at least two approaches to realism in cinema—a conservative, comforting rendition of the 36 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO real through a false image, versus the transformative use of mimesis to change the real. In previous flms Bollaín was rather ambiguous in her approach to social realism, but in También la lluvia she seems to have been deliberate in her use of social realism as a tactic to legitimate the more conservative, even “Hollywoodesque” and epic elements that are exemplifed by the flm’s happy ending.7 The character of María proves to be an important means of exposing the inner functioning of realist modes of representation; she is a secondary, hardly visible, amateur documentary-maker who is occasionally seen shooting crew and actors. This metaflmic device serves to unmask the conventional nature of the realist gaze, while, according to Paszkiewicz, it underlines the role of women in the flm industry. As such, María can be cited in support of the correlation that Wheeler makes between gender and genre in the fgure of Bollaín:

In addition to settling a gendered cultural defcit, many of these women’s works also participated in a broader trend by a PROOFnew generation of male and female Spanish flmmakers to deploy social realism as a form of political protest. (Wheeler 2013, 241)

Likewise, decolonial thinking about the colonial power matrix can clarify the role of documentary cinema in mediating between the epic and the social modes. Through an analysis strongly focused on flm language and techniques, Cilento (2012) has advanced an interpretation of También la lluvia that highlights the flm’s confation of different temporalities. He suggests that Bollaín is particularly aware of the history of Latin American cinema, and that she seeks to engage with specifc moments of such history. According to Cilento, in the flm’s “behind-the-scenes” moments, REVISEDa trained ear can perceive echoes of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s anti-imperialist manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema” of 1971, as well as Julio García Espinosa’s call, in 1969, “For an Imperfect Cinema”—that is, a revolutionary popular cinema markedly opposed to the formal and aesthetic perfection of commercial, imperialist cinema. The apparently minor character of María is particularly important in this regard:

[A] flmmaker whose task is to shoot a “making of” documentary about the historic Columbus drama … María soon reveals herself to be more perceptive than Sebastián and Costa, feeling an instinctive empathy toward 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 37

the exploited Bolivians. Her character problematizes the issue of where to look. Should she focus on the flm’s representation of the colonialist past [, or rather] should she turn her lightweight digital camera toward the popular rebellion against the privatization of water in Cochabamba? (Cilento 2012, 248)

In support of this view, María’s use of a digital camera produces grainy, occasionally black-and-white images, which are suggestive of Latin American social flm practices of the 1960s and 1970s. Commentators on También la lluvia have described the flm’s structure of binary oppositions in several different ways. This poetics of duality is commonly discussed with reference to the reversal process witnessed in the two main characters, Costa and Sebastián, which can be compared to the canonic reversal of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Sebastián inversion goes from idealism to egocentrism, whereas Costa’s quixotic turn brings him to understand some of the deeper issues that affect Cochabamba’s indigenous population. Pablo Brescia has invoked the Marxist term consciousness (“toma de conciencia”)PROOF to refer to Costa’s reversal, and this is consistent with his overall interpretation of the flm as an illustration of the principle that “los tiempos cambian pero las desigualdades no” (“times change but inequalities do not”) (Brescia 2014, 271). The flm’s open-ended questions linger:

How to retell the consequences of colonisation? Is fction (a flm-within-a- flm in this case) the best way to convey history’s truth? And, perhaps more urgently, which is or should be the relation between social commitment and art? (Brescia 2014, 271)8

No doubt a logical step in the decolonial reading is a critical focus on the key oppositionalREVISED characters as an instance of Otherness and othering. Andrea Smith and Sarah Campbell (2015) make a compelling argument for the pedagogical potential of También la lluvia as a flm that illustrates notions of Otherness and othering. In particular, they argue that “Bollaín employs the white male characters—supposedly the greatest benefciaries of privilege—as vehicles through which to explore Otherness and alienation” (Smith and Campbell 2015, 577). They maintain that in the opening scenes Sebastián is portrayed as an outsider, and the viewer sees Cochabamba through his eyes; Antón (Karra Elejalde), the Spanish actor who plays the role of Columbus in the 38 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO flm-within-the-flm, is shown experiencing estrangement as he struggles to communicate with his family; Costa is likewise estranged from his teenage son (Smith and Campbell 2015, 577). As such, Smith and Campbell see a parallel between Bollaín’s flm and Chus Gutiérrez’s Retorno a Hansala: both approach questions of identity, seeking to “complicate notions of inclusion and exclusion, to scour the layers of human experience for points of connection as well as contention” (Smith and Campbell 2015, 577). También la lluvia is rich in visual metaphors that encapsulate the complex relations between the many elements of the matrix of geopolitical and neoliberal subjugations. Prominent among these metaphors is the vial containing a few drops of Cochabamba water that the Christ- like character of Daniel-Atuey gives to Costa as a souvenir by the flm’s end. The vial works on several semantic levels simultaneously, connoting a memento of shared experiences, a reminder of the real value of natural resources, a warning against predatory neoliberal practices, a symbol of transcultural respect and understanding,PROOF a gift. The flm’s success in constructing a narrative concerning regional history through a global aesthetics is exemplifed in the violent climax—a scene centered on the indigenous individuals who upon refusing to convert to Christianity are tied to crosses and burned alive. It culminates with the arrival of police on the flm set, and the detention of Daniel-Atuey. The two timeframes of the ffteenth century and the twenty-frst are then fully confated, since the leader of the 1492 revolt is also a leader in the present-day Water War protest: he confronts the police while still wearing the flm costume and makeup pertaining to the historical indigenous character Atuey. The most powerful visual image of También la lluvia features an over- sized Christian cross as it is carried over the jungle towards the flm set. The cross REVISEDhangs from the transport helicopter in a way reminiscent of other famous airborne symbols, such as the statue of Lenin in Good Bye, Lenin! (directed by Wolfgang Becker, 2003) and the statue of Jesus in the opening scene of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960). With the fying cross shown hovering over impenetrable rainforest vegetation, this arresting image is so emblematic of the flm’s dramatic tensions that it has often been chosen for posters and teasers. It is indeed a lingering metaphor for the conficting layers and multiple hegemonies associated with the Global South. The elements of the image are all representative of well-known discourses. The cross stands for the suffering of the poor and the oppressed, but also for Christianism at large, evangelization as a 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 39 form of geopolitical proselytism, European expansionism and, ultimately, colonialism. The helicopter bespeaks industrialization and the ubiquity of commercial activity. The jungle is the medium that must be conquered as much as it is a world that resists land penetration. The image combines the various discourses invoked by each of its three elements (cross, helicopter, jungle) with three additional ingredients: point of view, movement and spectacle. Technically the image is framed as a general shot, with the camera shooting from a second helicopter; the narrative perspective is therefore that of an omniscient narrator, which adds objec- tivity and realism to the sequence.9 Such an effect is further emphasized by the movement of the helicopter-cross dyad: the helicopter seems to be surfng the skies, with the cross swaying slightly behind due to its weight. Thus the modernizing, commercial power of the helicopter is shown controlling the dead weight of tradition and the colonial past represented by the cross. Crucially, the whole visual composition is offered to the viewer as a rich, albeit disturbing, spectacle that combines past and present, symbol and pragmatism, form and meaning.PROOF The deep semiotic mechanisms of this metaphor become even clearer when its formal elements are connected with the ideological issues raised by También la lluvia. First and foremost, the flm questions the notion of a single North that subjugates a single South. It does so by insisting on a plurality and complexity of hierarchies at play, by including several “northern” countries (the US, the UK, Spain) and several “souths” (Mexico, Bolivian mestizos, Bolivian Quechuans). Rather than the binary, oppositional concept of North/South, the North-South continuum is highlighted by the subtle composition of the image centered on the fying Christian cross: the composition encompasses the two large objects of contrasting qualities (helicopter and cross) but also the wire that linksREVISED them, as well as their movement, and the telluric background which reminds the viewer of the indigenous peoples that remain at the bottom of the matrix of oppression. Secondly, this visual metaphor connects extremely well to the flm’s contestation of stable, convenient interpretations of history. The fying cross is a powerful reminder that colonialism takes different forms and uses different enabling means of exploiting colonized peoples and lands at different historical junctures— even as the fundamental nature of colonialism remains unchanged. The double character of Daniel-Atuey gives the cross its double historical meaning of conquest and spectacle. Finally, the metaphor emphasizes the metacinematic nature and intention of También la lluvia by explicitly 40 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO rendering the cross a prop, an element of décor and mise-en-scène. According to the same logic, the helicopter invokes the flm industry and its presumed or implicit links to a neoliberal economy that regulates modes of production and exhibition, the transnational labor conditions of global stars (such as Gael García Bernal) and the aesthetic and thematic constraints of critical flms such as También la lluvia. Arguably, this same metacinematic logic can be used to refect on the role of the viewer and the persuasive ways in which this flm calls upon its transnational audience.

Notes 1. Paul Laverty gained frst-hand knowledge of Central American conficts as well as Chiapas and Ciudad Juárez. He lived in Nicaragua in the mid- 1980s, where he worked as a human rights activist. As a scriptwriter, he has collaborated with socialist auteur Ken Loach on many flms, including Bread and Roses (2000) and The WindPROOF that Shakes the Barley (2006). Laverty and Bollaín frst met on the set of Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom (1995). In this social realist account of the Spanish Civil War from an anti-fascist perspective, Bollaín played Maite and Laverty played the minor role of an unnamed militia member. 2. Santaolalla (2012, 200–7) provides a detailed account of the flm’s industrial achievements. Internationally, the flm won three awards at the Les Arcs European Film Festival (Audience Choice Prize, Young Jury Prize and Best Actor), an Ariel Award in Mexico in the Best Latin American Film category, the Panorama Audience Award in the Berlin International Film Festival, the Best Film Award at the Munich Film Festival, the Bridging the Borders Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and three awards at the New York Association of Latin Entertainment Critics (Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor).REVISED 3. Roger Ebert admires the flmmakers’ courage in choosing the Bolivian water crisis as subject matter, but notes potential hypocrisy, writing, “at the end I looked in vain for a credit saying, ‘No extras were underpaid in the making of this flm’” (Ebert 2011). In interviews, Bollaín is quoted as having said that local extras were paid twenty US dollars per day (Santaolalla 2012, 211). 4. This notion closely resembles Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s “post-abyssal thinking” or “learning from the South through an epistemology of the South” (Prádanos 2014, 89). 2 SOUTHERN HEGEMONIES AND METAPHORS … 41

5. “La alternancia de los diferentes niveles diegéticos de la película permite apreciar la formación, continuidad, mutación y entramados de la matriz de poder colonial desde la conquista española hasta la globalización neoliberal, al tiempo que muestra la emergencia de un pensamiento fronter- izo que cuestiona la (i)lógica moderna-occidental-hegemónica y revela sus puntos muertos observacionales” (Prádanos 2014, 90). 6. The original quote reads: “¿Aprenderemos a escuchar, como Costa, o per- maneceremos ciego y sordos como Sebastián?” 7. The similarities between Bollaín’s working methods and those of Ken Loach have not passed unnoticed; these include extensive preliminary research, interviews, location shooting and reference to everyday aesthetics (Wheeler 2013, 242). 8. The original quote reads: ¿Cómo volver a contar las secuelas de la colo- nización? ¿Es la fcción (en este caso la película-dentro-de-la-película) la manera más idónea de contar la verdad de la historia? Y, tal vez de manera más urgente, ¿cuál es o debe ser la relación entre el compromiso social o cívico y el arte? 9. Although this image is often presented to viewers out of context in teasers and documentaries, its frst appearance in thePROOF flm is actually framed from the multiple points of view of Sebastián, Costa and Daniel. This perspectiv- ism, however, is not maintained long enough to sustain an interpretation of the visual metaphor as explicitly and unambiguously attached to any particular viewpoint. This said, a close reading of the complex character of Daniel would strongly beneft from a full consideration of his point of view in this scene, especially because this is the frst time he sees the cross on which Atuey (the character he plays in the flm-within-the-flm) will eventually hang to die.

Works Cited Bondi, Erika.REVISED 2016. “Conficting Emotions: Globalization and Decoloniality in También la lluvia.” Philosophy Study 6 (5): 275–81. Brescia, Pablo. 2014. “Review of También la lluvia.” Chasqui 43 (2): 270–72. Cilento, Fabrizio. 2012. “Even the Rain: A Confuence of Cinematic and Historical Temporalities.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 16: 245–58. https://doi.org/10.1353/hcs.2012.0035. Ebert, Roger. 2011. Review of Even the Rain. Posted February 24, 2011. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/even-the-rain-2011. Grech, Shaun. 2015. “Decolonising Eurocentric Disability Studies: Why Colonialism Matters in the Disability and Global South Debate.” Social Identities 21 (1): 6–21. Grovogui, Siba. 2010. “The Global South: A Metaphor, Not an Etymology.” Global Studies Review 6 (3): n.p. http://www.globality-gmu.net/archives/2271. 42 A. MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO

Higbee, W., and S. H. Lim. 2010. “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies.” Transnational Cinemas 1 (1): 7–21. Mignolo, Walter. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mignolo, Walter. 2016. “Global Coloniality: Decoloniality After Decolonization and Dewesternization After the Cold War.” Paper for the 13th Rhodes World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilisations.org, January 29, 2016. http://wpfdc. org/images/2016_blog/W.Mignolo_Decoloniality_after_Decolonization_ Dewesternization_after_the_Cold_War.pdf. Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna. 2012. “Del cine épico al cine social: El universo metafílmico en También la lluvia (2010) de Icíar Bollaín.” Lectora 18: 227–40. Prádanos, Luis. 2014. “Iluminando el lado oscuro de la modernidad occidental: Colonialismo, neocolonialismo y metalepsis en También la lluvia de Icíar Bollaín.” Confuencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura 30 (1): 87–101. Santaolalla, Isabel. 2012. The Cinema of Icíar Bollaín. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smith, Andrea, and Sarah Campbell. 2015. “EncounteringPROOF Difference: Images of Otherness in Contemporary Spanish Film.” Hispania 98 (3): 570–82. Wheeler, Duncan. 2013. “Y también la lluvia/Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín, 2010): Social Realism, Transnationalism and (Neo)colonialism.” In Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory, edited by Maria M. Delgado and Robin Fiddian, 239–55. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

REVISED CHAPTER 3

Neoliberal Masculinities in Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: Octubre and El Limpiador

Rosana Díaz-Zambrana

Between 1990 and 2000, the former PeruvianPROOF president Alberto Fujimori set forth the path for the nation’s neoliberal economic model through an aggressive free-market structural reform program that was eventually strengthened and expanded by his democratic successors (Silva 2009, 230).1 Remarkably, these enforced neoliberal policies fostered in the last decade the ideal conditions for the country to experience a record rise in commodity exports and foreign investment in a phenomenon referred to as the “Peruvian Miracle” (Mendoza Bellido 2013, 36).2 On the one hand, this unexpected economic boom generated an increased growth of the middle class, thus shaping a novel layer of citizens with buying power and access to commodity goods and entertainment.3 On the other hand, skeptics question the long-term sustainability of such economicREVISED bonanza given that Peru still “has not closed its gaps regarding inequality nor improved its economic and social exclusion issues” (Mendoza Nava 2015, 1). In either case, the country’s prosper- ous economy has simultaneously altered and, at times, negatively disrupted many dimensions of sociocultural and economic interactions and traditional practices.4

R. Díaz-Zambrana (*) Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, USA

As Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner argue in Neoliberalism and Global Cinema, the critical study of cinema can “offer insights into the nature and contradictions of the neoliberal project” while providing “a lens into the political economy of neoliberalism and its far-reaching implications on culture” (2011, 1). In this way, the impact of these emerging socioeconomic dynamics in Peru could certainly be understood via the cinematic discourse and its exploration of neoliberalism on daily life, relations and rituals.5 Moreover, recent productions are expounding the search for freedom and personal redemption through “antiheroes and survivors seeking a way out” but caught in isolating social power structures (Pimentel 2012, 105–6). This sense of detach- ment and social inadequacy aligns seamlessly with the detrimental side of neoliberalism in which “disposability and social death replace civic life with a culture of greed and cruel spectacles” (Giroux 2011, 592). In other words, the individual crises relating to the new economic, social and emotional realms become part of the collateral damage triggered by neoliberal forms of exclusion and marginality.PROOF Recent Peruvian flm not only continues to problematize the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic challenges embedded throughout the country’s history but also explores various means of maneuvering traumatic historic events through the inner experience of tormented male characters such as the ones depicted in Días de Santiago (Josué Méndez 2004) and Magallanes (Salvador del Solar 2015), to mention just two examples. As has been noted by Peruvian flm critic Ricardo Bedoya, the national cinema’s new tendencies look into the social aspect where collective representations disappear and, by consequence, what remain are the intimate portrayals, the private experiences and the dramatization of individual memories (2015, 71). Hence, the past will be fltered through “the prismREVISED of the subjective experience [in] stories of memory and post- memory” (Bedoya 2015, 71). It could be argued that psychologically driven dramas not only bring a distressing past into the present in an attempt to conciliate national open wounds, but also portray the ero- sive nature of neoliberal capitalism in the way interpersonal relationships are constructed, defned and negotiated in the post-confict, globalized Peruvian society. In this essay I will examine to what extent the intimate stories of ordi- nary people at moral crossroads illuminate “the transformations of the neoliberal era and the postconfict” (del Pino 2013, 11).6 The transformations I am most interested in are the changing moral and social 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 45 landscape, which includes the repression of postwar memories; the altered attitudes toward social solidarity; and the evolution of traditional masculine identities at the national and personal levels. For this exam- ination, I look to two recent Peruvian flms: Octubre (Diego Vega and Daniel Vega 2010) and El limpiador (Adrián Saba 2013). The male protagonists of both of these fctions are living testimony to “the rampant culture of commodifcation, abstraction, and dehumanization” promul- gated by the neoliberal project (Kapur and Wagner 2011, 2). Both protagonists live a solitary existence, are reduced to monotonous labor and are subject to the fimsy mediation of the vacuous human connection provided by the media of the market-based society. Equally important, the brutal reality for both of the characters is ruled by a “pseudo- satisfaction that is superfcially exciting but hollow at its core” (Harvey 2005, 170). This paramount shift from solidary society to consumer society takes shape via the depiction of affective indifference, broken human bonds, ethical fuidity and catastrophic spaces. Specifcally, the worlds fctionalized in PROOFOctubre and El limpiador expose private and collective scenarios of spatial and personal chaos. By using a stylistic austerity that avoids “heroic archetypes, excess, stri- dency, and speed” (Protzel 2009, 183–84), these intriguing productions suggest the intimate space of the house as a marginal locus where the subject negotiates his isolation and inadequacy. The sudden exigence to undertake the role of a father will demand that the apathetic and stolid male characters literally and fguratively step out of their “comfort zones” to an “outside” of potential solidarity, which, in some cases, becomes an improbable endeavor due to their emotional and social dys- functionality. In fact, according to Margarita Saona, the imaginary of the Peruvian nation still revolves around the topic of a conficted masculine subjectivity,REVISED which is often burdened with a wounded body or a wounded psyche (2011, 109). As a result of decades of violent armed confict, the principle of authority and power in Peru—sustained by an image of male incorruptibility—will not only be fractured but also unsus- tainable (Saona 2008, 164). Drawing on Saona’s analysis, Octubre and El limpiador could be read as inextricably entwined to that archetypical male wounded image, both emotionally and physically, which is intrinsic to the Peruvian idiosyncrasy and by extension its cinematography. The constraints and failures of the male subject are expressed through a pervasive inability to create affective bonds or secure a cultural/ historical memory. Simultaneously, the insurmountable male defciencies 46 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA cannot escape the moral dichotomies and drastic social alterations aggravated by the neoliberal culture at large. Although the stark aesthetics of Octubre diverge in many aspects from the haunting scenario—with sci-f undertones within an end-of-the-world schema—of El limpiador, both flms convey the multifaceted repercussions of this fractured neoliberal project in which the rarefed capital of Lima becomes the center of a veiled search for emotional connection and meaning. I argue that the corrosive impact neoliberal imperatives infict on social interactions, past traumas and cultural practices are mainly displayed through conficted, emotionally detached male fgures and the dystopic representation of urban spaces.

Emotional Transactions: Dark Intimacies in Octubre In his history of global neoliberalism, David Harvey exhaustively examines how neoliberal culture operates at the expensePROOF of all forms of human solidarity which “w[ere] to be dissolved in favor of individualism, private property, personal responsibility, and family values” (2005, 23). The Vega brothers’ opera prima, Octubre, dramatizes this crisis of social solidarity and affective bonds as a result of extreme individualism perpetuated as a consequence of Peru’s neoliberal theories and doctrines. The flm juxtaposes symbolic markers of greed with markers of isolation in order to recreate “a pulverized, atomized society spattered with the debris of broken inter-human bonds” (Giroux 2011, 588). The citizen’s seeming defance or complacency in the face of such an oppressive economic system will reappear as a narrative backbone in the Vega brothers’ subsequent flm, El mudo (2013).7 The apparent success of the male protagonist’s—and,REVISED indeed, the country’s—neoliberal integrations as exposed in El mudo are accompanied by pivotal, and at times, devastat- ing aftermaths. Nonetheless, while El mudo stresses this steady descent into the amoral greediness of a public persona, his previously made Octubre points to a possible redemption of the private self, a movement in the opposite direction from society’s self-centered principles. In Octubre, the accumulative effects of neoliberal practices will be transferred from the social to the private. Under this new order that favors the belief “greed is good,” the protagonist’s affective and social network is composed of prostitutes and neighbors who are merely customers. The abrupt emergence of what seems to be a family group is 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 47 also perceived in terms of a fnancial burden. In many aspects, the protagonist’s affective crisis stems from a neoliberal ideology that devalues the “social question” and aims “to dissolve crucial social solidarities, undermine compassion, disparage mutual responsibility and disband the bonds of social obligation itself” (Giroux 2011, 598–99). In other words, Octubre exposes the cultural and personal tension created by what Harvey calls the “anarchy of the market” which ultimately encourages the breakdown of all bonds of solidarity and enables a condition verging on social anarchy and nihilism (2005, 82). The critical state of the social spirit and bond in Octubre is reinforced by an artifcial theatricality in the manner in which the characters and objects are located in space (Bedoya 2015, 173). For instance, the excessive use of wide and still shots allow powerless characters to adopt specifc, at times petrifed, positions in front of the camera, signifying the stationary social roles that these characters play in the flm’s socioeconomic structure. The flm’s formal graveness—refected in the sober shooting style and begrimed surroundings—parallelsPROOF its characters’ inner struggles and shattered expectations. In many ways, Octubre’s cinematic language expresses a clear debt to New Latin American Cinema and its major infuence, Italian Neorealism, in turn reproducing an aesthetic concerned with “a new form of looking inward” and a “turning away from the epic toward the chronicle, a record of a time in which no spectacular events occur, but in which the extraordinary nature of the everyday is allowed to surface” (Rick 1997, 281). This attention to the “implicitly political at the level of banality, fantasy, and desire” (Rick 1997, 281) allows the mundane experience to be valued as a tool to access the concealed political ramifcations of the private. For instance, Octubre captures snapshots of objects symbolizing the despair inherent in intimate aspectsREVISED of everyday miseries: leftover food in the kitchen sink, an oven that serves as a safe box, a broken door at the brothel and an empty fower vase at the kitchen table. If the private space unveils these subtle— and not so subtle—signs of human disaffection, then so does the open urban landscape augur the same catastrophic sense of disconnection, loss and hard-hearted rootlessness. These private and urban catastrophes abound in the plot of Octubre, which centers on Clemente (Bruno Odar), a laconic moneylender, who follows a dour routine where petty economic transactions are at the focus of his daily life. One day, an abandoned baby—the fruit of one of his encounters with a prostitute—mysteriously appears at his apartment. 48 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA

Sofa (Gabriela Velázquez), a client and neighbor who is devoted to the historic October worship of Our Lord of the Miracles, agrees to take care of the newborn. She makes herself indispensable to Clemente, at frst as a live-in nanny, and eventually through offering sexual favors to him. In spite of Sofa’s desperate efforts to create a sense of familial structure, and her gestures of quiet generosity, Clemente stubbornly resists any emotional attachment. In fact, perplexed for all of a sudden having to share his time, space and money, he embarks on a futile search throughout the city to fnd the baby’s mother. Eventually, Sofa returns to her own home, taking the baby girl with her. At the end of Octubre, unable to fully readjust to his old selfsh existence, Clemente walks out of his house on the last day of the religious procession, inquis- itively moving through the multitude in what seems to be a search for Sofa and his daughter. The flm’s closing medium shot shows Sofa marching in tune with a massive horde of believers. It succeeds as one of the few panoramic shots of the flm—an overview of the walking crowd—and suggests a gestation of a more PROOFcivic culture based on tradition, togetherness and communal values. Despite the potential emotional opening in Clemente’s affective logic that such an ending implies, the family reunion of sorts between the three remains elusive. In this sense, Sofa has not been completely seduced by, or cannot harmonize herself with, the harsh avarice represented by Clemente. The damaging impact of market society in Octubre will be displayed both explicitly and implicitly in the characters’ social relations, gestures, negotiations and actions. For instance, getting a much-needed loan constitutes one of the main daily ordeals for the characters in an indifferent low-income quartier in Lima. As a loan shark, Clemente is at the epicenter of such economic urgencies, but the free-market principles deteri- orate his abilityREVISED for social solidarity and empathy. As Karl Polanyi claims, the market society cannot be the foundation for a stable and just social order because it reduces humans to commodities and in doing so “dis- rupts the ability of people to fulfll vital needs, such as personal and family economic stability, maintenance of status in the community, [and the] fulfllment of a sense of justice” (cited in Silva 2009, 17). In order to reproduce the barren state of human society, Octubre resorts to placing characters in suffocating private spaces that are con- tinuously infltrated by business affairs. The dingy apartment where Clemente conducts his business has peeling walls and only basic utili- ties. Clemente sits at a bare table in an old chair from which he visually 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 49 assumes a higher position over his customers—who sit on a tiny stool— as is emblematic to his relative superiority in the economic pyramid of his rundown side of town. Although many of Octubre’s scenes take place inside the four walls of this apartment, it is plausible to draw connections to the social and economic realities in the outside world. The series of money transactions between Clemente and his clients induce the same range of emotions displayed at all societal levels where fnances are involved, but for Clemente emotions should not interfere with the outcome of such business. Opposite to what his name may imply, he shows little clemency towards his clients’ calamities or requests, taking a cold approach in dealing with their stories of economic necessity. Clemente’s egocentrism is shown when one of his client’s makes a loan payment with a fake 200 pesos bill. When Clemente realizes the bill is fake, he tries in vain to get rid of it at every fnancial exchange he has.8 He even blames the baby, whom he refers to as “that thing,” for distracting him at the moment when he accepted the note. This forged bill acts as a metaphor for how PROOFfnancial transactions cause Clemente to develop tunnel vision that disengages him from other facets of his life. Clemente’s “blindness” is ironically reinforced on his birthday when he receives an eye loupe that will help him detect counter- feit pieces. Director Diego Vega explains that his persistent use of the fake money motif in Octubre stems from the cultural practice in Peru of doubting authenticity: “Peru has a ‘fake’ culture in the sense of piracy. Everything is sold as something it’s not … It’s common for Peruvians to be suspicious and scrutinizing when anyone pays them with paper money” (Guillen 2010, n.p.). In many ways, the intermittent reference to the fake bill throughout the cinematic discourse is a continual resistance to the market-based neoliberal ethics that keeps being negated by Clemente’sREVISED foremost weakness: greed. The absence of productive human exchange is also expressed in linguistic terms. Clemente is unable to relate to others beyond the oppressive language of fnancial concerns, a language which uses an economy of words. Thus, Clemente’s existential and material defciencies are a consequence of what Harvey calls “seductive but alienating possessive individualism” (2005, 69). Ironically, the characters fnally manage to escape their silence through necessarily using dialogue to accompany the recurrent exchange of currency. This necessary money-talk highlights how everyone’s daily interactions and affairs are subjected to the neoliberal economic urgencies that rule our modern lives. 50 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA

Similarly, a lack of intimate engagement in interpersonal affairs is characterized by the joyless transactions of Clemente’s sexual encounters. These are his only route to potential human intimacy, yet he views them as a reciprocal arrangement motivated only by the exchange of goods; as a result they are a devaluation of human experience. This logic is evi- denced in the dialogue Clemente has with Sofa once she becomes the baby’s caretaker: “I’ll pay you on the 15th, if you lose the house key I’ll discount it. Take care of the groceries, ask for receipts, render counts to me.” His major concerns exclude any reference to Sofa’s emotional needs or, for that matter, those of his own daughter. Clemente’s money-driven mentality categorizes him as the epitome of the neoliberal citizen whose independent pursuit of wealth and self-realization takes place at the expense of affective human ties, thus increasing his proclivity to moral ambivalence and artifcial relations. However, at one point Octubre offers a temporary sense of solidarity to counter the neoliberal principles of self-interest and proft, which prevail for most of the flm narrative. This takesPROOF place when the sudden familial structure generated by the arrival of the baby—named Milagritos (“little miracles”) by Sofa—confers upon the characters the unexpected yet fragile opportunity to redefne their modes of social and emotional interaction. Thanks to Sofa’s brief stay, a modest bouquet of fowers is the only ornament that turns the offce into a home—if only for a while. An out of frame “family picture” and an awkward Sofa sing- ing an English version of happy birthday to an expressionless Clemente lend force to the precarious attempts—through cultural rituals—to create a familial unity of some sort. Later on, when Sofa is back in her own home after having been humiliated by Clemente, he tries to reconcile with her through a gift of a dispensable commodity—a perfume. But insteadREVISED of buying the expensive imported variety, he has chosen the “national” option, which costs only a third the price but “smells the same.” Clemente’s short-term fnancial vision and his refusal to deal with the real issues of his life mirror the artifcial reality of post-confict, neoliberal Peru (Fig. 3.1). Although Clemente handles every personal exchange—especially an affective one—as a cost-based trade, Sofa’s logic and choices follow another course. She has won the newspaper’s lottery but keeps this fact secret. The lottery win constitutes a private act of revenge for her. Even though the money might have eased the economic constraints of the household, Sofa alleviates her unsatisfed individual desires by 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 51

Fig. 3.1 The “family picture” taken at Clemente’s surprise birthday dinner in Octubre (Diego Vega and Daniel Vega 2010) PROOF relying on luck, superstition and prayer. At some point, she adds her pee to a glass of water, which she then offers to Clemente with the intention of producing a “magical reaction” on his affections. In many aspects, Sofa´s eclectic practices—either religious or esoteric—and the October procession with its piteous pilgrimage of women, reinforce the cinematic narrative of cultural rituals, whose signifcance is as a viable panacea that might offer solace and the possibility of fraternal communion. Sofa’s character, then, proposes tradition and spirituality as cultural forms of restoring citizenship over consumption. A lottery seller,REVISED Don Fico (Carlos Gassols), provides yet another viewpoint from which we can witness the oppressiveness and emotional bank- ruptcy that clutter the flmic air of Octubre. Fico is saving money so he can afford to sneak his comatose girlfriend out of hospital and leave Lima. His profound conviction in using money as a means to achieve freedom and happiness is echoed in his words: “poor is not someone who has little, but he who wants a lot.” This phrase in particular summarizes the main dilemma that neoliberal mandates infict upon consumers. Sociologist Gilles Lipovetsky explains this notion of “paradoxical happiness” that characterizes the hyper-consumerist society: The right to happiness has been transformed by the imperative to consume, but 52 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA at the same time it creates shame or discomfort among those who feel excluded from it, leading, in some cases, to delinquent conduct (Lipovetsky 2007, 182–84). Octubre portrays this societal paradox through the selfsh behavior of Clemente, who, on the one hand, looks for his community’s moral acceptance by claiming that he has “saved the baby’s life,” while on the other hand, he privately tries to get rid of the “problem” by buying off a client’s debt in exchange for the man’s help in faking the child’s kidnapping. Given the fact that Clemente’s persona oscillates between his private corruption and a pretense of public respectability, his insatiable greed will impede his ability to take an appropriate moral stand. His relentless efforts to avoid responsibility as a father fgure are neatly counterbalanced by Don Fico’s willingness to freely assume all the responsibility for the helpless lady he is in love with. Inspired by love, he simply wants to do the right thing out of a natural sense of civic moral duty. This nostalgia for a simple past, based on solidarity and civil commitment but now com- promised by market-oriented principles, is eloquentlyPROOF expressed in Don Fico’s desire to escape the urban chaos. Reinforced by panoramic shots of congested traffc in a gray city, Don Fico—pushing an empty wheelchair in the middle of the road—stands out as the sole pedestrian. This image of disenchantment, really a longing for authenticity, fnds an ominous counterpart in the solitary stroll that Clemente takes after one of his visits to the local brothel. His silhouette turns to shadow, a shadow among a whole city of shadows, an image evoking a phantasmagoric, pseudo-apocalyptic urban space, a devastated urban geography far from any sense of personal redemption. By visually illustrating the moral devastation of the miser’s way of life in this manner, Octubre seems to reject Clemente’s neoliberal pragmatism in favor of fostering hopes generated by affective networks and REVISEDrituals, even if they are obtained through winning the lottery or by fervently marching in the streets alongside fellow religious worshippers.

El Limpiador: Between Science Fiction, National Trauma and Neoliberal Horror Similar to the fractures in human connections created by the neoliberal imperatives in Octubre, the male protagonist in El limpiador functions as a bitter representation of the disengaged citizen in times of social uncertainty and desensitization. The state of personal disarray—a microcosm of the national debacle—is represented through an apocalyptic 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 53 discourse typical of the science fction genre and rarely employed in Peruvian flm. El limpiador’s provocative treatment of this end-of-the- world global cinematic trend turns the pandemic-crisis framework into a useful lens through which we can scrutinize notions of citizenship and patterns of solidarity in neoliberalism. El limpiador relies on the father/son dynamic as a viable metaphor for the emergence and evolution of an empathic social order. Concurrently, the flm implicitly alludes to postwar traumatic memories that are embedded as persistent wounds in the national imaginary. What is implied here, then, is the prioritization of the neoliberal model over social reforms and reconciliation in post-confict Peru that has resulted from “claims for citizenship, rights, dignity and recognition, justice, and memory [that did not ft with] the dominant discourse on nation building, entrepreneurism, and economic progress” (Ulfe 2015, 5). Therefore, the lack of cultural and historic memory suggested in El limpiador may have its origin in the neoliberal strategies of individualization, dehistorization and depolitization that werePROOF implemented during the nineties when victims had to resort to alternative routes in order to reclaim social justice and validate their traumatic experiences. The story of El limpiador follows Eusebio Vela (Víctor Prada), a tac- iturn forensic cleaner, during an outbreak of a mysterious epidemic in the city of Lima, a fatal virus that seems to affect only the lungs of men. The parsimonious existence of the cleaner takes an unexpected turn one day; while disinfecting a house, he fnds an eight-year-old orphan boy, Joaquín (Adrián du Bois), who has been hiding in a closet during the crisis. Without the support of public institutions—which are completely overwhelmed by the epidemic—Eusebio is forced to take care of the boy while he investigates the whereabouts of his missing family. Matters are further complicatedREVISED when Eusebio discovers that is infected with the enigmatic virus and has only a few hours left to live. The time constraints he is under, along with his new role as father fgure, compel Eusebio to hastily reassess his daily routines, his behavioral patterns and his value system. Eusebio’s dilemma and an apocalyptic Lima become the points of departure for a bleak depiction of epochal crisis, a theme inherent to the science fction genre. The use of the rhetoric, tropes and narrative motifs of science fction provide a “camoufage device” that helps to formulate social critique and address pending issues related to memory and historical trauma (Cornejo 2015, 12). Adam Lowenstein looks to genres of 54 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA science fction and post-apocalyptic horror when he draws from Walter Benjamin’s ideas of allegory and trauma; he sees them as a mode of historical representation of trauma archive (2005, 1). By evoking instances of destruction and violence, the spectator is challenged to examine his or her own implications in national catastrophic events. This is what Lowenstein calls the allegorical moment. It is impossible for the viewer not to relate these post-apocalyptic aesthetics to the national trauma of Peru, born out of the violent years of the 1980s when state terrorism against the armed organization Shining Path resulted in the death, torture and disappearance of more than 60,000 people. The declared war against Shining Path by the state left Peruvians with an institutional distrust and collective scarring. Consequently, the traces of such events unrelentingly resurface, either directly, purposely obscured, hidden or hinted at via the many cultural and artistic expressions such as those seen in El limpiador. The apocalyptic discourse is a valuable paradigm from where to eluci- date the nation’s burden of traumatic historicalPROOF events and the viability of a productive future vision. Lucero de Vivanco Roca Rey’s work on the origin and evolution of the apocalyptic imaginary in Peru will be instrumental in drawing connections between the national context and the end-of-the- world cinematic model. According to de Vivanco Roca Rey, the apocalyptic imaginary arrives in Peru with the traumatic and gut-wrenching experience of the Spanish Conquest, and it gets renewed and legitimized continually because the social conditions born out of this traumatic experience still persist to this day (2013, 14). If apocalyptic thought has served in literature as a means to imagine the future and understand the past by “enabling a narrative construction that replaces the historical discourse and modifes its course,” then it is appropriate to consider El limpiador as part of a historicallyREVISED entrenched imaginary that could suggest a social critique of the current state of things (de Vivanco Roca Rey 2013, 8). As such, the long tail of neoliberal exigencies and their negative effects—as shown in Octubre—in conjunction with unresolved traumatic postwar memories, interrupts the formation of meaningful, affective relations and distort the social identities envisioned in El limpiador, contorting the tale into an end- of-the-world narrative. In short, the flm displays how fractured social pacts prove to be inoperative in the face of a disastrous collective emergency. In many aspects, the neoliberal society produces a fssure not only in the way citizens develop social solidarity and defne the common good but also in the types of strategies put in motion to process traumatic 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 55 historical memory. In this regard, James Berger’s reading of trauma and apocalypse will be illuminative. For Berger the reconstruction of trauma and the interpretation of the apocalypse are congruent ideas: “both refer to shattering of existing structures of identity and language, and both effect their own erasures from memory and must be reconstructed by means of their traces, remains, survivors, and ghosts: their symptoms” (1999, 19). Here, in order to reconstruct the symptoms of the trauma and the apocalypse, one must look to the past, “reading back in time” to pose the “diffcult question of what happened before?” (Berger 1999, 21). In invoking national catastrophe in this way, by using an apocalyptic event, El limpiador suggests that the collapse of forms of communication, affective language and memory are ultimately symptoms of an untreated historic trauma. The decimation of Lima in El limpiador is seen through the eyes of the eponymous cleaner, Eusebio, a working-class employee whose only distraction from his tedious, mechanized form of work is zapping through TV channels at home. GivenPROOF that “the global news and entertainment networks are conveyor-belts in the transmission of a common neo-materialist and hedonistic worldview” (Nef and Robles 2000, 34), zapping through TV stations in a post-apocalyptic world reeks of absurdity. This sense of the absurd is intertwined with the dis- mal tone of a world full of suppressed emotions and lingering death. For instance, the flm’s opening montage shows a young man at the Mirafores bridge, anxiously staring at the vehicles driving by; a few seconds later he abruptly jumps in front of a moving car. In the next scene, Eusebio robotically washes the blood off the street; and later, when the young man’s death report appears on TV, he changes to other channels instead of watching it. In a similar scene, Eusebio is in a restaurant watching televisionREVISED when a fellow diner collapses on the foor behind him—another fatality of the mysterious virus. Rather than turning to assist him, Eusebio keeps watching TV until he is called to disinfect the fuid waste of the man’s corpse. On the verge of his doom, Eusebio seeks solace not in his fellow citizens but in the mind-numbing quality of mass-media consumption. On the whole, these sequences establish an unsentimental disposi- tion in the flm, exposing a level zero of compassion toward unfolding human tragedy. All emotions have been subdued and subsequently read- justed to a new social order where citizens now cohabit in an absence of solidarity and empathy. The apocalyptic vision of El limpiador is 56 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA actualized not through the use of the impressive special effects typical of the science fction genre—which Susan Sontag calls “aesthetics of destruction”—but rather through an “aesthetics of weariness” (1966, 213). The focus of this aesthetic resides on an anticlimactic countdown to death, framed by an unsettling erasure of melodramatic emotions. In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson identifed this “waning of affect” as one of the constitutive features of a new culture of the image, or the simulacrum characterized by a new depthlessness, the consequences of which are the weakening of historicity and new types of emotional ground tones or “intensities” (Jameson 2003, 6). Emotions are central to the foundation of neoliberal capitalism and social solidarity. Along these lines, Jon Beasley-Murray contrasts pop- ulism’s passion with neoliberalism’s disaffectedness as neoliberalism excludes all affective relations and culture in the name of a hyperrational civil society (2010, 114). Ironically, end-of-the-world flms like El limpiador question that empirical approach by showingPROOF the inability of people to use science, technology or rational thought to control a catastrophe (Vich 2012, 47). In fact, the prevalence of male characters in the flm— especially the ones taking care of the sick nation as the doctor or the forensic cleaner—connects the failed modernity project to an impotent masculinity that is, at last, surpassed and defeated by the extent of the catastrophe. Ultimately, El limpiador highlights the blind spots we have in regard to understanding neoliberal capitalism and global economy, blind spots such as the dismantling of the social state, where restrictions on health, public education and security affect the most impoverished of a population. Furthermore, under the neoliberal rationale “social safety nets are considered inimical to economic effciency,” and the elimination of theREVISED concept of public good is replaced with a view of the common good that emphasizes individual responsibility, pushing citizens to deal with their own failures and fgure out how to solve them (Nef and Robles 2000, 38). As shown in El limpiador, the wellbeing of people is not perceived as a responsibility of the government; the main social player—the individual—stands alone in the pursuit of his own wellbeing and, ultimately, is in charge of his own survival. The state’s dysfunction- ality, including the abandonment of its citizens, is more explicit during the crisis, an institutional negligence confrmed throughout the flm by the TV news. Viewers of the news are informed that the government has failed to follow constitutional procedures and has turned out to 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 57 be totally inept in its commitment towards peace, internal order, education, health and the protection of private and public property. In the end, the state becomes inoperative, leaving its citizens to face an uncertain fate, while some workers—such as cleaners—continue to sustain the city through their sanitation of the dead. In general terms, El limpiador articulates that, despite the inherent inequality in the wealth distribution that the neoliberal logic imposes, in times of catastrophic crisis, the only consequential possession is the capacity for human compassion. Peru’s violent past connects with this notion of an allegorical moment at the root of El limpiador’s science-fction narrative, which in the flm points to the collective trauma of postwar memories. On the one hand, Eusebio is in charge of eradicating the ruins of the national body by removing the dead to the deserted hills of Lima; while on the other hand, Joaquin indicates a will to reconnect through “storytelling” when he asks Eusebio to tell him a story before he falls asleep. It is not surprising that Eusebio responds, “I don’t have stories,” and instead he reads aloud from the TV instructions manual.PROOF This inability to involve himself in anything creative may imply that Eusebio’s cultural memory has become defective and has been replaced by a utilitarian, un-affective language. In fact, a common feature in post-apocalyptic stories is a concern with the annihilation of the archive, whether cultural or historical, along with the crucial role of the archive’s guardian. The politics of postdictatorial traumatic memory in neoliberal times is explained by Idelber Avelar in the following terms: “Growing commodifcation negates memory because new commodities must always replace previous commodities, send[ing] them to the dustbin of history” (1999, 2). The lack of cultural memory, then, suggests a shift in social values and collective goals that privileges commodities over historic archive and collective memory. REVISED A further example containing disquieting historical resonances takes place during Joaquin and Eusebio’s pilgrimage through the city in search of the missing corpse of Joaquin’s mother. With this goal in mind, they visit different cemeteries and, at one point, Eusebio posts a picture of Joaquin in the metro. It sits there among many other pictures of the missing, or in Joaquin’s case, people looking for the missing; it is an eerie scene that is clearly allegorical, referring to the national dead and disappeared of the 1980s. The failed search for the mother’s body should be interpreted within the context of Peru’s post-confict period, a period which coincided with important neoliberal measures that were 58 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA prioritized over the peace-building process, thereby “shadow[ing] victims’ claims for justice, memory, and truth” (Ulfe 2015, 5). As part of their process to reclaim an identity in no-man’s-land, Eusebio and Joaquin’s tour of Lima acts as a symbolic excavation that will help them reconnect with the past (either Joaquin’s ancestry or the nation’s) along with retracing the national landscape through city trademarks. To Bedoya, this spatial trajectory follows a “descendant curve” that starts on top of the city and ends in the bottom, at the sea (2015, 326). Ultimately, the pair’s urban circuit—which incorporates some of Lima’s most iconic places, such as the football stadium, the metro, the planetarium and the seashore—visually uncovers traces and angles of a spectral city where the familiar becomes unfamiliar and the past haunts the present. The pair re-signifes the city’s residual geographies and, in doing so, reimagines other possible realities, for example, when they pre- tend to envision a football game while sitting in an empty stadium. In a world where money or science no longer have any real value, the human capacity to imagine, hope or remember becomesPROOF the only feasible path to meaningful experience and personal realization. El limpiador suggests an understated move from a neoliberal society to a society that retains certain traces of cultural and religious rituals as a mode to restore a sense of solidarity and value to a workaday existence. Joaquin reinforces the role of hope and resilience for the future through religious gestures, for instance, kneeling to pray for Eusebio’s health, or doing the sign of the cross at church. This is all to Eusebio’s astonishment; nevertheless, Eusebio does exhibit subtle changes in his affective scheme and worldview. For example, when he visits his father at the nursing home, he brings him a bouquet of fowers which are, because of the crisis, “very diffcult to fnd.” He also confesses to his father withREVISED contained pride: “I am taking care of a child … I am having a good time.” Eventually, amidst the collapsing city, Eusebio and Joaquin are compelled to restructure the defcit in their emotional connection and to activate strategies that will assign meaning to their time together despite their fear and mutism. Unfortunately, Eusebio will soon succumb to the virus while waiting for Joaquin’s aunt to take care of the child. For the most part, Eusebio’s death at the end of the flm redirects the viewer’s attention to the hopelessness and incompetence of the male adult, cementing the impossibility of a restored national future, not in his generation anyway. 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 59

No Heroes, Little Miracles The sustained neoliberal ramifcations of Peru’s “miraculous” economic growth permeate all aspects of the country’s cultural and social spheres, ranging from structural inequality to notions of community and the politics of memory. During the post-confict period, the political and neoliberal discourses in Peru did not concentrate on the recognition and dignity of the victims, because the consequences of violence were understood to be a primarily, if not exclusively, economic problem (Ulfe 2015, 4–9). The fact that these hegemonic discourses silenced the victims in favor of a neoliberal agenda has created long-term obstacles to addressing traumatic memory and dealing with severed social bonds caused by institutional distrust. Taking into account the aftermath of such internal turmoil, an apocalyptic aesthetics such as the one in El limpiador can be viewed as symptomatic. It could also assume an “interpretative, explanatory function” that pushes identifcation of the symptoms of the national trauma by recognizing “the ideological sutures that hide the damages and repetitions” (Berger 1999, 5/219). PROOF Directly linked to national trauma is the cinematographic representation of an unsettled masculinity. Adding to the concept of masculinity in crisis, Juan Carlos Ubilluz explains that end-of-the-world flms also tend to exhibit diminished paternal and state authorities. Ubilluz relates this fragile paternal portrayal to the collapse of grand narratives and to the new market imperatives that force the individual to look for new fathers, regulators and communities (2012, 21). Thus, the irruption of a child into the lives of the asocial characters in Octubre and El limpiador puts to the test the already problematic representation of masculinity that traverses regularly through Peru’s history, literature and artistic forms. Since these flms will judge the ethical stature of the father fgure in a world of amorality, indifferenceREVISED and lack of solidarity and order, it should not be read as fortuitous that female characters are the ones that will take on the responsibility of ultimately caring for that “next generation.” The emotional insuffciency of the male fgure in these fctions is confronted with the idea of social restoration through an affective awak- ening. Although Octubre’s ending has been interpreted as the “end of a process that starts from an existential crisis and ends up in liberation and redemption” (Pimentel 2012, 107), it falls short in proving the true extent of Clemente’s emotional transformation. Likewise, in 60 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA

El limpiador the fnal message is replete with ambiguity and skepticism. Despite the positive traits exhibited during the time of Eusebio’s fatherly tutelage, it is his death that takes center stage in a distressing closing image. Initially, at least, it seems that Joaquin’s survival tale will adjust to the tendency in apocalyptic fctions to use the child as embodiment of the potential regeneration of society and continued legacy of the cultural and historical archive. Ultimately, the much-needed male emotional adequacy is suggested by Joaquin’s removal of the rustic cardboard hel- met that was carved by Eusebio to help the child cope with his fears and trauma. In addition, the urban spaces in both fctions contain allegorical indicators of a citizen in crisis. Paradoxically, the city in Octubre is presented at times as a place congested with traffc, hard-working people and devoted worshippers, but the private solitary spaces—especially Clemente’s dark apartment—visually refect the characters’ true inner gloom and claustrophobic reality. Opposed to this repeated saturation of people, El limpiador tends to a dispersionPROOF of people as a dreadful sign of national pandemonium in which Lima becomes a reduced, deserted, grey and haunted landscape with traces of an unresolved traumatic past. In sum, the grim scrutiny of marginal or even invisible social agents in the neoliberal system provides an interesting angle from which we can decrypt new confgurations of space, community, economy and subjectivity. In this way Octubre and El limpiador lucidly display the multilayered male crises and wounds. The day-after imagery and the weakening of emotional decibels, instead of acclaiming the promised neoliberal discourse, confrm its debilitating effect on morality, affects, and history. Overall, the emotional and physical trajectories of the male protagonistsREVISED coincide when they, quite literally, “open the door” to let others come in or step out. This opening creates the potential for human connection, either by searching for dead or living relatives, by fnding meaning in cultural rites or by looking after a child. Ultimately though, these stories shy away from such histrionic revelations and heroic deeds; the directors seem to suggest that in critical times of limited solidarity, historical amnesia, and dehumanizing economic agendas, “little miracles” do take place, but they get lost in the banality of everyday gestures and silences. 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 61

Notes 1. The national consolidation of this neoliberal ideology was made feasible almost entirely by the state’s heavy-handed counterinsurgency war against the guerilla movement Shining Path during the eighties which helped inhibit the advance of a signifcant anti-market society contention (Silva 2009, 230–45). 2. The economy soared with an annual average growth rate above 6.5% between 2005 and 2012 (Mendoza 2015, 1). 3. During the boom, the most visible result was the reduction of monetary poverty, which offcially went from more than 50% in 2004 to less than 23% in 2014 (Mendoza 2015, 2). In the same period, the middle class increased from 11.9 to 50.6% of the population. 4. The radical economic changes the country has been experiencing are remarkably explicit in the cultural phenomenon generated by the release of the two-part comedy saga, ¡Azu mare! 1 and 2 (Ricardo Maldonado 2013, 2015). This saga broke the all-time records for the most watched flms in Peru’s history, in the process bringing to the forefront the neoliberal values of new flm audiences whilst PROOFalso showing the extent of the expansion of mass-media consumption. Indeed, the saga’s aspirational storyline of a mestizo Peruvian comedian’s journey from a modest upbringing to an achievement of fame and fortune reinforces the age-old seductive tale of rags to riches and, in the process, underscores the capitalist principles of fast money, class mobility and individual success the neoliberal model vigorously praises. 5. For instance, this double-edged sword of neoliberalism is perfectly illustrated in the internationally acclaimed flms Madeinusa (2006) and La teta asustada (2009), where Claudia Llosa addresses—with pioneering and not uncontroversial cinematic language—the cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities between the Andean regions and Lima. By putting in motion what Juan Zevallos-Aguilar calls the “unconscious neoliberal politics,”REVISED Llosa ultimately alludes to this deep-rooted dichotomy—and its prejudicial implications—between center and periphery in the milieu of consumer society (2006, 76). 6. The postwar period offcially begins in 1992 with the capture of the Shining Path’s leader, Abimael Guzmán. 7. In El mudo, a poker-faced, overly honest judge, Constantino Zegarra (Fernando Bacilio), becomes voiceless as a result of a drive-by shooting, the culprit of which he resolves to fnd at all costs. His tortuous search for justice—a metaphor of the nation’s institutional moral crisis—unearths a chain of corrupt offers and deals that end up contaminating Constantino’s 62 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA

upright approach to justice and social order. The judge’s betrayal of his old moral compass is sealed at the end of the flm when he attends an eccentric party where he acquires a cynical acceptance to a society ruled by shady favors, treasons and opportunism. This powerless surrender of Constantino’s sense of ethical duty, in a bitter twist, ends up improving his family and professional life. 8. In a similar fashion, desperate for economic mobility, individual forgers in flms like The Man Who Copied (Jorge Furtado 2003) or Nine Queens (Fabián Bielinsky 2000) act as social critiques of globalized and consumer-based societies.

Works Cited Avelar, Idelber. 1999. The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ¡Azu mare! Directed by Ricardo Maldonado. Peru, 2013. DVD. Beasley-Murray, Jon. 2010. Posthegemony. PoliticalPROOF Theory and Latin America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bedoya, Ricardo. 2015. El cine peruano en los tiempos digitales. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad de Lima. Berger, James. 1999. After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cornejo, Yvonne Frances. 2015. “The Embodiment of Trauma in Science Fiction Film: A Case Study of Argentina.” PhD diss., University of Leicester, England. del Pino, Ponciano. 2013. “Introducción: Etnografías e historias de la violencia.” In Etnografías e historias de la violencia. Las formas del recuerdo. Etnografías de la violencia política en el Perú, 9–24. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. de Vivanco Roca Rey, Lucero. 2013. Historias del más acá. Imaginario apocalíp- tico en la literatura peruana. Lima: IEP. Días de SantiagoREVISED. Directed by Josué Méndez. Peru, 2004. El limpiador. Directed by Adrián Saba. Peru, 2013. Giroux, Henry A. 2011. “Neoliberalism and the Death of the Social State: Remembering Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History.” Social Identities 17 (4): 587–601. Guillén, Michael. 2010. “Peruvian Cinema: Octubre/Octubre (2010): Interview with Diego Vega.” ScreenAnarchy (December 27). http://screenanarchy. com/2010/12/peruvian-cinema-octubre-october-2010-interview-with-diego-vega.html. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Jameson, Fredric. 2003. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. 3 NEOLIBERAL MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN … 63

Kapur, Jyotsna, and Keith B.Wagner, eds. 2011. “Introduction: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics, and New Forms of Resistance.” In Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique, 1–16. New York and London: Routledge. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 2007. La felicidad paradójica. Ensayo sobre la sociedad de hiperconsumo. Barcelon: Editorial Anagrama. Lowenstein, Adam. 2005. Shocking Representations: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Magallanes. Directed by Salvador del Solar. Peru, 2015. Mendoza Bellido, Waldo. 2013. “Milagro peruano: -¿buena suerte o buenas políticas?” Economia XXXVI, no. 72 (July–December): 35–90. Mendoza Nava, Armando. 2015. “Inequality in Perú: Reality and Risks.” OXFAM, no. 1 (October): 1–12. https://peru.oxfam.org/sites/peru.oxfam. org. Nef, Jorge, and Wilder Robles. 2000. “Globalization, Neoliberalism and the State of Underdevelopment in the New Periphery.” In Critical Perspectives on Globalization and Neoliberalism in the Developing Countries, edited by Richard Lege Harris and Melinda Seid, 27–45. Leiden, Boston and Koln: Brill. PROOF Octubre. Directed by Diego Vega and Daniel Vega. Eurozoom. Peru, 2010. DVD. Pimentel, Sebastián. 2012. “A Brief Historical Account of Trends in Contemporary Peruvian Cinema.” Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 7 (2): 103–9. Protzel, Javier. 2009. Imaginarios sociales e imaginarios cinematográfcos. Lima: Fondo Editorial. Rich, Ruby. 1997. “An/Other View of New Latin American Cinema.” In New Latin American Cinema. Vol. 1: Theory, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations, edited by Michael T. Martin, 273–97. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Saona, Margarita. 2008. “Cuando la guerra sigue por dentro: posmemoria y mas- culinidadREVISED entre “Yuyanapaq” y “Días de Santiago”.” INTI. Revista de literatura hispánica (67–68): 157–72. Saona, Margarita. 2011. “Wounded Men in the Dysfunctional Nation: Representations of Masculinity in Perú.” In Global Masculinities and Manhood, edited by Ronald L. Jackson II and Murali Balaji, 106–23. Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Silva, Eduardo. 2009. Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sontag, Susan. 1966. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador. 64 R. DÍAZ-ZAMBRANA

Ubilluz, Juan Carlos. 2012. Nuevos Súbditos. Cinismo y perversión en la sociedad contemporánea. Lima: IEP. Ulfe, María Eugenia. 2015. “Neoliberal Reforms, Reparations, and Transitional Justice Measures in Torn-Apart Peru, 1980–2015”. Centre for Research on Peace and Development 41: 1–23. Vich, Víctor, and Juan Carlos Ubilluz. 2012. La pantalla detrás del mundo: las fcciones fundamentales de Hollywood. Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú. Zevallos-Aguilar, Juan. 2006. “Madeinusa y el cargamontón neoliberal”. Wayra 2 (4): 71–81.

PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 4

New Geographies of Class in Mexican and Brazilian Cinemas: Post Tenebras Lux and Que horas ela volta?

María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez PROOF

The frst decade of the twenty-frst century witnessed an unprecedented rise of the middle classes in Mexico and Brazil that is due to neoliberal developments in both countries and, in Brazil, also owes to the legacy of the “Lula era” (Ferreira et al. 2013; Castañeda 2011; Machado 2011).1 This transformation towards países clasemedieros (middle-class countries), in De la Calle and Rubio’s terms (2010), is refected in the cinemas of Mexico and Brazil, which increasingly create “a sympathetic portrait of the contemporary middle class in Mexico” (Newman 2015, 159) and record “the lives and inhabited spaces of the upper middle class” in Brazil (Marsh 2015, 155).2 In recent years, flm scholars and flmmakers have identifed a shift REVISEDtowards a predominantly middle-class audience and new articulations of textual politics in Mexican and Brazilian cinemas (MacLaird 2013; Sánchez Prado 2014; Arias Barreto 2008). Moreover, the use of cinematic space exposes these widespread and ongoing class transformations in the twenty-frst century. As flm scholars Cacilda Rêgo and Carolina Rocha note with regard to contemporary Latin American cinema,

M. M. Vázquez Vázquez (*) The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

“space in neoliberal times redefnes social relations” (2011, 9). Other recent studies have applied notions of place and urban space to examine shifting class relations in contemporary Brazilian flms (Navarro 2017; Marsh 2015). This essay identifes a middle-class perspective through strategies of containment in the use of flmic space and cinematography. Fredric Jameson uses the term strategies of containment to denote the artistic and theoretical limitations to which petty-bourgeois intellectuals are constrained due to their social position (2002, 37). A predominantly middle-class profession in Latin America,3 in the past, socially engaged middle-class directors demonstrated a predilection for revolutionary narratives of the poor. In the twenty-frst-century however, flmmakers have turned their gaze towards their own class. Rather than perceiving it as a limitation, this new awareness is better understood as a liberation that embodies the flmmakers’ acknowledgement of their own constraints and interests. I will examine fgurations of confict between the working class and the middle class in the Mexican Post TenebrasPROOF Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) and the Brazilian Que horas ela volta? (Anna Muylaert, 2015), two feature flms particularly well suited to illustrate this new sensibility. Though both flms contain a skeptical leaning towards middle-class philanthropic attitudes, the cinematography and framing of space unveil a middle-class point of view. Seen through this lense, directors Carlos Reygadas and Anna Muylaert are part of a group of Mexican and Brazilian flmmakers including Kleber Mendonça Filho, Beto Brant, Gary Alazraki, Alfonso Cuarón or Fernando Sariñana, who situate their own class concerns at the center of their narratives. Mendonça Filho under- lined this attitude when he noted that it was absurd to flm in spaces that members of the middle class are unfamiliar with (Dallas 2013). The correlationREVISED between the growth of the middle classes in Brazil and Mexico and a cinematic production geared towards narratives set in middle-class milieus thematizing an interaction between social classes as employers and employees justifes labeling this cinema as cine clasemediero (middle-class cinema). Cine clasemediero refects spatial developments linked to the effects of neoliberalism in Mexico and Brazil, such as spatial segregation and class lines that limit opportunities for social interaction in public spaces (Janoschka and Borsdorf 2006). As Néstor García Canclini has aptly observed, “Latin American elites … live in gated communities and consume in the segregated shopping centers of their cities” (2014, 73). Another equally common urban development 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 67 associated with neoliberalism that has severely affected the lower classes is the displacement of the urban poor from city centers in order to make space for middle-class residential developments (Janoschka and Sequera 2014; Maricato 2010; Caldeira 2000). While this phenomenon has barely caught the attention of flmmakers, despite being linked to class confict in both Mexico and Brazil, and indeed worldwide (Jameson 2015, 130),4 narratives where house cleaners work for the middle class (Que horas ela volta?) or stories in which middle-class individuals fear the invasion of their private space by the lower classes (Post Tenebras Lux) abound. Before proceeding to a close analysis of the spatial dynamics in these two flms, a discussion of the notion of space is required. Fredric Jameson’s defnition of space associated with class fts the conceptual framework of the present analysis since, for Jameson, “the land is not only an object of struggle between the classes, between rich and poor, it defnes their very existence and the separation between them” (2015, 130–31). Doreen Massey has critiqued staticPROOF notions of space such as Jameson’s. She views space as a relational notion intimately entwined with time and unavoidably political (1992). Not only does space construct relationships, but also “these relationships themselves … create/ defne space and time” (1992, 79). The scholar convincingly argues that space and time cannot be viewed as separate entities but are inextricably interwoven and that “the spatial is integral to the production of history, and thus to the possibility of politics” (1992, 84). Massey’s conceptualization can shed new light on the politics of contemporary flms, which will be the point of departure for my analysis of Post Tenebras Lux.

REVISEDPolitical Spaces and Frag mentation in Post Tenebras Lux The dominance of spatial explorations in “the narrative discourses of contemporary Mexican cinema” is a trend that Miriam Haddu already identifed in the Mexican cinema of the 1990s (2007, 9). Vinicius Navarro, on the other hand, identifes space as a key for understanding cinema’s “concern with social inequality” and the consequent revitalization of Brazilian political cinema (2017, 70). Yet with regard to Reygadas, studies seem to neglect that in his texts, space is intricately interwoven with social and political issues. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, for instance, observes that the “re-signifcation of cinematic spaces” 68 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ in Reygadas’ flms works towards “the deliberate undermining of the marks of the national” (2014, 201), and Cynthia Tompkins’s analysis highlights the flmmaker’s concentration on “feelings and states of mind” in narratives that stress “ideological differences” (2013, 160). Reygadas himself seems to confrm this view. In describing his approach to Post Tenebras Lux, he noted that “reason [would] intervene as little as possible, like an expressionist painting where you try to express what you are feeling through the painting rather than depict what something looks like” (Hopewell and Mayorga 2010, 8). This fts with Tiago de Luca’s contention that Carlos Reygadas’ flms5 are best understood within Rancière’s “aesthetic regime” of art (2014, 90–91). As de Luca argues,

More than representations of social issues, these flms are sensory explorations of realities yet to be properly understood. Averse to didacticism and univocal messages, they reveal the bewildering complexity of local and global events while producing unexpected confgurationsPROOF of the sensible that contravene the logic of the world. (2014, 240)

Without contradicting these approaches to Reygadas’ multilayered texts, the following analysis expands on the politics of Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux in line with Doreen Massey’s conception of and Vinicius Navarro’s approach to space. Arguably because of its disregard for a structured narrative, the use of computer-generated images and the family-video look of some of the scenes, Post Tenebras Lux had a mixed reception. Released in 2012, it was selected for the Cannes Film festival where it won the prestigious Best Director Award despite being booed by the audience when it was screened. The main plot of Reygadas’ flm deals with the daily life of a familyREVISED of four, Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro), his wife Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) and their two children, living in a house in rural Mexico. A secondary plotline concerns the relationship between Juan and his employees “el Jarro” (José Alberto Sánchez) and especially “el Siete” (Willebaldo Torres), who had been previously employed by Juan. Juan attempts to befriend el Siete by helping to reunite him with his battered wife and children, but el Siete shoots Juan when he is caught stealing. Juan dies as a result of this attack, something that, together with other traumatic personal problems, will drive el Siete towards self-decapitation. 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 69

The flm displays a preference for patterns of incoherence and dis- continuity, whether temporally—the ages of the two children vary in different scenes without any apparent reason and Juan is present at a Christmas dinner that would have logically happened several years after his death—or narratively—there are scenes of a rugby match and a bird hunt that are unrelated to the plot. Most scenes are set in Mexico, where the characters speak Spanish, but there are also scenes in the UK (the rugby match), where the characters speak English, and in France (a swingers’ sauna), where French is spoken. Underscoring this disjointed style, Post Tenebras Lux does not contain establishing shots or exterior images aimed at providing spatial orientation to the viewer. The main space, Juan’s home, is located in a mountainous rural environment, but the landscape shots do not help orientate the audience. Spaces seem disconnected, or only possibly connected through the logic of dreams and the blurred edges of the camera lens support this surrealistic effect. The frst sequences are consecutively set in an improvised soccer feld with grazing cattle in the mountains, Juan’sPROOF upper-middle-class home surrounded by a similar landscape, a forest with a woodcutter, el Siete, going about his work, the middle-class home of Juan again, a shack covered with a corrugated metal roof where Alcoholics Anonymous members meet, and the aforementioned rugby feld. Juan’s middle-class home is in reality Reygadas’ own residence in the suburbs of Mexico City, but in the flm there is no reference to any urban center or neighboring communities that would allow the viewer to locate the area. Just a few details suggest that this house with an open design, which allows easy access from the outside, is, in fact, a gated community. In Post Tenebras Lux only Juan’s employee el Jarro and some dogs guard the house. This scenario induces a certain fear of invasion that is a commonREVISED trope in other Mexican flms. Yet the absence of fences or security cameras contrasts markedly with other contemporary flms set in gated communities where we see security devices and overtly conspicuous security staff.6 In this sense, Juan and Natalia’s home temporarily serves as a heterotopia: a “counter-site” that is “outside of all places” (Foucault 1986, 24). More specifcally, it is a “heterotopia of compensation” for the insecurity of urban centers in the way that its “role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled” (Foucault 1986, 27). The invasion of Juan’s residence by el Siete, however, will prove that his heterotopic home is not immune to attacks from the outside. 70 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ

The disorienting effect in Reygadas’ flm that is produced by insuff- cient spatial mapping is aggravated through a compartmentalization of space that appears to separate social classes from each other. The scenes in interiors around a bed, a table, a courtyard or a lectern are generally recorded as shots with a static camera, which makes them seem photo- graphic. This is the case in an early scene when the children wake up. The camera remains static, focused on Rut, while the mother, out of frame, picks up toys and talks to her daughter. In her study of Reygadas’ frst feature, Japón, Laura Podalsky explains that this use of space does not correspond to that of “a ‘container’ through which the human subject moves; indeed, off-screen sounds often remind the viewer of the limits of the frame” (2011, 168). In some cases, Alexis Zabe, the cinematographer of Post Tenebras Lux, uses a wide shot which allows us to situate the characters within a particular space. But often, particularly when the characters in front of the camera are from the lower classes, information about the space in which these characters move, is limited. The medium shots and close-ups used in lower-classPROOF settings reduce the feld of vision and fragment bodies. There are a number of scenes which document this approach. When Juan and his family are at a village party, there are such shots of people eating at tables. Sometimes, the camera appears static and the characters face the camera. This also occurs when the alcoholics share their substance abuse experiences with each other. The medium and extreme close-ups of these lower-class characters prevent us from seeing them in totality. In contrast with this static camera work cinematography, that produces the effect of lower-class characters “performing” while being scrutinized, scenes such as the Christmas party and swingers’ sauna, and a rugby match are recorded with long shots. In the Christmas party scene, for instance, a hand-held REVISEDcamera travels through the rooms among different characters, which refects Reygadas’ familiarity and comfort with this more upper- class setting. Conversations between members of this same social class are fuid and rich in detail, whereas the lower-class characters in the flm appear mainly in exchanges between Juan and the locals, and the latter do not interact among themselves often, suggesting that Reygadas shoots from a middle-class perspective and primarily for a middle-class audience. This choice of cinematography refects Reygadas’ distrust of collec- tivism. Reygadas claims to see characters as individuals, not as members of a social class. In a 2010 interview, the director stated that, for him, “community is nothing but the sum of individuals” and that 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 71

“declaring … a social truth will turn it into dogma and therefore will prevent it from being experienced as real” (Castillo 2010, 72–73). This claim ought to be understood in the context of a general distrust for Marxist ideology and, in cinematic terms, a distancing from the left-wing ideology of New Latin American cinema and Cinema Novo. Reygadas’ ideas conform to a wider trend in line with what Leslie L. Marsh observes in the Brazilian Film O som ao redor (Mendonça Filho, 2012), namely “the contemporary urban experience of being distanced, isolated, and disconnected from one’s surroundings” (2015, 151). However, in Post Tenebras Lux, the produced spatial limitation and bodily fragmentation seem more apparent in depictions of members of the lower classes. This shift from political flmmaking of previous times, and a focus that has shifted from community to isolated individual, is undoubtedly related to the effects of neoliberalism, such as the disintegration of unions, the fragmentation of society and the precarization of the labor force. Neoliberalism is, as David Harvey observes,PROOF “in the frst instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2005, 2). The inability of flmmakers to map the whole social environment is related to the rejection of “totalities” described by Jean-François Lyotard (1984) and has been identifed by Fredric Jameson as the “cultural logic of late capitalism” (1991). This is a refection of the way neoliberalism has infringed on societies culturally and socially, replacing class solidarity with individualist desires. The framing in the climactic scene when el Siete shoots Juan conveys a somewhatREVISED ambivalent social message. Juan and Natalia en route to the airport with their children suddenly remember that Natalia has left the baby stroller behind. They decide that Juan is to return home to col- lect it while Natalia and the children wait at a restaurant. Upon arriving at his house, Juan discovers his friend and former employee’s intrusion. The audience hears el Siete shooting Juan. A static long shot obscures them from seeing the men’s faces, the weapon and the wound inficted on Juan. Juan does not turn el Siete over to the police for his crime and will eventually die, but Reygadas’ condescending gesture to avoid crim- inalizing lower-class characters like el Siete is not enough to muffe the 72 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ echoes of the common narratives of fear middle class characters have of members of lower social classes.

Political Spaces in Que horas ela volta? Anna Muylaert’s Que horas ela volta? was sold to more than 22 countries. In France alone, it was shown in 122 theaters, nearly reaching the box-offce success of Cidade de Deus there.7 This interest in narratives about class confict in Latin America, however, was not evident in Latin American theaters. As in Post Tenebras Lux, the middle-class domestic space is the setting and theme in Que horas ela volta? The narrative takes place for the most part in the Morumbi district of São Paulo, a middle-class neighborhood that is a referent for the living spaces of its affuent urban middle class. Que horas ela volta? depicts the relationship of two mothers from different social backgrounds, a fashion/television celebrity, Bárbara (Karine Teles), and her domestic PROOFhelper, Val (played by the Brazilian star Regina Casé), with their children.8 Bárbara is married to Carlos (Lourenço Mutarelli), a member of the Brazilian rentier class (living on income from inherited properties) who is also a frustrated artist. One day Val receives a call from her estranged daughter Jéssica (Camila Márdila), to tell her that she is coming to São Paulo to take university entrance exams. Because of a confict with Jéssica’s father, Val has not seen her daughter for more than a decade and the relationship between them is distant. Nevertheless, Val picks up Jéssica from the airport and arranges for her to stay at her employer’s home. Because Jéssica does not abide by the implicit rules established in Bárbara and Carlos’s home that confne her to a lower social status, a series of REVISEDconficts arise. Ultimately, Jéssica moves to a rented apartment in the much poorer district of Embu-Guaçú. She passes her frst exam, and her mother, socially and emotionally transformed by her daughter, quits her job to fnally take care of her daughter and her (newly discovered) grandson. Que horas ela volta? initially invites a reading through the prism of affect. “Que horas ela volta?”—What time does [mother] come back? is the question uttered by children indicating resentment of the absence of the mother from home. Affect and social mobility are key terms for understanding Que horas ela volta? (Lana 2016; Ferreira and Neves 2016). Leslie L. Marsh notes that in Anna Muylaert’s flms, “Domestic 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 73 space frequently becomes the context for examining issues such as moth- erhood and cross-class relationships” (2017, 151), but focuses exclusively on gender, not space. I argue that in Que horas ela volta? space has centrality as a marker for the division of social classes. Unlike Post Tenebras Lux, however, space does not generally appear fragmented. For instance, when Val walks the dog we get a glimpse of the Morumbi neighborhood through a traveling shot, one of the few exterior scenes. The first scene of the film is set in an emblematic part of the house that is charged with class overtones: the swimming pool. The pool is reserved for Carlos, Bárbara and Fabinho, that is to say, as a place of pleasure that is restricted to the upper-middle class and off-limits for Val and Jéssica (Fig. 4.1). As the family’s house cleaner, Val would never dare to enter this place, because she respects the rigid class separation that keeps her out. It is not until later when her daughter plays in the pool and challenges her mother that she dares to enjoy this space. Bárbara has the swimming poolPROOF emptied with the excuse of having seen a rat (Jéssica) in order to curtail the young woman’s brazen occupation of what she sees as her space. At the end of the film, when Jéssica has already left, Val having decided to quit her job, finally enters the water. In this scene her figure occupies the central position of a long shot. Lights in the background surround her as if she were a star in a theater show, a visual trope that signifies her upward mobility.9 Her daughter’s force of character in challenging old class divisions has motivated her to aspire to climb the social ladder. A similar signifcance attached to the swimming pool in Que horas ela volta? is highlighted in Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga (2001). The opening scene ofREVISED this Argentine flm depicting the malaise of a middle-class family takes place at a swimming pool, too. In her analysis of La ciénaga, Amanda Holmes has argued that Martel “draws attention to spatial order and categorization” (2011, 131) and that “the construction of spatial representation refects questions about the formation of social and personal order in the complexity of contemporary Argentine society” (2011, 133). In other words, the swimming pool in La ciénaga takes part in social categorization and class division. The same applies to space in Que horas ela volta? with regard to contemporary Brazilian society. While the swimming pool in La ciénaga evokes the “passivity, almost despondency” (Holmes 2011, 134) of the Argentine middle classes, in 74 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ

Fig. 4.1 Val and Jessica at the swimming pool in Que horas ela volta? (Anna Muylaert, 2015)

Que horas ela volta? it symbolizes both the upward social mobility of the lower classes and the fear of traditional middlePROOF classes for the new middle class that emerged in the twenty-frst century as a result of the policies that the governments of the Brazilian Workers’ Party put into place: Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.10 Hence, the pool is a space fraught with social confict. Jéssica is depicted as an ambitious character who uses space to push class boundaries. From the moment this student from the Northeast, who is aspiring to study at the university, enters Bárbara’s home, her movements and her body language display an irreverent attitude towards established house rules and more general social conventions. When Bárbara’s husband shows her the guest room, she sits on the spacious bed and jokingly suggests that she occupy this comfortable bedroom instead of sharingREVISED the cleaner’s confned room. Carlos, who likes Jéssica, asks Bárbara whether she can be accommodated in the guest room. Bárbara feels forced to agree, but this moment is visually conveyed as the realization of a class confict. A close-up of Bárbara looking at Jéssica is followed by an eyeline match of Jéssica looking at her, with Carlos in the middle. Carlos will gradually fall in love with Jéssica, later asking her to marry him. The cinematography in Que horas ela volta? emphasizes social conflict within neoliberal parameters, according to which Jéssica and Val should only interact with Bárbara’s family, members of the 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 75 middle class, insofar as they provide a service to them. Unable to stand a dangerous situation in which Jéssica clearly takes advantage of every opportunity to live comfortably in Bárbara’s home, Bárbara requests first that Jéssica vacate the guest room and later that she remain within the limits of the helper’s room. Jéssica’s entrance into the domestic helper’s area is visually rendered as Jéssica’s occupation of an animal’s space. A bird’s-eye view of the space in this scene allows the audience to perceive Jéssica’s confinement to the lowest floor of the house and her gaze at the sky, a visual metaphor of her current social position and her aspirations alike. The staircase inside the home next to the guest room is another space symbolizing social mobility. There are several eye-level shots of the empty staircase, the camera zooming in to invite the viewer to contemplate this possibility. Spatial arrangements in the house also underscore the social segregation that neoliberalism promotes. The kitchen doorframe is the most important space in the flm, which PROOFrepresents the boundaries between classes. The frst title of the flm was, in fact, The Kitchen Door, a door that, in this flm, serves as a threshold between the worlds of employer and employee. Many scenes are flmed from Val’s point of view from the kitchen sink, from where she sees the dining room through the doorframe. The kitchen is not only Val’s workplace but also the family’s breakfast room. In her frst morning in São Paulo, Jéssica wakes up before her mother and fnds Bárbara in the kitchen making juice for breakfast. In this scene, Bárbara stands next to the sink usually occupied by Val while Jéssica sits at the table. In just one night, Jéssica has shaken up the social order of the household. Jéssica is now symbolically occupying Bárbara’s space in the house, somethingREVISED that Bárbara quickly realizes and resents. In another scene, Carlos invites Jéssica to eat with him in the dining room. Whereas Val’s view of and access to the dining room has always been limited, Jéssica’s is now unrestricted. Anna Muylaert’s depictions of the protagonists Val and Jéssica in connection to Bárbara’s home and the relationship between Bárbara and Val as employer and employee are part of a cine clasemediero. Another example that allows us to classify this flm as cine clasemediero is the reluc- tance to represent a favela in the flm. Que horas ela volta? revisits the common favela/sertão theme only towards the end of the flm. Jéssica and her mother are originally from Pernambuco, the Northeast, and the 76 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ land of the sertão. When Val visits her daughter right before resigning and moving in with her, we see them arguing in the small apartment rented by Jéssica. The favela of Embu-Guaçú appears in the background, seen through the apartment door. Parallel to the framing of the family dining room in Bárbara’s middle-class kitchen from Val’s perspective, the framing of the favela from Jéssica’s new apartment suggests that Val and Jéssica do not belong to this space either. The favela has enjoyed a long tradition of cinematic representation. Igor Krstić (2016) has identifed a general transition from a referential to a symbolic representation of the favela on the Brazilian screen since the frst flms set in the favelas in the 1930s to contemporary cinema. Throughout the decades, the favela has been approached as a romanti- cizing setting, a location for stories about struggling characters, a polit- icized space, and, in more contemporary flms, a place associated with extreme violence—Ivana Bentes’ “cosmetics of violence”—such as in Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2003) and Tropa de Elite (José Padilha, 2007), and a space forPROOF creativity, such as in Orfeu (Carlos Diegues, 1999) (Krstić 2016, 196, 202). Despite this long history of the favela on screen, director Anna Muylaert keeps the favela “outside.” Just as Val was incapable of crossing the boundaries to the dining room table, so is director Anna Muylaert reluctant to enter the favela, a territory that she, as a member of the Brazilian middle class, does not seem to know well. For this reason, she remains in the safety of the interior of Jéssica’s home and frames/contains the favela as a lit picture in the distance.

Concluding Remarks Post TenebrasREVISED Lux and Que horas ela volta? exhibit a similar emerging awareness of the flmmaker’s social position and the ensuing limitations in trying to depict the lives of the members of the lower classes. The flms’ strategies of containment are made evident through several means. At a narrative level, members of lower classes are presented as service providers for the middle classes.11 Cinematography and the depiction of space demonstrate Reygadas’ and Muylaert’s strategies of containment. Lastly, both flms exhibit a fear of the lower classes. The “fear of violence and anxiety about security” (Caldeira 2008, 52) is palpable in Post Tenebras Lux. In the case of Que horas ela volta?, there 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 77 is the traditional middle-class fear of downward social mobility combined with their fear of the rise of the lower classes. The most interesting aspect of both flms is the combination of an awareness of the limitations concerning knowledge about “the other” and a critical view towards the middle class that might be construed as a creative liberation. Spatial representation in these two flms is tied to the effects of neoliberalism in Mexican and Brazilian societies. In Post Tenebras Lux, the innovative connotation of the rural space as a setting for class segregation and class confict leaves behind earlier associations of the countryside with innocence and virtue (Haddu 2007), backwardness and even spirituality (Sánchez Prado 2014). Anna Muylaert’s Que horas ela volta? is a more positive spin for social mobility, which might be attributed to neoliberalism in combination with the effects of sociopolitical policies aimed at reducing inequality in Brazil between 2003 and 2016, when the Workers’ Party (PT) was in power. In any case, the camera has turned its attention from underpriviliged to middle-classPROOF characters, and sees working-class people as their employees. A relational approach to space allows us to identify the social position assumed by flmmakers and cinematographers. In Post Tenebras Lux and Que horas ela volta?, the camera flms from a middle-class “position” even in shots that are from the point-of-view of working-class characters. The construction of middle-class spaces in contrast to the spaces traditionally associated with the lower classes clearly indicates that the fear of invasion in Post Tenebras Lux and the anxiety towards the new middle-class upward social mobility in Que horas ela volta? are central to the understanding of these flms as political.

REVISEDNotes 1. There is a consensus about the rise of a new class that most scholars identify as a middle class, although Brazilian sociologist Jessé Souza prefers to call it os batalhadores (the fghters). These references illustrate differing views about the causes for this rise. 2. Newman’s and Marsh’s studies refer specifcally to the Mexican flm Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbcke, 2008) and the Brazilian flm O som ao redor (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012), not necessarily to a group of flms. 3. The renowned Argentine director Lucrecia Martel declared in a recent interview that cinema’s weakness worldwide is that it is only in the hands 78 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ

of the upper-middle class (Pinto Veas 2015), and flm scholar Lúcia Nagib noted earlier that “There is still an economic cleavage which reserves cinematographic activity for the middle and upper classes” (2002, 15). My translation. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 4. While Mexican flmmaker Iria Gómez Concheiro was shooting her second flm, Los inquilinos, about this forced gentrifcation, attention to this urban and social phenomenon is not yet common at the time this chapter was written. 5. De Luca concentrates on Reygadas’ frst three features, not on Post Tenebras Lux. 6. In contrast to Post Tenebras Lux, in some Mexican and Brazilian crime dramas about the invasion of middle-class homes or neighborhoods, the protection of middle-class residents is foregrounded and “safe” and “dangerous” spaces are often visually rendered as interdependent with each other (O som ao redor, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012; La Zona, Rodrigo Plá, 2007; Redentor, Cláudio Torres, 2004; Era uma vez…, Breno Silveira, 2008; Amar te duele, Fernando Sariñana, 2002; O invasor, Beto Brant, 2002; Os inquilinos, Sergio Bianchi, 2009). 7. This is according to data gathered by ThiagoPROOF Stivaletti shortly after the flm’s release in 2015 (“Que horas ela volta? é vendido para 22 países,” Filme B. July 17, 2015, http://www.flmeb.com.br). 8. See Johnson (2017) for more information on Casé’s performance as a “Brazilian style” star. 9. Anna Muylaert felt the need to refect on her own social class when asked in an interview about the swimming pool’s symbolism. For her, in addition to being “the place for leisure and for the privileged,” it is also the place for machismo (male chauvinism), and in this sense Muylaert would identify with both Jéssica and Val in such a place, even though she “belong[s] to the other social class. “Director Anna Muylaert Interviewed by French Journalist Pierre-Michel Meier.” DVD Extra Features. 2016. Oscilloscope Pictures. 10. As Lima has noted, “Fifteen years ago, a work dealing with the relationship REVISEDbetween a wealthy Morumbi family and its maid, played by a well- known and charismatic actress like Regina Casé, would hardly have resonated in the same way as The Second Mother does today” (141). 11. There is a signifcant number of flms on domestic and security services in contemporary Latin American cinema, such as Doméstica (Mascaro, 2012), Benjamín Naishtat’s Historia del miedo (2014), Rodrigo Moreno’s El custodio (2006) and Réimon (2014), and Jorge Gaggero’s Cama adentro (2004), but the Chilean-Mexican coproduction La nana (Sebastián Silva, 2009) is probably the best known internationally. The growing number of flms about domestic helpers has lead flm scholar Deborah Shaw (2017) to classify them as a genre. 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 79

Works Cited Arias Barreto, Alain. 2008. “Lucía Murat y el cine.” La Jiribilla. Revista de cultura cubana 397, 13–19 (December). Caldeira, Teresa P. R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2008. “From Modernism to Neoliberalism in São Paulo: Reconfguring the City and Its Citizens.” In Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age, edited by Andreas Huyssen, 51–77. Durham: Duke University Press. Castañeda, Jorge. 2011. Mañana Forever?: Mexico and the Mexicans. New York: Vintage. Castillo, José. 2010. “Carlos Reygadas.” Bomb 111: 70–77. Dallas, Paul. 2013. “Culture Wars: Talking Brazilian Cinema and Its Discontents with Director Kleber Mendonça Filho.” Filmmaker 28 January. “http://flm- makermagazine.com”. De la Calle, Luis, and Luis Rubio. 2010. “Clasemedieros.” Nexos (May). “http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p 13742”. = Ferreira, Francisco H. G., Julian Messina, JamelePROOF Rigolini, Luis-Felipe López- Calva, María Ana Lugo, and Renos Vakis. 2013. Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class. Washington, DC: World Bank. Ferreira, Luis Fernando Correia, and Lívia Almada Neves. 2016. “O conceito do ócio vicário no flme ‘Que horas ela volta?’: Revisitando Thorstein Veblen em uma nova perspectiva dos fenômenos socioeconômicos.” Conference Paper. XL Encontro da ANPAD, September 25–28. Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27. García Canclini, Néstor. 2014. Imagined Globalization. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Haddu, Miriam. 2007. Contemporary Mexican Cinema 1989–1999: History, Space and Identity. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford UniversityREVISED Press. Holmes, Amanda. 2011. “Landscape and the Artist’s Frame in Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga/The Swamp and La niña santa/The Holy Girl.” In New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema, edited by Cacilda Rêgo and Carolina Rocha, 131–46. Bristol: Intellect. Hopewell, John, and Emilio Mayorga. 2010. Reygadas Looks to ‘Lux’. Variety 418 (2): 8. Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. 80 M. M. VÁZQUEZ VÁZQUEZ

——. 2002. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge. ——. 2015. “The Aesthetics of Singularity.” New Left Review 92: 101–32. Janoschka, Michael, and Axel Borsdorf. 2006. “Condominios Fechados and Barrios Privados.” In Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives, edited by Georg Glasze, Chris Webster, and Klaus Frantz, 92–108. London: Routledge. Janoschka, Michael, and Jorge Sequera. 2014. “Procesos de gentrifcación y desplazamiento en América Latina, una perspectiva comparatista.” In Desafíos metropolitanos. Un diálogo entre Europa y América Latina, edited by Juan José Michelini, 82–104. Madrid: Catarata. Johnson, Randal. 2017. “Television and the Transformation of the Star System in Brazil.” In A Companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by Maria M. Delgado, Stephen M. Hart, and Randal Johnson, 21–35. Malden: Wiley. Krstić, Igor. 2016. Slums on Screen: World Cinema and the Planet of Slums. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lana, Lígia. 2016. “‘Da porta da cozinha pra lá’: gênero e mudança social no flme Que horas ela volta?” Rumores 19 (10): 121–37 (January–June). Lima, Bruna Della Torre De Carvalho. 2016. “Criticism and Condescension: The Triumph of the Poor in The Second MotherPROOF.” Latin American Perspectives 211 (6): 141 43 (November). − Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Machado, Uirá. 2011. “É um erro falar que existe nova classe média, diz sociólogo.” Folha de São Paulo, February 13, 2011. “http://www1.folha.uol. com.br/poder/2011/02/874777-e-um-erro-falar-que-existe-nova-classe- media-diz-sociologo.shtml”. MacLaird, Misha. 2013. Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Maricato, Ermínia. 2010. “The Statute of the Peripheral City.” In The City Statute of Brazil: A Commentary, edited by Celso Santos Carvalho and Anaclaudia Rossbach. São Paulo: Cities Alliance and Ministry of Cities. “http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/781901468014398230/REVISED The-City-Statute-of-Brazil-a-commentary”. Marsh, Leslie L. 2015. “Reordering (Social) Sensibilities: Balancing Realisms in Neighbouring Sounds.” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 12 (2): 139–57. ——. 2017. “Women’s Filmmaking and Comedy in Brazil: Anna Muylaert’s Durval Discos (2002) and É Proibido Fumar (2009)”. In Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, edited by Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw, 149–71. London: I.B. Tauris. Massey, Doreen. 1992. “Politics and Space/Time.” New Left Review 1 (196): 65–84 (November–December). 4 NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF CLASS IN MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN CINEMAS … 81

Nagib, Lúcia. 2002. O cinema da retomada. Depoimentos de 90 cineastas dos anos 90. São Paulo: Editora 34. Navarro, Vinicius. 2017. “Local Filmmaking in Brazil: Place, Politics, and Pernambuco’s New Cinema.” Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 14 (1): 59–75. Newman, Kathleen. 2015. “A Different Mexican Postcard: Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe (2008).” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 12 (2): 159–74. Pinto Veas, Iván. 2015. “Lucrecia Martel.” La fuga 17. “http://2016.lafuga.cl/ lucrecia-martel/735”. Podalsky, Laura. 2011. “Landscapes of Subjectivity in Contemporary Mexican Cinema.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 9 (2 & 3): 161–82. Rêgo, Cacilda, and Carolina Rocha, eds. 2011. New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Bristol: Intellect. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M. 2014. Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Shaw, Deborah. 2017. “Intimacy and Distance-Domestic Servants in Latin American Women’s Cinema: La mujer sin cabeza and El niño pez/The Fish Child.” In Latin American Women Filmmakers:PROOF Production, Politics, Poetics, edited by Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw, 123–48. London: I.B. Tauris. Tompkins, Cynthia. 2013. Experimental Latin American Cinema: History and Aesthetics. Austin: University of Texas Press.

REVISED CHAPTER 5

Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?: Challenging the Neoliberal in Mexican Cinema

Niamh Thornton

Mexican flm studies has had two primary PROOFpreoccupations: production history and auteurs. These are consistent with scholarly approaches to other national cinemas (Page 2009; Rêgo and Rocha 2011). At their best, it means that we have excellent analyses of the flm industry as a business that translates the national for the widest possible audience or competes on an international stage for plaudits and festival awards. To focus on such histories is to plot out a series of peaks and troughs, evaluating outputs, and ranking them according to a carefully formu- lated set of criteria. The legacy of taking these readings as the primary determinations of all that constitutes national cinemas is that it narrows the scope and fxes who is acknowledged in the creative process. The second focus has produced important work that follows key directors and mapsREVISED out what their career means for the Mexican flm industry and transnational trends. However, to solely carry out such work is to privilege individuals and overlook the ways that flms are the result of a team effort. Neoliberalism encourages this focus on the idea of a singular self-determining genius who leads his (and sometimes her) team to greatness. There is a need to upend this model and challenge a tendency

N. Thornton (*) University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 83 C. Sandberg and C. Rocha (eds.), Contemporary Latin American Cinema, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9_5 84 N. THORNTON to allow the often unseen hand of neoliberalism to determine what and who gets our attention (La Berge and Slobodian 2017). Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? (Mariana Chenillo, 2013) is a flm that serves as an ideal case study for a new way of looking at Mexican cinema. It is an adaptation of a little-known short story, made by a director for hire, starring a frst-time actor who has since transitioned into becoming a YouTuber, with musical choices that encourage micro-attention to Mexico City at street and neighborhood level and signals a shared aesthetics with transnational genre cinema. Successful, yet far from the type of flm normally celebrated by scholarship, because it does not ft the familiar models, at a textual and meta-textual level Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is a highly generative case study to use to critique neoliberalism. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? counters a trend noted by Ignacio Sánchez Prado in Mexican flms of the early 2000s where “neoliberalism is not a problem but a given and accepted fact” (2014b, 4), because it foregrounds the desire for a perfectible body, a problem that is ascribed to neoliberalism. The narrative PROOFof Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is concerned with a husband and wife, Alfredo (Andrés Almeida) and Carmen (Daniela Rincón), who move from Ciudad Satélite, a suburban district on the outskirts of Mexico City to an area within the city boundaries, for his IT job. She previously worked at her parent’s accountancy business but has little to do and no friends at her new home. The couple is proudly overweight, at frst. The flm opens with a sex scene, which illustrates the couple’s attraction for one another that is shortly followed by a dance surrounded by friends and family at their farewell party. Clearly, they are a couple who are not curtailed by fat shaming to demonstrate their love both privately and publicly. This all changes when they move to the city. At a formal work event, Carmen overhears twoREVISED women insult her and Alfredo’s weight. Shortly thereaf- ter she joins a weight loss club and, after initial reticence, he joins too. Gradually, her initial enthusiasm for weight loss wanes while he fully embraces it. Their relationship is sorely tested by this shift as she sees the change in treatment he receives, the ease with which he buys new clothes, and the validation he gets through newfound female attention. In the meantime, she embraces her skills in the kitchen and fnds friendship through a cookery class. As tensions build, they separate for a while. She tests new ground emotionally and physically and enters a cookery competition. It soon becomes clear that they want to give their relationship another go and end the flm with a hopeful embrace. 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 85

Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is an adaptation of the short story, “Paraíso” [Paradise], from the collection, Paraíso y otro cuentos incómodos [Paradise and Other Uncomfortable Stories] by Julieta Arévalo (2013). In both the short story and the flm Carmen’s decision to reject weight loss is framed positively, whilst Alfredo’s advantages on losing weight are temporary and, ultimately, empty. This upends the archetypal transfor- mational neoliberal narrative which suggests that ftting into standardized beauty brings with it rewards. The flm is an exploration of the consequences of neoliberalism on the individual using a popular generic form, following a trend observed by Sánchez Prado (2014a) of late 1990s to early 2000s flms. For him, the political in such flms “is readable only through an approach that understands its organic and problematic relationship with the politics and economics of neoliberalism” (2014a, chap. 3, loc 2476). For my purposes, because neoliberalism is a highly contested and slippery term, I shall use Nick Couldry’s relatively open defnition, as “the range of policies that evolved internationally from the early 1980sPROOF to make market functioning … the overwhelming priority for social organization” (2010, 4, italics in original). His study is concerned with voice. In his usage this refers to the ways the self is articulated and heard in social and political contexts. For him, neoliberalism is an “embodied process” (Couldry, 2010, 8, italics in original) that involves interventions into powerful processes and discursive practices. As Couldry elaborates, “Neoliberal rationality is reinforced not just by explicit discourse but through the multiple ways in which that discourse and its workings get embedded in daily life and social organization” (2010, 12). Discursive and historic processes nat- uralized by neoliberalism also determine the size, shape and ability of the human body, and how it is perceived by others. Attaining an ideal body is partREVISED of this everyday “individualization,” as defned by Zygmaunt Bauman, which “consists in transforming human ‘identity’ from a ‘given’ into a ‘task’” (2001, 144). Carmen and Alfredo in Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? are an exemplary exploration of this function in Mexican society. Their fatness is their personal failing and responsibility to be resolved. At least, this is the premise that Chenillo’s narrative challenges. Neoliberalism seeps into many aspects of this flm as aesthetic experience and object of circulation and consumption. As a consequence, in order to refect on how Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is a critique of neoliberalism, I consider four key workers in the flmmaking process: the director, the author of the source text, the principle actor and the 86 N. THORNTON music supervisor. Each require unique approaches. The actor has built an online presence, which I consider to posit how her move into entre- preneurialism complicates a reading of the flm. The short story has been transformed by the director whose own body of work informs a reading of a flm she was hired to make. Thus, her role in making this flm complicates auteurist readings. I discuss both the process of adaptation and the signifcance of this flm in Chenillo’s oeuvre. Drawing on an interview with the music supervisor, Lynn Fainchtein, I start with an analysis of the soundtrack. Her choices establish the characters as neoliberal subjects, whose tastes are formed by the global circulation of music specifcally determined by the neighborhood they lived in prior to their move to the city.

Music and (Trans)National Location Music is used to locate the characters. David William Foster (2002) and Sánchez Prado (2014b) have both noted howPROOF the specifcity of locations act as shorthand for class and social relations in the neoliberal city of the 1990s and early 2000s. In Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? the location is established and complicated through the use of pre-recorded music chosen by the music supervisor, Fainchtein. Carmen and Alfredo move for work from Ciudad Satélite, a middle-class commuter belt of Mexico City founded in 1957, into a neighborhood near Ciudad Universitaria within the metropolitan area. The characters occupy the city spaces at street and neighborhood level in such a way that highlights what it means to nav- igate an urban landscape and to inhabit a megalopolis at a microlevel. As a result, the setting is foregrounded in ways that are reminiscent of recent Brooklyn-based mid-budget flms such as Supporting Characters (Daniel Schechter,REVISED 2012), Obvious Child (Gillian Robespierre, 2014) and The Incredible Jessica James (James C. Strouse, 2017), which follow twenty-something characters as they try take precarious hold on to their place as inhabitants of a neoliberal city. In Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? there are also song choices that suggest local tastes and specifcities. Fainchtein is an experienced music supervisor. She has worked on all of the flms produced by Cananea, the company run by actor- producers Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. In addition, she has collaborated with Alejandro G. Iñárritu on all of his projects to date, as well as on other independent US and Mexican flms, including collab- orating on the music flm Hecho en México (Duncan Bridgeman, 2012). 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 87

Fainchtein works closely with directors from pre- to post-production to ensure that she creates the world required by the script (Thornton 2017). Given Fainchtein’s considerable experience, the soundtrack must be read as a deliberate signaling of an urban ambience that is simultaneously transnational and frmly rooted in Mexico. Understanding how music refects who these characters are requires an applied understanding of the neighborhood they come from. According to Fainchtein, her musical choices were led by the intention to locate the flm in time and place. The soundtrack is composed of a mixture of English indie singer songwriters, such as Bon Iver, Local Natives and John Costello, and Spanish-language electronic and new Cumbia musicians, such as Elidian and Ricardo Reyna. Just as with the aforementioned New York flms, the soundtrack of Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? consists of indie music that reference a transnational cosmopolitan creative aesthetic and are chosen to evoke an affective connection between the inhabitants across borders while the Spanish-language songs locate the flm within a specifc national boundary.PROOF Fainchtein explained that since the 1970s Ciudad Satélite has been a place with a number of well-stocked music stores with access to a wealth of indie and prog rock album choices from all around the world (Thornton 2017). For her, this infuenced the musical soundtrack and was a necessary element in building an authentic locatedness into the flm, placing it in a specifc neighborhood. The very transcultural nature of the soundtrack functions to situate the characters and narrative for a local audience familiar with the economics of this location and the Spanish-language music locates it for a foreign audience in the Hispanic world. In dialogue with the director, Fainchtein created a musical soundtrack using pre-recorded music to evoke a time and place and also a sense of connectedness to a transnational indieREVISED musical taste.

Bodies: Fat and Thin Music locates the flm within specifc locales and connects the characters to those beyond the national boundary. Fatness has a similar function. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? explores fatness, an area that has become a site of anxiety for women all over the world, which is presented as a nexus of the problematics of consumption and another way in which the excesses of the female body must be controlled and contained. It fts with what Debbie Martin and Deborah Shaw described in their 88 N. THORNTON introduction as the “redefnition of the political” that is required when looking at women’s flmmaking that shifts away from a politics of revolution to a “politics of interiority” (2017, 19), at least insofar as it is an exploration of the personal experience of the fat body and the expectations that are imposed upon it, which, at its heart, is also a challenge to assumptions about the ideal neoliberal subject. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? fts into this politics of interiority and can be read as an original intervention into the public sphere. Therefore it is a flm about the private individual choices and the very public politics of physicality and exteriority. Fat studies is a relatively new and developing feld which is keen to challenge the hegemonic belief that fatness is necessarily a sign of illness or wrongness and has explored how “the desire to be fabless, to eliminate our fat, is a manufactured desire” that is a Eurocentric precept and “culturally produced” (Burns-Ardolino 2009, 272).1 The idealized thin body is central to the commodifcation of the female body inherent in neoliberal capitalism that is also marked by race,PROOF class and gender. This is evident in a number of studies that have focused on the ways the Latina body has been presented as one which is curvy with most emphasis on the buttocks (Molina Guzmán and Angharad 2004; Mendible 2007; Burns-Ardolino 2009). A narrowly defned ideal encumbers the Latina body with a specifc type that is burdened with historical meaning. These studies often focus on a specifc star or celebrity to explore the contradictory and troubling histories that persist around Latina bodies. Research into Latina and Latin American women’s bodies has primarily been concerned with their commodifcation and explorations of how particular body parts—breasts, hips and buttocks—have become “mixed signifers of sexual desire and fertility as well as bodily waste and racial contamination”REVISED (Guzmán and Valdivia 2004 , 212). It is important to note that their analysis recognizes that there is no single woman’s body shape that could be read as representative of all Latin American women. Isabel Molina Guzmán and Angharad N. Valdivia explore three noteworthy women, Salma Hayek, Frida Kahlo and Jennifer Lopez as exemplars for the ways “popular culture representations of Latinidad must continue to construct that mythical brown race that falls somewhere between Whiteness and Blackness and elides the dynamic hybridity of Latinidad that spans across the entire racial spectrum” (2004, 218). Their analysis is largely concerned with the reception and consumption of an idea of Latinidad in US cinema. With an eye to international distribution and 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 89 reception, this legacy of the narrowly defned Latina body hangs over Chenillo’s work. As a director of Mexican flm, she also has to contend with a long history of body types in Mexican cinema that privileges European phenotypes and, more recently, thinness. This is evident in such actors as Karla Souza, Fernanda Romero and Stephanie Sigman. In this context, to focus on non-standard bodies is a shift in representations and an important critique of the social constructions of wellness and women’s agency. Chenillo’s flms challenge the persistence and reifcation of market value on women’s bodies that is integral to the current itera- tion of neoliberal capitalism. The analysis of cultural theoretician Wendy A. Burns-Ardolino is typical of those who take a primarily US focus and examine how the Latina body is read in popular culture. Whilst the Mexican context has its own particularities, it has a dominant presence in the audiovisual marketplace that is worth dwelling upon in relation to how normative bodily ideals are portrayed. Burns-Ardolino considers the attention given to the Latina “big butt” and draws on the “polyvalent meaningsPROOF of Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé Knowles” whose buttocks stand as signifers of an intersection of class and race that is in turn commodifed, celebrated and denigrated (2009, 272). In her analysis Burns-Ardolino sees such privileging as serving to “reinforce and codify the boundaries of desirable bodies” (2009, 272). But these bodies are not those that are held up as ideal for Carmen, the protagonist of Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?. Carmen’s body does not match the idealized Latina star nor that of those, at frst, she seeks to emulate. Lopez’s curves differ from the thin bodies of the women who scorn Carmen at the work party she and Alfredo attend, because their thinness suggests affuence. The women’s sneering attitude is refective of the rejection by a certain strata of Mexican society of fatness because of its association REVISEDwith those who are racially other, such as the indigenous population. In Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? Carmen must fnd a way to believe in her own value as a person despite the fact that her body shape does not match the Mexican middle-class ideal. The pressures of the neoliberal marketplace and its expression in Carmen’s lived experience means that her weight-loss group focuses on volume lost rather than on either attaining a healthy weight or self-acceptance. Their collective weight loss is pitted against competing groups across the city. Therefore, the goal is not on healthy parameters or improved health, merely numbers. One of the noxious effects of this goal-oriented program is signaled through the presence of a very thin woman constantly sucking on ice to lose weight 90 N. THORNTON who is a recurrent fgure of fun and sly humor. The implication is that she has body dysmorphia, and her obsession with unhealthy weight loss proves useful in reaching the group’s weekly goals, but a sign that the company cares little about the health of the participants. The focus on competition is another symptom of neoliberalism where individuals are set against each other for the economic gain of the slimming company. Chenillo critiques neoliberal capitalism through focusing on women’s bodies at a narrative level. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? openly addresses the idea of fat shaming and body image (Fig. 5.1). Both characters take different directions in their road to self-esteem, Alfredo through weight loss and Carmen through confdence building. Neither is presented as ideal. Carmen’s decision to leave the weight loss program is shown to be a reclaiming of her own power over her body and a rejection of an economic regime focused on proft over wellbeing. Whilst this is structured positively, the actor who plays Carmen, Daniela Rincón, has picked up the narrative focus on fatness and created a digital self, thereby performing the labour involvedPROOF in being tasked to perfect

REVISED

Fig. 5.1 Carmen and Alfredo in Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? (Mariana Chenillo, 2013) 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 91 her own body. This serves a dialogic function with Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?. On a paratextual level, because of Rincón’s online self, there are attendant features that demonstrate the cultural and economic systems into which the flm text is interpolated that return us abruptly to the reality of the precarious creative class to which Rincón belongs.

Agency and Wellness: From Big Screen to Small Rincón has taken the primary focus of the flm, fatness and body positiv- ity, and built an online profle that extends, complicates and contradicts the pro-flmic message. Whilst framed within the language of empowerment and (self-)control, Rincón’s online self does not sit easily with the ways the flm attempts to complicate and challenge negative assumptions about fat bodies because it slips into normative neoliberal regimes that task the individual to transform the self. Although Rincón does not have the profle of Kahlo, Hayek, Lopez or Knowles, she has made her own intervention into this feld and is a fascinatingPROOF example of actor as entrepreneur through her creation of digital content and use of social media to develop her online profle. Her online persona could be seen to be marked by this flm and its attendant concerns. Subsequent to performing as Carmen in Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?, Rincón has become part of the wellness industry through social media. She has a blog site and YouTube channel. From her “About Me” section of her blog she credits her family and a move from Mexico City to Guanajuato for her shift in health and wellbeing, which is an assertion of her participation in the transnational entrepreneurial creative class. Her YouTube site channel has over 5000 subscribers at time of writing (October 2017) and she has posted several times a month over a two- year periodREVISED (2012–present). She self-identifes as “curvy” (in English), which she uses as a qualifer for exercise and activities, such as “curvy running” and “curvy shopping.” She has subsequently moved to New Jersey, US, making her contribution part of a transnational fow of Mexican migrant narratives. In star studies, this intervention can be read as part of her star persona and the creation of an online star text. With only two screen credits to her name, Rincón is not a star of flm or television, but is building her own public brand via social media. Rincón is creating an online persona by “generating some ‘surplus value’ or beneft derived from the fact of being well known” (Van Krieken 2012, 10), although her renown is still relatively small in scale. What is evident from 92 N. THORNTON her public online self is that she is well-versed in the generic and affective conventions of the form as proposed by Alice Marwick and dana boyd which “involves ongoing maintenance of a fan base, performed intimacy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona” (2011, 139–40). Her place in this burgeoning economy requires her to develop an account of her self, and to create and modify her online persona as part of this affective economy. Rincón’s social media persona is a continuation of her character in Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?, but one that shifts away from the body-positive message of the flm that embraces fatness to reinscribe it within the recent trend of wellbeing and wellness. She has become part of

The fashion/beauty complex [that] strategically adopts the tone of sisterly invitation, encouragement and guidance and – in much the same way as biopower utilizes the notion of freedom – the language of choice, pleasure, health, and wellbeing. Its recursive visual linkages of women’s sexual desirability, romantic success, and personal happinessPROOF to their embodiment of (hetero)normative femininity fgure the masquerade as somehow both voluntary and imperative. (Sanders 2017, 49)

Rachel Sanders draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Angela McRobbie to analyze how self-monitoring and individualiz- ing women’s responsibility over their bodies is inherent to neoliberal-era capitalism that fnds its most recent manifestation in wearable self-tracking devices and an obsession with algorithms, but is also evident in the broader wellness industry. Through her use of online social media tools, Rincón is inserting herself into an ecosystem that is framed by discourses of fatness and the personal responsibility for body wellness that, in turn, is integral to the neoliberal commodifcation of the body. Her profle and career fromREVISED actor to vlogger is part of a portfolio career that makes her trajectory typical of that of the transnational precariat who create content and earn money from the numbers of views or hits that their sites, channels and networks receive.

The Auteur as Hired Laborer Like Rincón, Mariana Chenillo is carefully navigating a precarious neoliberal creative labor market. Her work is concerned with women’s bodies as sites of anxiety and regulated by neoliberal interests. 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 93

The women in her flms have non-standard and disruptive bodies that present challenges to the social constructions of wellness and women’s agency. Throughout her career, Chenillo has combined her own projects with commissioned work, and directing for hire. In this way she is paradigmatic of many directors in the Mexican flm industry as well as sharing common ground with her more internationally renowned contemporaries. Take, for example the trajectory of Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo Del Toro, whose work has encompassed both hired work on studio productions and auteur output (see Shaw 2013). Where both of these have received “transnational consecration” (Sánchez Prado 2014a, chap. 4, loc 3569) and have largely worked between Anglophone—not to say Hollywood productions—and Hispanic language flms, Chenillo has primarily worked in the Mexican flm industry and across Mexican and transnational television work. Working largely in Mexico, rather than getting distribution through international festival and arthouse circuits, has meant that she has had little international scholarly attention. PROOF An interest in the human body is already evident in her frst feature. After Chenillo attended flm school at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfca, specializing in directing, in 2010 she became the frst woman director to win an Ariel, a Mexican flm academy award, for best opera prima for Cinco días sin Nora/Nora’s Will (2009). One of a small number of Jewish flmmakers in Mexico, Cinco días sin Nora is based on her grandmother Nora’s suicide and its consequences on her family (Balfour 2010). In real life and in the flm, her grandparents were long divorced and lived across the road from each other. Nora (Silvia Mariscal) leaves detailed preparations for her funeral including a request for Jewish last rites that her husband (Fernando Luján) attempts atREVISED frst to circumvent and then fulfll, fghting against a religious decree that suicides must be interred in a separate area. Family, friends, members of the Jewish community and her housekeeper all vie to have control over how Nora’s body is prepared and interred. This means that her body is kept for fve days on ice in her air-con- ditioned apartment whilst the drama unfolds. Her body and how it is dressed and prepared for burial becomes a focal point for contestatory worldviews and spiritual beliefs that are about the intersection of affective relations, millennial practices and traditions, and Mexican identi- tarian norms. It is a flm that navigates these with much dark humor and compassion. As her opera prima, Cinco días sin Nora establishes 94 N. THORNTON

Chenillo’s aesthetic approach and tone, as well as her focus on women’s bodies and their agency that can be found in Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?. Chenillo’s ability to access lucrative international distribution has been more successful through her for-hire work than her auteurial output. Cinco días sin Nora had festival release, and Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? secured distribution in the US and Europe through the streaming service Netfix, thus facilitating international reach. Yet another indicator of the neoliberal marketplace, streaming-service distribution simultaneously broadens and narrows her audiences. As a scholar of Mexican flm in the UK, Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is easier for me to access than much of her arthouse fare, however, as Sánchez Prado (2014a) has noted, paid-for services present considerable barriers for the average viewer in Mexico.

Adaptation and thePROOF Body Hired to make Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? by the producer who found the story, “Paraíso,” Chenillo wrote the screenplay. Originally written from Alfredo’s point of view, the adaptation shifts to Carmen’s. This decision was inspired by the particularities of the performative labor expected of Chenillo when promoting Cinco días sin Nora. She was struck that as a woman director she was subject to scrutiny and was expected to pay attention to how she looked: “it’s so different for women than for men, that I started noticing that there was this thing, like this weight put on to women to keep up their appearance” (Vargas 2015). Whilst marketing her flm Chenillo was expected to be readily consumable alongside her flm within a neoliberal marketplace with its narrowly defnedREVISED roles for women. As is clear from her interview, her personal experiences become part of Paraíso: ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?, which foregrounds a woman’s experience of fatness as a way of interrogating the narrow conceptualization of attractive gendered bodies on screen. Such a signifcant change in point of view was available to Chenillo because Arévalo is not a writer with a signifcant readership and is a reason why this short story makes for a fascinating example of literary adaptation. The burden of expectation often attached to bestsellers or canonical texts was alleviated. As such, it has freed Chenillo from the “a priori valorization of historical anteriority and seniority” of the literary 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 95 text over the flm (Stam 2007, 4). The sparse prose and brevity of the short story requires flling out in its adaptation to the screen, and Chenillo took many liberties rendering the short story into the flm. As a result they work as companion pieces that have a useful dialogic function. In “Paraíso” Alfredo as narrator gives an account of his relationship with Carmen, how they met, married and broke up, and expresses his hope that they can reconcile. The possibility of reconciliation remains hopeful and unfulflled. Unlike the flm, no fnal meeting or embrace takes place. Interspersed with this is his awareness of their fatness, the shared decision to lose weight, her abandonment of the diet and his realization that this creates a distance between them that he must address before he can fnd her desirable again. Alfredo’s reconciliation with his own body happens through weight loss and a subsequent awareness that his new standard body with the attendant benefts of being able to attract conventionally beautiful women will not mend his sense of self. His tentative assertion in the opening sentences, “Siempre he sido gordo. ¿O debo decir fui?” [I have always been fat.PROOF Or, should I say I was?] (Arévalo 2013, 11), is rendered meaningful in the subsequent narrative. He may have lost weight, but his identity is determined by his fatness irrespective of his current size. Bodies and their physicality are integral to the adaptation process. In his discussion of adaptations and the associated “distaste” that accom- panies the “‘embodiedness’ of the flmic text,” Robert Stam’s assertion that “Film offends through its inescapable materiality, incarnated, feshy, enacted characters, its real locales and palpable props, its carnal- ity and visceral shocks to the nervous system” (2007, 6) is particularly apropos with regards to Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?. Embodiedness, excess, its control and acceptance is central to both the source text and the adaptation.REVISED But, where “Paraíso” focuses on the ways Alfredo struggles to reconcile his fat shame with his external thinness, Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? refects how Carmen comes to accept her fat body and discover her place in the new economy. These series of “cor- respondences” between the source text and the adaptation can provide deeper understanding of the signifcance of Chenillo’s choices (Venuti 2007, 29). Both “Paraíso” and Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? are critiques of prejudice against fatness and the neoliberal idealized body, but Carmen’s rejection of thinness as an ideal in the flm is a more powerful challenge to limited conceptualizations of beauty than Alfredo’s in the short story. 96 N. THORNTON

Conclusion At textual and contextual level Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? is a richly layered flm that opens up new spaces to discuss women’s agency over their bodies. These choices and the pared-back aesthetics mean that it does not fall into the melodramatic mode still popular in Mexican flm (Sánchez Prado 2014a, Intro., loc 1462). Instead, it could be more fruitfully compared to the mid-budget US urban dramas of recent years that also critique neoliberal capitalism via a woman’s body and her precarious place in its alienating economic ecosystem. By troubling the desire to control and contain Carmen’s body, Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? critiques how bodies are commoditized and reduced to problems under neoliberalism. Fatness and thinness are terms that are employed in fat studies to examine how bodies are con- ceptualized as objects to be parsed, subjectivities to be reclaimed and imbued with agency beyond the banal stereotyping that is culturally, historically and discursively determined by neoliberalism. At this current historical moment neoliberalism’s focalizationPROOF on the individual’s responsibility to attain physical perfection through a restrictive set of regimes and practices operates as a Foucauldian disciplinary technology that Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? challenges. This chapter situates Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? within the director, Mariana Chenillo’s wider output to give a clear understanding of how her work should be understood in relation to her fellow Mexican flmmakers and asserts her signifcance. But, to focus solely on her input into this project is to slip into a purely auteurist approach and its attendant neoliberal tendency to privilege a singular genius. Instead, this chapter considers Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? as the result of multiple creative interventions in dialogue with one another and the broader creative ecologyREVISED with which they are engaged. To that end this chapter also considers the music supervisor, the principal actor and the source text, all of which supply signifcant and implicit commentaries on the neoliberal economies of circulation and the transnational imaginaries of the flm. The music supervisor, Lynn Fainchtein, is a key worker whose contribution lends much to the world building that simultaneously helps locate the flm in a specifc neighborhood yet impels it beyond the national boundaries. The actor, Daniela Rincón, has extended and complicated how fatness is addressed in the flm through the creation of an online persona adjacent to that of the flm, yet mapped on to her own life story. 5 PARAÍSO ¿CUÁNTO PESA EL AMOR? … 97

The author Julieta Arévalo’s short story provided a frame for the disillusionment with a narrow conceptualization of the perfect body. All three of these contributions creatively amplify and complicate the message of the flm, which works to challenge the limitations inherent in the neoliberal marketplace regarding narrow ideas of beauty, health and wellbeing.

Note 1. The growth in fat studies can be seen in the number of books that have emerged in recent years critiquing the ways fatness is moralized in the media and popular culture. See, for example, Rothblum and Solovay (2009) and Raisborough (2016).

Works Cited Arévalo, Julieta. 2013. Paraíso y otro cuentos incómodos. México: Casa Editorial Abismos. PROOF Balfour, Brad. 2010. “Exclusive Q&A: The Jewish-Mexican Experience Via Mariana Chenillo’s Award-Winning Film.” HuffPost, October 15, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour/exclusive-qa-the-jewish- m_b_764653.html. Accessed October 2, 2017. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burns-Ardolino, Wendy A. 2009. “Jiggle in My Walk: The Iconic Power of the ‘Big Butt’ in American Pop Culture.” In The Fat Studies Reader, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, 271–87. New York and London: New York University Press. Cinco días sin Nora. 2009. DVD. Mexico: Mariana Chenillo. Couldry, Nick. 2010. Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Los Angeles and London: Sage. Hecho en México. 2012. DVD. Mexico: Duncan Bridgeman. La Berge, LeighREVISED Claire, and Quinn Slobodian. 2017. “Reading for Neoliberalism, Reading Like Neoliberals.” American Literary History 29 (3): 602–14. Martin, Deborah, and Deborah Shaw. 2017. “Introduction.” In Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, edited by Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw, 1–28. London: I.B. Tauris. Marwick, Alice, and Dana Boyd. 2011. “To See and Be Seen.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 17 (2): 139–58. Mendible, Myra, ed. 2007. From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press. Molina Guzmán, Isabel, and Angharad N. Valdivia. 2004. “Brain, Brow, and Booty: Latina Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture.” The Communication Review (April): 205–21. 98 N. THORNTON

Obvious Child. 2014. Streaming. USA: Gillian Robespierre. Page, Joanna. 2009. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentina Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? 2013. DVD. Mexico: Mariana Chenillo. Raisborough, Jayne. 2016. Fat Bodies, Health and the Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rêgo, Cacilda, and Carolina Rocha. 2011. New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Bristol: Intellect. Rincón, Daniela. 2012–Present. “Home.” YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/ladanielarincon/videos. Accessed October 23, 2017. Rothblum, Esther, and Sondra Solovay, eds. 2009. The Fat Studies Reader. New York and London: New York University Press. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. 2014a. Screening Neoliberalism. Mexican Cinema 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Kindle. ———. 2014b. “Regimes of Affect: Love and Class in Mexican Neoliberal Cinema.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 4 (1): 1–19. Sanders, Rachel. 2017. “Self-tracking in the Digital Era: Biopower, Patriarchy, and the New Biometric Body Projects.” Body and Society 23 (1): 36–63. Shaw, Deborah. 2013. The Three Amigos: ThePROOF Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Stam, Robert. 2007. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” In Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 1–52. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Supporting Characters. 2012. Streaming. USA: Daniel Schechter. The Incredible Jessica James. 2017. Streaming. USA: James C. Strouse. Thornton, Niamh. 2017. Unpublished Interview with Lynn Fainchtein, October 10, 2017. Van Krieken, Robert. 2012. Celebrity Society. Oxon: Routledge. Vargas, Andrew S. 2015. “Mariana Chenillo on How Female Directors are ExpectedREVISED to Look Pretty.” Remezcla, February 13, 2015. http://remezcla. com/features/flm/mariana-chenillo-female-directors-expected-look-pretty/. Accessed October 2, 2017. Venuti, Lawrence. 2007. “Adaptation, Translation, Critique.” Journal of Visual Culture 6 (1): 25–43. William Foster, David. 2002. Mexico City in Contemporary Mexican Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. PART II

Neoliberal Film Policies and the Global Market

PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 6

Güeros: Social Fragmentation, Political Agency and the Mexican Film Industry Under Neoliberalism

Jacobo Asse Dayán PROOF

Neoliberalism is perhaps most readily identifed as a set of economic policies that emphasize free trade through deregulation, privatization and fscal austerity. From the 1970s onwards, these policies have shaped the economic and social orders of almost every country in the world. There has been economic growth in some places for some periods of time, but there have also been crises, economic inequality, social fragmentation and increasingly precarious working conditions. But neoliberalism is more than just a set of policies; it is an ideology, a world view that shapes not only our living conditions, but also ourselves, affecting our identities, aspirations and moral values. Neoliberalism is not only an outside phenomenonREVISED to support or reject, but a force that impinges upon our subjectivity, making it hard, even for those who fervently oppose it, to imagine a viable alternative.

This is an abridged version of the article of the same title that appeared in Norteamérica 12, no. 1 (2017): 137–68.

J. Asse Dayán (*) Independent Researcher, Mexico City, Mexico

Mexico’s history with neoliberalism is typical for a Third World country. Driven by a fnancial crisis and a long history of corrupt and repres- sive governments, in the late 1980s its people welcomed the neoliberal reduction of government with some enthusiasm at frst, but, after the inevitable disappointment, approached it with a kind of resignation to its inescapability. Mexico’s incorporation into world markets became offcial in 1994, with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but it had begun a few years earlier, with a process of privatization and deregulation of its main industries. Among those affected was the flm industry, which was state owned and operated, and, therefore, in need of a complete overhaul in order to comply with NAFTA’s legal requirements. This overhaul dictated that the government would be less involved in flm production, there was a reduction of screen quotas for Mexican flms, the sale of its national chain of theaters and the deregulation of ticket prices. The results of this transition are open to interpretation. Some, following neoliberal dogma, have proclaimed thesePROOF developments to be a great success, citing the industry’s overall growth, since it now occupies the fourth place worldwide in the number of screens and tickets sold. Not only did production values improve, Mexican flms also receive international acclaim. Others deem it a failure. Cinema, they claim, has become big business in Mexico, but mostly for transnational corporations that have inundated the market with Hollywood flms, leaving most Mexican flms, even those that have earned international awards, without exhibition spaces. Even graver is the fact that cinema has become just one more consumer good, accessible only to a minority of the population, and has practically given up any aspirations of expressing Mexico’s cultural diversity. Within this context, Güeros (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2014) constitutes a fascinatingREVISED example of a flm that supports both sides of this argument. A product of the Mexican neoliberal flm industry in many ways, Ruizapalacios’s flm has earned international acclaim, confrming the superior quality of today’s Mexican flms. On the other hand, Güeros offers a stark critique of the effects of neoliberalism on Mexican society, empha- sizing the social fragmentation that has left its people almost completely devoid of political agency. This critique extends to the Mexican flm industry as well, which the flm comments on through a series of episodes that subtly parody the formulaic strategies it has used to pander to its middle- and upper-class audiences, exposing it as just one more self-serving consumer industry that peddles conservative ideology as a commodity. 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 103

The Mexican Film Industry “Optimized” The award ceremony of the 2016 Arieles (Mexico’s Academy Awards) began with a speech by Mexican Minister of Culture Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, who proclaimed Mexican cinema to be in good shape. He boasted that, in 2015, 140 flms had been produced in Mexico, a number unrivalled since the Golden Age of Mexican cinema; he also praised their quality, stating that they had been awarded 450 international prizes. He then proceeded to congratulate the audience—actors, directors and flm executives—as they were, he claimed, responsible for this success. The audience clapped, presumably in agreement. Later in the broadcast, the Ariel de Oro, the Academy’s maximum honor, given in recognition of a notable career in flm, was presented to Paul Leduc, a director who came to prominence during the 1970s with a series of anti-establishment flms. After thanking the Academy, he read a speech that served as a rebuttal of Tovar y de Teresa’s optimistic assessment. He did not contradict any of his numbers, but added a few, which support a very different interpretation of the currentPROOF state of the Mexican flm industry. He began by clarifying that, of the 140 flms produced, only 46 were features, many fewer than the 80 features produced in 1945. But the more signifcant difference is that the the Mexican public actually watched flms of the Golden Age, while most of today’s productions will remain practically invisible. Cinema, he continued, is a very proftable business in Mexico, but not for Mexican flmmakers. While Mexican flm companies struggle to generate annual revenues of Mex$15 million, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures exceeded Mex$1.5 billion each, and Warner and Disney surpassed Mex$2 billion each.1 In the three preceding years, Leduc noted, overall box offce grew, but in that same period, the audience numbers for Mexican flms fell to almost half, from 30 to 18 millionREVISED tickets sold. While they win international awards, these flms are not being shown in Mexican cinemas, or broadcast on private or public TV channels. All the while, the government continues to turn a blind eye to the numerous violations of the 10% screen-time quota set for Mexican flms. This avalanche of numbers, Leduc continued, demands that we ask why this is so and who these developments beneft, concluding by asking state offcials to clarify what the cinema project is that they are trying to advance. In what amounted to a kind of schizophrenia, the crowd, composed of the same people who had applauded the now- rebutted offcial version, gave him a standing ovation. 104 J. ASSE DAYÁN

By numbers and statistics, Mexican cinema’s transition to neoliberalism is a resounding success. Mexico has the largest Spanish-language audience and the fourth-largest flm market in the world. With the multiplex system, the number of screens more than tripled between 1994 and 2011, from 1432 to 4818, and audiences more than doubled, from 82 million to 189 million (MacLaird 2013, 34). In 2015, this growth placed Mexico in fourth place worldwide in both the number of screens (Canacine 2016, 25) and in cinema tickets sold (Canacine 2016, 23). Mexican flms have improved in production resources, as the average budget per flm grew from Mex$940,000 (about US$94,000 at the time) in 2000 to Mex$22.4 million (about US$2 million) in 2012 (Sánchez 2014, Conclusion, Part 2). A “star system” has developed, with many world-renowned Mexican actors and directors working at home and in Hollywood, some even winning Oscars. And, in general, Mexico’s flm industry has gained international recognition. On the other hand, as Leduc pointed out, a problem exists with the domestic exhibition of Mexican flms. InPROOF an industry fooded with Hollywood flms, Mexican flms accounted for only 5.3% of the total box offce (Canacine 2016, 17), and most of the Mexican population (72%) do not go to movie theatres. The 28% that attend overwhelm- ingly choose to see Hollywood flms, and the Mexican flms which get screened are easily digestable genre flms which cater to the tastes of the middle and upper classes. So Leduc’s question is worth pondering: What is the point of all this growth? Is it just about economics? Or is there still a culturally signifcant national cinema project? Neoliberal ideology or the logic of the market has skewed everyone’s preferences, telling us which flms should be produced, what their content should be, where they should be exhibited and at what price.2 And the resultsREVISED seem to be clear: Mexican audiences want to see mostly Hollywood flms and maybe Mexican flms in multiplexes in affuent urban areas, in VIP theatres with food service. According to neoliberal ideology, the problem with the—lack of—exhibition of Mexican flms is simply the result of government interference: excessive production resulting from the government’s partial funding of flms that the free market has not fully approved. As soon as this interference stops, claim neoliberals, the market will reach equilibrium. Furthermore, they claim that the 72% of the Mexican people who have stopped going to theatres are not being excluded; they have just freely and rationally decided that they would rather invest their money in some other consumer good. 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 105

This percentage, say neoliberals, should be interpreted as a necessary percentage for the industry to be optimized, something akin to the natural rate of unemployment, but for consumption. And fnally, for neoliberals, economic growth is always good; it means that people are fnding more consumer satisfaction through cinema. Any other idea of what is good is an imposition of our ignorance on consumers’ freedom; there is no such thing as the public interest, there is only individual interest, and it is being maximized by the free market. In case we needed someone to spell out this answer for us, Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA at the time of the signing of NAFTA did so. After Canada obtained a cultural exemption from NAFTA to protect its flm industry3—an exemption that Mexico did not ask for—Valenti insisted that “this [debate] has nothing to do with culture. … [This] is all about the hard business of money” (Valenti, quoted in Larrea 1997, 1124). There is, of course, a different answer to the question, one that is, presumably, part of the motivation for Leduc’s speech and for the audience’s standing ovation. It hinges on the possibilityPROOF of a cinema that escapes our individual consumer decisions, more specifcally a national cinema that represents national-cultural values. Ironically, this is exactly what the 1992 Law of Cinematography—the law that spearheaded the neoliberal transition—explicitly states in its Article 14:

National cinematographic production constitutes an activity of public interest, without this undermining its commercial and industrial character, for it expresses Mexican culture and contributes to the strengthening of the bonds of national identity between the different groups that make it up. Thus, the state will foster its development in order for it to fulfll its function of strengthening the multicultural composition of the Mexican nation, throughREVISED the funds specifed by Law. (Pef, Segob 1992) Following this rationale, Mexican cinema has a serious defcit, and what- ever growth it has managed under neoliberal policies has not been in the right direction. The “multicultural composition of the Mexican nation” cannot be strengthened by the myriad of Hollywood flms shown in our cinemas, or by the fve percent of Mexican flms that do get seen, when they are seen by—and flmed for—only 28% of the population. And so, there appears to be a political confict between the Mexican government’s cultural objectives and the conditions stipulated by NAFTA. However, despite appearances, not much confict exists at all. 106 J. ASSE DAYÁN

Article 14 is nothing more than a bit of demagoguery planted in the middle of an utterly neoliberal law. All the articles in the law which determine the material conditions of the industry obey neoliberal dogma.4 The only provision of the law that infringes on the free market is funding for national productions, and it is actually a reduction over previous levels; but, more importantly, it is ultimately ineffectual when it is not matched by legislation to guarantee the flms’ proper exhibition. Furthermore, the Mexican government does not seem to be motivated for renegotiations of NAFTA or trying to obtain a cultural exemption. Perhaps more important than the question of whether a confict exists between Mexico’s government and NAFTA’s conditions is whether the Mexican people oppose their government’s policies on cinema. After so many years of neoliberalism, is there still a national culture that we want protected from international capital? Would we be willing to trust our government with this protection? And if we did, and if it did resolve the problems of flm exhibition, would the content of Mexican productions be substantially different—less conservative—fromPROOF the current content? And if it were, how many of us would go and watch them? In other words, do we still have a cultural identity that is substantially different from the one we have been consuming from Hollywood and other international cultural outlets for so many years? Or have we been colonized for too long? And, of course, then the diffcult question arises of who is the “we” in this series of questions. The aforementioned schizophrenia displayed by the audience at the Arieles might serve as a perfect metaphor for the ideological questions just posed. The fact that Leduc’s speech refuted Tovar y de Teresa’s does not necessarily mean that the applause for either of them was insincere. The audience reaction to Leduc was more enthusiastic, probably responding to a more effusive,REVISED nationalistic sentiment, but the one for Tovar y de Teresa jibed more with their work and their lives in a neoliberal national economy, in a neoliberal world order from which the Mexican flm industry does not really know the way out—institutionally, or even in our own imaginations.

Güeros I now turn my attention to the analysis of Güeros so as to show how it is a ftting illustration of the quandary that the Mexican flm industry fnds itself in. Before I undertake a flm analysis, it will be useful to briefy describe its production, reception and plot, in order to situate the flm analysis within the structure of this essay. 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 107

Like most recent Mexican flms, Güeros is a coproduction, fnanced in part by private enterprise, in this case, Catatonia Films, a small Mexican production company with fve full-length flms to its credit. The flm project was also supported with public funds, through Conaculta (the Mexican equivalent of a Ministry of Culture), and Difusión Cultural UNAM, the cultural arm of the same university whose strike is portrayed in the flm, and which opened its campus for the flm to be shot on location. Even with all three entities chipping in, the flm’s budget was a modest Mex$2,240,0005 (slightly under US$200,000 at the time of production). It is the frst feature flm by Alonso Ruizpalacios, who cowrote the flm script together with Gibrán Portela. The flm enjoyed a solid reception. It was frst screened at the Berlinale in March 2014, and continued on the festival circuit until March 2015, when it was released in Mexico on 48 screens across 32 cities (Imcine 2016, 86).6 Well liked by Mexico’s cultural elites, it became the Mexican flm with the largest audience at the National Cinematheque in 2015 (Imcine 2016, 96). Although it won more prizes than any otherPROOF Mexican flm in 2014, a total of 16 international awards and fve Arieles, including best picture, it did not manage to draw large audiences outside the arthouse cinema circuits. Güeros sold a total of 55,530 tickets and grossed Mex$2,479,145 (less than US$200,000), placing it in twenty-fourth place of Mexican flms in 2015 (Imcine 2016, 72). The flm was distributed in six countries, including the United States, where it grossed a very modest US$60,000. It is out on DVD and Blu-Ray and also available on Netfix Mexico. Güeros centers on a character, nicknamed Sombra (Spanish for shadow), who is a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, in the midst of a student strike in reaction to theREVISED government’s plans to begin charging tuition. He lives with fellow student Santos and is visited by his younger brother, Tomás, from the coastal state of Veracruz. He fnds his brother and Santos in a kind of paralysis. Sombra is in love with Ana, an upper-class student who is very involved in the strike and has a radio program in the striking students’ radio station. Sombra, Santos, Tomás and eventually Ana decide to look for Epigmenio Cruz, an obscure rock and roll fgure from the 1960s who Tomás listens to obsessively, as his father did before him. Their quest to fnd him takes them on a tour of Mexico City that passes through a lower-class neighborhood, where they have a potentially dangerous encounter; a student assembly at the university, where Ana joins them; an upscale party populated by the very hip community of artists 108 J. ASSE DAYÁN and intellectuals; the neighboring town of Texcoco, where they fnally fnd and talk to Epigmenio Cruz; and fnally, back to Mexico City, where they fnd themselves in the middle of a student protest. Their encounter with Epigmenio is the climax of the flm. After Epigmenio angrily refuses to autograph Tomás’s audio cassette, Sombra explains who they are and why they have come for him, an introspective speech that reveals the healing effects that the road trip has had on him; he now appears ready to move again. Later, in the car, he and Ana talk about the preju- dices that have kept them from coming together and fnally kiss. Back in Mexico City, the group fnds itself in the middle of a student demonstration. Ana immediately gets out of the car and joins it; after some hesita- tion, Sombra does too.

Why Güeros? While Güeros is not a typical “neoliberal flm,” it is, nonetheless, a neoliberal flm in many ways: it clearly targets PROOFa sophisticated middle- and upper-class audience; it is crafted as an auteur flm featuring black and white cinematography reminiscent of the French New Wave; it ran the international art flm festival circuit; its protagonists are middle class and educated; it is genre cinema that falls between light-hearted comedy and romance. However, Güeros is a neoliberal flm that is aware of its own condition and struggling to transcend it. This struggle is manifested in two ways. First, its narrative attempts to criticize neoliberal policy and its effects on Mexican society. Its focus on the state of mind of its protagonists, rather than on the actual political struggle, serves to illustrate the all-important ideological effects of neoliberalism. Secondly, through a series of self-referential episodes, the flm seeks to address the state of the MexicanREVISED flm industry, its recent neoliberal malaise, and its own place within it.

Looking for Epigmenio Cruz: From the 1960s Political Rebellion to the 1990s Political Paralysis The central topic of Güeros is political agency in Mexico in the time of neoliberalism. The plot is set against the student strike, but the flm’s real focus is not the political struggle, but the students’ state of mind. That is to say, it is not about the fght against neoliberalism as policy—an outside entity—but against neoliberalism as ideology, 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 109 the enemy within, existing in the mind of each member of a society that has lived under it for so long. The flm portrays disagreements among the students. These range from divergences about the goals of the strike—while some want to concentrate on very specifc demands regarding the university, others want to turn it into a broader social movement—to divisions rooted in class and gender—when Ana gives a speech at the students assembly, she is subjected to shouts of “shut up you classist bitch!” and “striptease!” The main focus is on Sombra and Santos, who seem to have internalized these fragmentations of the student body and fnd themselves paralyzed in many ways: despite their support for the strike—they do not attend the student protests; in Sombra’s words, they are “on strike from the strike.” Sombra is in love with Ana, but does nothing about it. They are supposed to work on their dissertations, but instead Sombra steadily presses the “delete” key on his dissertation fle. And they never leave their apartment; they sit around trying—and failing—to learn to do magic tricks and watching Big Brother on TV. Santos even has a BartlebyPROOF moment: when asked by Tomás why he doesn’t just change universities, he replies, “I’d prefer not to.” Sombra is doing even worse; all this stasis is having an effect on him, as he has frequent panic attacks, for which he is prescribed—in true neoliberal fashion—a vacation: “Go to the beach with your girlfriend.” Escape, don’t engage. The whole country appears to be feeling the debilitating effects of neoliberalism. In Veracruz, Tomás’s mother has to work as a seamstress—presumably sewing clothing that will end up being exported to the US—so she has no time to watch him; the last straw of his bad behavior is when he tosses water-flled balloons at a mother and baby from the roof of his house. In Texcoco, a different group of kids emulateREVISED this behavior by tossing bricks from a bridge; as in Tomás’s case, their parents are nowhere to be found. All around, the family appears to have disintegrated—Ana cannot talk to her parents, and Sombra only talks to his mother when he needs money—and no other social structure is there to pick up the pieces; the state is nowhere to be found and everyone is left to his or her own devices. The only presence of a state offcial is a cop who signals at Sombra and Santos to stop. But cops are not to be trusted, and as they try to get away from him, a wrong turn of the wheel takes them into a bad neighborhood where the unknown awaits—one of the consequences of marginalization and social fragmentation. 110 J. ASSE DAYÁN

A clue to the roots of Sombra and Santos’s paralysis is shown via a recurring piece of idle conversation. It is on the topic of breakfast: after embarking on a brief catalogue of the different types of breakfast there are—English, Mexican, student breakfast—they come to “continental breakfast,” which sparks some anger in Santos, who gripes, “What the fuck are they talking about? What continent? It’s like saying that it’s the breakfast of people over there. Who are they over there? And who are we here?” The so-called continental breakfast is a product of capitalism and urbanization. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as people moved into cities and took jobs that required less physical stamina, the full, calorie-flled breakfast was replaced by a light continental breakfast. It is unclear if the flm is making symbolic use of this somewhat obscure origin, but even if it is not, their annoyed reaction still remains from being subjected to a classifcation that comes from elsewhere and makes little sense to them. Similar complaints appear in the context of the strike, when their road trip accidentally takes them to the university and they are not allowed intoPROOF the assembly until a friend vouches for them and lets them in; a discussion ensues about the exclu- sivity of the strike, and how certain groups seem to think they own it. Sombra and Santos’s malaise seems to spring from a sense of social fragmentation and the subsequent impossibility of creating a truly collective movement, rendering any possible social activism ineffectual. This theme is emphasized by the flm’s title. Literally translated, the term “güero” means “blonde,” but it is widely used to refer to people of higher social class, regardless of their hair and skin color. That is why Santos gets angry when a security guard at a party calls them “güeros,” even though only Tomás has light hair, and Sombra is in fact very dark skinned. This stagnant situation is fnally alleviated by two events. First is Tomás’s arrivalREVISED from Veracruz. He represents a younger, more active Sombra. He still listens to Epigmenio Cruz, like Sombra and their father used to, an indication that Sombra’s paralysis is the result of a process that has slowly eaten away at his formerly idealistic self. Tomás is constantly pressuring Sombra and Santos to leave the apartment, particularly when he fnds out that Epigmenio is dying alone in a hospital. They still will not budge, and it is not until the second mobilizing event—their neighbor coming after them after realizing they were stealing electricity from him—that they are fnally forced to leave. It is then that the flm 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 111 changes from stasis to road trip; even the camera is visibly shaken by the movements. The road trip is a quest to fnd Epigmenio, who represents the the 1968 student movement, and acts in the flm as both a symbol of social protest in light of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and bridging the 1968 movement with the 1999 strike. The young characters listen to Epigmenio’s music on an old Walkman, and all we hear is the grind of the gears as they rotate the cassette tape. He remains idealized, just as 1968 has. No actual music could have lived up to the obscure fgure who “could have changed Mexican rock and roll forever” and who, “they say, made Bob Dylan cry.” But while the search for him symbolizes their own search for political agency, there is an ironic element in their relationship to the 1968 movement. While the 1968 protesters demanded more freedom from an oppressive government, their 1999 counterparts advocated for the government to remain involved in keeping education free and public. The 1960s youth movement’s individualistic spirit played into the hands of neoliberalism, and, ironically, today’sPROOF paralysis might be, in some small part, the result of yesterday’s rebellion. By the time they fnd Epigmenio in a lonely Texcoco saloon, their experiences and the act of moving itself seem to have had a healing effect on Sombra. Predictably, Epigmenio is a complete disappointment, but this event shows how much Sombra has come to understand. After Tomás (young Sombra) is dismissed by Epigmenio, Sombra takes charge, with a determination that we have not seen before, as he gives the climactic speech of the flm. He introduces himself as Federico, using his real name, and tells him that they have come because for the last six months he has not been able to sleep or to leave his apartment. They used to listen to his music with their father, but back then he did not understandREVISED his lyrics; now he does. He understands what his father understood, “that in life you’ll run into a bunch of assholes who don’t understand anything, that can’t see beyond the surfaces. … but that as long as you have that, as long as you can see beyond the surface, then no one can take that away from you, that feeling.” His speech continues, saying that his father used to say that if the world is a train station, poets are not the ones coming and going, but the ones who stay behind watching the trains leave, and that he, Epigmenio, is one of those poets who watches the trains leave. What is it that turned Sombra into Federico? Given the run-up to the encounter, it seems to be the flm’s 112 J. ASSE DAYÁN proposed solution to the political paralysis afficting Mexican society, and an answer to the question regarding the relationship of today’s political activism with the activism of 1968. But Sombra’s speech sounds a lot more poetic than political. It is more about witnessing than doing, about protecting an inner part of ourselves from what is going on outside. So, in the end, is Güeros just another neoliberal conservative flm that prompts us into retreating from collective action and into personal growth? It certainly is not a revolutionary flm pointing the way toward engaging in a specifc social movement, but it is not conservative either, just very modest in its progressive political ambitions. So Sombra’s speech is political after all, and aimed at those who do recognize the tragic consequences of neoliberalism, and it is an appeal not to despair—or to despair, but not fall into paralysis because no solution seems to be in sight. So, if Güeros is not a revolutionary flm, it promotes witnessing and staying alert; if it is not a recipe for political revolution, at least it is a sign to not give up completely. Perhaps this answer had already been given to us, muchPROOF earlier, when Sombra asks Tomás why they should go and look for Epigmenio, to which Tomás replies, “Because no one else will.” The end of the flm seems to validate this reading. In the car ride back to Mexico City, Sombra and Ana start to kiss, a personal reward for Sombra’s reactivation; but when they fnd themselves in the middle of a student protest, Ana gets out of the car and joins it without waiting for Sombra to go with her. He hesi- tates, but fnally enters the march as well. The message here could be that romantic love was never the ultimate goal of Sombra’s journey; but regaining his political mobility was.

REVISEDGüeros as a Meta-ci nematic Commentary on the Mexican Film Industry As mentioned above, Güeros engages neoliberalism in two ways. The frst is by representing its paralyzing effects on political agency, and the second, to which I now turn, is through a series of self-referential episodes that aim at commenting on the current state of Mexican flm industry and on Güeros’s own place within it. In what follows, I will try to show that this self-referentiality is closely linked to Güeros’s political ambitions. A flm that wants to address social fragmentation but is only going to be watched by one of those fragments has a basic problem. Güeros is—as it had to be in order to exist—a flm aimed at the social elites, and so, 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 113 in a certain way, it is part of the problem. As such, it has the need to be refexive about itself, about the audience watching it and about the flm industry that it is part of. This is achieved partly through a couple of self-referential episodes, and partly through a constant interplay with some of the genres that have become typical of contemporary neoliberal Mexican cinema. This interplay begins in the very frst scene. The frst character to appear on camera is a hysterical woman, pleading with her baby to stop crying. As the phone keeps ringing, she is frantically putting clothes inside a suitcase and getting ready to leave. As she hits the street, we can see she has a black eye. But, as we—the audience—start to get ready for what seems to be an intense domestic-violence melodrama, a water-flled balloon falls from the sky and hits the baby right on the head. The point of view of the camera then switches, and we watch from above as Tomás is dismayed by having hit the baby. We then follow Tomás as he tries to get away, and the mother and baby are never heard from again in the flm, except for a brief moment, when SombraPROOF asks him what happened to the baby, to which he dismissingly replies, “He’s fne.” With this switch, the flm tells us, right from the beginning, that there is something it does not want to be. By doing so, it manages two things: frst, to insert itself as a flm into the universe of topics that it wants to address, and second, it launches what will be a constant dialogue with flm genres, through which it will manage to talk about the Mexican flm industry and its recent vices. In this frst episode of this dialogue, what matters is the typicality of the situation portrayed: the crying baby, the battered mother, the hysteria of the situation accentuated by the ringing phone, which seems formulaic, just as Mexican cinema has become in recent times.7 A secondREVISED episode of this interplay deals with the “citizenship of fear.”8 It begins when, during their road trip, Sombra takes a wrong turn and quickly ends up in a bad neighborhood. When they come to a dead end and want to back up, a group of lower-class youngsters who had been playing football on the street, block their way. Sombra immediately mut- ters, “Nooo,” in a fatalistic tone of voice that conveys that this was to be expected—a flm typical situation. But the situation takes an unexpected turn. One of the youngsters “offers” to help them fnd the main road if they give him a lift, but before they have a chance to answer he unlocks the door and gets in the car. Throughout the ride, the camera focuses closely on Sombra’s nervous face, with the youngster blurred in the background. 114 J. ASSE DAYÁN

In a sardonic tone of voice, the youngster asks Tomás: “What is it güerito [diminutive for güero], are you really afraid of me?” and laughs. He then tells them that his friends were going to kill them, adding, “What do you think about that?” But, despite the veiled violence in his tone, he only asks them to buy a round of beers. As he forces them to drink, he watches somewhat incredulously and giggles, as if surprised by his own power over them. As they fnish the frst round, and he goes to the store to get the second, Sombra, Santos and Tomás frantically escape, leaving him behind. Afterwards, Tomás is upset and needs to vomit, so Sombra tries to calm him down by telling him that the youngster was only trying to make friends. When Tomás stares at him in disbelief, Sombra shrugs and says, “Well, maybe.” As an audience we are not sure what to make of this episode. The lower-class youngster was obviously not trying to make friends, but he was not that menacing either; he was quite skinny and unarmed. The real force at play here was middle-class fear of the lower classes. The flm is careful not to interpret the violence encountered,PROOF cleverly creating a contrast with the recent subgenre of flms that exploit the politics of fear, thus pointing a fnger, once again, at the social fragmentation that is behind these formulaic expressions of panic. Then there are two explicitly self-referential moments. First, when they go to the university for the student assembly, one of their fellow students suddenly asks Santos, “What do you think about the script of the movie?” We then see the clacker and flm crew as he replies, “Frankly I don’t like it, as I’ve told you many times before. It’s just a chase movie, and what I don’t understand is how it is that you guys are the heroes.” Later, at a very posh party in a room full of very hip, pretentious and affuent young people, apparently artists, we overhear conversations about flm REVISEDfestivals and complaints about how Mexico is viewed abroad. Ana is welcomed by her upper-class fellows but Sombra, Santos and Tomás are ignored and decide to step outside. Once outside, Sombra rants about Mexican cinema: “Fucking Mexican cinema. They grab a bunch of beggars, shoot in black and white, and say they’re making art flms. And the fucking directors, not satisfed with the humiliation of the Spanish Conquest, now go to the Old World and tell French critics that our country is full of pigs, derelicts, diabetics, sellouts, thieves, frauds, traitors, drunks, and whoremongers with inferiority complexes.” Santos replies that Mexico is full of all that, and Sombra agrees, but complains that if they are going to humiliate us, they should do it with their own 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 115 money and not with public funds. Tomás then asks, “Have you seen the flm?,” clearly referring to Güeros itself. These two episodes serve the purpose of destroying the world of fction that the flm created, and getting the audience to think about Güeros as a product of the Mexican flm industry. Sombra’s rant serves as a complaint about an industry seemingly dominated by rich hipsters who use Mexico as a commodity to be packaged and sold to European audiences. But the rant is not meant to put Güeros above the fray; on the contrary, the reference to shooting in black and white, as Güeros is, is there to make sure it is included as a flm that uses public funds and premieres at international flm festivals. Moreover, Oso’s stated displeasure with the script, and particularly with its choice of heroes, points to an industry that invariably hails the middle class as the privileged witnesses of our times, even when they are represented by a couple of lazy youngsters who steal electricity from their neighbors. But more important than putting down the flm industry—or the flm itself as part of it—is what the mere presencePROOF of these references— hopefully—achieves: to see us—the spectators—as part of the problem. Sombra, Santos, Tomás and Ana are very likeable characters with whom the audience is meant to identify, and despite the contrast established with the hipsters at the posh party, they are repeatedly—to their dismay—called “güeros.” On one occasion, when a security guard (a member of the lower class) calls them “güeros,” Santos gets agitated and complains to him about this designation, pointing at Sombra, who is very dark skinned, and asks him if he is a güero. Very matter-of-factly, the guard answers, “Yes, he is.” And he is right; socially and culturally speaking, if we are inside a cinema or projected on the screen, we all are; and, as long as that is the case, neoliberalism will succeed in its reduction of cinema to one more consumer good, utterly incapableREVISED of articulating any kind of cultural expression that could seriously challenge it.

Conclusions More than just a set of policies, neoliberalism is an ideology that affects the subjectivity of those living under it. After almost 40 years of neoliberal hegemony, a growing minority has begun to realize that its market “equilibriums” are not really optimal for the majority of the people. Its confation of citizen and consumer has fragmented society and done away with any kind of collective ethos, leaving people in a state 116 J. ASSE DAYÁN of extreme precariousness and political isolation. And yet, reversing the course is a diffcult proposition, as neoliberal ideology has made any alternative hard to even imagine. The case of the Mexican flm industry is a prime example of this. From 1988 to 1994, it underwent a complete overhaul to comply with NAFTA’s neoliberal dictums. Formerly state owned and operated, cinema underwent a process of privatization and deregulation. The effective exclusion of the majority of Mexican people from its cinemas is one more element contributing to the further stratifcation of society, by extending the marginalization of the lower classes from the economic realm to the cultural and political. And yet, despite some discordant voices, the material conditions of the industry prevent any real change, as production and exhibition of flms hinges upon them being fnancially approved by the market. Güeros is a good illustration of this situation. Anti-neoliberal in spirit, it elaborates its critique from within a neoliberal shell, the result is an interesting paradox that refects and comments on the Mexican flm industry and itself, in an attempt to recognizePROOF its own limits as a “neoliberal flm” and to point the fnger at the defciencies of the flm industry. If not a revolutionary flm, Güeros is both a sign of a growing consciousness about the ill effects of neoliberalism on Mexican society and its flm industry, and an illustration of the very effective limits that neoliberalism and its free market imposes on any kind of expression of dissent.

Notes 1. Actually, his fgures fell short of reality. The 2015 Canacine report boasts about a new box-offce record attained by Universal, with over Mex$3 billion, followed by Fox at Mex$2.8 billion and Paramount and Disney slightlyREVISED over Mex$2 billion. 2. This is addressed more extensively in the original version of this article. 3. MacLaird reports that this exemption never made much of a difference, as Canada suffers the same imbalance in distribution as Mexico (2013, 36). 4. This is addressed more extensively in the original version of this article. 5. As reported in the Diario Ofcial de la Federación, Mexico’s offcial national gazette, found online at http://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle. php?codigo 5383762&fecha 27/02/2015. = = 6. This is not a high number, considering that there are more than 100 cities in Mexico with populations of 100,000 or more. 7. This is addressed more extensively in the original version of this article. 8. A term coined in Sánchez Prado (2006). 6 GÜEROS: SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION, POLITICAL AGENCY … 117

Works Cited Anuario Estadístico de Cine Mexicano 2015. 2016. Imcine. Mexico City. Larrea, Therese Anne. 1997. “Eliminate the Cultural Industries Exemption from NAFTA.” Santa Clara Law Review 37 (4): 1107–50. MacLaird, Misha. 2013. Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Poder Ejecutivo de la Federación, Secretaría de Gobernación (PEF, SEGOB). 1992. “Ley Federal de Cinematografía.” Diario Ofcial de la Federación, December 29, 1992. http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/ref/lfc/ LFC_orig_29dic92_ima.pdf. “Resultados defnitivos 2015.” 2016. Canacine. http://canacine.org.mx/ wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Resultados-Defnitivos-2015-ATI-1-1.pdf. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. 2006. “Amores perros: Exotic Violence and Neoliberal Fear.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 15 (1): 39–57. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. 2014. Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema, 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbilt UniversityPROOF Press. Kindle.

REVISED CHAPTER 7

Negotiating Neoliberal Demands on Contemporary Cinema: The Role and Infuence of the Socially Committed Film Producer in Peru

Sarah BarrowPROOF

The range of new opportunities available to Latin American flmmakers since the late 1990s has enabled the renaissance, stabilization and fourishing of production in many countries of that region and advanced the worldwide recognition of their work.1 Film festivals, government departments and multimedia conglomerates across the world have become important sources of support for Latin American flmmakers. However, these opportunities, interventions and contributions have often entailed compromises in artistic, logistical or thematic terms which have led to new formsREVISED of hierarchy and power structures. Indeed, each one brings with it an increasingly complex scenario involving multiple partners with their own needs, requirements, commitments and mission statements. Some of these are linked to ideological agendas, while others are borne out of philanthropic motivations, and others still are part of broader cultural strategies at pan-regional level. There have been several excellent

S. Barrow (*) University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 119 C. Sandberg and C. Rocha (eds.), Contemporary Latin American Cinema, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9_7 120 S. BARROW studies on the funding mechanisms supporting the development of flm production in contemporary Latin America.2 Investigations have explored the impact that coproduction and supranational funding initiatives have had on the flm industries of Latin America in the twenty-frst century and have started to address the relationship between flms and their European audiences, encouraged by the profts generated by titles such as Amores perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2001) and Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2002).3 As yet, the specifc role played by the Latin America-based producer in rooting out and exploiting such sources for national and regional cinema remains largely overlooked.4 This chapter focuses on the role of the contemporary cinematic producer based in Latin America, especially those who have chosen to develop more socially committed flms. I argue that their role has become more crucial than ever to the progress made by the flm industries of the region within an economic, cultural and political landscape framed by neoliberal discourses and practices that have been dominant since the 1990s when, according to Nick Couldry,PROOF they tended to be imposed as a condition of multilateral external fnance (2010, vi). The chapter draws attention to what I term the “contemporary committed” cinema producer as a highly collaborative and intermediary fgure, fundamental to addressing and fxing issues of access, agency and diversity, as well as to navigating the increasingly complex terrain of private enterprise, competition and the free market. The following case studies have been taken from Peru, where recognition of the signifcant contribution of the producer remains largely neglected amidst a context where the prominent flm critics are still primarily infuenced by the spirit of André Bazin’s formulation of the auteur theory that “acknowledges the director’s authorship as a frst step towards recognizing cinema as an art form”REVISED (Lewis 2016, 4).5 It is also a nation where neoliberal politics and economic policies have had a profound impact on culture and its funding, in particular during and since the regime of President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). As Couldry has observed: “neoliberalism took root as the rationale behind a particular interpretation of the 1970s global economic crisis and policy responses to it [… which …] authorised a quite different approach to politics and economics which saw market competition as their common practical and normative reference point, with state intervention in the economy now the aberration” (Couldry 2010, 4). David Harvey, in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, expressed the belief that the world has experienced “an emphatic turn 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 121 towards neoliberalism in political-economic practices and thinking since the 1970s” (2005, 2). He further noted that, according to neoliberal theory, state interventions in markets should be reduced as much as possible because it was thought that the state simply could not “possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own beneft” (2). Couldry’s approach provides a useful framework for understanding the consequences of the shift in approach to cinema legislation, policy and funding that occurred in the mid-1990s in Peru under Fujimori when the protectionist system that had been introduced in 1972, with guaranteed funding and screenings for Peruvian flmmakers who met certain published criteria, was repealed. It was replaced by the more market-oriented Cinema Law 26270 which set up a new system of funding competitions for flm project developments and promised to develop associated projects in flm education, preservation and promotion. However, funding available to supportPROOF these objectives was extremely limited and the legislation resulted in conditions that forced flmmakers to compete directly with Hollywood imports without the level of resources and political support that those productions enjoyed. Moreover, by the time the new legislation was fully ratifed in 1994, plans for US-fnanced and US-programmed multiplex cinemas in affuent areas of Lima were underway, audience demographics had shifted almost entirely to the middle and upper classes, and flmmaking by Peruvian citizens had all but ground to a halt (Bedoya and León Frias 1994, 110). While the main case study of this chapter focuses on the work and infuence of Enid “Pinky” Campos, producer of some of the most signifcant award-winning productions to have been made in Peru in recent years, it is REVISEDimportant to take into account the work of Stefan Kaspar, the Swiss-born founding producer of the Peruvian flm collective Grupo Chaski which was founded in 1982 during the period when the protectionist cinema legislation was bearing fruit. Kaspar had studied literature and communications in Berne, and in 1978 he made his frst trip to Peru to research the theme of internal migration. The Grupo Chaski was formed by Kaspar with fellow flmmakers Marita Barea, Fernando Barreto, Fernando Espinoza and Alejandro Legaspi, Susana Pastor and René Weber, and grew to over sixty members by the late 1980s.6 Their work, in documentary, fction, feature and short form, contained clear traces of the militant, revolutionary socialist legacy of the broader 122 S. BARROW

New Latin American Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s; indeed, they shared with that movement “a commitment to making flms with and for a marginalized community and a desire to alter mainstream commercial flmmaking practices” (McClennen 2008). Like the other groups within that movement based in Argentina, Brazil and Cuba, they set out to distinguish their practices from the hierarchical structures that they perceived as common in Hollywood and in auteur cinema, and to approach projects in a much more collaborative, community-oriented way. Grupo Chaski worked within the context of a protectionist cinema policy that had been developed in the 1960s and was introduced in 1972 as part of the ambitions of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces whose agenda was not concerned with maintaining the power and wealth of the economic elite, but with appealing more broadly to the masses in order to secure ongoing electoral support and control.7 While Chaski refused to depend on the Peruvian state for direct resources, the group did beneft from the infrastructure developments of the 1970s and the renewed appetite for local cinema. Kaspar’sPROOF own European connections were undoubtedly useful in terms of securing collaborations with media companies such as the German television channel ZDF. The group also received funding from international charitable and philanthropic agencies such as UNESCO. Two decades later, Campos’s position as intermediary between the increasingly neoliberal competitive funding environment and a new generation of flmmakers keen to make their mark on a global scale holds resonances with predecessors working under different circumstances while also providing a new model for understanding and appreciating the value of the producer in early twenty-frst century Latin American cinema more generally. The flms that Campos has produced include Paloma deREVISED papel (Fabrizio Aguilar, 2003), Días de Santiago (Josué Méndez, 2004), NN (Héctor Gálvez, 2014) and Climas (Enrica Pérez, 2014), as well as Madeinusa (2006), the frst feature by acclaimed director Claudia Llosa who put her country on the cinematic map by winning the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2009 with the flm La teta asustada. All these titles have achieved success and praise from critics, audiences and investors from within and beyond national borders, and have been noted for their distinctive blend of globally recognizable themes and styles with local cultural references.8 Paloma de papel, Días de Santiago and Madeinusa are included in the library of flms with socially engaging themes and subject matter that the Grupo Chaski has established as part 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 123 of its more recent Microcine network project across Peru.9 As Miriam Ross has noted, with this initiative, Kaspar ensured that the Grupo Chaski continued to engage with “responsible cinema” in Peru and in 2003 decided to take advantage of digital change in order to “bring about opportunities for improvement in the areas of Latin American cinema that have historically had the greatest weaknesses” (Ross 2008). The points of contact between Kaspar and Campos transcend their mutual interest in socially engaged flms in that the Microcine project, while being part of the work of a non-proft organization with no commercial aims, exists only due to the efforts of its founders to secure investment from highly competitive sources such as Rotterdam’s Film Festival’s Hubert Bals Fund. Kaspar, as a seasoned producer, was a highly skilled negotiator and networker who recognized the urgent need to focus on alternative forms of distribution, and brought these skills to bear for the beneft of all the Grupo Chaski projects. While Campos’s working environment has been more overtly commercial, she has a determined social commitmentPROOF that is evident through her flm work and other projects.10 Having experienced the Fujimori era as a young person, she entered feature flmmaking in the early years of the twenty-frst century at the end of a period when the domestic funding and support for national cinema that had been decimated in 1994 had started to recover and new transnational opportunities had emerged. Like many of her generation of cineastes, she studied communications at the University of Lima and had ambitions of becoming a flm director herself. Instead, she frst became assistant director in a publicity company and now pursues a “portfolio career” between cinema, theatre and advertising that provides the fexibility, networks and access to resources to enable her to get involved in projects about which she is passionate.REVISED Whereas observers such as John Hartley have described creative workers as comprising of small dispersed groups that form a precarious and casualized workforce, have little bargaining power and are more and more reliant on international factors “so that individual workers see little common cause with each other” (Hartley 2005, 22), it is suggested here that those international determinants—whether investment events, exhibition circuits, producer networks or awards events—are precisely the points where intermediaries such as Campos fnd their common cause and negotiate their way through the constraints of neoliberalism. The increased opportunities afforded by cheaper travel, transnational funding initiatives and digital communication technologies have enabled 124 S. BARROW

Campos and her contemporaries to come together as collaborators and develop a common platform for their work as socially committed producers. It is already clear from her choice of projects during her frst decade as a flm producer that she aligns herself with other committed Latin American producers of her own and previous generations. Campos has this in common with the formidable Lita Stantic from Argentina who, as Constanza Burucúa observes, has produced “a cinema of untold stories, of alternative points of view, of defant approaches to a continually changing reality” (2016, 215). Campos’s flms challenge audiences to be critically aware of the neoliberal environment that continues to create divisions between the various communities of Peru. When interviewed in summer 2016 for the purposes of this chapter, Campos was keen to emphasize that she chooses projects that she feels are “important for Peru,” and selects her directors carefully on the basis of shared values and passions. She told this author that, in keeping with her training, she considers cinema to be a vital form of communication and critique and that she prefers “storiesPROOF that have to be told, that are less commercial and that have a legacy for Peru.”11 This can be seen clearly in two of her frst choices, Paloma de papel (as production manager, with $90 k production budget) and Días de Santiago (as full producer, with $35 k budget) which, with their focus on remembering aspects of the confict with Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),12 offer powerful examples of fction cinema that have played “an infuential and controversial role in shaping a sense of collective identity [… examples that are] vital in their provision of diverse representations of landmark events of national concern which draw attention to the fractured and fragmented nature of such experiences” (Barrow 2014). Given the subject matter of at least two of her subsequent projects, it might be argued that this approachREVISED of narrating and memorializing one of the most signifcant conficts of contemporary Latin American history through developing cinema of quality with social purpose has become a hallmark for this producer. NN (Héctor Gálvez 2014), for example, was described by reviewers as a somber drama which considers “the long-term consequences of violent political repression through the lens of those professionals tasked with exhuming and (hopefully) identifying torture/ assassination victims found decades later in mass graves” (Harvey, 2015). Similarly, Magallanes (Salvador del Solar, 2015), for which Campos worked as producer in the development and shooting stages, adopts the thriller format to show how the sins of the past might force a painful 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 125 reckoning in the present. This award-winning flm, whose director is at the time of writing Peru’s Minister for Culture, follows a cab driver’s attempt to right a past injustice through desperate criminal acts. In keeping with the three flms already outlined, Magallanes offers a narrative about the persistence of old wounds and the elusive quest for some form of redemption stemming from personal and political abuses of the past. Together, this body of work reveals the social commitment of a producer in the relatively early stages of her career who has already made a profound impact on the ecology of flm production in Peru (Figure 7.1). Unlike predecessors such as Stantic and Kaspar, Campos has embraced and negotiated the more commercial aspects of flm production that have helped her to thrive in a more neoliberal context than they had to face. She has learnt how to maximize the benefts of the contacts, mentoring and work methods she has acquired from her experiences in advertising and used those to develop her own system as an effective flm producer. With her early experience on Días de Santiago, she learnt about working with very low budgets to produce a flmPROOF that nevertheless attracted worldwide attention. Attendance through those flms at festivals such as Rotterdam and Cannes has given rise to frst-hand experience and knowledge of initiatives linked to the distribution and marketing of flms in the early digital age. Then, through working on the development stages

REVISED

Fig. 7.1 Cab driver Damien in Magallanes (Salvador del Solar, 2015) 126 S. BARROW of Llosa’s Madeinusa, she picked up crucial frst-hand knowledge of the intricacies and nuances of major transnational funding schemes such as Ibermedia and the complexities of negotiating coproduction deals with Spanish government and television sources. Like another prominent Peruvian flmmaker, Armando Robles Godoy (1932–2010), whose out- spoken advocacy contributed to the development of the frst national cinema law of 1972, Campos has used her profle to become involved in the local politics of flm and to be part of the campaign for a new cinema law that fully recognizes the need for diversity of opportunity, facilitates coproductions with other countries and takes into account the proliferation of digital platforms and other advances.13 Within the neoliberal context in which Campos operates, she has picked up via negotiations of coproduction deals that the frst sign of confdence in a project tends to be established as a result of investment from the state from which the flmmakers hails. This has been the case with one of her current projects: Contactado (Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás 2016), a drama set in Peru and Venezuela aboutPROOF fake prophets and religious cults in Latin America, was among six out of sixty-seven fction feature applicants to succeed in the 2016 round of Peru’s flm competition, managed by the Ministry of Culture’s audiovisual division. Armed with $150,000 from this annual fund, whose jury appreciated its unusual topic, the project further secured a similar amount from Ibermedia, thereby covering around half of its total production budget of $600,000. Another of her current projects, comedy-drama Ronnie Monroy ama a todas (Josué Méndez, 2016), was one of the remaining fve winners of the feature flm award fund, praised by the jury for its original script and potential to portray a fractured masculine identity, harking back to some of the distinctive features of the director and producer’s frst project together.14REVISED A recent project that serves as a case study which shows how Campos has managed to align socially committed ambitions at the same time as working within and exploiting neoliberal structures in the Peruvian flm world is La deuda, released in 2015 as a Peruvian/US/Spanish coproduction, directed by the Peruvian-based US flmmaker Barney Elliott and which brought Campos, as one of the coproducers for Peru, into contact with a much more mainstream approach to cinema. Through its storyline and protagonists, the flm provides a blunt critique of neoliberal economics and postcolonial power structures, offering a cinematic work that—echoing Ignacio Sánchez Prado—performs and resists “the 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 127 cultural values and implications of the neoliberal process” (2014, 7). As Dona Kercher notes, “the multiple sites of co-production are the thematic vortexes of the fnancial manipulations dating from 1968 to the present examined in the movie” (2017). More broadly, and aligning with David Harvey once more, the neoliberal policies that infuence the geographies and the temporalities through which individuals imagine their relationship to struggle are brought to the fore in this flm. La deuda is set against the backdrop of an international fnance deal with profound social implications. A wealthy North American business- man, Oliver (played by award-winning Hollywood actor Stephen Dorff), sets out to score the deal of a lifetime in Peru—the redemption of a long-forgotten, decades-old multi-billion-dollar debt owed by the Peruvian government to its citizens—and gets entangled in a local battle for land, money and power. Cutting between the Peruvian highlands and the busy streets of Lima, La deuda places three very different lives on a collision course amidst ethical and fnancial complexities that connect corporate greed with rural deprivation, adopting the PROOFkind of multilayered narrative structure that had become the hallmark of several of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s successful flms. While Oliver is forced to confront the brutal consequences of his ambition, María (Elsa Olivero), a nurse, desperately tries to secure treatment for her ailing mother. The main success of the flm lies with Olivero’s character in that she transcends one-dimensional victimhood and reveals a steely resolve that enables her to fearlessly take on the fnanciers. First shown at Lima Film Festival in August 2015 and released on commercial screens in March 2016, just as the Presidential elections were getting into full swing, La deuda was critically aligned with and had the potential to contribute to an important political debate, for it was alleged that the Peruvian government really did owe billionsREVISED to former landowners after expropriation in 1969. Thus, despite its more mainstream pretensions and Hollywood connections, by highlighting the complex morality of debt, its obligations and liabili- ties, Oliver’s Deal made perfect sense as part of Campos’ growing body of ethically driven, commercially astute and well-crafted work that has never sought to avoid diffcult topics of confict and human rights that tend to side with the marginalized on screen (Figure 7.2). This specifc case for Peru is very much part of a wider struggle of priorities for Latin American cinema in the new millennium, when political beliefs remain more important than ever and yet are constantly framed and constrained by neoliberal economic policies. In her 128 S. BARROW

Fig. 7.2 Oliver watching out of the window in LaPROOF deuda (Barney Elliott, 2015) essay on twenty-frst century Brazilian flm, Sophie McClennen argues that the success of contemporary Latin American cinema has to be measured not only by the work itself, but also by the debates it provokes and by the way that it has broken down the supposed antago- nism of entertainment versus social critique that had governed Latin American approaches to flmmaking prior to the start of the new millennium (2011, 17). Some of the successful post-2000 “slick grit” flms, such as Amores Perros, Cidade de deus (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, Brazil 2002) and Días of Santiago, utilize recognizable aesthetic and narrative traits of global art cinema to portray life for different cultures across the world (Hart 2015, 105–8). As Lúcia Nagib notesREVISED about Latin American flmmaking after 2000, “the fact that cinema immediately revived in Latin American countries as soon as there was a political opening is signifcant of the continuing belief in its power as a conveyor of national identity” (2006, 27). With this belief in cinema’s sociopolitical infuence frmly embedded, with access to different types of technology and sources of funding, and infuenced by an even wider range of cinematic styles than their predecessors, the new generation of flmmakers set out to break the stereotypes both of how their communities might be portrayed and what their flms should look like. 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 129

As such, and within this context, we should acknowledge the vital role played by contemporary producers such as Campos in breaking the barriers and blurring the boundaries of entertainment versus social comment and keeping alive the tradition of committed cinema by astutely navigating a complex flm industry that under the infuence of neoliberal developments has to consider different funding scenarios, distribution networks and viewer habits. Campos and others like her achieve this by seeking out and identifying new talent, by nurturing projects and collaborators that align with their own values, by bringing stories from many different perspectives to the screen to emphasize and provoke conversations about diversity, and by negotiating with investors in situations that often have uneven starting points and are almost always fraught with compro- mise. After many decades of seeing flm scholarship privilege the status of the director as central to negotiations that balance political and artistic visions with the commercial demands of global flm fnance arrangements, there is an urgent need to take account of the committed “auteur producer.” These include fgures such as Campos,PROOF whose prolifc work ethic, signifcant transnational presence, including via social media, engagement in political activity and commitment to a cinema that addresses the multifaceted issues of her nation’s history, society and culture are signifcant characteristics of those who can really infuence the highly competitive landscape of today’s flm ecology (Burucúa 2016, 220).

Conclusions This chapter, then, has begun the task of revealing and reappraising some of the connections between the role of the contemporary committed producer and the evolving relationships, networks, tensions and power dynamicsREVISED between Latin American cinemas, where local support tends to be precarious and unreliable, and global markets, where the Latin American producers are often placed in the subaltern position. In so doing, it has also drawn attention to what Tamara Falicov has called “the underlying cultural politics stemming from colonial legacies that continue to plague the flm funding dynamic, especially in former colonial territories” (2010, 3). The proliferation of funding schemes and support from Europe and the US has been accepted by most as an inevitable by-product of market forces but has brought with it the risk of exploitation. There is, moreover, the strong potential for buyers of media products to base their decisions on certain aspects of unconscious 130 S. BARROW

(or conscious) bias that link to decades of cultural stereotyping. Such assumptions on their part might also be shared with the so-called consumers of images of Latin America who might be looking for certain images to align with those assumptions about a part of the world they probably know only through mainstream media when buying their next cinema ticket, DVD copy or download. This situation has the potential to become even more restrictive when the domestic support for cinema is under threat, under-developed or non-existent. Again calling on Harvey, it should be recalled that neoliberalism “proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” (2005, 2). It follows then that the “rights” of the market are paramount, and for flm culture, this could lead to the end of protections for national cinema and investment in cinema altogether, abandoning those entrepreneurial flmmakers to negotiating deals that could result in a less politically committed and risk-averse product. PROOF Although the relatively new government in Peru (elected June 2016) has expressed support for developing local culture, the long-awaited new cinema legislation has so far remained at the proposal stage.15 As Pierre Emile Vandoorne, head of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture’s audiovisual and new media division, observed in his annual account of cinema activity in Peru at the end of 2016 after a record twenty-three features had been released on commercial screens, “the main challenge for 2017 is the consolidation of a national cinema market and the international circulation of national flms” (2017). For him, the priority remains to secure industry consensus and governmental approval for the new cinema law so as to support the development of various genres of cinema, including the more sociallyREVISED committed flms produced by the likes of Campos. At the same time, and acutely aware of the overriding neoliberal context within which he operates, he acknowledges the need to sign bilateral coproduction agreements with neighboring countries and those beyond the region, without falling back on the more neocolonial arrangements set from Spain of the 1980s and 1990s (Rix 1999, 113–28). There also remains the dilemma of securing distribution and exhibition deals and agreements for Peruvian flms that face enormous competition in accessing commercial screens, which are themselves under great economic pressure. Producers and policy makers such as Campos and Vandoorne appreciate that they can no longer afford to rely upon protectionist legislation as the sole solution 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 131 to global capitalism. They must operate in a “global marketplace that has redefned the idea of making a national flm” (McClennen 2011, 105). What is often distinctive about the more successful contemporary Latin American flms in terms of their global circulation is, as Mette Hjort has remarked, their combination of local specifcity and topical issues that relate to very particular historical or cultural formations, with broad themes that cross historical and cultural borders (2000, 106). Certainly, it seems that topics such as poverty, social activism, childhood, drug-dealing, violence, petty crime and insurgency emerge time and time again in those Latin American flms that succeed at the festival and global arts cinema circuits. This chapter has taken account of the role played by the contemporary committed producer such as Campos in navigating away from tired and ste- reotypical portrayals of topics such as gender and violence with innovative flms such as Climas, Días de Santiago and Magallanes, in drawing attention on screen to the effects of neoliberalism as seen in La deuda, and in infu- encing the terrain of flm funding, while also trying to secure and maintain local creative control and integrity over contentPROOF and representation. Campos has understood that the act of making and distributing a flm with socially committed themes in the contemporary context is itself a political act, and by aligning herself with a new generation of equally committed flmmakers such as Méndez, Pérez, Elliott and del Solar, she has positioned herself as an infuential leader of contemporary Peruvian cinema and culture.

Notes 1. Such opportunities include the Hubert Bals Fund developed by Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands; the Cinéfondation programme and Aides aux Cinéma du Monde in France; the German World CinemaREVISED Fund created by the Berlin Film Festival; and the Hispanic scheme, Programa Ibermedia. 2. See, for example: Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market edited by Deborah Shaw (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2007); Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film edited by Stephanie Dennison (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2013). 3. See Nuria Triana Toribio, “Building Latin American Cinema in Europe: Cine en Construcción/Cinéma en construction,” in Contemporary Hispanic Cinema, 89–112. 4. One notable example is Constanza Burucúa, “Lita Stantic: Auteur Producer/Producer of Auteurs,” in Beyond the Bottom Line: The Producer 132 S. BARROW

in Film & TV Studies, edited by Andrew Spicer, A. T. McKenna and Christopher Meir (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 5. The critics I refer to here include Isaac León Frías and Ricardo Bedoya, founders of infuential cinema journals Hablemos de Cine (1965–1984) and La Gran Ilusión (1993–2003), and who have looked consistently to the founders of Cahiers du Cinéma for inspiration. 6. The Grupo Chaski is better known internationally for the landmark feature flms Gregorio (1984) and Juliana (1989). See http://www.grupochaski. org/historia.html for details of their history, membership and projects. 7. The frst President of Peru’s Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces was Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–1975); the second was Francisco Morales Bermúdez (1975–1980). Since then there have been constitutionally elected presidents except the time of the extraordinary self-coup d’etat in 1992 when Fujimori snatched a second election. 8. For example, in Maria Chiara D’Argenio, “Monstrosity and War Memories in Latin American Post-confict Cinema,” CINEJ 5, no. 1 (2015), who explores the themes of monstrosity and humanity in Días de Santiago and links these to global discourses of political violence and post-confict trauma more generally. PROOF 9. This was Kaspar’s last main project before he died suddenly while trav- elling in Colombia in 2013; in its frst ten years, over 80,000 spectators have enjoyed 960 flms and 300 young people have been involved in setting up the projections. Moreover, since 2011, 92 short community flms have also been made as part of the scheme. http://grupochaski.org/ red-de-microcines/. 10. Campos uses her social media profle to engage in a range of causes such as the #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less) campaign against femicide and other forms of violence against women. 11. This interview was conducted during the period of Lima Film Festival, August 2016. The festival was launched on an optimistic note when the newly appointed Minister of Culture Jorge Nieto Montesinos drew cheersREVISED when he made a public pledge to oversee a much-needed overhaul of Peru’s 1994 flm law. 12. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is a guerrilla rebel organization in Peru. Founded in 1970 by Abimael Guzmán (“Comrade Gonzalo”), a philosophy teacher inspired by the writings of Peruvian Marxist, Jose Carlos Mariategui, the organization began with a core group of intellectuals and idealists recruited by Guzmán at the San Cristobal de Huamanga National University in Ayacucho. In the group’s frst act of violence against the state on May 17, 1980, ballot boxes were destroyed on the eve of the country’s frst national elections in over a decade. At its peak the Shining Path had a presence throughout the country, including Lima, but primarily operated in the poor, isolated and disenfranchised rural 7 NEGOTIATING NEOLIBERAL DEMANDS ON CONTEMPORARY CINEMA … 133

highland departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurimac. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 2003 to investigate the 20-year confict stated that over 69,000 people had been killed by guerrillas and armed forces. In 2011, Shining Path lawyers submitted 360,000 signatures to register as a new political party, Movadef. Although the electoral authority denied the registration on the grounds the organization advocated terrorism, Movadef remains active with its campaigning. 13. Pierre Emile Vandoorne, head of the Ministry of Culture’s audiovisual division, which controls a nearly $3 million fund, reported at Lima Film Festival 2016 that a new draft flm law had been proposed in 2014 but failed to secure enough political support to be passed. 14. Announced August 6, 2016. http://www.cinencuentro.com/2016/08/06/ estos-son-los-ganadores-del-concurso-nacional-de-largometrajes-2016/. 15. At the end of April 2017, the Ministry of Culture convened a meeting of representatives from the cinema sector for a public discussion about the proposal for a new cinema and audiovisual law. This was a chance for those participating to clarify what type of Peruvian cinema should be prioritized by the legislation in the context of more commercial flmmaking which might not be in such need of the PROOFincentives proposed. See critic Mónica Delgado’s blog post of 27 April 2017 on the features of this new proposal. http://blog.desistflm.com.

Works Cited Barrow, Sarah. 2014. “Out of the Shadows: ‘New’ Peruvian Cinema, National Identity and Political Violence.” Modern Languages Open. Liverpool University Press, no. 2. http://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.18/. Bedoya, Ricardo, and Isaac León Frías. 1994. “Volver a vivir: cronología (acci- dentada) de la ley de cine.” La Gran Ilusión 3: 108–10. Burucúa, Constanza.REVISED 2016. “Lita Stantic: Auteur Producer/Producer of Auteurs.” In Beyond the Bottom Line: The Producer in Film & TV Studies, edited by Andrew Spicer, A. T. McKenna, and Christopher Meir, 215–28. London: Bloomsbury. Couldry, Nick. 2010. Why Voice Matters. Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Los Angeles: Sage. D’Argenio, Maria Chiara. 2015. “Monstrosity and War Memories in Latin American Post-confict Cinema.” CINEJ Cinema Journal 5 (1): 85–113. Delgado, Mónica. 2017, April 27. “The New Peruvian Cinema Law: Key Points.” http://blog.desistflm.com. Dennison, Stephanie, ed. 2013. Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film. Woodbridge: Tamesis. 134 S. BARROW

Falicov, Tamara. 2010. “From South to North: The Role of Film Festivals in Funding and Shaping Global South Film and Video.” In Locating Migrating Media, edited by Greg Elmer, Charles H. Davis, Janine Marchessault, and John McCullough, 3–19. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld. Hart, Stephen M. 2015. Latin American Cinema. London: Reaktion Books. Hartley, John, ed. 2005. Creative Industries. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, Dennis. 2015, June 6. “Film Review: ‘NN’.” Variety, http://variety. com/2015/flm/reviews/nn-review-1201498784/. Hjort, Mette. 2000. “Thematisation of Nation.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 103–7. London and New York: Routledge. Kercher, Dona. 2017. “Metafctional Co-production: Barney Elliott’s Oliver’s Deal (2016) and Cesc Gay’s Truman (2015).” Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Lima, April 2017. Lewis, Jon, ed. 2016. Producing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. McClennen, Sophia A. 2008. “The Theory and Practice of the Peruvian Grupo Chaski.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 50 (Spring). https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/Chaski/PROOF. McClennen, Sophie A. 2011. “From the Aesthetics of Hunger to the Cosmetics of Hunger in Brazilian Cinema: Meirelles’ City of God.” Symploke 19 (1–2): 95–106. Nagib, Lúcia. 2006. “Reframing Utopia: Contemporary Brazilian Cinema at the Turn of the Century.” Portuguese Cultural Studies 1: 25–35. Rix, Rob. 1999. “Co-productions and Common Cause.” In Spanish Cinema: Calling the Shots, edited by Rix and Roberto Rodríguez-Saona, 113–28. Leeds: Trinity All Saints. Ross, Miriam. 2008. “Grupo Chaski’s Microcines: Engaging the Spectator.” eSharp, no. 11 (Spring). http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_81277_en.pdf. Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M. 2014. Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Shaw, Deborah,REVISED ed. 2007. Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld. Triana Toribio, Nuria. 2013. “Building Latin American Cinema in Europe: Cine en Construcción/ Cinéma en construction.” In Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film, edited by Stephanie Dennison, 89–112. Woodbridge: Tamesis. Vandoorne, Pierre Emile. 2017, January 12. “Balance 2016,” http://www. latamcinema.com/especiales/balance-2016-pierre-emile-vandoorne-director- del-audiovisual-la-fonografa-y-los-nuevos-medios-del-ministerio-de-cultura- de-peru/. CHAPTER 8

Larraín’s No: A Tale of Neoliberalism

María Paz Peirano

On January 10, 2013 the flms nominated for Academy Awards were announced. In Chile, the media covered this announcement with unusual expectation. The Chilean flm No (PabloPROOF Larraín, 2012) was on the Best Foreign Language Film shortlist, which includes the pre-candidates for nomination by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a historic accomplishment for Chilean cinema. No is about the advertising campaign that facilitated the 1988 Chilean referendum win, which ended the 16-year military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It had premiered in May 2012 at the Cannes Film Festival and circulated quite successfully across the international flm festival circuit. It premiered in Chile in August 2012, and was seen by around 212,000 moviegoers—a good number considering the flm industry’s global crisis and the regularly low audience numbers for Chilean cinema in the country.1 During 2012, and for almost a month before No’s nomination, after theREVISED flm passed the frst stage on its way to the Oscars, Chilean flm professionals had discussed it and speculated on its chances of being selected in the contest. Was it enough to have a flm with the most common Chilean cinema “signature,” Pinochet’s dictatorship?2 Could it even dream of going to the Oscars when the Cannes winner Amour

M. P. Peirano (*) Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile

(Michael Haneke, 2012) was also a candidate? This debate continued in all kinds of social gatherings and on social media. Sometimes a flm critic or a flm producer would point out the recurrent idea: “Anyway, if it’s not this flm, I don’t know what other Chilean flm could ever go to the ceremony,” since No seemed to “tick all the boxes” for being nominated: it tells a very particular story about the rare democratic end of a dictatorship, it has a “universally” compelling epic narrative and it portrays an event that the Academy would be happy to endorse (the end of Pinochet’s regime), a “politically correct” move. And, indeed, the flm made it. For the frst time in Chilean cinema history, a flm was nominated for the Academy Awards. And it was not any flm, but one of the few explicitly political Chilean fction features of the last decade, and one whose political stance was highly controversial within Chilean society, given both its context of production and its narrative. As I discuss in this chapter, No stirred up considerable controversy in Chile. Accused of being both reactionary and a piece of left-wing propaganda, the flm motivated an unprecedented PROOFpublic debate. It opened up a much needed discussion on the political and cultural experience of the expansion of neoliberalism in Chile after the imposition of this system during the dictatorial regime, and how this experience has affected national flm production. In this chapter I investigate the national reception and various debates about No, particularly among intellectuals and flm professionals, considering (1) its conditions of production and circulation, (2) the flm’s narrative about historical events and (3) the local expectations for Chilean political cinema, all of which, taken together, allow us to explain the roots of the controversies underlying the flm’s reception. I argue that these controversies highlight the ambiguous and complex relationship of No with neoliberalism, which Chilean intellectuals and flm professionalsREVISED often oppose. On the one hand, the flm presents a political narrative that aims to critique Chilean neoliberalism, creating a skeptical image of the end of the regime and the enforcement of neoliberal culture in the country. In this sense, it could be understood as a continuation of the longstanding tradition of Chilean “alternative”, political cinema. On the other hand, No moves away from this tradition, provoking suspicion regarding its critical stance and its view of the historical events. Moreover, while the flm presents an implicit critique of neoliberalism, it is also part of a new wave of Chilean cinema that has expanded precisely due to a “neoliberal” reconfguration of the Chilean feld of flm production (that is to say, its transformation in response to the global expansion of a post-industrial economy or late capitalism). Therefore, the flm highlights the 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 137 contradictory nature of a local feld of flm production, particularly in relation to political cinema, when it has been increasingly professionalized and internationalized under the logics of late capitalism. This chapter draws on the results of a multi-sited ethnography of the Chilean flm world, which involved participant observation among Chilean flm professionals both in Chile and at international flm festivals between 2011 and 2014. This research allowed me to observe some of the ways in which the Chilean feld of flm production was being transformed, contributing to the fourishing “newest” Chilean cinema of the last decade. The ethnographic accounts I collected among flm professionals refect their lived experiences of the production and circulation of Chilean national cinema, and the ways in which the Chilean feld has been confgured and contested during this period. I will consider neoliberalism here as an ideological construction anchored in the principles of free-market economics, praising values such as economic freedom, privatization and individual enterprise (Harvey 2005), which provides not only thePROOF structural contexts for socioeconomic exchanges but also specifc cultural imaginaries reworked in different parts of the world. In the case of Chile, these imaginaries are linked to the orthodox neoliberal economic system imposed by force during Pinochet’s regime (1973–1990), which shaped the political and economic national context that continues today. The material conditions that have enabled the fourishing of contemporary Chilean cinema depend on the more recent neoliberal policies of the Chilean state and its participation in the international flm market. For Chilean intellectuals and flm professionals, to produce a cultural critique of neoliberalism that follows the tradition of political flmmaking opposing capitalism and the dictatorship is highly problematic. No was the frst flm that attempted to narrate REVISEDthe end of Pinochet’s regime in relation to the emergence of Chilean neoliberalism. We will see how, by doing so, it also revealed some of the unresolved issues of the local feld of production, which could be understood as both a product of and a challenge to the hegemonic neoliberal cultural practices established in Chile since the 1990s.

No’s Reception: An Ethnographic Account In May 2012, No was selected for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) of the Cannes Film Festival, where I undertook my ethnographic research project. The Quinzaine is a section for independent flms out of competition, something highly prized by a small 138 M. P. PEIRANO peripheral country like Chile, as a presence at Cannes can be used as a value-addition strategy for the flm, supporting further circulation in the global market (de Valck 2007; Iordanova and Rhyne 2009). The flm had already gained some attention, since a Latin American “star,” the Mexican Gael García Bernal, plays its main character, thus there was great expectation at this world premiere. Everyone who was part of the so-called “Chilean Mission” in Cannes’ Marché du Film that year tried to attend No’s premiere and to sit together in one row, clapping enthusiastically, in order to show their solidarity and support for the flm. The Chilean Mission, which allowed for a collective participation at Cannes, was organized by a private agency, CinemaChile, and the government institution ProChile, which promotes Chilean exports abroad. This strategy was the result of Chilean cultural policies established in the mid-2000s, aimed at fostering a national industry. They include new state funds for Chilean cinema and its promotion in the international market, and have led to both the expansion and the internationalization of Chilean flm production, seeking participationPROOF in the global flm market. As I have discussed elsewhere (Peirano 2018), the expansion of Chilean cinema went hand in hand with the growing professionalization of the feld, as the frst generation started to graduate from the national flm schools, and as new agents, such as producers, directors, festival program- mers and academics, entered a competitive job market. Chile’s national flm expansion has mirrored the global expansion of neoliberal cultural politics (Kapur and Wagner 2011), which has meant a more market-oriented production especially targeting international markets, like many other small national cinemas in the periphery (Iordanova et al. 2010). Under the logics of late capitalism, the state has aimed to foster cinema as a strategic economic sector, and in order to develop a local flm industry,REVISED Chilean flm production has been reorganized towards the professionalization of the creative sector and the development of a market for Chilean cultural products abroad (see Trejo 2009). As a result, there has been an increase in the production of flms deemed internationally appealing, helped by the aforementioned participation in international festivals, coproduction markets and laboratories for flm development— all of which boosted contemporary Chilean cinema as a promising flm industry circulating in the international flm festival circuit. At Cannes, as the opening credits of No appeared on the screen, it was obvious that for many Chileans this would be an emotional flm. The television campaign that is the focus of the narrative had been a highly 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 139 appreciated cultural product, and therefore the flm provoked a certain nostalgia for the 1980s. The flm focuses on the campaign to vote “no” against the continuity of the Pinochet dictatorship in the national referendum of 1988, which eventually led to the end of the military government. Not only this story, but also the materiality of the flm drew on memories that Chilean cinema had not previously worked on. Larraín sought to tie style with content. No was shot with a U-Matic camera, so its quality resembles that of 1980s video images. Since it incorporates footage from the original television campaign, there is not much difference between the contemporary images and the archive material, producing a sense of continuity between the past (the dictatorship) and the present (contemporary Chile). In addition, No reconstructs the history of the campaign by employing some of its actual protagonists, who portray their younger selves 22 years later.3 For those who remember the referendum that ended Pinochet’s government, these images have a powerful impact, bringing to life again one of the most important moments of contemporary Chilean history. PROOF The flm was met with great applause. The lights went up to reveal crying and laughing faces in the audience, including those of the director and his team. After the premiere, outside the venue of the Quinzaine one could hear generally positive comments from international festivalgoers, as well as journalists and critics, already considering this as one of the big discoveries of the Festival that year. At this point, all of this seemed quite surreal to me and to the flm professionals back in Chile, used as we were to the lack of attention for our national cinema. I received messages asking me if it was true that the flm was a success at Cannes. Was it an exaggeration by the Chilean press? Did people really like it that much? They apparently did. After a few days there was a big announcement that Sony had REVISEDbought the rights to sell the flm in the US. Moreover, the flm won the Quinzaine award, and many critics asked how it was possible that No was not part of the offcial competition, which according to them revealed a serious curatorial mistake. Later, during 2012 and 2013, international press releases and flm critics kept reaffrming this buzz. The flm was shown at all the most important flm festivals in the world during this period, including most “A-class” festivals such as San Sebastián, Toronto and Berlin. It also had special screenings at the more artistic-oriented festivals of Locarno and Vienna, as well as the prestigious London and New York flm festivals. This festival circulation also opened doors to international flm distribution in commercial cinemas around the world. 140 M. P. PEIRANO

Nevertheless, already at Cannes dissenting voices had emerged from the Chilean delegation. Despite the buzz, some directors and producers were concerned that the strength of the flm for Chilean audiences was its historical appeal, which was not quite understandable to foreign audiences. Others thought the narrative oversimplifed what actually happened in 1988, complaining that it was superfcial, historically inaccu- rate and “not political enough,” which would give the wrong impression to international audiences. This latter criticism would turn into a major debate among Chilean audiences after its national premiere in Santiago a few months later. By then, the flm was already enjoying international success triggered by its performance in Cannes. However, Chilean audiences’ response to the flm was not totally positive. More conservative sectors were reluctant to watch another flm about the dictatorship. And while others were pleased and curious to watch it, some were suspicious of the fact that it was so appreciated at European and North American flm festivals, pointing out that this could be a case of a flm made for foreign audiences, easily sellable in the globalPROOF market, but not really true to the political event. Film professionals in particular did not trust the political and artistic authenticity of a flm made by director Pablo Larraín. They expressed some suspicion of his real motives, suggesting that he was only looking for international recognition and had no artistic or political aims, just commercial ones. Some time before the flm was even fnished another director had told me during an interview, “Larraín is now flming the movie about the No [campaign]. What is he doing? Why is he flming precisely that and then going to Venice or wherever? C’mon, he is who he is, he’s a Larraín. … I don’t believe Larraín, I don’t believe him at all.”4 The director of No had made two other flms about the dictatorship, Tony REVISEDManero in 2008 and Post Mortem in 2010, getting mixed reviews for his style and, above all, his social position. His surname is synonymous with social privilege in Chile, where he is part of the upper social class, and this encouraged professionals in the feld to suggest that his representation of Chilean social and political struggles was somehow illegitimate. He was not only a cuico [posh person], but he and his producer, Juan de Dios Larraín, are the sons of Hernán Larraín, a right-wing politician who actively supported the Pinochet regime. As a result, the flm was judged for what was supposed to be its inevitably conservative content, as a commercial and therefore “neoliberal” product. Even when Pablo Larraín has constantly tried to differentiate himself from his father 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 141 and has declared himself closer to the left, his fliation is a cause of major distrust, as part of a class identity that is impossible to overcome. The fact that Hernán Larraín and other politicians were present at the flm’s national premiere reinforced this belief. The general public could follow the “exclusive” frst screening by streaming via the flm’s website, and the immediate online comments did not ignore the fact that important political personalities, including all the ex-presidents of the Republic, were at the venue except for the current president, right-wing Sebastián Piñera, who had apologized for not attending. After a week in commercial cinemas in Chile, the debate about the flm was all over the national media. No, which by 2012 was the only fction flm about the end of the dictatorship, generated very strong reactions from Chilean audiences, ranging from passionate enthusiasm to furious criticism. These reactions spread through social media, provoking extended debates among not only flmmakers but also intellectuals, politicians and general audiences. The media, normally not much interested in Chilean cinema, paid particular attentionPROOF this time. Larraín was repeatedly invited to talk on the news and other television programs, and even tabloid newspapers quoted the flm, which provoked a public debate that had never been seen with a movie release in Chile—not even with Machuca (Wood, 2004), a popular flm about the coup that initiated the dictatorship in 1973. This media impact unfolded as with no other fction flm before, the persistent wounds and unresolved conficts that the Pinochet dictatorship had left in Chilean society bringing out the cultural fractures of Chile’s political and economic legacy. For those progressive moviegoers who supported the flm, No was long awaited. It fnally portrayed the experience of an important moment of Chilean political memory, and allowed for subsequent discussions among friendsREVISED and families. Some right-wing politicians, however, considered the flm to be purely resentful and communist propaganda that was stuck in the past—a common political narrative among ex-Pinochet supporters when referring to any cultural products questioning the dictatorship. Member of Parliament Iván Moreira tweeted, “I’m sure most Chileans are not going to watch it, they prefer the present, laugh, and want to face the future.”5 These statements set Chilean Twitter on fre. Larraín attacked Moreira’s “ignorance,” and other supporters of the flm began to send tweets such as “I wasn’t sure about it, but if Moreira hates it, I’ll watch No,” “I care about what happened, like every good citizen. Great flm No,” or “This is a flm to discuss with the family. Thank God 142 M. P. PEIRANO we want to remember, Mr Moreira.” Moreira later defended himself in an interview, commenting, “What I do is a political criticism that has unleashed the hysteria and the fury of the Concertación [center left] and the left [… the flm] is mediocre … How long will we continue to allow the history of Chile to be written with the red pen?”6 On the other hand, for several left-wing commentators and social scientists, No was a very conservative, even patronizing, flm. They wondered why it did not mention what had happened in the 1980s before the referendum, such as the popular struggles in the slums, the human rights violations, the political prisoners and disappearances, and the many cases of forced exile. These detractors argued that the struggle against Pinochet could not be reduced to a political campaign, and that portraying advertising executives as somehow the “saviors” from the regime was somewhere between naive and insulting. They complained that the flm showed the campaign but ignored what, according to them, was people’s actual experience of the dictatorship. Somehow they were asking Larraín— and the flm—to fll an empty space not onlyPROOF in Chilean cinema but also in Chilean audiovisual and social memory. The fact that the flm did not represent the entire social experience of the period was thus perceived as an irresponsible failure, especially because this was the version of Chilean history that the world would see and believe, silencing other voices. Renowned sociologist Manuel Antonio Carretón, for example, considered No to be “the biggest ideological garbage” he had ever seen.7 For him, the flm presents a historical misrepresentation where an old Western-style hero arrives in town to save the people by means of an advertising campaign. The outdated politicians are shortsighted, while “the good guys are those who do not talk about it [politics].” From this perspective, the flm is an apolitical construction of the past that provides a cynical view of citizens whose onlyREVISED role in the democratic process is as “consumers” (see for the cynism in Pablo Larraín’s cinema also Chapter 11). The fact that the flm was eventually nominated for an Oscar both reinforced the national pride in the flm and refueled criticism. A feeling of national success spread through the media, which covered the event as if it was a communal triumph. This popular international recognition was generally interpreted as a reason to feel proud to be Chilean.8 For flm professionals in particular, being recognized by the American Academy was a historic achievement that brought prestige to Larraín and attracted much attention to Chilean cinema in general. The flm’s detractors, however, took this chance to attack the flm again, questioning the 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 143 nationalistic excitement at the nomination. For them, this confrmed what they already thought, that this was an easy-to-sell and market-oriented product, suitable for conservative audiences and too much in line with the requirements of the American flm market. The fact that the flm had been bought by Sony—which helped it get onto the shortlist of Oscar nominees—and that Hollywood received it so well, was not attributed to its quality, but understood as a demonstration of how the flm “sold” Chile’s recent history to a global market dominated by the United States, turning the trauma of the dictatorship into a commodity for the international flm market, exploited by the elite.

A Tale of Neoliberalism—A Neoliberal Tale After a title card explaining the referendum that would end the Chilean dictatorship in 1988, No opens with a young publicist, René (Gael García Bernal), giving a speech to his clients. “What you are about to see,” says the flm’s main character, “is in PROOFline with the current social context. We believe that the country is prepared for this kind of communication. … Let’s be honest: today Chile is thinking of its future.” He turns on the television, and shows the campaign for a new locally produced cola, Free. The clients make some suggestions, while the main character is called outside by a politician, who asks him to lead the “No” campaign against Pinochet. Throughout the flm, René continues to work for both the advertising company and the campaign for the opposition. He uses the same advertising speech—one that emphasizes the values of the free market and conspicuous consumption—for the political campaign against Pinochet’s military regime, while his boss at the company is leading the “Yes” campaign supporting the dictator, fully aware of his employee’sREVISED undercover activities. After the referendum has been won, the protagonist goes back to his regular job, while his boss and former opponent introduces him to the clients indicating, proudly, that he is the author of the “No” campaign. As spectators, we assume that the hero’s work against the government will bring, after all, an added value to the company, for it is proof of the publicists’ success. With this focus on the advertising campaign and its consequences for both Chile and the company, No contains a critique of modern Chilean society, and today’s experience of political and economic neoliberalism. This draws on the disappointment experienced by the most progressive political sectors with the process of Transición (the political transition 144 M. P. PEIRANO to democracy) that followed the dictatorship, led by the Concertación from 1990 to 2009. The flm shows the impact of Pinochet’s neoliberal policies, and implies that, although the political regime was defeated, the economic system fostered during sixteen years of dictatorship continues to exist. The marketing campaign, which embodies the neoliberal values of freedom and personal enterprise in the “No” branding process, suggests the reach and the triumph of the neoliberal policies imposed by the dictatorship. During Pinochet’s regime the government disassembled the Chilean welfare state. The closest economic advisers of the regime, known as the Chicago Boys, were sent to be educated in the USA by Milton Friedman, who inspired them with his “shock doctrine”: the idea that the government should impose liberalization policies and an orthodox free-market ideology in Chile, in order to achieve a “pure” neoliberal state—and a new, modern Chilean society. The Chilean economic experiment entailed the liberalization of most state companies, as well as deregularization policies in the mid-1970s, including previous social benefts like health and education. The process of liberalization and restructuringPROOF of the Chilean economic system did not stop with the end of the dictatorship, but was deepened during the 1990s, when Chile was ruled by center-left governments (see Klein 2008). These transformations in Chile’s political and economic structures also meant the expansion of a free market culture that articulates a specifc system of values. That is to say, neoliberal expansion involves a rationality that extends and disseminates market values to all institutions and social actions (Brown 2005, 40). In No, the triumph against Pinochet is then also a sign of the victory of the system he imposed, for it is precisely an advertising campaign, symbolizing market rationality and neoliberal expansion, that overcomes the regime. Neoliberalism is presented REVISEDas a force that consumes everything, including the dictatorship that defended it in the frst place. Thus, the expansion of neoliberalism ended up displacing political power and installing the logic of the free market, along with the values of “success” and “freedom,” in every other sphere of Chilean society. This displacement of politics becomes evident during a scene in which René presents the campaign to the old politicians and proposes a marketing strategy that emphasizes joy over the memory of the political trauma. While Garretón suggested that the politicians in No were presented as shortsighted, resisting the joyful campaign, it is actually one of them who challenges René and provokes a self-refective moment predicting the long-term consequences of his 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 145 winning strategy when, ashamed, he rebukes the protagonist, pointing out that history is going to judge them later for using advertising tricks in order to win political power. The hero’s personal gain at the end of the flm reinforces this idea, questioning in fact his position as a “hero.” Thus, more than a celebration of the political campaign, No takes a cynical position about the substitution of politics by the logics of the market. It is precisely this skepticism that led to much of the aforementioned controversy regarding the flm’s narrative, since on the one hand it could be seen as a self-refective political critique, but on the other, it could be understood as embracing depoliticization. Thus, for detractors on the left, the flm was deemed to sympathize with neoliberalism, praising advertising as the “rescuer” of the Chilean people from the dictatorship, while also denying the people’s agency and political involvement. This criticism was also reinforced by the discussions described above about the flm’s historical misrepresentations, and its inability to give an account of the complexity of the historical events. While these limitations were recognized by Larraín, specializedPROOF audiences (such as the intellectuals, flm critics and flm professionals mentioned in the previous section) seemed to expect a historical narrative that would fll a gap in national cinema: the ultimate story of the referendum, delivered in a flm that totalized the historical experience and brought together the “imagined community” (Anderson 2004), thus helping Chilean society make sense of its recent past. Instead, they saw in the flm a market-oriented product that embraced individualism and marketing practices as the salvation from the regime, removing social participation and collective political action from the picture. These expectations for No can be seen as a continuation of the traditional expectations for local cinema, which partly explains the detractors’ frustration.REVISED Since the 1960s, Chilean cinema has been defned by its social role and its cultural specifcity. The politics of local flm production were central to most debates within the local feld, and flms and flmmakers’ political positions were important indicators of cultural value. One of the main fndings of my feldwork was that, shaped under longstanding narratives of cinema as a space for cultural resistance, Chilean cinema has often been understood by both flmmakers and flm critics as part of a political project, and politics was constantly intertwined in a rhetoric of what “real” national cinema is and how flms made in Chile “should be” (see Peirano 2015). In this sense, national cinema has been used, as suggested by Andrew Higson (2000), mostly as a prescriptive 146 M. P. PEIRANO category, not a descriptive one, indicating what national flms ought to mean and accomplish. This focus on politics is strongly linked to a “doxa” of the feld (Bourdieu 1977, 164) built on the New Latin American Cinema movement as a founding moment for a socio-critical Chilean cinema, and the role and responsibility of flmmakers. By 2012, many of the expectations for national cinema were still rooted in this ethically defned artistic tradition, which has historically constituted the distinctive mode of cultural production and the “revelatory regime of value” (Myers 2001, 8) in local cinema. Political criticism has often been understood as flmmakers’ duty, and their work is supposed to reveal local particularities while contesting the hegemony of Hollywood flm production. This political standpoint involves a condemnation of the global conditions of production beyond the domestic framework, an endeavor that has been endorsed by the intellectual elites, particularly the progressive left. Thus, for the most committed Chilean intelligentsia, the fact that an obviously political flm like No was successful in the globalPROOF market and produced by someone from the upper class, whose family supported Pinochet’s political and economic policies, was, understandably, highly problematic. To complicate its position even more, No’s aesthetic and political approach moved away from the previous traditions of political national cinema. Similarly to other flms of the so-called Newest Chilean cinema (Cavallo and Maza 2011), the flm aimed to refect on contemporary social experience in Chile without attempting to produce big social narratives. Although the flm is concerned with a subject from national history, the social comments and references to Chile’s political past and present-day struggles did not aim to develop collective political narratives. No has a nostalgic and subjective visual style. It was shot so as to resembleREVISED the low-quality home video technologies of the 1980s and edited elliptically, combining elements from documentary and fction flm.9 Moreover, it refers to the historical process using the subjective perspective of the main character—one that is not quite politically committed and arguably more ambiguous than expected. This style differs from the militant political cinema that dealt with Pinochet’s dictatorship in previous decades, while more resembling other Chilean flms from the last decade which have moved into intimate and affective politics (Page 2017). These are flms that, considering their themes and aesthetics, provide an indirect critique of the neoliberal experience, as has been suggested by some scholars in Chile (see Urrutia 2010, 2013; Bongers 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 147

2010; Pinto and Horta 2010; Pinto 2009), particularly in relation to the refexive nature of Larraín’s atmospheric work, which brings out the atmosphere and the ghosts of the Chilean political past (Urrutia 2011). The clash of No’s aesthetic and political approach with these traditions of Chilean cinema helped provoke the debates that framed the flm’s reception in Chile described above. For certain critics, academics and flmmakers, No, like other recent Chilean flms, is a depoliticized “neoliberal” product that lacks commitment, because it has avoided direct sociopolitical discourses on the dictatorship, inequality and violence, and has thus abandoned the social role of national cinema. Recent Chilean flms’ sophisticated, cosmopolitan aesthetics have been understood as nothing more than a consequence of the introjection of neoliberal individualistic and alienating cultural values (see, for example, Cavallo 2013; Saavedra 2013). In this line, No was interpreted not as a truly political flm but as the self-absorbed, elitist expression of a young flmmaker who refused to represent real Chilean society and, instead, praised the importance of the individual hero in a liberalizedPROOF society, while also using Chilean political struggles for his own beneft. Larraín’s participation in international festivals reinforced this perception. No encompasses a type of global aesthetic, integrating an international look with a highly local content. The flm’s subjective point of view apparently privileged its cultural and artistic value over its political aims, echoing contemporary “global” cinema. The content, of course, makes it quite “Chilean,” as it addresses the country’s most famous historical period, Pinochet’s dictatorship. The unique story of the end of the regime thanks to a democratic procedure was not well known abroad, and, until the flm’s premiere at Cannes, only existed in the memories of those Chileans who had lived the experience. However, despite its REVISEDnational roots, No’s carefully self-conscious aesthetic and its particular, almost intimate, politics made it very suitable for the international circuit, revitalizing enduring international imaginaries about the country and its association with the fgure of Pinochet. No’s identity was, then, somewhat “glocal” (Appadurai 1996), that is, constructed as both Chilean and cosmopolitan, opposing the localism of national cinema discourse in the way internationally successful flms tend to do (Galt and Schoonover 2010, 7). The narratives of the internationalization and cultural commodifcation of Chilean cinema, embedded in the branding process at international flm markets and the search for international success sponsored 148 M. P. PEIRANO by the Chilean state, could be seen as the triumph of the neoliberal system in Chilean culture and the imposition of the logics of “creative economies” (Aronczyk and Powers 2010, 15), and therefore the defeat of Chilean flmmakers’ historical struggles. The rhetoric of author cinema would then be understood as yet another expression of the desperate will to achieve individual success in the international market, disguised as an artistic aim, and the cosmopolitan aesthetic of Chilean cinema would be considered a sign of mere snobbery. Thus, the fact that Larraín abandoned big political narratives and had international success could be understood as a sign of a conservative elitist turn, the opposite of the progressive political gesture that young flmmakers think they are making. These types of confict about the nature of political cinema refect the aspirations of a younger generation of Chilean flmmakers to challenge previous conceptions of national cinema, and reveal this to be a period of transformation of the logics of the feld that reside in agents’ actions and dispositions (Bourdieu 1996, 113). These involvePROOF the coexistence of new narratives of a global Chilean cinema that overlap with enduring perceptions of the political role of cinema, which are still important among flmmakers, critics and other intellectuals.

Conclusion: No and the Neoliberal Field of Film Production We have seen how No’s subject matter and aesthetics, as well as its context of production and reception, show the highly complex and ambiguous relationship of the flm with neoliberalism. This case highlights the paradoxes and challenges of making political cinema under the recent confgurationsREVISED of the feld of flm production in Chile, and emphasizes that the political engagements of flm professionals in late capitalism are often a complicated task. As suggested by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2005, 419–73), the artistic and emancipatory aspirations of cultural critique, which are still central to the construction of contemporary artistic subjectivities, have been captured and commodifed in the post-industrial global economy. Creating political art in these current conditions shows the diffculties of reconciling the accumulation of symbolic, cultural and economic capital with social responsibilities and political critique (see Bourdieu 1984, 397–465). In the Chilean case, the 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 149 regimes of value of traditional political cinema overlap with contemporary international art flm regimes and with the reorganization of the production and distribution systems, which have, however, vitalized national flm production in recent years. Political narratives of Chilean cinema are then subsumed to the broader socioeconomic and political contradictions of the experience of neoliberalism. No in particular shows how the artistic project has involved resignifying political values within the horizons of possibility of the global flm market, which tends to complicate the possibility of artistic critique, as well as the construction of “political” subjectivities and political cinema. Moreover, despite its political critique, No’s conditions of production and its circulation are a result of the cultural policies of the Chilean neoliberal state, as well as the reorganization of national flm production in the face of the globalized flm market. Recent Chilean cinema is embedded in the social practices of a contested cultural feld, in which different local and global expectations are intertwined and refect the broader political and economic conditions of flmmaking in the country. Situated within the global andPROOF local political economy of neoliberal flm production, No’s narrative and circulation refect the paradoxical nature of the experience of neoliberalism in Chile. The flm’s position toward this subject and the controversies associated with its release express the lived experience of broader social, economic, cultural and political transformations associated with late capitalism, not only in the changes in flmmaking practices that are framed under the conditions of a deep, overarching neoliberal system, but also through the types of flm being made under these conditions.

Notes 1. Source:REVISED CAEM (2014). 2. The Chilean flm was offcially competing with the Austrian Amour, the Danish A Royal Affair (dir. Arcel, 2012), the Norwegian Kon Tiki (Ronneng, 2012) and the Canadian War Witch (Nguyen, 2012). 3. For example, the TV campaign’s presenter, Patricio Bañados, and the ex-president of the Republic Patricio Aylwin. 4. Filmmaker, personal interview, Santiago de Chile, January 2012. In Spanish in the original, translated by the author. 5. Iván Moreira, Twitter post, August 9, 2012, 9:16 a.m., https://twitter. com/ivanmoreirab?lang es. Translated by the author from the original = Spanish. 150 M. P. PEIRANO

6. UPI Chile, “Moreira por críticas a película NO: ‘Respeto el cine chileno, pero esta cinta es tendencios’,” El mostrador, September 25, 2012, accessed December 13, 2016, http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/ pais/2012/09/25/moreira-por-cuestionamientos-a-pelicula-no-respeto-el- cine-chileno-pero-esta-cinta-es-tendenciosa/. Translated by the author from the original Spanish. 7. Emol, “‘No’ según M.A. Garretón: ‘Es la basura ideológica más grande que he visto’,” Emol.com, August 22, 2012, accessed December 13, 2016, http://www.emol.com/noticias/magazine/2012/08/23/557085/ manuel-antonio-garreton-contra-la-pelicula-no.html. Translated by the author from the original Spanish. 8. For example, a flm critic posted on his Facebook page: “If football fans can be happy with the success of a team they don’t play in, then I can be happy for No. I’m a fan of the Chilean flm team.” January 10, 2013. In Spanish in the original, translated by the author. 9. On the political aesthetics of the flm, see also Benson-Allott (2013).

Works CitedPROOF Anderson, Benedict. 2004. Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Aronczyk, Melissa, and Devin Powers. 2010. Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture. New York: Peter Lang. Benson-Allott, Caetelin. 2013. “An Illusion Appropriate to the Conditions: No (Pablo Larraín, 2012).” Film Quarterly 66 (3): 61–63. Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. 2005. “The New Spirit of Capitalism.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 18 (3): 161–88. Bongers, Wolfang. 2010. “Archivo, cine, política: Imágenes latentes, restos y rspectrosREVISED en flms argentinos y chilenos.” Aisthesis 48: 66–89. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brown, Wendy. 2005. Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. CAEM. 2014. El cine en Chile en el 2013. Cámara de exhibidores multisalas de Chile A.G. [Online]. Available from: http://www.caem.cl/. Accessed December 13, 2016. 8 LARRAÍN’S NO: A TALE OF NEOLIBERALISM 151

Cavallo, Ascanio. 2013. “No somos las estrellas del mundo.” Revista Capital [Online], December 14, 2013. Available from: http://www.capital.cl. Accessed December 13, 2016. Cavallo, Ascanio, and Gonzalo Maza. 2011. El novísimo cine chileno. Santiago: Uqbar. de Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Emol. “‘No’ según M.A. Garretón: “Es la basura ideológica más grande que he visto.” Emol.com, August 22, 2012. Accessed December 13, 2016. http:// www.emol.com/noticias/magazine/2012/08/23/557085/manuel-antonio-garreton-contra-la-pelicula-no.html. Galt, Rosalind, and Karl Schoonover. 2010. “Introduction: The Impurity of Art Cinema.” In Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, edited by Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, 3–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Higson, Andrew. 2000. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, 57–68. London: Routledge. PROOF Iordanova, Dina, and Ragan Rhyne. 2009. The Festival Circuit. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies. Iordanova, Dina, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal. 2010. Cinema at the Periphery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Kapur, Jyotsna, and Keith Wagner. 2011. Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique. London: Routledge. Klein, Naomi. 2008. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin. Myers, Fred. 2001. The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture. Oxford: James Currey Publishers. Page, Joanna. 2017. “Affect and Self‐Authorship in Contemporary Chilean Cinema.” In A Companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by María Delgado,REVISED Stephen Hart, and Randal Johnson, 269–84. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Peirano, María Paz. 2015. “Contemporary Chilean Cinema: Film Practices and Narratives of National Cinema within the Chilean Film Community.” PhD diss., University of Kent, Canterbury. Peirano, María Paz. 2018. “Film Mobilities and Circulation Practices in the Construction of Recent Chilean Cinema.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Art, Performances, Impacts, edited by Aslak Aamot Kjærulff, Peter Peters and Kevin Hannam, 135–47. London: Routledge. 152 M. P. PEIRANO

Pinto, Iván. 2009. “Cine, política, memoria. Nuevos entramados en el documental chileno.” Revista La Fuga [Online]. Available from: http://www.lafuga. cl/. Accessed June 20, 2014. Pinto, Iván, and Luis Horta. 2010. “Vías no realizadas en el cine político chileno: Parodia, extrañamiento y refexividad.” Aisthesis 47: 128–41. Saavedra, Carlos. 2013. Intimidades desencantadas: la poética cinematográfca del dos mil. Santiago: Cuarto Propio. Trejo, Roberto. 2009. Cine, neoliberalismo y cultura: crítica de la economía política del cine chileno contemporáneo. Santiago: ARCIS. UPI Chile. “Moreira por críticas a película NO: ‘Respeto el cine chileno, pero esta cinta es tendenciosa’.” El mostrador. September 25, 2012. Accessed December 13, 2016. http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2012/09/25/moreira- por-cuestionamientos-a-pelicula-no-respeto-el-cine-chileno-pero-esta-cinta-es-tendenciosa/. Urrutia, Carolina. 2010. “Hacia una política en tránsito: Ficción en el cine chileno (2008–2010).” Aisthesis 47: 33–44. Urrutia, Carolina. 2011. “Post Mortem y Tony Manero. Memoria centrifugada de un pasado político.” Cinémas d’Amerique Latine 19: 65–76. Urrutia, Carolina. 2013. Un cine centrífugo: PROOFfcciones chilenas 2005–2010. Santiago: Cuarto Propio.

REVISED CHAPTER 9

Crowdfunding Images of Colombia and Ecuador: International Collaborations and Transnational Circulation in a Neoliberal Context

Carolina RochaPROOF

The withdrawal of the state in the 1990s and early 2000 from the area of culture in Colombia and Ecuador as a result of the neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation and austerity had dire consequences for flm production. In the frst decade of the twenty-frst century, however, these cinemas experienced a striking revival due to the passing of laws— in 2003 in Colombia and in 2006 in Ecuador—that aimed to promote and encourage flm production as an expression of their national cultures. Law 814, which supports Colombian cinema, and Law 29, which provides incentivesREVISED for Ecuadorian flms, were reactions to the neoliberal policies that called for a decreased role of the state and the primacy of the market. In Colombia, the immediate effect of Law 814 of 2003 was the dramatic increase in the number of flms released: from three in 2002 to six in 2004, a number that has since continued to climb annu- ally. In 2016, 30 flms were produced, an amount that supports scholars

C. Rocha (*) Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA

Cédric Lépine and Marie-Françoise-Govin’s belief that Colombia is gradually developing a flm industry (2017, 111). For its part, Ecuador has also seen a rise in the number of released flms. The flm law and the creation of a Council to encourage flm production have dramatically invigorated Ecuador’s flm production (Dillon 2013; Luzuriaga 2013). In 2012, José Luis Serrano, director of the Ecuadorian Council on Cinema, mentioned a 300% growth in flm production since the creation of the Council in 2007, with 11 feature flms and 13 documentaries, adding that there were 15 projects in post-production, fve of which were feature-length flms and ten of which were documentaries in that year (“La producción”). Despite this positive outlook for Colombian and Ecuadorian cinemas, a number of flms shot in these two countries have been possible thanks to an innovative form of international fnancing. Indeed, the neoliberal primacy of market forces and the concomitant reduced role of the state have fostered novel ways of raising funds for flms. Scholars Toby Miller and Richard Maxwell assert that, “neoliberalism understood people exclusively throughPROOF the precepts of selfshness” (2011, 22). In this interpretation, the rationality of the market, detrimental to large sectors of society, stresses ferce competition for limited resources. There is, however, an alternative reading, one in which collaboration plays a central role, particularly in the development of an artistic project. In this case, private foreign sponsors support flms that are to be shot in either Colombia or Ecuador for reasons that include—but are not limited to—encouraging young and non-traditional flmmakers, supporting national and supranational themes, and advancing alternative points of view. Some of these reasons overlap with what Jyostna Kapur and Keith Wagner have pointed out as topics in neoliberal cultural production: the intersection of business with the representation of emotions, the prevalent role of cultureREVISED in neoliberal societies, the public and private realms, and issues of gender and sexuality as well as the links between flmic narratives, society and the nation (2011, 4). Kapur and Wagner have also identifed a trend in neoliberal flmmaking when they state that, “all cinema is the localized expression of a globalized integration” (2011, 6). Key in this tendency are entrepreneurial flmmakers who double up as flm producers and have thus resorted to a new way to raise funds for their flms. If Miller and Maxwell refer to neoliberal society as an “enterprise” (2011, 21), the three flmmakers whose flms will be explored in this chapter have resorted to crowdfunding to produce them. They have engaged in entrepreneurial activities to shoot in either Colombia or Ecuador, aware that 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 155 their projects concerning Latin America’s complex relationship to gender, race and history could be appealing to international viewers as well as to national audiences of these two countries. In this chapter, I analyze the use of crowdfunding as a special form of soliciting funds—in this case, for flms—that adapts to the neoliberal tenet of self-suffciency. I also examine the ways in which these initiatives came to represent Colombia and Ecuador beyond these countries’ geographical borders. I start by providing a brief description of the concept of crowdfunding and its relation to flm production and then explore each of the three flms selected.

Crowdfunding Though a fairly new development, crowdfunding has quickly become a popular way of raising money for a host of purposes. Business scholar Ethan Mollick defnes it as “a novel method for funding a variety of new ventures, allowing individual founders of for-proft, cultural, or social projects to request funding from many individuals,PROOF often in return for future products or equity” (2014, 1). Scholars Inge Sorensen, Miguel Afonso Caetano and Gustavo Cardoso have astutely recognized that patronage of the arts has existed for a long time. What distinguishes crowdfunding from other forms of sponsorship is the appeal to many small investors who have access to online platforms, such as Indiegogo— founded in 2008—and Kickstarter—established in 2009 in the United States and dedicated to creative projects by Americans or United States residents but which accepts pledges from all over the world (Afonso Caetano and Cardoso). The Firefy (Ana María Hermida, 2013), Dirty Hands (Josef Wladytka, 2014) and An Unknown Country: The Jewish Exiles of Ecuador (Eva Zelig, 2015) were made thanks to crowdfunding on theREVISED website Kickstarter, which describes itself as “an enormous global community built around creativity and creative projects. Over 10 million people, from every continent on earth, have backed a Kickstarter Project” (Kickstarter). Sociologists Afonso Caetano and Cardoso indicate that of the 13 categories found on Kickstarter, music is the most popular one, closely followed by flm. Despite the popularity of this form of publicizing projects and requesting fnancial support, much remains unknown about present- ing creative projects to enlist global investors. The impact of crowdfunding in the arts is a fairly new area of research. In a recent article, Patryk Galuszka and Blanka Brzozowska convincingly demonstrate that 156 C. ROCHA crowdfunding of music projects has the potential to democratize the feld, that is to say, allow the expression of alternative media (2017, 835). For her part, Sorensen judiciously states that crowdfunding in relation to specifc art forms and audiovisual genres has received little academic attention (2015, 270). Her pioneering research on the crowdfunding of documentaries in the UK has made clear that certain types of documentaries (high-profle and issue-led) are chosen by crowdfunders (2012, 739) and that the instance of shared investing only benefts flm festivals and traditional distributors (2015, 272). While these statements are indeed compelling, my goal in this chapter is to examine the process of creation and circulation of unusual flms—that display themes important for Colombia and Ecuador by up-and-coming flmmakers (one socio-critical, one supports a female flmmakers, one supports the career of a young flmmaker).

The Firefy PROOF The Firefy deals with the representation of gender, which during neoliberal times, is paradoxical. On the one hand, women are now seen as equal to men with new opportunities for self-expression and development (McRobbie 2013). On the other hand, white masculinism has resurfaced as a reaction that seeks to maintain traditional spheres of power (Tudor 2011). In the antipodes of this variant, The Firefy engages with the progressive topic of lesbian love. The flm is Ana María Hermida’s opera prima. Born and raised in Colombia, Hermida moved to the United States to study frst in Georgia and later in New York City. In 2007, her brother died in a car accident, an event that served as the inspiration for The Firefy, which she wrote, produced with the help of Luisa Casas, and directed. TheREVISED flm’s plot involves two estranged siblings. When Andrés (Manuel José Chávez) dies in a car accident, his sister, Lucía (Carolina Guerra), acutely feels remorse about their disaffection and, in her grief, starts mentally distancing herself from her partner Adrián (Andrés Aramburu). She meets Mariana (Mexican actress Olga Segura), her late brother’s fancée, and they decide to live together to help each other through the grieving period. But as they remember Andrés, they fall in love with each other. The fact that Hermida has resided in the United States for many years but wrote a the script in Spanish and shot the flm in Colombia makes The Firefy a hybrid project.1 The flm’s shooting took place in 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 157

June–July 2013. In addition to scenes in Bogotá, the flm includes several views in the picturesque Valle de Leyva, a colonial town. Even though The Firefy has beautiful locations and centers on upper-middle- class characters, many of the actors and members of the crew worked without pay because they believed in the project (“Olga” 2013). Hermida began her crowdfunding on Kickstarter in 2015, when she was in the post-production stage and needed funds in order to fnish her flm. Her appeal for funding explains:

Despite having minimal funding, we have come so far and have already completed most of the heavy lifting. I am confdent that with your support, we will fnish post-production, we’ll get a website, posters, flm festivals and more. (Hermida on Kickstater)

The fundraising took place during June–July 2015. In this period, 33 backers—“folks who pledge money to join creators in bringing projects to life” (Kickstarter)—committed a totalPROOF of $4065. Pledges ranged from $5 to $1000 (35% of them were of $50, 38% were $15 and two pledges were $2000). Most of the supporters were located in New York, six were in Colombia and the remaining were in Europe and other countries of South America. Although her sponsors were in different countries, surprisingly, Hermida did not offer updates about her flm’s progress. If, on one hand, the migrant status of the director rendered it diffcult to obtain support from Colombian agencies that promote flm production, on the other hand the topic of The Firefy, a love story between two young women, opened up new possibilities for the flm’s distribution. Hermida acknowledgesREVISED that her script struck a special chord in some circles: I think investors and studios (not only in Latin America but also around the world) are still uptight about investing in flms that tell unique stories. In my case, I was very lucky to fnd investors that loved the story and believed in it. Some are from North America, others from South America. LGTB themes are still a taboo in many Latin American places and that’s another reason why I wanted to make this flm. (Cáceres 2016)

Indeed, The Firefy has garnered considerable attention as the frst Colombian lesbian flm, which has perhaps contributed to some of its funding and its international circulation in various flm festivals. The flm was screened at a variety of flm festivals: in 2015, the Atlanta Film Festival 158 C. ROCHA where it was premiered, the Havana International Festival of New Cinema and the Sarasota Film Festival; in 2016, the Fourth Colombian Film Festival in New York, the Mardi Gras Film Festival in New Orleans, and the San Diego and Barcelona LGBIT. In Colombia, it was premiered on November 10, 2016 at the Cine Tonalá in Bogotá. In June 2017, The Firefy was picked up by Netfix to be streamed in the United States. Here it is worth considering flm critic Ragan Rhyne’s remarks about the support that gay and lesbian themes receive in the flm festival circuit:

Gay and lesbian international flm festivals are phenomena born of progressive international politics but fnanced as much by global capital as by philanthropic funding. If queer identity, culture, and communities are in fact being internationalized, then they are inexorably linked to globalization. (2006, 619)

In the case of The Firefy, global capital played a role in the flm’s production, even though there is no data aboutPROOF the backers’ motivations. However, in several comments on Kickstarter, viewers praise the flm’s script and the happy ending for the characters of Lucía and Mariana. The circulation of Hermida’s frst feature-length flm in a number of festivals can also be attributed to two other facts. First, The Firefy shows a sleek Colombia. The characters in The Firefy belong to the upper-middle class, inhabit modern apartments and drive expensive cars. As such, The Firefy can be seen as a Colombian product for export which distances itself from more socially committed flms. As a Colombian flm, it participated in the Fourth Colombian Film Festival of New York in 2016. Second, in the promotion for its release in Bogotá, The Firefy was characterized as a flm about women made by women. This drama about two females is different from the depictions of the armed confict andREVISED rural and urban poverty that have prevailed in many recent Colombian flms, such as La Sirga (William Vega, 2012) and Alias María (José Luis Rugeles, 2015). While lesbian love is an important component in The Firefy, the themes of loss, grief and survival show the resilience of the two leading female characters. Belonging to a new generation of Colombian flmmakers, Hermida brings to the fore the universal topic of bereavement of a loved one. Her flm education acquired outside Colombia probably contributed to a project that easily transcends geographical borders, but was not funded by Colombian sources, which predominately go to male flmmakers and leave female directors 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 159 outside the spheres of fnancial support. Crowdfunding is a benefcial means of flm funding for a female flmmaker. As the following case will show, foreign flmmakers also face challenges to fund their flms set in Colombia.

Dirty Hands Dirty Hands is the frst feature-length flm by Josef Wladyka, a young, up-and-coming American director, son of a Polish father and a Japanese mother. He graduated with a degree in flm direction from New York University. In 2007, he took his frst backpacking trip to Colombia, following pointers from a Colombian friend who recommended he check out some off-the-beaten-path areas. Wladyka discovered Buenaventura, Colombia’s main port and a city that is home to a majority of African descendants who live among high levels of poverty and violence. Buenaventura is also a main hub for cocaine traffcking to the North American market. During his trips, WladykaPROOF gathered local stories and experiences about the criminal activities in the area. In 2010, he returned to Colombia, this time with permission to visit the Malaga Naval Base off the coast of Colombia, which is used to deter drug traffcking. Having hit an impasse in the production of a viable script, he teamed up with classmate Alan Blanco and they both wrote the screenplay for Dirty Hands. They were inspired by what they learned:

cruising up the Pacifc Coast of Ecuador and Colombia … we kept hearing stories from local fsherman [sic] about how the drug trade affected their communities and everyday lives. We heard stories of people on go-fast boats with narco submarines, hiding bales of cocaine and heading toward Panama. I knew immediately there was an important story to be told. (“Josef” REVISED2014)

However, being aware that theirs was a project driven by two young out- siders, Wladyka and Blanco felt compelled to reach out to the humble community of Buenaventura for supporting their project. For instance, they joined forces with a local theater professor who helped them cast the main roles. Furthermore, their venture received initial funding from the Spike Lee Fellowship Award and other donations. Additional fnancial support was obtained by a crowdfunding campaign to facilitate flming in Colombia. 160 C. ROCHA

To fnance part of this independent flm, Wladyka turned to Kickstarter in February 2013. He hoped to raise $55,000 to start shooting his flm in South America. His Kickstarter campaign provided a wealth of information and pictures about the region, people involved and his plan for the flm. His pitch was both local and global, as it emphasized the power of flm to communicate stories: “I arrived in Colombia with a passion for discovering the local stories; I left with an idea for a flm that will speak to audiences across the globe” (Kickstarter). Wladyka also listed challenges and risks for the local community that contributed to making his flm proposal well thought and sensible. By the end of February 2013, the campaign had already raised more than 50% of the targeted goal. In March 2013, the project was awarded the Canon Filmmaker Award through Film Independent, which required the use of Canon equipment during shooting. On March 12, 2013, three days before the end of the fundraising campaign, Wladyka’s project achieved its target and the script was included in the New York University’s Purple List, a catalogue of thePROOF most promising students’ ventures. By the end of the campaign in March 2013, a total of $60,483 was raised. Pledges ranged from $5 to $10,000, with the most popular pledges being of $50 and $100, each with 41 backers. Most of the supporters were from New York City, three were from Brazil. Almost half of the supporters were frst-time sponsors. Unlike Hermida, Wladyka kept backers informed of the different stages of his project. On May 13, 2013, there was a frst update about the crew’s activities in Colombia, scouting possible locations, casting and learning about the special submarines that are flled with drugs that would be used in the flm. The update included six pictures illustrating the different tasks in which the crew was involved. By July 2013, the REVISEDphotography stage came to an end. In November of that year, Wladyka and Blanco received two grants for post-production. In an entry from February 2014, the director announced that Spike Lee would be the flm’s producer, and the crew also received an invitation for the International Film Festival of Cartagena de Indias (FICCI), which would be Dirty Hands’ offcial release. Wladyka posted a teaser with a short interview and a short rap from one of the actors. A month later, in the wake of the flm’s release in the FICCI, an update proudly announced: “We won the hearts of the Colombian audience and were the buzz of the festival” (Kickstarter). Local media 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 161 corroborated Wladyka’s statement: “it had a good reception among the attending audience who gave a long round of applause for the flm, its director and the rest of the team” (Cárdenas Mogollón 2014, n.p.).2 In equally laudable terms, El país reporter described the flm as “something we have talked about thousands of times but no director had been able to tell it like this, with fresh eyes before the beauty of fear that is seen for the frst time” (Rojas).3 Arguably because of its favorable reception in Cartagena and the strong, positive reviews in different media outlets, Dirty Hands was selected to participate in the Tribeca Film Festival. Dirty Hands’s plot is concerned with both local mores and the global fows of illegal drug traffcking. Jacobo (Jarlin Martínez) works for narco-traffckers taking submarines full of cocaine. At his young age, he has experienced the violence of the paramilitaries who killed his only son Julito and took over his property. He is saving money to leave behind his criminal activities and heads to Bogotá to build a better life for himself. In one trip transporting the illegal cargo, hePROOF is joined by the naïve and inexperienced Delio (Cristian James Advincula), who at 19 is already a father, has a girlfriend and loves to rap. Delio’s laid-back attitude gradually changes as he is exposed to the dangers of their mission and joins Jacobo in attempting to survive their perilous journey. The flm’s participation in festivals and its release in different countries were also described in different updates on its Kickstarter website, thus sharing the flm’s success with its backers. In September 2014, Wladyka publicized Dirty Hands’ screening at the Zurich International Film Festival, the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, the Athens International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Two months later, an update informed of the flm’s release in Buenaventura, its selection toREVISED represent Colombia at the Goya Awards and its forthcom- ing release in the United States. The flm’s participation in different flm festivals around the globe and in Buenaventura demonstrates that despite its foreign director and script writer, Dirty Hands quickly came to be seen as a Colombian flm, and as such, it was embraced not only by the community in which it was shot—which was proud of its worldwide circulation—but also by Colombian flmmakers and authorities who selected it to represent the country at the prestigious Goya Awards. This led to the flm’s double nationality, announced in a message about the flm’s launch for sale in the United States and for rent in Colombia. 162 C. ROCHA

Fig. 9.1 Poster of Dirty Hands (Josef Wladytka,PROOF 2014) The fnal update informs backers about its being streamed on three different platforms (Fig. 9.1). As evident in its participation in flm festivals, Dirty Hands has been able to traverse boundaries due to its universal theme. The jury of the Tribeca Film Festival announced its selection of Dirty Hands, explaining:

We felt this flm was an eye and mind opener that transported us to a different place, stimulating our thinking, allowing us to meditate on the relationship between violence and circumstance. (“Manos sucias” 2014)

Wladyka and Blanco’s “outsider” view about drug production and trans- portation hasREVISED managed to touch viewers both in Colombia and around the world. What started as an individual leisure journey taken by a young American flmmaker eventually became a flm made by the funding of many small investors and one that has managed to move audiences worldwide. The following flm also focuses on transnational links and the production of subjectivities during neoliberalism.

An Unknown Country Eva Zelig’s documentary, An Unknown Country: The Jewish Exiles of Ecuador, deals with the subject of the Holocaust and the migration 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 163 of European Jews to Ecuador during World War II. Offcially released in January 2015, An Unknown Country took several years of intense work and the support of an unusual group of “producers.” Its director, Eva Zelig, born in Ecuador to European Jewish parents and now an Emmy Award winner living in New York, began researching the flm in 2010. Coincidentally, at that time, Zelig found out that a group of “Jews of Ecuador” living in the United States was planning to return to the Andean country for a short visit. This reunion served as the point of departure for her flmmaking activities, which she completed two years later. After that, the director spent considerable time searching for fnancial resources that would allow her to complete her documentary: “I devoted a lot of time and effort to raising funds. That was the hardest part as the project’s completion depended on substantial funding” (Vourvoulias 2015). As it transpired in Zelig’s words, she not only directed the documentary but was also in charge of producing its fnal cut. After exhausting her own fnancial resourcesPROOF for the making of An Unknown Country, Zelig opted to raise funds using Kickstarter. On this site, in a seven-minute trailer, she introduced herself, explained her project and solicited donations. She aimed to raise $35,000 in a two-month period (October–December 2011) so as to be able to complete her documentary by 2012. By the end of the fundraising campaign, Zelig’s project had raised $41,630 with 226 backers who had pledged donations ranging from $25 to $2500. Most of the donations ranged from $25 to $100—20% donated $25, 18% pledged $50 and 27% donated $100. Despite these modest contributions, in the frst month of the campaign (October–November 2011), 84% of the aimed sum was pledged. When the fundraising was over in December 2011, Zelig thanked her multiple sponsors whoREVISED had contributed $6530 above the desired goal. This fundraising enabled Zelig to return to Ecuador for additional shooting as well as pay for some editing and licensing of archival footage, images and music. Needing more funds for the fnal edit and post-production, she requested additional donations from her Kickstarter donors. This request was answered by one of the children of Jewish refugees to Ecuador who undertook another crowdfunding campaign on her behalf. It took fve years to complete the flm. Throughout this process, the flmmaker periodically provided updates on Kickstarter, the frst of which is dated March 2012 and the most recent, September 25, 2017, in which she announced the TV broadcast of the flm on the PBS network. 164 C. ROCHA

These updates included a summary of her trip to Ecuador for additional shooting, information about a test screening and the announcement of the completion of the documentary on March 7, 2015. During this phase, Zelig and Terence Taylor, the documentary’s producer and editor, paid attention to numerous details, such as the selection of photos, stock footage and music rights. In An Unknown Country, Ecuadorean history and the contemporary politics of memory about human rights violations and the com- memoration of Holocaust survivors coalesce. This documentary opens with a family picture in which the different members of Zelig’s family are classifed according to their destinies after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia: some were killed, others went into hiding and yet others fed to what for them was an unknown country: Ecuador. The flmmaker’s voice-over explains that she was born and raised in Ecuador, but she left for the United States when she was 15. Her narration focuses on the Jewish refugees’ experience of escaping from Nazism. Eleni Coundouriotis, who studies refugees’ narratives,PROOF holds that “the story of fight is central to the imaginary of the refugee who needs to be able to hold on to a sense of agency and movement toward a destiny” (2016, 78). As a second-generation survivor of the Holocaust, Zelig’s documentary pays special attention not only to the story of exile, but also to the fact that many countries denied visas for European Jews in the late 1930s. In this context, Ecuador appears as an exceptional country that facilitated the survival of many of those persecuted for their Jewishness. Thus, even if Ecuador is no longer the place of residence of the many interviewees who appear in the documentary, the small South American nation remains the country that granted many the freedom of circulation that is so closely related to the agency to which Coundouriotis alludes. Ecuador’sREVISED blending of Europeans and Latin Americans, expressed by the music score, displays the country’s diverse cultural fabric. The classi- cal music that is heard in the flm’s frst seconds is soon replaced by typical Andean rhythms as the camera shows both picturesque villages and modern cityscapes, providing a glimpse of Ecuador’s diversity. This context presents Zelig as part of the group of the “Jews of Ecuador”—Jews who were born in Ecuador but have migrated to the United States—who return to pay homage to the nation that hosted them when their parents were feeing persecution. The documentary captures these visitors’ recognition of the places where they were born and spent their child- hoods. Consequently, their former homes now stand in a society that 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 165 has changed in positive ways since their parents’ arrival in Ecuador in the 1940s, partially as a result of their businesses and cultural contributions. Nonetheless, the pervasive theme that moves the documentary forward is the director’s heartfelt gratitude to the country that demonstrated solidarity towards Jews during the Holocaust. In an interview with Kristina Puga, Zelig states, “You can’t fnd more welcoming people than Ecuadorians. I want everyone to know there was this little country that saved almost 4,000 lives” (2015). Zelig refers to the events that took place after the Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal) in 1938 and the subsequent pogroms in Nazi-occupied territories, when European Jews became the target of massive human rights violations that had deep repercussions not only at that time and in that geographical area, but that are still being processed today through the testimonies of survivors and second- and third-generation survivors. In the documentary, escaping persecution is intimately related to the fact that most countries in the world closed their borders to European Jews who were seeking to escape Nazism. Within this context, the policies of Ecuador that permittedPROOF the arrival of almost 4,000 refugees stand out as a heroic instance of humanitarian aid amid the indifference or hostility of other nations. The unfamiliar country that opened its doors to thousands of displaced and persecuted people turned out to be, for many Jewish European refugees, a permanent place of residence. For others, those who continued their journey to the United States, the unknown country allowed them freedoms—to enter, leave and return—that were sharply curtailed during Nazi Germany. Because of past and present journeys, An Unknown Country re- territorializes the experience of Jewish refugees and their descendants, tracing new links between the United States and Ecuador. The ability to move that the second and third generation of Jewish refugees in Ecuador enjoy, however,REVISED is also related to their sense of permanent displacement. While many of them are currently residents of the United States just like the documentary’s director, the fact that she is part of a diaspora complicates her access to state funds and subventions to tell the unknown stories of Jewish diaspora and the nation that hosted Jewish exiles during the Holocaust. Through her initiative to crowdfund her documentary, Zelig set up an innovative way to fnd sponsors who believed in her project and who would donate funds for its development, proving that many anonymous backers considered her project of revisiting the painful history of human rights violations and the diaspora to Ecuador worth preserving in a documentary. Therefore, An Unknown Country squarely 166 C. ROCHA participates in the contemporary “boom of memory,” which Andreas Huyssen has aptly named, as well as in the thriving trend of documentary flmmaking. Zelig’s documentary, which participates in the transnational politics of memory, simultaneously pays homage to a nation state—Ecuador.4 Sociologists Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider link the representation of the Holocaust to the production of shared memories (2006, 5). While collective memories have traditionally been associated with the construction of nationalism, refecting on the role of memories from the Holocaust in a global age, Levy and Sznaider hold that “the inscription of Holocaust memories into local contexts thus produces processes not only of de-territorialization but also of re-territorialization” (2006, 12). This means that processes of remembrance go beyond national borders, and in so doing, trace maps of new spaces bound by the shared remembrance of human right abuses. An Unknown Country articulates the national and supranational layers that inform the current politics of memory. PROOF As an independently made documentary that is part of a global phenomenon of memory preservation, An Unknown Country has been exhibited in alternative venues both in Ecuador and in the United States. Since January 27, 2015—the International Holocaust Remembrance Day—when the flm was frst shown in Ecuador, it has enjoyed a number of screenings and been part of several flm festivals. Many of these screenings were for the Jewish community, such as the one at the Leo Baeck Institute—a Manhattan-based center dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the German-speaking Jewry—those at Holocaust museums in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas, and many Jewish syna- gogues and community centers. One of these showings—the one of March 2016—wasREVISED sponsored by the New York Women in Film and Television Association. An Unknown Country has also found an important niche and recognition in Ecuador. In April 2015, Zelig reported on Kickstarter that she was in Ecuador, participating in events related to the Jewish community in the city of Cuenca. Besides the interest of the Jewish-Ecuadorian community, An Unknown Country has also received more mainstream recognition from Ecuador, as it was invited to be part in the frst Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York City in 2015. Here it is important to mention that the Ecuadorian flm industry is a small one. Scholar Michael Dillon states that “its small feature flm production and lack of state support have relegated it to historical and critical oblivion” 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 167

(2013). Despite the small size of Ecuadorian flm production, Zelig’s documentary, which was realized thanks to many small supporters, has shown images of Ecuador and part of its recent history both inside and outside the nation’s borders.

Conclusions With its prioritization of the market, neoliberalism stresses competition and entrepreneurship. Ana María Hermida, Josef Wladyka and Eva Zelig, flmmakers who have resorted to raising funds for their audiovisual projects on Kickstarter, have embraced both of these values. Their flms were shot in Colombia and Ecuador—even though the fnal cuts and post-productions were done in the USA—with topics that while pertaining to these nations also resonate with audiences worldwide. The three different themes of lesbian love, illegal drug traffcking and surviving violence, and the links between survivors of the Holocaust and their migration to Ecuador, have both captured the PROOFimagination and the hearts of many backers, mainly in the United States and Latin America. This innovative form of raising flm funds challenges the traditional division of Northern capital and Southern labor. In addition, these transnational/ coproduced flms have easily crossed geographical borders, reaching viewers other than those in Colombia and Ecuador. Therefore, these flms stand as a positive result of neoliberalism, their creators having to rely on international cooperation despite the neoliberal context of competition. Time will tell if these pioneering forms of raising funds for flms will become a model to be replicated, particularly among Latin American directors and producers. Acknowledgements My special thanks to Pablo Carrión who frst told me about An UnknownREVISED Country when the documentary was still in post-production and to Eva Zelig with whom I have been in touch since 2014.

Notes 1. Silvia Harvey states: “In a world of increased migration and of-cross border fows of news and of entertainment there has emerged a common way of speaking about lived cultures as hybrid, plural, varied, and of the great cities of the world as polyglot and multi-cultural” (3). 2. Original quote: “tuvo muy buen recibimiento por parte del público asistente que brindó unánime un largo aplauso a la película, su director y el resto de equipo de realización”. 168 C. ROCHA

3. Original quote: “algo de lo que hemos hablado mil veces, pero que ningún director había podido contar así, con ojos vírgenes ante la belleza del miedo que es visto por vez primera”. 4. A similar theme appears in Sandra Kogut’s Um passaporte húngaro [A Hungarian Passport] (2001). For more on this, please see Rocha (2014).

Works Cited Afonso Caetano, Miguel, and Gustavo Cardozo. 2017. “Crowdfunding the Culture of Remix.” Accessed September 15, 2017. Cáceres, Juan. 2016. “LatinoBuzz: Exclusive Interview with ‘La Luciérnaga’ Filmmaker Ana Maria Hermida.” http://www.indiewire.com/2016/03/ latinobuzz-exclusive-interview-with-la-luciernaga-flmmaker-ana-maria-hermida-168180/. Accessed September 10, 2017. Cárdenas Mogollón, Yinna Paola. 2014. “Manos Sucias recibió buenos comentarios en el FICCI 54.” La Verdadera Alternativa de la Radio, March 18, 2014. http://laud.udistrital.edu.co/noticias/%E2%80%98manos-sucias%E2% 80%99-recibi%C3%B3-buenos-comentarios-en-el-fcci-2014PROOF. Accessed October 12, 2017. Coundouriotis, Eleni. 2016. “In Flight: The Refugee Experience and Human Rights Narrative.” In Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights, edited by Sophia McClennen and Andrea Schultheis Moore, 78–85. London and New York: Routledge. De Luca, Tiago. 2014. Realism of the Senses in World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality. London: I.B. Tauris. Dillon, Michael. 2013. “The Birth of New Ecuatorean Film.” Cine Y… Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinarios Sobre Cine En Espanol / Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies on Film in Spanish 4: 13–23. Galuzka, Patryk, and Blanka Brzozowska. 2017. “Crowdfunding and the Democratization of the Music Market.” Society, Media and Culture 39 (6): 833–49. REVISED Harvey, Silvia. 2006. Trading Culture. Global Traffcs and Local Cultures in Film and Television. Eastleigh, UK: John Libby. “Josef Wladyka and Alan Blanco.” 2014. Filmmaker Magazine. http://flmmak- ermagazine.com/people/josef-wladyka-alan-blanco/#.WcLAUNOGOqA. Kapur, Jyotsna, and Keith B. Wagner. 2011. Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique. New York: Routledge. “La producción del cine ecuatoriano crece al 300%” Andes 2012. http://www. ecuadorinmediato.com/index.php?module Noticias&func news_user_ = = view&id 185218. Accessed November 15, 2017. = Lépine, Cedric, and Marie-Françoise Govin. 2017. “El cine colombiano desde los años 2000.” Cinémas d’Amérique Latine 25: 111–17. 9 CROWDFUNDING IMAGES OF COLOMBIA … 169

Levy, Daniel, and Nathan Sznaider. 2006. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Luzuriaga, Camilo. 2013. “Antecedentes, inicios y problemas del cine histórico en el Ecuador: apuntes para un estudio critico.” Chasqui 121: 73–80. “Manos sucias y Güeros Awarded at Tribeca.” Cinema Tropical, April 25, 2014. https://www.cinematropical.com/cinema-tropical/manos-sucias-and-gueeros- awarded-at-tribeca. McRobbie, Angela. 2013. “Preface.” In Femininities. Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity, edited by Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, xi–xv. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Miller, Toby, and Richard Maxwell. 2011. “‘For a Better Deal, Harass Your Governor!’: Neoliberalism and Hollywood.” In Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique, edited by Jyotsna Kapuer and Keith B. Wagner, 19–37. New York: Routledge. Mollick, Ethan. 2014. “The Dynamics of Crowdfunding: A Exploratory Study.” Journal of Business Venturing 29 (1): 1–16. “Olga Segura flma La luciérnaga en Colombia.” El Universal, June 25, 2013. http://www.eluniversal.com/arte-y-entretenimiento/cine/130625/olga-segura-flma-la-luciernaga-en-colombia. AccessedPROOF September 10, 2017. Puga, Kristina. 2015. “Fleeing Nazism and Settling in Ecuador: Film Tells Jewish Families’ Story.” http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/feeing-nazism-ecuador-new-flm-chronicles-jewish-families-story-n377816. Accessed October 22, 2016. Rhyne, Ragan. 2006. “The Global Economy of Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals.” GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12 (4): 617–19. Rocha, Carolina. 2014. “Documenting Otherness: Jewish-Latin American Female Filmmakers.” Jewish Film & New Media 2 (1): 47–63. Rojas, Jorge Enrique. 2014. “Josef Kubota Wladyka, el chico de la película ‘Manos Sucias’ rodada en Buenaventura.” El país, March 17, 2014. http:// www.elpais.com.co/entretenimiento/cultura/josef-kubota-wladyka-el-chico- de-la-pelicula-manos-sucias-rodada-en-buenaventura.html. Sorensen, Inge.REVISED 2012. “Crowdsourcing and Outsourcing: The Impact of Online Funding and Distribution on the Documentary Film Industry in the UK.” Society, Media and Culture 34 (6): 726–43. Sorensen, Inge. 2015. “Go Crowdfund Yourself! Some Unintended Consequences of Crowdfunding for Documentary Film and Industry in the U.K.” In MoneyLab Reader: An Intervention in Digital Economy, edited by Geert Lovink, Nathaniel Tkacz, and Patricia de Vries, 268–80. Amsterdam: Institute for Networked Cultures. Stanton, Dillon. 2016. “A New Universal for Human Rights?: The Particular, the Generalizable, the Political.” In Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights, edited by Sophia McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore, 27–36. London and New York: Routledge. 170 C. ROCHA

Tudor, Deborah. 2011. “Twenty-First Century Neoliberal Man.” In Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique, edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner, 59–75. New York: Routledge. Vourvoulias, Sabrina. 2015. “An Unknown Country’ Explores Stories of Jews Fleeing Nazi Persecution to Find Refuge in Ecuador.” Al día News. http:// aldianews.com/articles/culture/film-television/unknown-country-explores-stories-jews-feeing-nazi-persecution-fnd. Accessed September 22, 2017.

PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 10

Argentine Cinema in the Age of Digitization: Between Foreign Dominance and Discussion of Benefts

Andrea Morán Ferrés and Miguel Fernández Labayen PROOF

This chapter takes on three tasks: First, it charts Hollywood dominance on the Argentine flm market in terms of distribution and exhibition; second, it examines theatrical digitalization as the latest form to expand market share of US flms but also as a potential expansion of Argentinian flm culture; and third, it evaluates state measures to mitigate foreign dominance and protect national cinema spaces, analyzing the diffculties of implementation of these measures, and reviewing the critical discussions on a local flm industry level. To this effect, we look at the ways in which the Argentine government has reacted to the digitization of cinemas, which began in 2008 with the inauguration of the frst two digital screens REVISEDin Buenos Aires by the chains Cinemark and Hoyts. In fact, theatrical digitization in Argentina took place in what could be understood as a second period in the multiplex era. After the critical period of the early 1990s, when theatrical exhibition hit bottom due to the proliferation of video stores and cable TV, with only 326 theaters available nationwide in 1994 (Getino 1998), foreign chains like Cinemark (USA),

A. Morán Ferrés (*) · M. Fernández Labayen Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Getafe, Spain

Showcase (USA), Village (Australia) and Hoyts (Australia) opened their frst premises in Argentina later that decade. Despite the monetary devaluation in early 2002 practically putting a stop to foreign investment in the exhibition sector, multiplexes still gained a dominant position over traditional venues throughout the 2000s. This hegemonic situation would be even reinforced with the transformation of movie houses from analogue to digital. In the face of the compulsory advent of digital cinema, the National Institute of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) chose to introduce several policies in order to alleviate any negative effects which the transition might have on national and minority agents. In this chapter we examine the two most signifcant of such policies: the creation and digitization of the Espacios INCAA cinemas, and the regulation of the Virtual Print Fee (VPF) model. First of all, we provide a brief analysis of the period 2008–2015 in terms of numbers of screens, corporate concentration and the presence of national flms in Argentine cinemas, in order to see how the exhibition market behaved duringPROOF the transition from analogue to digital. Once this map of the sector has been drawn, the two measures mentioned above will be examined. These measures must be contextualized within the Kirchnerism period (2003–2015),1 characterized by a rejection of neoliberalism and a preference for state intervention after the economic crisis of 2001. As Jens Andermann notes, the 2001 crisis meant the bursting of the “speculative bubble, which exposed the fantasy character of neoliberal economics and its claims to have elevated Argentina into the ‘First World’—instead bringing to the fore the true realities of exclusion, poverty, and hunger; the open secret of neoliberal globalization” (2013, 158). Once Argentina realized it was no exception in the Latin American context, this frst “return of the real” was followedREVISED by a return to the national. In this sense, Joanna Page believes that:

The events of the crisis were to mobilize a set of nationalist discourses around a common experience of economic disaster and against a set of common enemies: the World Bank, the IMF, and the multinational companies that took over many of Argentina’s assets during Menem’s programme of privatization. (2009, 111)

In the context of this renaissance of the Argentine nation, flm texts played a role in rebuilding national identity, but so too did the 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 173 production, distribution and exhibition companies that put them in circulation. Theatrical digitization was perceived as another threat to national culture and economy. In fact, scholars like Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner have pointed out that “new technologies of communications have served as the glue and conduit of neoliberalism” (2011, 1). Thus, in this chapter we look at the digitization of theatrical flm exhibition not as an inexorable step forward for cinema’s technological progression but as a strategic move which strengthens the dominant positions in the industry and which shows that technology can act as a useful tool for the neoliberal economy. The chapter ponders the tensions between neoliberalism as a global phenomenon and “the nation as a strategy of resistance,” as Joanna Page has stated in her study on capitalism and the crisis in Argentina cinema (2009, 6). Our aim, however, is not to polarize the relations between neoliberalism and the nation state as opposite extremes that dialectically confront each other. Rather, we contemplate the relationsPROOF between the international exhibition companies, the state, the local agents and the spectators as an interrelated feld of forces and negotiations. After all, “neoliberalism did not involve an absolute retreat of the state” (Miller and Maxwell 2011, 22). In line with valuable recent work on cinema-going and flm policies in Argentina (Roque González 2013, 2015; Moguillansky 2016; Torterola 2010), we wish to open up the feld of discussion beyond the centrality of close readings and aesthetic criticism of flms, and comple- ment more traditional flm studies’ approaches with a political economy perspective. In this context, we reconsider the “felt internationalism” present in today’s multiplex flm culture based on the simultaneity of the cinematic experience (same flms, look-alike spaces, etc., see Acland 2003) in theREVISED light of the tensions brought in by theatrical digitization in Argentina. In this case, and also aligned with precious work like Leandro González’s (2015) review of flm exhibition in Argentina from 1980 to 2013, we acknowledge the growing importance of statistics and the mixture of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to understand the complexities of cinema as part of global media industries. It is through the careful selection and analysis of the growing body of data available on flm as an economy and culture that we proceed to explore the set of transformations that digitization has entailed in the Argentine exhibition sector. 174 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN

Movie Theaters in Argentina: From Analogue to Digital (2008–2015)2 The number of theatrical screens in Argentina has moderately increased over the last ten years. The rise in the number of screens (not theaters), a consequence of the implementation of the multiplex and the meg- aplex in Argentina throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, peak in 2000 (956 screens) and 2015 (912 screens). Though these fgures come close to those of 1980 (996 screens), this data may be misleading if we do not take into account other transformations. First, the number of cinemas has grown at a slower pace than the population of Argentina. Movie theaters have become smaller, not only physically (that is, less number of seats, a smaller dimension of the rooms, and of most screens) but also quantitatively (that is, there are fewer screens per inhabitant). Whereas in 1947/1950 there was one screen per 6,886 citizens, in 2010 that number grew to one for every 50,975 people (González 2015, 79). As Leandro González’s work on the history of PROOFflm exhibition in Argentina reminds us, the number of theaters and screens has decreased on an almost constant basis since the 1950s, with the exception of the catastrophic situation of the early 1990s (Table 10.1). As for the typology of the cinemas, the distribution of these screens has changed in the last three decades. Currently, Argentina possesses 758 complexes with at least two screens, and 154 single-screen venues. The former generate over US$188 million in earnings, the latter little more than US$9 million (Kitsopanidou 2015). While the difference between multiplexes and single-screen theaters is not so great in provinces with

Table 10.1 Number of REVISEDYear Argentina cinema screens 2007 801 2008 825 2009 843 2010 870 2011 865 2012 883 2013 866 2014 867 2015 912

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 175 few cinemas, the balance clearly favors the multiplex-type venue oriented towards blockbusters in urban areas like the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (153 multiplexes as opposed to nine single-screen cinemas) or Córdoba (89 versus 20). Regarding attendance, the percentage of spectators increased con- siderably from 2010 onwards. While admissions went down during the period 2005–2010, they have increased in recent years, and in 2015 exceeded 50 million spectators, the highest fgure since 1986 (55 million) (Table 10.2).3 According to Marina Moguillansky, “this upturn might be the result of various factors, including the relative reduction in the price of cinema tickets … in a context of growing infation … or the successful new strategies of Hollywood and multiplex chains to reinvent theatrical flm exhibition as a visual and technological spectacle” (Moguillansky 2016, 174). However, data provided by the INCAA show that ticket prices have risen. While in 2007 it cost 10.59 pesos on average to see a flm in the city of Buenos Aires, in 2015 the samePROOF ticket was worth 58.49 (US$3.24). Currently, some cinemas in the city charge up to 250 pesos (over US$13), when just eight years ago the maximum price was around 20 pesos. Also, there is a certain price disparity across different geographical areas, with cinemas in the interior charging compara- tively less than those in the capital. In fact, Greater Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires alone account for 52.64% of spectators and 53.67% of total earnings. This causes the rural or less populated areas of the country to be neglected. As will be explained later on, among other reasons, the Espacios INCAA network was set up to alleviate the scarcity of venues in these areas and to decentralize the REVISED Table 10.2 Number of Year Number of spectators spectators in Argentina (total) 2008 34,444,107 2009 33,453,123 2010 38,394,256 2011 43,098,722 2012 47,320,503 2013 48,405,285 2014 45,648,799 2015 51,364,759

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors 176 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN exhibition sector. All in all, the average of tickets sold per inhabitant per year in Argentina in 2015, 1.21, was still slightly smaller than those of other Latin American countries such as Brazil (1.69), Chile (1.45) or Colombia (1.23) (INCAA 2015). Another possible explanation for the increased number of spectators may be the effect that blockbusters from the United States, locally known as “Hollywood tanks” (los tanques de Hollywood), have on the box offce. For example, in 2015 several flms passed the million- spectators mark, which acts as the symbolic frontier for top-grossing flms. A flm like Minions (Pierre Coffn and Kyle Balda, 2015) sold over 4,900,000 tickets, setting a record and becoming the flm with the highest theatrical attendance ever registered by the INCAA (Scholz 2016). On examining the total number of flms exhibited in 2015, national flms remain in second place. National flm production has not stopped increasing at great speed thanks to the flmmaking possibilities provided by digital technology (Aguilar 2010). Currently, the percentage of spectators watching Argentine flms represents 13.5%PROOF of the total, an average that fuctuates according to the presence or absence of a big hit each season. For example, Damián Szifron’s Relatos salvajes swept the national box offce with almost 3,400,000 spectators in 2014, which accounted for 45% of the total of spectators for national flms that year (Tables 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5). It is indisputable that digital technologies have facilitated flm production by notably reducing costs, but in Argentina flm theaters as a whole (lacking a signifcant increase in the number of screens and having a notable degree of ownership concentration) cannot take advantage of this cinematographic “surplus.” Simply put, there are more REVISED Table 10.3 Theatrical Year Total National Foreign releases in Argentina 2008 290 74 216 2009 300 95 205 2010 350 129 221 2011 348 133 215 2012 340 146 194 2013 390 167 223 2014 404 172 232 2015 450 177 273

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 177

Table 10.4 Theatrical Year Releases % of releases % of total gross releases of Argentine flms in Argentina 2010 129 37 8 2011 133 38 7 2012 146 43 9 2013 167 43 14 2014 172 43 17 2015 177 39.3 13.5

Source INCAA, SInCA/compiled by the authors

Table 10.5 Number of seats offered per flma

Year Number of seats (foreign flms) Seats (national flms)

2009 4,211,086 2,078,857 2010 6,392,487 2,093,452 2011 6,440,210 1,744,790 2012 6,655,302 PROOF2,020,856 2013 6,429,684 3,192,784 2014 6,175,252 3,368,801 2015 8,172,786 2,862,639 aCalculations made using the top-ten foreign and national flms most viewed for each year Source INCAA/compiled by the authors flms produced than exhibited. Consequently this problem, the “bottleneck” also affecting many other exhibition sectors, requires specifc actions to be taken if the obstacles these types of flm encounter on their way towards cinema screens are to be reduced. Thus, the situation of Argentine cinema within its own territory remains a complicated one in terms of boxREVISED offce revenues. With a share of almost 40% of the flms released in Argentina, the box offce results are signifcantly poorer, with an average of 14–15% of the total theatrical revenues in recent years. National cinema remains relegated to a second division, with fewer seats, showings and spectators. Digitization has not resolved any of these contextual problems; rather, some of them have become more entrenched. According to Santiago Marino, the main diffculties faced by cinema in Argentina

lay in the poor, precarious conditions for the exhibition of national flms, in the reduction of the number of screens, in their geographic 178 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN

concentration (in big cities and particularly those districts with greater pur- chasing power) and in the fact that a vast amount of money (generated by the sector itself but also by television) is destined for the production of flms which are seen by very few people. (Marino 2014)

In fact, the unbalanced concentration of the sector may account for Argentine cinema’s unfavorable situation in terms of its share of seats and screenings. In 2015, nine out of the top-ten most-watched flms were North American, while only one was a national production: El clan (2015). Pablo Trapero’s flm is in fact an Argentine-Spanish coproduction that was distributed by 20th Century Fox in blockbuster mode, with 41,606 total screenings around the country. With the exception of this flm, none of the other national flms that opened in 2015 exceeded 14,000 screenings. The data on seats available is also revealing: while Minions commanded 13,914,670 seats, the second-most-viewed Argentine flm, Abzurdah (Daniela Goggi, 2015), could only obtain 2,871,760 seats (Table 10.5). According toPROOF Pablo Messuti, “the main foreign distributors have capitalized on their advantage in the local market by maintaining preferential agreements with the major Hollywood studios and by running aggressive promotional campaigns, marketing their flms in the printed media and on television” (2014, 35). In this crossroads between foreign distributors, international theatrical chains and Hollywood studios, it is essential to examine the rise of 3D projection over the last few years as a key part of the fnancial process that digitization entailed. As David Bordwell highlighted, the return of the three-dimensional format “was the Trojan horse for digital projection,” a “wedge prying open reluctant multiplexes” (2012, 75). In Argentina, this format was introduced in September 2008 through the chains Cinemark and Hoyts, which were the frst to open digital venuesREVISED in Buenos Aires. Coca Cola sponsored the 3D room at Cinemark Palermo, while Telmex, the Mexican telecommunications company owned by Carlos Slim that operates across Latin America, partnered with Hoyts at Hoyts Unicenter. These two cinemas chose different providers (RealD and Dolby 3D) to carry out the conversion, but both selected the same flm to launch operations: the concert-flm Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D (Bruce Hendricks, 2008).4 It is signifcant that both chains chose this flm as the opening attraction of their new installations. Produced by Walt Disney pictures and distributed in Argentina through Disney’s 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 179

Buena Vista International, the Jekyll-and-Hyde coming-of-age concert flm of Montana/Cyrus was part of a multimedia production, which consisted of music albums and soundtracks, TV series and concert tours. The agreement between Hoyts, Cinemark and Disney is another example of bringing together fnancial interests among big international players within the entertainment industry. The operation is exemplary of the fnancial and cultural bottleneck that theatrical digitization implied. The similarity of experiences offered by the 3D screens at Cinemark and Hoyts speak of a global (neoliberal) flm culture. The operations are revealing of the fexibility, heterogeneity and adaptability of contemporary flm theaters in the search of new spectators captivated by all kinds of multimedia experiences. The Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D case illustrates the aim of attracting large audience numbers through the inclusion of alternative content like concerts, live broadcasting of sport events and opera, which reinforces hegemonic pop culture and market monopoly. The defnitive establishment of 3D camePROOF about in 2009. By then, there were already 31 cinemas equipped for this projection format in Argentina, and its expansion continued to advance. This was partly thanks to highly popular US flms such as Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), whose effective marketing campaign was a game-changing event that legitimized the penetration and expansion of 3D technology both in movie and home theaters. In 2010, there were 110 venues offering this service, and by 2015, 492 screens distributed all over the country were ready to provide 3D projection (Table 10.6). Comparing these fgures with the recent evolution of spectators, the 3D boom coincides with increased audience numbers from 2010 onwards. ThoughREVISED Bordwell claims that “by 2012, the initial excitement Table 10.6 3D flms in Year Releases Spectators Gross Argentina 2009 10 1,363,841 31,905,454 2010 22 6,593,995 165,013,081 2011 44 11,356,523 326,190,336 2012 39 13,381,438 450,426,597 2013 45 11,073,800 484,049,816 2014 41 10,508,280 563,455,332 2015 41 15,063,525 1,106,645,387

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors 180 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN and box-offce results of 3D had waned signifcantly” (2012, 74), in the case of Argentina the decrease has not been so striking. In fact, earnings have not ceased to grow since the 3D format was introduced, thanks to the rise in ticket prices. Despite the temporary downturns of 2013 and 2014, in 2015 the 3D ticket sales record was surpassed with over 15 million spectators. Again, this confrms the impact that certain specifc titles, for example Minions, can have in terms of boosting the box offce on their own, which poses a complicated question and a threat to cultural diversity. These data allow us to state that in Argentina the introduction of 3D has increased box-offce revenue and number of spectators, and thus constitutes a considerable incentive to digital conversion for the exhibiting companies, which keep trusting this format. Therefore, if we take into consideration attendance numbers, digitization has introduced no negative trend in Argentina’s cinemas as a whole. In fact, the coordinator of the INCAA cinema digitization program, Ariel Direse, argues that thanks to digitalization morePROOF flms are now shown in Argentina and coming into cinemas more quickly, whereas a few years ago it took weeks for some titles to get released in the interior of the country.5 Nevertheless, the increase in spectators does not mean that digitization has altered the Argentinian exhibition sector in a democratic way. On the contrary, looking at the fnal fgures, one could say it has reinforced the status quo. That is to say, the good results of 3D and the concentration of ownership have made it possible for blockbusters to be more proftable and accumulate a large percentage of the earnings. In 2014 alone, four large cinema chains of US and Australian capital (Cinemark, Showcase, Village, and Hoyts) dominated 37% of the country’s screens and accumulated 59% of its spectators. In order to rectify this REVISEDscenario, the government has widened its protectionist strategies into the digital context: both through the creation of the Espacios INCAA and the regulation of the VPF.

State Intervention #1: The Espacios INCAA In defense of cinema as a national good, the protectionist strategies prompted by the Néstor Kirchner’s administration (2003–2007), and later on by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s mandate (2007–2015), included the establishment of a screening quota,6 the continuity average,7 the customs exemption for the importation of celluloid, and the return 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 181 of unpaid subsidies and the restoration of the INCAA as a self-governed entity (Getino 2010).8 These were all a part of a strategy to mobilize Argentine cinema as an emblem of the nation. Néstor Kirchner’s words leave no room for doubt:

It is important to understand, a country is as large or as small as its cultural project or its cinema, which returns as a mirror of a child its notion of being, its notion of identity. This cultural industry expresses in a few strokes the integration of body and soul of a nation.9 (2005, 10)

In this scenario, the INCAA created a program that would establish a network of public cinemas that would screen Argentine cinema. This network, called Espacios INCAA (INCAA Spaces) and initiated in 2003, was born in the spirit of then President Néstor Kirchner’s view of cinema as a source for national identity. The program had the same objective as the regulation described above: to protect national cinema in face of the extreme ease with which foreign flms were takingPROOF over cinema screens. At the time of its inauguration Jorge Coscia, then President of the INCAA, defned the Espacios’ network as “a new exhibition concept. The idea is to consider every cinema which systematically shows Argentine flms as an Espacio INCAA, based on a scheme of aid and support for venues in regions of the country which have no flm theaters and those which Argentine cinema fails to reach” (Lerer 2003). The strategy consisted of tipping the scales in favor of national flms as opposed to foreign cinema and, at the same time, democratizing access to cinema in the most underserved areas of the country.10 After the opening of numerous cinemas in the country’s interior, in an almost compulsive bid for expansion, the INCAA also decided to give its network an international dimension. Several venuesREVISED were opened abroad, mostly located in embassies or consulates, as in the cases of New York, Mexico City, Madrid, Paris and Rome. Thus the project took on a role of international representation, using cinema as a vehicle for disseminating the Argentine image and values. Later on, due to the diffculty of maintaining the network, the objective of digitization was added to improve the functioning of the theaters. This modernization scheme began in 2014 and consisted of installing projectors with 2K resolution, compatible with Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) standards and 2D and 3D projection, and 7.1. surround sound. Currently, of the 69 INCAA cinemas existing in the whole territory it is estimated that over 80% (some 55) have already been digitized. 182 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN

However, not all the management decisions surrounding the Espacios INCAA Programme were well received. In 2006, it was decided that cinemas which were unproftable or had high rental costs should be closed down. In general, the activity of this cinema network has been criticized due to its intermittence, thus becoming an adventure more concerned with opening and closing venues rather than with creating audiences around new spaces. Lack of transparency has also been reported with regard to the designation process. Ten years after the program started (and already in the conservative political environment brought in by Mauricio Macri’s presidency), the Argentine Federation of Film Exhibitors (FADEC) complained in an open letter addressed to the INCAA that the organization was making “illegitimate use” of these cinemas (Otroscines, 2016). The grounds for this complaint included the location of the venues, in some cases built just a few meters away from commercial cinemas, and the questionable programming of those Espacios. Some national flms screened in the Espacios were also screenedPROOF in privately owned theaters. American box-offce hits like Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Wood, 2015) and The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013) were programmed at some Espacios INCAA. Arguing that the Espacios INCAA offered lower prices, FADEC claimed that “the policy maintained by the INCAA to date has permitted fagrantly unfair competition to the detriment of commercial cinemas, particularly small ones and those employing national capital” (“Los exhibidores cuestionan” 2016). These protests reveal the diffculty of intervening in a market without giving rise to conficts of interests with adjoining actors. On a different note, it is also worth mentioning the discussion different authors had over the performance of the network on its tenth anni- versary. DiegoREVISED Torterola, for example, refers to its results as “discreet” and wonders “why, despite offering tickets at very affordable prices, have the Espacios INCAA been relegated to the fringes of cinephile consumption? The truth is that neither the monetary equation nor the places where the cinemas are located seem to be explanatory factors” (Torterola 2010, 118). One might seek an explanation to this question in the amenities offered by the multiplexes and megaplexes in com- parison to these other, more modest venues. A second hypothesis could be that the perception of these spaces as haunts for movie buffs discour- ages the general public, already wary of the Ibero-American productions and auteur cinema programming. In the opinion of Emiliana Cortona 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 183 and Juan Cruz Lapenna, “lack of long-term planning, the instability of the implementation of this programme and poor promotion of national cinemas resulted more in the continuation of the problems the exhibition sector for local production faces than a real change in its structure” (Cortona and Lapenna 2013). It seems unrealistic to think that the exhibition scene would be structurally changed by the arrival of the Espacios INCAA given the spread of multiplexes and the power accumulated by foreign distributors and exhibitors. One could rather say that state intervention in this case is a useful tool for alleviating the imbalance, albeit one which is unable to solve the problem. If one looks at the actual fgures, the positive but limited effect is confrmed. Although the INCAA does not provide attendance fgures for each of its cinemas, we do know that in 2015 these venues together brought in 700,000 spectators. There is also partial data for the network’s fagship venue, the Gaumont cinema, located close to Plaza Congreso in central Buenos Aires, known as “Espacio INCAA km.0.”11 With three screens, the Gaumont was acquired by the INCAA in 2012, and currently is the top exhibition space for Argentine productions.PROOF In 2015 this venue managed to host the release of 88 national flms, while in second place was the chain N.A.I. Internacional II INC. SUC. ARG., with under half that number, 40 releases. Attendance at the Gaumont has also increased over the last few years, from 325,021 spectators in 2010 to 528,391 in 2015 (Tables 10.7 and 10.8). Despite the management-related ups and downs that Espacios INCAA has experienced, it can be concluded that the program is an interesting initiative for channeling the circulation of national and Ibero-American flms, as well as for projecting the image of Argentine cinema abroad. Its leadership may have failed to take into account that setting up a movie theaterREVISED does not guarantee the attendance and fdelity of the

Table 10.7 Releases Year Number of flms of national flms— Gaumont cinema 2010 57 2011 50 2012 74 2013 65 2014 82 2015 88

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors 184 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN

Table 10.8 Gaumont Year Spectators Share (%) cinema—spectators 2010 325,021 0.85 2011 337,262 0.79 2012 431,050 0.92 2013 360,698 0.75 2014 435,899 0.95 2015 528,391 1.01

Source INCAA/compiled by the authors public, and probably the lack of activities and promotion surrounding the opening of several of these spaces may have led to the failure of some of them. Nevertheless, the implementation of the network is evidence of the government’s involvement and commitment to adding new exhibition windows to the digital scenario, enabling flms which in many cases the INCAA helped to produce, to have a theatrical release. Regarding the Espacios INCAA, it seems advisablePROOF to rethink the program’s objectives and restrict its activities to the screening of those titles which are vulnerable in the context of commercial cinema scheduling, without harming the private activity of other flm theaters. Regarding the future of the network, one of the changes introduced by Macri has been its inclusion in a wider platform called CINE.AR in order to bring together all the INCAA screens (television, movie theaters and the Internet) under one brand.12 It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this platform and analyze whether domestic screens become reinforced or if, on the contrary, Espacios INCAA (now known as Cine.Ar Salas) are able to withstand the advantages of video-on-demand systems (VOD). Beyond this unanswered question, what seems true is that providing theatricalREVISED projection with some kind of added value and trying to build a connection between the community, cinema and local inhabitants could win over cinema-goers who are accustomed to the comforts of multiplexes.

State Intervention #2: Regulation of the VPF The arrival of digitization occurred later in Latin America than in Europe and the US. This allowed the different governments to plan lines of action and possible measures for protecting the sector. But the delay also 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 185 brought the disadvantage of adjusting to the pre-established rules of a game controlled by foreign companies and global interests. On the initiative of the Colombian Ministry of Culture’s Film Offce, in 2011 and 2012 international conferences on flm digitization were held in Bogotá, Colombia with the aim of reviewing the actions being taken in the exhibition sector after digitization, both on a national and international level. These debates brought together representatives from public institutions and private companies in order to discuss, among other subjects, the challenges of digital technology and the advantages and disadvantages of the VPF model. This model was created by the Hollywood studios, which came together under the DCI in order to avoid accusations of monopoly or vertical integration. The organization drew up a funding process based on creating a third agent, the integrator, and a fee, called VPF. The VPF is the fee that distributors pay to a third party integrator that has supplied the digital projection system to the exhibitor, though it can also be paid directly to the exhibitor dependingPROOF on the country. The aim of this model is to create a subsidy by which distributors pay a fee (which varies quantitatively depending on each country) to the exhibitors each time one of their flms is distributed in a cinema that has been fnanced by the integrator. Thus, even though the VPF is a system that seems as though it was created in order to fnance the digitization of the different theaters, it has other consequences that affect the links between distribution and exhibition, since paying the VPF secures certain time for each flm that the distributor company pays the VPF for.13 One of the issues that came up repeatedly during these meetings was the backwardness of most Latin American countries in making the transition from analogue to digital. To quote Guillaume Thomine Desmazures,REVISED director of the integrator company Arts Alliance Media for Spain and Latin America, “in Europe we have had fve years to get to this point, in Colombia and Latin America you only have one and a half years to make the transition (into digital through the VPF model)” (2012, 54–55). This phrase, with its “ultimatum” overtones for those who wish to stay in the business of flm exhibition, illustrates how the digital technology became mandatory for the exhibitors since the major Hollywood studios in 2005 came to an agreement on how to phase out analogue projection. Again, this is a policy imposed by the center on the periphery, a situation in which countries like Argentina, Colombia or Brazil have 186 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN little room for maneuver when it comes to regulating a change with profound cultural and economic implications. At the conference in Colombia, the representatives of the commercial brands presented the VPF as “the only model today that allows for digitization” (Desmazures 2012, 57). In a context such as Latin America, marked by the importance of public aid and a strong anti-American impulse in intellectual and cultural debates, the VPF was viewed with suspicion, since almost every part of the flm process is partially funded by the government. On the other hand, a good part of the Latin American flm industry and culture has been founded on the tensions with Hollywood. Thus, both Desmazures and David Hancock, senior analyst at IHS Screen Digest, tried to soften what otherwise seemed non-negotiable: “The VPF has been invented by Americans; that is true. But it is not a model that favors a major studio more so than it does a small distributor, we have to bear that in mind” (Desmazures 2012, 57). Desmazures and Hancock were also anxiousPROOF to stress that collective negotiation was the only way for independent exhibitors to access VPF. Indeed, VPF agreements demand a minimum number of auditoriums, so the smallest cinemas must come together in order to be accepted and reach a common agreement with the big integrator companies. To quote Hancock, “in Latin America, there are a lot of small theaters and exhibitors; it would be ideal, then, for them to get together to see if it’s viable to go digital through the VPF, and to start working to fnd the best way to go digital, since that’s what needs to be done” (Desmazures 2012, 53). In addition to suggesting this associative way forward, Desmazures also pointed to the key role of the administration in this process: “As it is, there is only one institution that can organize (independent) exhibitors in an effectiveREVISED way, and it is the government, working in an organized way, and helping fnance digitization” (2012, 55). In this way, a lobby’s private interest was presented as a public interest, something like a natural movement towards progress and modernization which had to be supported by the state. In the particular case of Argentina, the government did not prohibit the VPF model, but neither did they promote it. Exhibitors were given the choice of jumping on the VPF bandwagon or making their own investment with the help and facilities offered by the INCAA. This pack- age of measures forms a part of the Cinema Digitization Programme (Programa de Digitalización de Salas Cinematográfcas) created in 2012 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 187 to “assist with the digitization of all existing movie theatres and contribute to the restoration and creation of new cinemas in Argentina” (INCAA 2016). Among the different support measures were low- interest loans for national exhibitors: an alternative fnancing channel so that they would not be forced to accept the VPF governed scheme, and, ultimately, would have more freedom in terms of scheduling. In view of these initiatives towards digitizing cinemas through subsidies and soft loans, the government decided not to act as an intermediary between exhibitors, distributors and the big studios, so as not to facilitate the introduction of the VPF system. To quote Ariel Direse in a paper illustra- tively titled “Argentina: audiovisual democracy”: “If we, as the government, lead a program through which we encourage cinema digitization, we think the VPF model won’t be necessary, but whoever wants to participate in the VPF independently is free to do it” (2012, 77). However, due to the state measures coming into effect very slowly, VPF agreements were gradually introduced into the Argentine market through two main integrator companies: GDC TechnologyPROOF and Arts Alliance Media. The negotiation process with these companies was not easy. As Diego Bachiller, Commercial Manager from Village Cinemas, explains:

Digitization caught us in a very complicated time because until the end of 2015 imports were an obstacle. The government pretended to defend the national industry, and it took them a while to understand that there were no Argentine companies that manufactured that technology. Then again Argentina was out of the global standard. Finally, when the integrator companies managed to arrive in the country and became familiar with our political and economic situation, they realized it was no business. They decided not to invest directly but just to offer gathering the VPF agreements theyREVISED already had with the studios.14 Besides these complications, in 2015 the INCAA observed that in the VPF-driven context the independent and national cinema distributors found themselves in an unfavorable position. According to Direse, “although in Argentina we have a screening quota and the continuity average, we detected that these agents needed more help from the administration. When national or independent distributors managed to release a flm and began to earn some money from the box offce, the flm had already been taken off the billboard. And, on top of that, they also had to pay a VPF. This dynamic was generating huge problems for 188 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN this kind of distributors.”15 Regarding the possibility of following policies applied by neighboring countries like Uruguay, where it was agreed that all national flms should be exempt from payment of a VPF, the then INCAA director, Lucrecia Cardoso, admitted: “that would generate greater exclusion [of national flms] because it would mean lower earnings or lower underwriting for national flms than for the rest” (Udenio and Guerschuny 2014). The option chosen by the Argentine government was to introduce moderate regulation of the VPF system. Under a resolution issued in September 2015 it was agreed to return part of the quotas for national and independent flms not distributed by the major studios.16 In this way, national independent distributors releasing between three and 40 copies of an Argentine or foreign feature flm (not counting those screened at Espacios INCAA) could receive compensation from the INCAA equivalent to a maximum of 40 (if an Argentinian flm) or 15 (if foreign) VPF’s. The aim of this measure was to mitigate the risk distributors opting for minority flms had to assume and, at the same time, to try to regain audiences interestedPROOF in national and foreign flms not controlled by major distributors.

Conclusions The beginning of Mauricio Macri’s presidential term in December 2015 was followed by a smooth transition in the INCAA. However, in April 2017 the president of the Institute, Alejandro Cacetta, was asked to resign due to alleged corruption. As a result of this dismissal, different sources highlighted that INCAA’s stability could be at risk and protests were organized in favor of the independence of the institution (Barreiro 2017). In NovemberREVISED 2017, different media pointed out that the INCAA was planning to get rid of the VPF refund to independent distributors as of January 1, 2018 (“INCAA: desde el 1 de enero” 2017; Stiletano 2017). Though the outcome of this operation was unclear by the end of the writing of this chapter, independent distributors were deeply concerned about the future. Should the INCAA intervene on their behalf once again? Will the integrator companies—and the Hollywood majors through DCI—offer another batch of contracts to help carry out future technological upgrades? At the moment, Mauricio Macri has not advanced any extra measures of support, and recent replacements in 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 189

INCAA’s management might reveal a change of position in relation to the protection of national cinema. In this essay, we have analyzed two measures, the creation of the Espacios INCAA, and the regulation of the VPF system. Both exemplify the behavior—more contained in the former case and more overt in the latter—adopted at a particular moment by the Argentine government in favor of cinematic protectionism. These interventions attempted to go against developments of increased American market share, and using digital technologies to the beneft of the local flm industry. The creation of protected spaces for national cinema through the Espacios INCAA has provided more visibility for local productions. As for the VPF, the Argentine government offered a vernacular response in the face of capitalist strategies by Hollywood studios and addressing the concern for the Latin American flm industry. In a context of rapid changes, we will have to keep our eyes open to see how further technological developments try to shape the audiovisual market. 4D, which combines 3D projection with physical and environmental effects such as wind,PROOF fog machines and smell, has already been launched as another step forward in theatrical attrac- tions and modernization (i.e. globalization) of Argentine flm exhibition, thanks in this case to local chains like Cines Multiplex (Chandler 2016). In any case, it has not been our intention to reify technological inno- vation or fetishize theatrical exhibition as some sacred space of contemporary cinematic practice. On the contrary, our chapter has shown the strategic place that the digitization of theatrical exhibition has played in a neoliberal context. Caught up between the logic of global entertainment and the poetics of national resistance, Argentine cinema provides a test case to see how, when and where alternatives to neoliberalism may be forged. If neoliberalism has become not only an economic and cultural regime, butREVISED more importantly an epistemological regime that frames all sorts of cultural activities—what Nick Couldry calls a “‘culture’ of neoliberalism” (2010, 5)—the aforementioned disputes over the digitization of theatrical exhibition in Argentina remind us that contests over the effects of some of these neoliberal premises must be historically and geographically contextualized. In this sense, the digitization of flm exhibition leaves small but necessary room for optimism in the politics and practices that escape or relocate neoliberal economics and try to preserve a place where cinema can be enjoyed as a global, national and local adventure. 190 A. MORÁN FERRÉS AND M. FERNÁNDEZ LABAYEN

Acknowledgements Andrea Morán Ferrés and Miguel Fernández Labayen have written this chapter in the context of the research project “Transnational relations in Spanish-American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico and Argentina” (CSO2014-52750-P), funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and co-fnanced by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Notes 1. Néstor Kirchner’s term took place between May 25, 2003 and December 10, 2007, while Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was president from December 10, 2007 to December 9, 2015. 2. In this section we have mostly used statistics taken from the INCAA Yearbook, the SInCA report (Cultural Information System of Argentina) and SICA (Argentine Film Industry Trade Union). While the existence of recent statistics has obvious advantages, this proliferation unfortunately also reveals a lack of consensus between the sources. 3. Figures in 2016 and 2017 show that this tendency has stabilized around 50 million spectators per year, though itPROOF has not reached the peak of 2015 again. 4. The flm sold more than 4000 tickets in its frst four days of exhibition, representing the best average per copy that week “Los gigantes del cine digital” (2008). 5. Personal interview held in Buenos Aires, May 24, 2017. 6. A screening quota is the exhibitors’ obligation to include a certain number of national flms in their programs. 7. The number of spectators that a national flm must attract per week in order to prevent the exhibitor from being able to withdraw it from the program. For more info see Moguillansky (2016) and http://fscalizacion.incaa.gov.ar/images/fchas_didacticas/Fichas_06_Media_de_con- tinuidad.pdf 8. The REVISEDrestored autonomy of the INCAA had been cancelled by Carlos Menem in 1996. 9. The original reads: “Es importante entenderlo, un país sin lugar a dudas es tan grande o tan pequeño como su proyecto cultural o como su cine que devuelve como el espejo de un niño su noción de ser, su noción de identidad. En tanto industria cultural expresa como pocas actividades la integración del cuerpo y el alma de una nación.” 10. Although the strategy of building a cinema network was new, the INCAA had previously rented the Complejo Tita Merello in 1995 in order to program national cinema. The venue was closed in 2010 due to fnancial problems. 11. The name of the cinema refers to its location, in front of a monolith that symbolizes the starting point of the Argentine road network. Some of the 10 ARGENTINE CINEMA IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION … 191

Espacios INCAA also have this denomination, according to the mileage with the referred point. 12. CINE.AR includes Cine.Ar TV (former INCAA TV), Cine.Ar Play (previously known as Odeón) and Cine.Ar Salas (former Espacios INCAA). 13. The VPF changes from country to country. In Argentina, for instance, the fee that the distributor pays is around US$800, and the flm gets to stay two weeks. 14. Personal interview held in Buenos Aires, on May 3, 2017. 15. Personal interview held in Buenos Aires, on May 3, 2017. 16. Resolution 2834/2015 of 26 September 2015 can be accessed here http:// servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/250000-254999/252081/ norma.htm

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PROOF

REVISED PART III

Defant Actors and Marginal Spaces

PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 11

Social Cinema in Neoliberal Times: The Macabre Baroque in the Films of Pablo Larraín

Walescka Pino-Ojeda PROOF

Reframing Trauma and Nostalgia As the frst country where neoliberalism was introduced via military force in a regime lasting 17 years, Chile experienced a violent transition from a short-lived socialist democracy (1970–1973) to the state terror of dictatorship, whose market-driven ethos has ruled Chilean society ever since. By the time institutional democracy was restored in 1990, the Chilean people confronted an international context where their experience of neoliberalism in the periphery had become global and normalized. Chile’s return to democracy could not reconnect its sociopolitical culture to its own democratic past. Rather, this so-called “transition to democracy” soughtREVISED to prioritize governability by regulating dissent through the promotion of social reconciliation between the democratic forces and those supporting the military regime. Despite state-led initiatives to confront the past via Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, acts of memory carried out by cultural and civic activists became the only social

W. Pino-Ojeda (*) The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

© The Author(s) 2018 197 C. Sandberg and C. Rocha (eds.), Contemporary Latin American Cinema, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9_11 198 W. PINO-OJEDA vehicles available to acknowledge and reconnect with a sociopolitical history that had been severely disrupted and later smoothed over by the reconciliatory agenda of subsequent post-authoritarian governments.1 In this context, cinema occupies a central role in collectively confronting the recent past.2 In the post-authoritarian era, Chilean cinema has intimately tracked the ethical and aesthetic premises inherited from the New Latin American Cinema project (NLAC) of the 1960s. From the 1990s onwards, flmmakers such as Silvio Caiozzi, Gonzalo Justiniano, Cristián Galaz, Orlando Lübbert and Andrés Wood have enacted traumatic and nostalgic memory through these same frameworks. As Pablo Corro notes, this has involved a convergence of genre, subjectivity and history (2012). Consequently, the values expressed in the flms of this period are still clearly entrenched within the societal and ontological models established across Latin America by the “committed state” (el estado de compromiso), with its mission of strengthening public institutions and the national economy in order to provide basic servicesPROOF to the citizenry. The attachment to this truncated project explains their enactment of nostalgic memory, and the traumatic condition of seeing this model of society being violently replaced. This ruptured past likewise illuminates the unease, perplexity or abandonment of many of their flms’ characters.3 I contend that Pablo Larraín’s cinema breaks with this tradition. Although flms produced in the post-authoritarian era have been effective in their social critique and in confronting the past, this nostalgic/traumatic approach has ultimately prevented them from effectively engaging with either the neoliberal era’s overwhelming disjunctures or its new modes of subjectivity. Although rooted in the legacy of the NLAC when engaging in social critique, Larraín’sREVISED flmic output has distanced itself from the tradition described by Corro, by dislocating the correspondence between the narrative format, the characters’ psychological profles and the realities portrayed. This disjuncture derives in part from imitating genres rooted in the commercial culture industry (i.e. thriller, docudrama, biopic), though without fulflling the narrative expectations and ideological reaf- frmations often implicit in these structures. Larraín’s flms enact these disjunctures by employing a measured cynicism, and by focusing on characters inhabiting interstitial geographical or psychological landscapes. In doing so, this cinema displaces its allegorical gaze towards Chile’s recent history. 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 199

Perhaps counter-intuitively, this double breakage has not brought commercial success in the local national market, but it has engendered a great deal of attention and awards in international circuits.4 Larraín’s cinematic intervention positions itself at a crossroads: both affliated to the tradition of the social auteur cinema established by the NLAC, but at the same time breaking with the sensibilities and subjectivities of those who frst established this tendency in the 1960s, and indeed those who have perpetuated it since.5 This dynamic may be explained by two interrelated factors. First, Larraín’s output is constructed through an incorporation of (and confrontation with) a new creative subjectivity consolidated during the dictatorship under the rubric of state terrorism and, secondly, through the ubiquitous infuence of neoliberalism. We are as such witnessing a self- made artist who assumes a level of political interest in an environment where the public realm has been gradually disappearing, and dispersed collective memories have negated one another, only crossing over from the private into the shared public realm in the last few years (Pino-Ojeda 2015). In the contemporary context, politicalPROOF engagement can no longer be effectively carried out through the kind of baroque experimentation that marked the last phase of the NLAC’s output, which “combines spectacle and social realism [thus creating a form of] social baroque … flms that invite philosophical speculation beyond a right versus left dichotomy by exploiting neobaroque strategies – proliferation of allegorical characters and situations, operatic theatricality [and] self-refexivity” (Schroeder Rodríguez 2012, 90–101). Instead, political engagement must be enacted by taking into consideration cinema’s positioning within a standardized and commodifed global culture industry. On a regional level, this engagement must also account for a social reality marked by the ethical-political collapse that emerged from state-sanctioned technologies of terror and their disappearanceREVISED of people. It is with respect to Larraín’s flms self-positioning as both social critique and aesthetic rupture within these realities that we may refer to them as comprising a macabre baroque cinema. These factors are themselves intertwined with Larraín’s own family history, as part of a militantly conservative family of the Chilean upper class.6 More than others of his generation (those born during the dictatorship itself) he grew up sheltered from the atrocities and social suffering produced by pinochetism—a vacuum in experience and learning that Larraín has sought to fll “privately” through his own endeavors since his early adulthood (Chernin 2013). This to some extent helps to explain his work’s own unconventional, ideologically displaced approach. Larraín 200 W. PINO-OJEDA himself qualifes this position as the result of an unease and confusion caused by an inability to obtain reliable information, which in turn leads to a deprivation of any coherent ideological bearings through which history may be understood. He says in an interview with Andrew Chernin:

My work is not established on the basis of certainties … The piecemeal education I had, when I was fnally able to organize it and give it meaning, was structured more along the lines of unease and perplexity … But I entered into a mode of flmmaking that was more political because it is from there that more interesting questions emerge. (2013)

The discomfort that Larraín’s cinema has engendered in a broad range of national actors, both on the left and the right, is not due to a triv- ialization of history made possible by his position as a member of the upper classes. It is because of the liminality of his work, proposing as it does a reading of recent history through acts of memory carried out from isolated (or orphaned, as I will explain)PROOF historic-political positions, using these to confront the dominant ideological discourses that have delineated Chile’s present reality. Larraín’s work has to be understood then through his own biographical circumstances, and the subjectivities created by a neoliberal Chilean society that has largely privatized collective memory. Just as perplexity and uncertainty defned Chilean flm’s characters in the post-authoritarian era, in Larraín’s own work, such confusion and anxiety form the creative space within which coherent narratives about the past attempt to give meaning to the present. Moreover, while neoliberal society has facilitated individualized interests for personal gain or short-term benefts, it has also forced those critical to this model to seek refuge in certain liminal spaces. These realms provide refuge from an ever-present and deterministic market logic, and locate us in a displacedREVISED position to respond to the dispersion of memories and to the ideological entrenchment of polarities. This is how Larraín’s cinema distances itself from the fundamentalism of the right, which insists on the necessity and irreversible character of the market-driven social model. Yet it also distances itself from the traditional left’s nostalgic and lethargic discourse, which remains unable to fnd a way of effectively and critically responding to the destruction of the public and social realms. It likewise distances itself from the Third Way neoliberal left. Attempting to understand the position of an artist interested in building narratives around recent Chilean history, but who has been shaped within a Chilean 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 201 neoliberal context where this same history is contested, requires a reex- amination of the underlying dynamics structuring that model.

The Dissident Homo Economicus From a political-economy perspective, neoliberalism is understood as a fundamental change in the role assumed by the state, which, in transferring control of the economy to the private fnancial sector, makes tariffs fexible and brings about a process of deregulation of economic policies in order thus to permit a liberalization of the market. The principle underlying these strategies is that in the absence of state restrictions, the free circulation of commodities would produce a market with the capacity to self-regulate, guaranteeing free competition, and through this, the exercise of true freedom, unencumbered by prescribed ideologies of social law. Notwithstanding its self-representation as an exclusively economic non-intervention model, from the moment that the state guarantees the market its freedom to PROOFself-regulate, it ensures that the market transforms itself into the organizing principle of the entire social structure. In this way, principles of competition are imposed over those of collaboration, labor and environmental regulations are adjusted to prioritize attracting investment that may put more capital into circulation, and speculation becomes the organizing principle over and above the value base of production and distribution. Privatization of essential public goods and services (health, education, pensions) is enacted as a supposed remedy for bureaucratic shortcomings such as ineffciency or corruption, and/or the state’s lack of economic solvency. In the words of David Harvey, this is the “fnancialization of everything. This deepened the hold of fnance over all other areas of the economy, as well as over the state apparatusREVISED and … daily life” (2005 , 33). Sociological approaches to the subject of neoliberalism have likewise concentrated on the effects of the displacement of the state as a guaran- tor of the defense and distribution of collective interests, which in being subsumed in market logics become themselves commodifed, leading to the disappearance of a public sphere. In the same way, the “fnancialization of everything” has inevitably transcended quotidian and affective personal exchanges. The logic of competition has instrumentalized interpersonal and labor relationships, isolating individuals while also necessarily shaping the manner in which the human itself is conceived. Zygmunt Bauman clarifes: 202 W. PINO-OJEDA

Being left alone means, frst and foremost, the right to self-defnition and self-assertion, and having a realistic chance to act effectively on that right. It is that so-called self-governance … [thus the orphan self emerges from] the void left behind by the retreat of fading political authorities, it is now the self that strives to assume, or is forced to assume, the function of the center of the Lebenwelt (that privatized, individualized, subjectivized rendition of the universe). It is the self that recasts the rest of the world as its own periphery, while assigning, defning, and attributing differentiated relevance to its parts, according to its own needs. (2008, 12–14)

In this line of analysis, philosophy has established that more than a political-economic agenda, neoliberalism has imposed a new ideological discourse through which to conceptualize human nature and social existence. Thus, it resignifes the classic concept of ‘homo economicus’: “neoliberalism strives to ensure that individuals are compelled to assume market-based values in all of their judgments and practices in order to amass suffcient quantities of ‘human capital’ and thereby become ‘entre- preneurs of themselves’” (Hamann 2009, 38).PROOF By the same token, according to Jason Read, market deregulation “is not the absence of governing, or regulating, but a form of governing through isolation and dispersion” (2009, 34). This suggests that the doctrine intended to privatize the public has transcended further to privatize subjectivity itself, creating atomized subjects incapable of seeing their organic interdependence on the wider social body—a process that has been described as neoliberal subjectifcation, as Trent H. Hamann claims: “Neoliberal subjects are constituted as thoroughly responsible for themselves and themselves alone because they are sub- jectifed as thoroughly autonomous and free” (2009, 44). This invisi- bility of market logics’ governance over the socio-psychological realm permits subjectsREVISED to enjoy their successes as individual accomplishments of self-governance, but at the same time burdens the individual with responsibilities and costs for errors and failures that were once in the collective domain. In such a context, how is it possible to make socially committed art interested in relating the self to one’s fellow human beings from a common history and shared humanity, rather than from a position of competition to establish one’s own sense of self? In Larraín’s flmic output, liminality is an essential strategy, reconciling traits of commercial entertainment media, while acknowledging the position of uncertainty and perplexity as a legitimate vantage point from which to scrutinize Chile’s recent past. This process enables the creation 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 203 of a discursive position that cannot be placed in the service of neoliberal instrumentality. As Ilana Gershon states, “A self that is a mystery to itself is not so easily absorbed into a neoliberal marketplace as a self that is consciously managing itself as a set of traits and assets to be brought into the market” (2011, 553).

The Macabre Baroque in Larraín’s Films In order to determine to what degree Larraín’s genre-based narrative choices fundamentally distance his own work from the ethics of the NLAC, we must ask ourselves what the central tenets were that drove the NLAC itself to categorically reject commercial genre flm formats to begin with. Paul Schroeder Rodríguez states: “The consensus is that it reacted to the old studio cinema and formulaic genres and conservative values by affrming instead a praxis that effectively married avant-garde politics with avant-garde aesthetics to create a cinema that was broadly defned as epic, spectacular and revolutionary”PROOF (2012, 90). The NLAC proposed a shift away from established structures of power by supporting an ideological turn towards decolonization, a revolutionary task that would be impossible to achieve in their perception if they were to perpet- uate the discursive formulas created by the capitalist culture industries. Fiske summarizes: “A mass culture produces a quiescent, passive mass of people, an agglomeration of automized individuals separated from their position in the social structure, detached from and unaware of their class consciousness, of their various social and cultural allegiances, and thus totally disempowered and helpless” (2011, 17). In spite of the social and decolonizing commitment of the NLAC, its increasing tendency towards textual “baroque” experimentation (which was intended as an emancipatory act) ultimatelyREVISED undermined its ability to engage with its audiences. The need to attract audiences is a lesson well learned by the generations of flmmakers that came after the NLAC, especially those who immediately preceded Larraín and his contemporaries (i.e. Alejandro González Iñárritu). This is how despite inscribing himself within this tradition, with his cynical attitude Larraín renounces the political vanguard- ism, the epic tone and its pedagogical approaches, adopting narrative formats associated with commercial flm, which are, however, selectively modifed. Consequently, Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), No (2012) and Neruda (2016) are constructed by a dislocated positioning of genre, character construction and narration, therefore offering an 204 W. PINO-OJEDA oblique intertextual dialogue with prior flms that have engaged with similar events, people and environments. This positioning is reinforced by a cynicism that pointedly focuses on the macabre as well as on liminal spaces that erase distinctions between health and pathology, love and hate, and life and death. In turn, distinctions are blurred between virtue and malice, or, in a more pointedly religious sense, good and evil. The psychological drama Tony Manero reads as a pulp thriller. The sociopathic violence of Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro) is triggered by his obsessive identifcation with the Saturday Night Fever’s protagonist Tony Manero. The flm constructs an atmosphere of horror, anchored in a cold, calculating protagonist, prone to erratic outbursts that reinforce constant suspense. Set in the social margins of Chile during the dictatorship, Peralta is at least 30 years older than Fever’s Manero, but still maintains a certain level of status in his precarious local circle. The small nightclub that entertains the working-class community had previously been recognized as an important center for sociopolitical agents, but under dictatorship it was demoted toPROOF the lowly position of the “minimum-wage class,” to be entertained not by great artists, engaged with Chile’s own cultural history, but by types like Peralta, who identify with the subject model imported from the North American culture industry. The fact that Saturday Night Fever’s protagonist had been the son of working-class immigrants explains Peralta’s identifcation with the young Italian-American protagonist. From his own precarious political and social positioning—one contemporaneous to that of Manero’s character—Peralta nonetheless distinguishes himself as a successful, well-connected and hard-working entrepreneur. He is multitalented, in good physical shape and a good dancer and choreographer, traits that garner him respect and attraction from the women surrounding him, all of whom heREVISED treats with total disregard. His desire to emulate Manero intensifes when the opportunity for him to be offcially recognized as his double in a celebrity look-alike contest appears as part of a TV show, “The 1 pm Festival,” which, as its name indicates, is broadcast at lunch- time. This contest provides Peralta the opportunity to demonstrate his abilities as an entrepreneurial subject, compelling him to demonstrate the social-Darwinist values of the context he inhabits. He therefore pro- ceeds to murder any characters who become obstacles to his ambition as a success-oriented, competitive man. These are killings that the spectator is prevented from witnessing directly, caught only in glimpses, and via the latent violence that comes from being attached to this mentally 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 205 disturbed character, a visual positioning that echoes life under the dictatorship’s state terrorism. Thus, Peralta himself embodies the values of a sociopathic society created by dictatorial neoliberalism. It is this aspect of the flm that lends it its sense of the macabre: seeking out meritocratic success in a context of extreme violence. Such strategies are the same institutionally implemented by the dictatorial regime, which lead to disappear people in order to implement market-driven values. In this way, the dislocation between genre, character and plot is constructed, given that “while Tony Manero does exhibit some of the stylistic conventions that we associate with horror flms, it lacks the kind of satisfying revela- tion upon which the genre depends” (Johnson 2016, 206). Like Raúl Peralta, the protagonist of Post Mortem, Mario Cornejo (Alfredo Castro), exhibits erratic behavior oscillating between obsession, withdrawal and violence. In his role as a transcriber of autopsy reports in the Santiago morgue (the Institute of Forensic Medicine, regularly visited by families of the disappeared during the dictatorship), Mario observes the daily violence of the last monthsPROOF of the Popular Unity government. From this location, he also witnesses the sudden pile of bodies that arrive once the coup d’état starts. Nevertheless, Mario is distanced from the ideological turbulence prevailing in Chile during this time, where there is an unprecedented empowerment of the working class under Allende, facing the economic and political blockade orchestrated by social elites in alliance with the CIA. In this ideologically loaded environment, Mario’s sole obsession is his attraction to his neighbor, Nancy (Antonia Zegers). When Mario pays her a brief visit on one occasion, he surreptitiously listens to the political meeting that her father, Arturo (Ernesto Malbrán), is having with members of the political sector of the Popular Unity Party who plan an armed response to the boycotts they were suffering.REVISED We then learn why Mario identifes with Nancy. Like him, she is alienated from her social surroundings, not working in any capacity that would explicitly connect her with the working or middle classes, since she works as a stripper in a nightclub. She also takes no part in the debate or political activities of her father. Her isolation is accentuated by the continual humiliations she suffers as a result of her work by maintaining the look as a young attractive woman, forcing her to maintain a physically undernourished appearance, producing a laconic and emotionally distanced attitude. For his part, Mario’s alienation takes place mainly through the subordinate role that he occupies within his institution: to copy technical reports using a medical 206 W. PINO-OJEDA jargon he has no way of understanding. For this reason, he describes his profession as a funcionario (civil servant, carrying out “functions”), fulflling such a small role that he seems totally disconnected from it. This mechanical relationship to his job helps explain his withdrawn character, his minimal gestures and contained emotions that give no indication of how he feels towards his immediate social surroundings. This is similarly suggested in his austere lifestyle and meager diet, which may be due to either a lack of funds or the wider shortage produced by the blockades against the Popular Unity. The flm accentuates this displacement by recreating the exact event of the military coup during a scene in which Mario is taking a shower. The spectator is made to understand what is happening through the sound of aircraft, gunfre, banging, barking and shouts that are perceptible while the shower is running.7 This approach enables the flm to rely on memories of these events already instilled in its spectators, who now experience these sensations at a distance with the protagonist. Thus, in the flm the coup is a minor incident, a background eventPROOF displaced from the center of the flm’s story and from the experience of its protagonist. Post Mortem’s distancing of the military coup contrasts with its recre- ation of Salvador Allende’s autopsy, in which Mario moves to a central role when he serves as transcriber. At this point, the flm directly dialogues with the 30-year documentary tradition focusing on memory, characterized by its depiction of autopsy processes, which I have identifed elsewhere as a cinema of “forensic memory” (Pino-Ojeda 2013). In the scene involving Allende’s autopsy, the medical team is taken to a military precinct, a setting whose macabre character is permeated with a ceremonial aura of both terror and order. A group of soldiers surrounds the corpse, while Dr. Castillo (Jaime Vadell) analyzes and describes the destructionREVISED of the cranium. Cornejo clumsily takes notes on a type- writer that he cannot make work, only to be replaced by a soldier who completes the task. In contrast, rustic instruments—a large spoon and two big kitchen knives—are used by the forensic medical assistant to conduct the autopsy itself. Sandra (Amparo Noguera), overcome by the task, excuses herself, unable to complete it, and Dr. Castillo is similarly shaken. Hence, both refuse to infict a greater wound on the dead body, which already displays an open skull. In view of this, Dr. Castillo presents the conclusion in his report: 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 207

Conclusions: male corpse, identifed as Salvador Allende Gossens. Cause of death: a recent cervical-buccal-cranial-encephalic bullet wound with pro- jectile exit. The type of shot is known in legal medicine as “point blank range.” The shot could have been made by the individual himself.

Here Post Mortem offers viewers of this fctitious alternative an opportunity to be witnesses to the forensic testimony left by Allende, something made impossible for the documentarians of memory, such as Patricio Guzmán and Silvio Caiozzi with whom Larraín dialogues here so directly.8 The scene concludes with a close-up on Cornejo, who smiles subtly at the very moment of hearing that Allende died by his own hand. However, the withdrawn personality we have seen up to this point does not permit a reliable interpretation of the cautious gesture of emotion: did he smile because Allende had deprived the dictatorship of the process of humiliating and torturing him, or because in committing suicide Allende can be seen as exhibiting a form of cowardice, confrming Cornejo’s possible previous disapproval of Allende’s person andPROOF government? Cornejo later discovers that Nancy is hidden in the remains of her own house with her friend Victor (Marcelo Alonso). Although in the following days he brings them food, jealousy and anger eventually bring him to close their only way out of the wreckage with a pile of rubble, an act realized with obsessive care and without any sign of emotion, assuring that there is not the least possibility of their escape. This effectively con- verts their hiding place into a tomb, adding them to the series of disappearances caused by the dictatorship from its inception. It is from this withdrawn and self-centered profle that Cornejo transitions from Chile’s brief socialist interlude to the dictatorial regime, one that presents a blank canvas for his social role given his affective, ideological and intellectually removed position, despite being at the epicenter of important historical-politicalREVISED processes. His live burial of Nancy and Victor has no ideological motive, but is exclusively guided by his personal obsessions. This act, in addition to his ambivalence and his affective and ideological distancing demonstrated in his position as a mediocre civil servant who shows himself to be incompetent at pivotal junctures, serves to position Cornejo as a suitable instrument of any system, any institution. State terror as implanted by the dictatorship, motivated by its agenda of “exterminat- ing a Marxist cancer” in order to implant the logic of market competitiveness, seems to be the ideal context for protecting and promoting the 208 W. PINO-OJEDA psychopathic subjectivities that Cornejo presents here, which we see in full development in Alfredo Castro’s character in Tony Manero. In contrast, No and Neruda achieve such displacement through more cynical, ironic distancing, in this way ensuring that flm’s chosen viewpoint is arranged through oblique characters, positioned in such a way that they remember and evaluate historical events from an unprecedented perspective in Chilean accounts of the recent past. Therefore, far from being framed as an intellectual and political paragon pursued by the system, in the biopic Neruda (Luis Gnecco) the Nobel Prize winner becomes an adventure hero, forming a playful, literary relationship with his persecutor, Inspector Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal). Thus, what might have been a weighty political drama depicting a major historical fgure’s victimization and persecution for having been a communist sen- ator is depicted in ludic style, not necessarily irreverently, given the affect still present in the flm. The weight of Neruda’s legacy as both a literary institution and bastion of the Chilean communist party is relaxed. On the other hand, focusing on this particular periodPROOF of Neruda’s life also allows the flm to make sly allusions to the kinds of persecutions unleashed three decades later under Pinochet. These later Cold War actions erupted in a militarized Latin America now infamed in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, when Operation Condor blocked any chance of escape to neighboring countries, as was the case for Neruda in the 1940s. For its part, the historical drama No is formatted and structured to resemble a docudrama or “fctionalised documentary” (Cilento 2015) that takes a cynical view of the civic context and media events leading up to Chile’s return to democracy (see for a discussion of No also Chapter 8). This de-monumentalizing approach is conducted by adopting the perspective of the publicist, René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), who, after living for a time REVISEDoutside the country, is given the task of designing the strategy for “the ‘No’ campaign.”9 His creative team doesn’t immediately come up with the idea of formatting this political campaign along the lines of commercial advertising, nor is it unanimously supported. Saavedra’s character is being drafted to come from a leftist family and on returning from abroad is in the process of resettling, which he achieves by becoming a star publicity executive for large foreign companies. This success is nevertheless undercut by both the breakup of his marriage and the ambiguous position he holds in the wider audiovisual creative community, placed as he is, at the intersection of two ideological sectors, between artists and corporate management. In employing renown Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, for this role, 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 209

No then not only responds to an extra-textual imperative to insert this flm within a wider global circuit created by prominent Latin American artists (Argentinian, Brazilian and Mexican in particular), it also relates to the diegetic framing of the protagonist. It underlines Saavedra’s displaced positioning with respect to his wider social environment in spite of his own centrality to the historical events in question. It is precisely this trait in Saavedra that motivates the director of the campaign, José Tomás Urrutia (Luis Gnecco), to recruit his expertise. As he states, in spite of the campaign already being “in the hands of … expert communicators in political discourse … what is needed is an outsider’s opinion.” The distance from which the protagonist has experienced the reality of Chilean authoritarianism over the last few years is therefore transformed into a virtue, one that Urrutia foresees will help to decompress the claus trophobic, polarized atmosphere created under the dictatorship. The challenge then faced by the campaign is in creating a discourse that will manage to unify the sectors critical of the dictatorship. These range from those who are politically paralyzed by the climatePROOF of terror created by the regime, and who would therefore vote to support Pinochet or not vote at all, to those who are skeptical of the plebiscite’s legitimacy, and who therefore separate themselves from the entire process. Saavedra’s own ex-wife falls into the latter camp. In spite of the fact that by 1988 Chile had been under the neoliberal model for 13 years (offcially endorsed when Milton Friedman visited the country in March 1975), there was still a clear distance between economic/corporate discourse and that of the social sciences and the politically dissident sectors. This is the schism Saavedra deals with through an advertising-driven discourse that is both pragmatic and instrumental. While some in the campaign emphasize the centrality of democracy as the crucial “concept,” SaavedraREVISED insists that democracy be framed rather as the “product” being sold. These differences in rhetoric frequently place Saavedra’s approach in regular and direct tension with the priorities of his comrades who are focused more concertedly on denouncing the dictatorship’s violations of human rights from their own diverse positions and discursive approaches. In spite of being tasked alongside surviving victims with lending the “No” campaign an image and legitimacy, Saavedra’s logic of advertising dictates that the campaign will be carried out “without art, without folklore, without rock,” without an anthem, but rather with a jingle, Chile, la alegría ya viene (Chile, happiness is on its way). History vindicates Saavedra’s position, given the campaign’s success. 210 W. PINO-OJEDA

It is his partially detached position, unburdened by the weight of history and trauma that allows the campaign to overcome the climate of fear and oppression that permeated the period, affecting even the country’s dem- ocratically oriented political, artistic and cultural leaders. This need for an external perspective suggests, then, that the campaign’s victory was not due to the creative impulses of a native vernacular neoliberalism. Rather, what was needed was a subjectivity that was affectively distanced, making recourse to the lightness and frivolity inherent in advertising discourse—a rhetorical approach able to break with the climate of terror normalized at the affective and civic core of Chile’s citizenry. In cynically undermining genre expectations built into familiar historical narratives, Larraín’s cinema produces a dislocation of understanding that inhibits the spectator’s ability to take pleasure in the exposure these flms give to what was previously unexplored. It likewise prevents them from taking gratifcation in confrming their own references and regis- tries of memory. They jostle the affective, ideological and experiential positioning from which audiences have evaluatedPROOF the historical realities being depicted. It is indeed through this displacement that Larraín’s flms break with the commodifed nature of commercial genre formats themselves, robbing them of their capacity to reproduce and reinforce hegemonic ideologies. What we are seeing here is a cinema that does not necessarily aspire to transform, but certainly to critique and dislocate perspectives of Chile’s recent past in order not only to create new assess- ments of old issues, but also to identify the new problems that prevail in the neoliberal era. Larraín’s cinema illuminates the macabre nature of practices which have become normalized under and since the dictatorship, as well as the way in which this regime exposed and made use of the abjection of the human condition. We are faced then with a cynicism arisingREVISED from the certainty that we exist in a fractured society that has renounced what constitutes the public and ceded social and human welfare to the market while the natural world suffers the direct consequences of consumer society. It is in this sense that we can speak of a macabre baroque. In placing the abject nature of humanity at the forefront of society through technologies of terror and the disappearance of people, Latin America’s dictatorships have made the aesthetic approaches of the NLAC impossible to recreate or continue. Just as Adorno wrote of the end of poetry after Auschwitz, so too did these regimes do away with the utopian neo-baroque aspirations of the NLAC. Their legacy persists, however, in the macabre baroque cinema of Larraín. 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 211

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my colleagues Gwyn Fox, Kathryn Lehman and Camilo Diaz Pino for assisting me in translating this article from Spanish into English.

Notes 1. For an analysis of this process see Pino-Ojeda, Noche y Niebla, “Insurgency of Discourse,” and “¡No más lucro!” 2. A clear example is Ignacio Agüero’s documentary No olvidar (1982), which inaugurates the cinema of memory in Chile. 3. For an analysis on flms that deal with nostalgic and traumatic memory see Cavallo et al., Huérfanos; Pino-Ojeda, “Latent Image”; Estévez, “Dolores políticos”; and Corro, Retóricas. Within the category of flms that deal with trauma and/or characters who suffer from some form of orphanhood we may include Caluga o menta (El Niki) (Gonzalo Justiniano, 1990), Johnny 100 pesos (Gustavo Graef-Marino, 1993), El entusiasmo (Ricardo Larraín, 1998), El chacotero sentimental (Cristián Galaz, 1999), Taxi para tres (Orlando Lübbert, 2001), B-Happy (GonzaloPROOF Justiniano, 2003) and Machuca (Andrés Wood, 2004). 4. Tony Manero (2008) won awards for Best Director and Lead Performance in both the 2009 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema and the 2008 Havana Film Festival. No (2012) was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and won at Cannes that year for Best Director. The Club (2015) won the award for Best Director at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival and Best Film at the 2015 Havana Film Festival. 5. Some of the representatives are Miguel Littin (1942), Silvio Caiozzi (1944), Gonzalo Justiniano (1955) and, more recently, Andrés Wood (1965), and currently Larraín’s contemporaries: Alejandro Fernández Almendras (1971), Sebastián Lelio (1974), Alicia Scherson (1974) and Sebastián Silva (1979). 6. This aestheticREVISED rupture has been generally interpreted as an indication of partiality and an ideological affront on the part of the director due to his family history. See Sánchez, “La ambigüedad de NO”; Hodge, “Maestros de la manipulación”; Dzero, “Larraín’s Film No.” 7. See Bongers, “La estética del (an)archive,” for an analysis on the audio strategies to accentuate suspense in the flm. 8. Some of the most important are Fernando ha vuelto (Silvio Caiozzi, 1997), El juez y el general (Patricio Lanfranco and Elizabeth Farnsworth, 2008), and by Patricio Guzmán Chile, la memoria obstinada (1997), El caso Pinochet (2001), Nostalgia de la luz (2010) and El botón de nácar (2015). 9. For another approach on this flm’s cynicism see Howe, “Yes, No, or Maybe?” 212 W. PINO-OJEDA

Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. 2008. Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Bongers, Wolfgang. 2014. “La estética del (an)archivo en el cine de Pablo Larraín.” A Contracorriente 12 (1): 191–212. Cavallo, A., P. Douzet, and C. Rodríguez. 1999. Huérfanos y perdidos: el cine chileno de la transición. Santiago de Chile: Grijalbo. Chernin, Andrew. 2013. “Entendiendo a Pablo Larraín.” La Tercera, January 20, 2017. http://www.latercera.com/noticia/entendiendo-a-pablo-larrain/. Cilento, Fabrizio. 2015. “Pablo Larraín’s No and the Aesthetics of Television.” Seismopolite April 30: 1–10. http://www.seismopolite.com/ pablo-larrain-no-and-the-aesthetics-of-television. Corro, Pablo. 2012. Retóricas del cine chileno. Ensayos con el realismo. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio. Dzero, Irina. 2015. “Larraín’s Film No and Its Inspiration, El plebiscito: Chile’s Transition to Democracy as Simulacrum.” Confuencia 31 (1): 120–32. Estévez, Antonella. 2010. “Dolores políticos: Reacciones cinematográfcas. Resistencias melancólicas en el cine chileno PROOFcontemporáneo.” Aisthesis 47: 15–32. Fiske, John. 2011. Understanding Popular Culture, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Gershon, Ilana. 2011. “Neoliberal Agency.” Current Anthropology 52 (4): 537–55. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Hamann. Trent H. 2009. “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics.” Foucault Studies 6: 37–59. Hodge, Polly J. 2015. “Maestros de la manipulación: titiriteros de la memoria histórica en No de Pablo Larraín y La niña de tus ojos de Fernando Trueba.” Hispania 93 (3): 431–41. Howe, Alexis.REVISED 2015. “Yes, No, or Maybe? Transitions in Chilean Society in Pablo Larraín’s No.” Hispania 98 (3): 421–30. Johnson, Mariana. 2016. “Political Trauma, Intimacy, and Off-Screen Space in Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero.” Letras Hispanas 12: 200–7. Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2009. “Latent Image: Chilean Cinema and the Abject.” Latin American Perspectives 36 (5): 133–46. Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2011. Noche y Niebla: Neoliberalismo, Memoria y Trauma en el Chile Post-autoritario. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio. Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2013. “Forensic Memory, Responsibility, and Judgment: The Chilean Documentary in the Post-authoritarian Era.” Latin American Perspectives 40 (1): 170–86. 11 SOCIAL CINEMA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES: THE MACABRE … 213

Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2014. “Insurgency of Discourse and Affective Intervention: The Chilean Students’ Movement.” Argos Aotearoa 1 (1): 126–35. Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2015. “Genealogía y ética de la memoria: Chile al con- memorar 40 años desde el Golpe.” Alter/nativas. Número Especial “Tramas de la memoria” 5: 1–28. http://alternativas.osu.edu. Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. 2017. “¡No más lucro!” Desobediencia, memoria e inter- vención afectiva en el movimiento estudiantil chileno.” Agencia cultural, arte, educación y prácticas sociales en América Latina y la Frontera, edited by Zulema Moret, 47–66. Nueva York: Escribana Books. Read, Jason. 2009. “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity.” Foucault Studies 6: 25–36. Sánchez, Matías. 2012. “La ambigüedad de ‘NO,’ la última película de Pablo Larraín Matte.” El Ciudadano, August 7, 2012. http://www.elciudadano. cl/2012/08/07/55797/la-ambiguedad-de-no-la-ultima-pelicula-de- pablo-larrain-matte/. Schroeder Rodríguez, Paul A. 2012. “After New Latin American Cinema.” Cinema Journal 51 (2): 87–112. PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 12

Between Armed Confict, Social Awareness and the Neoliberal Market: The Case of Alias María

Carlos de Oro PROOF

This chapter is concerned with the flm Alias María (José Rugeles 2015), a Colombian-Argentine-French coproduction, as a case study to demonstrate that in the current neoliberal environment, laws regulating flm policies in Colombia achieved an opening of Colombian cinema to the international market and created spaces in which flms dealing with urgent social issues could thrive.1 The feature Alias María raises awareness about the recruitment, exploitation and abuse of minors and women by guerrilla groups. In this flm, female subjectivity and perspective play an important role in bringing the victimization and suffering of people from vulnerable sectors into public view. Simultaneously, the flmmakerREVISED and his team organize and run social projects that work as citizens’ media to educate people, especially children from politically unstable areas, to manage confict in non-violent ways.2 Director José Rugeles engages minors from regions affected by armed conficts as nonprofessional actors and creates mechanisms to train community leaders so that they can use audiovisual tools as pedagogical and

C. de Oro (*) Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 215 C. Sandberg and C. Rocha (eds.), Contemporary Latin American Cinema, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9_12 216 C. de ORO communicative strategies to strengthen community networks. In light of its combination of economic and social interest, I argue that Alias María serves both as an example of neoliberal practices of fnancing, producing and exhibiting cultural products and an effective resistance strategy that uses flmmaking as an instrument of social engagement and awareness.

Film Policies in Colombia and Neoliberalism A major economic and political transformation with respect to cinema in Colombia occurred between the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, when the national flm industry began to change due to market-oriented policies seeking to advance the liberalization of trade and industry and facilitate the worldwide fow of cultural goods. This was a trend that spread throughout the region. In Argentina, for instance, Law 24,377 of 1994 “mandated several measures to develop local flm-making, such as opening credit lines, providing subsidies and setting screen quotas for national flms” (RêgoPROOF and Rocha 2011, 3). In Brazil, Law 8313 of 1991 and Law 8568 of 1993 “allowed individuals and national and foreign corporations alike to receive tax exemptions for sponsoring national cultural productions, including flms” (Rêgo and Rocha 2011, 2). For Colombian cinema, the neoliberal developments meant a vast privatization of productions through a semi-private model that allowed access to transnational funds and promoted an opening to international markets. Crucial measures during this decade included the enactment of the so-called Culture Law (Law 397) in 1997, which promoted the artistic and industrial development of cinema, and the creation of the Ministry of Culture, an institution that has since solidifed cinematographic activity through the Dirección de Cinematografía (the Film DivisionREVISED in charge of designing and implementing offcial policies), and the Mixed Film Promotion Fund, Proimagenes Colombia. Proimagenes Colombia is a public institution managed as a private company that administers the Film Development Fund. Proimagenes’s main objective is to promote Colombian cinema and consolidate the flm industry. Its activities are oriented towards the creation and development of support mechanisms such as direct incentives, credits and prizes based on box-offce earnings or on participation in flm festivals according to their importance (Law 397, article 46). Proimagenes Colombia also 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 217 supports the internationalization of Colombian cinema, providing directors and producers with information about national and international funding opportunities to strengthen and take advantage of transnational networks and connections. The existence of the Culture Law, and previous experiences with the production company FOCINE, eventually paved the way for the introduction of Law 814, the so-called Law of Cinema, in 2003.3 Law 814 marked a pivotal moment for the revival of Colombia’s flm production. This law consolidated all past flm legislation into a complex document based on the principles proclaimed in Law 397 (articles 40–47). Law 814 combines a market-oriented strategy for flm production, consumption and exhibition internationally with an interest in the preservation of the national cultural industry. Among the most positive aspects of Law 814 is the continuation and supervision of the aforementioned Film Development Fund, a parafscal fund that requires a contribution from exhibitors, distributors and producers, and allocates at least 70% of the resources to new cinematographic productions.PROOF The law promotes private investment through tax exemptions for national flm projects and securitization in the stock market. In fact, Law 814 replicates the trend of other national flm industries in Latin America to stimulate flm production with new, market-oriented funding strategies. Argentine and Brazilian flm legislations seek to negotiate the tensions between the local and the global to take advantage of transnational market demands and opportunities to circulate flms as cultural products while also promoting their national flm industries. In her article “The Post-Neoliberal Colombian Film Policy,” Liliana Castañeda (2009) mentions three key elements in the consolidation of the current flm model in Colombia. First, she notes that the state acts as a guardian ofREVISED an important industrial process for the projection and expression of national cultural identity, diversity and collective memory—replacing the former consideration of cinema as a public entertainment. Castañeda mentions that national and international “lobbying campaigns, and compensation tools, joined the legislative initiative in building acceptance of the flm policy framework.” She points out: “By introducing the instrument of ‘cultural reserve,’ the Latin American version of ‘cultural exception,’ Colombia managed to defend cultural diversity and still leaves open the possibility of participating in free trade negotiations” (2009, 30–31). Finally, lawmakers can take advantage of current market trends and conditions 218 C. de ORO to design coherent policies that facilitate access to global networks, flm circuits, international organizations and festivals, particularly those in Europe. This model has paid off, because it contributed to the increase and revitalization of Colombian cinema in the new millennium.4 Moreover, these developments promoted innovative aesthetic approaches and flmmaking which addresses urgent social issues, focuses on minorities and gives a voice to marginal social groups. Recent productions such as El vuelco del cangrejo (Óscar Ruiz, 2009), Chocó (Johnny Hendrix, 2012), and Ciro Guerra’s Los viajes del viento (2009) and El abrazo de la serpiente (2015) refect the impact of economic policies, racism and social exclusion on marginalized members of Colombian society— Afro-Colombians, indigenous peoples and peasants. Other productions, among them La sombra del caminante (Ciro Guerra, 2004), Los actores del conficto (Lisandro Duque, 2008), La pasión de Gabriel (Luis Restrepo, 2009), Retratos en un mar de mentiras (Carlos Gaviria, 2010) and Los colores de la montaña (Carlos Arbeláez,PROOF 2011) focus on themes related to the armed confict that include violation of human, social and civil rights, social exclusion, vulnerability of juveniles and minors, kidnapping, psychological trauma, and forced recruitment and displacement. These flmmakers use cinema as an instrument of social critique and consciousness raising or concientización, bring flm to the attention of middle-class audiences and, in many cases, work with non-professional actors from marginalized groups. In light of neoliberal principles and transnational exchanges that drive flm industries globally, directors such as Ciro Guerra, Óscar Ruiz, Johnny Hendrix, Luis Restrepo, Carlos Gaviria, Lisandro Duque and Carlos Arbeláez take advantage of dominant funding, production and exhibition mechanisms and work in conventional genres,REVISED mainly infuenced by “lo melodramático” (Herlinghaus 2002) or by what Paul Schroeder refers to as “melorealism.”5 Schroeder explains that this tendency of flm “points out to the prevalence of a realistic visual style constructed to the use of natural acting, continuity editing, on-location shooting, and the restrained use of nondiegetic sound” (2016, 250). Contemporary Latin American flmmakers, as Paul Schroeder states, tend to “create transnational products through casting, setting, narrative, and aesthetic choices that facilitate the flms’ marketing to international audiences and help satisfy the different economic and political interests of the coproducing parties” (2016, 247). 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 219

This is a very different panorama to that of the militant and neobaroque stages of the New Latin American Cinema, when flmmakers searched for cultural and national autonomy and independent production mechanisms, created epic, radical and revolutionary cinematic projects, and used inventive and experimental formats. Latin American production of the last two decades use intimist and realist approaches, redirecting our attention, as Schroeder points out, “to focus instead on the micropo- litical of everyday life” (2016, 250). Jorge Ruffnelli notes that current Latin American fction flm shows a commitment to themes of the everyday, often using a minimalist aesthetic style. In doing so, it has turned away from the totalizing gestures of cinema from the 1960s (2011, 128). The flm Alias María is an example of the intimist and melorealist approach taken by many Latin American productions in the last twenty years, that continues a tradition of socio-critical flmmaking while responding to current political and social context and conditions. PROOF Alias María: Social Engagement in a Neoliberal Framework of Production and Exhibition Alias María is Rugeles’s second feature flm, and it tells the story of María (Karen Torres), a thirteen-year-old girl and member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who has been given the dangerous mission of taking her commander’s newborn son to a safe nearby town. Along with three other guerrilla members—Mauricio, age 28 (Carlos Clavijo); Byron, age 17 (Anderson Gómez); and Yuldor, age 12 (Erik Ruiz)—María embarks on a perilous journey while coming to terms with her own pregnancy in this young age. The flm portrays the confict of a pregnant adolescent who is not allowed to be a mother, because womenREVISED are forbidden to have children in the guerrilla. This risky mission develops María’s maternal instinct, which ends up being her source of determination not to undergo an abortion. In the closing scene, María fees. She runs toward a railroad track, a visual symbol of the possibility of escaping the jungle. The flm’s ending emphasizes María’s strength to fght, and literally, to fnd a track to escape her dangerous and limited life in the guerrilla. The thematic choices made by director José Rugeles confrm the importance of both his commitment to current Colombian sociopolitical issues as well as the support provided by the Colombian national 220 C. de ORO flm apparatus. The movie’s central theme is appealing in a context of glocalization (Brooker 2003) where flmmakers also think of local stories as cultural products that can be consumed globally. Rugeles facilitated the flm’s marketing to international audiences with a minimalist style and a plausible story concerning human rights violations involving children and adolescent women in the midst of armed conficts. As Marianne Bloch-Robin argues in her essay about minimalist flms, the use of an internalized confict, scarce dialogue and long takes to create a slow pace, seek to avoid “the spectator’s suspension of credulity. The director sets out to highlight the supposed reality of the diegesis (which often includes elements of a documentary) while remaining a fctional flm” (Bloch-Robin 2014, 195). Rugeles created a cultural product of interest for coproducers and transnational organizations using a melorealist style based on careful investigative work with ex-combatant Colombian women, shooting in real jungle environments in Colombia and casting children from politically unstable areas as non-professional actors. PROOF In a contemporary neoliberal environment of increased market competition, José Rugeles took advantage of production, distribution and exhibition mechanisms which the current flm policies in Colombia facilitate. As a Colombian coproduction, the flm benefted from support by the Film Development Fund. The coproduction agreement of Rhayuela Cine (Colombia), Sudestada Cine (Argentina) and Axxon Films (France) exemplifes the opportunity for a production to achieve economic and promotional support, allowing the flm to have premieres in Colombia, Argentina and France, as well as a pre-sale on FOX + for Latin America (proimagenes).6 The French side of the coproduction was key for distribution and entry into European flm circuits, with promotion byREVISED Sophie Dulac Distribution (a company that distributes feature flms in French cinemas) and UniversCiné (a French independent flm platform that raises awareness of independent flm through VOD service). As is the case in coproduction agreements, personnel from the coproducing countries were involved, including the Argentine actress Lola Lagos, editor Delfna Castagnino and sound designers Martín Grignaschi and Federico Billordo. Yet, over 70% of cast and crew came from Colombia. The numerous domestic and international flm festivals in which Alias María participated might be spaces where affuent and specialized 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 221 audiences “consume” stories of underprivileged groups and communities. However, the participation of the flm in these festivals also demonstrate how flmmakers get involved actively and creatively to promote national cinema and, in turn, tap into additional funding sources. In 2015, Alias María participated in various flm festivals in the following categories: A Certain Look, 65th Cannes International Film Festival; Inaugural flm, 55th Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival; Offcial Selection, Biarritz Film Festival; Offcial Selection, Sao Paulo Film Festival; Offcial Selection, Camerimage, Polonia; Offcial Selection, Helsinki Film Festival; Offcial Selection, Munich Film Festival. It received international awards including: Best Film, Haifa International Film Festival, Israel; Best Film, FEMI—Guadeloupe International and Regional Film Festival, 2016; Ecumenical Award of the Jury, 30th Friburgo Film Festival, Switzerland, 2016 (Proimagenes). The flm was also selected as the Colombian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. Participation in such a wide range of festivals, for which Law 814 acted as a catalyst in bringingPROOF the flm and its subject to international recognition, shows a concerted effort of policy makers, producers and directors to insert Colombian cinema into international market spheres. An important source of support was Programa Ibermedia, an organization based in Madrid that promotes Iberian-American flm, granting funds for the coproduction of feature flms and documentaries made in Latin America, Spain and Portugal.7 Ibermedia promoted Alias María by highlighting its achievements and innovative aspects. This program’s website mentions the flm’s multiplatform approach with social programs to help children affected by the Colombian armed confict, and the social assistance it offers through workshops with NGOs.8 In addition, otherREVISED non-governmental organizations whose work is concerned with cross-cultural understanding, such as the Global Film Initiative, granted funding for the flm production. Within the predominance of market forces that move the flm industry worldwide, organizations such as Ibermedia and the Global Film Initiative are vital to support cultural products of social denunciation like Alias María. This flm evidences how Colombian flm production can beneft from the funding system that neoliberal reforms have set in place while it resists the social implications of neoliberal developments on a textual level and in terms of flmmaking. 222 C. de ORO

Resisting the Neoliberal Machine: Filmmaking as a Tool for Voice and Community-Engaged Projects In his article, “Neoliberalism and its Alternatives,” Javier Corrales states that “neoliberal reforms deprived vulnerable economic sectors, social groups, and even the environment of protection against the negative effects of globalization, while failing to deliver suffcient economic growth to reduce poverty and inequality” (2016, 140). Throughout Latin America, neoliberal measures have had a negative impact on many dimensions of social and political life. In Colombia’s case, there was an added sinister element that linked the armed confict to the dynamics of the world market and drug traffcking money (Aristizábal 2007, 129). Parallel to legal trade exchanges driven by neoliberal tendencies, a narcotics market that allowed illegal groups to join the illicit international demand for drugs as the basis of their war economy also grew in Colombia. Armed groups, including guerrillas, were strengthened with money from the marijuanaPROOF and cocaine industries. The absence of the Colombian state in areas controlled by illegal armed groups contributed to strengthen an economic model based on criminality and illegality. Furthermore, neoliberal policies facilitated the entry of multinational companies that exploited Colombia‘s natural resources indiscriminately and, in some instances, paid security fees to illegal groups, such as guerrillas, thus contributing to the fnancing of the armed confict.9 In response to the violation of human rights, and the abuse of women and children in war, Alias María presents a critique of neoliberalism that brings into public view issues related to the recruitment of minors from deprived economic sectors by guerrilla groups. Both the flm and the accompanyingREVISED programs refect Rugeles’s goal to raise consciousness for pertinent social problems. As an integral part of this strategy, the director hires nonprofessional actors from underprivileged areas as protagonists, an approach that integrates experiences of minors who live or have lived in areas affected by the armed confict. The flmmaker interviewed approximately 1800 children from such places. He fnally chose fve who, along with a professional cast of actors, occupied lead roles in his flm. He had these children actively participate in the script interviewing and interacted with them in order to include their personal stories in the narrative. His team interviewed several female ex-combatants of different 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 223 ages, among them one girl named Yineth.10 The flmmaker notes about the participation of non-professional actors in the writing of the script:

The actors never read a script. They worked each scene so that they could contribute with their way of speaking, their dialogues, their sensitivity. Then the actors wrote what they had just done, with their own ideas. They did the scenes from the point of view of non-professional actors. This tech- nique avoids memorization of a text, of specifc words, and motivates the actors to feel. (Cinéflos 2015)

The flmmaker adapted his original script to the experiences, the way of speaking and mannerisms of the nonprofessional actors. In this way, the flm acts as a mouthpiece for invisible and usually silenced individuals. This philosophy of flmmaking is also a trademark of other Colombian directors, such as Victor Gaviria. Film scholar Eduardo Ledesma states about Gaviria’s flm Rodrigo D No Futuro (1990) that nonprofessional actors followed “a loose script, which was altered as circumstances developed. … Gaviria does not speak for the adolescentsPROOF but rather allows them to speak for themselves, even participate in the creation of the script, which is then acted using their natural language and mannerisms” (2012, 155–58). Similarly, Alias María refects its director’s interest to include experiences of marginal social groups in the flm script and adapt the flmmaking process to enable them to express themselves. These practices are a central component of an aesthetic representation of resistance that shows the flmmaker’s commitment to those who are socially and economically marginalized. Rugeles demonstrates his inclination to align with the perspective of the oppressed by hiring Karen Torres, a non-professional adolescent actress from a region impacted by guerrilla’s recruitment, for the lead protagonist,REVISED María. Torres noted that it was easy for her to slip into the role of María, because she did not have to learn diffcult scripts and dialogues. In an interview with flm critic Andrés Hoyos from the newspaper El Tiempo, the young actress said: “Chepe [Rugeles’s nick- name] explained to us the scenes and we wrote his instructions in a notebook before shooting. That was something deeper and more natural” (Hoyos 2015). Torres confrmed that she was familiar with the forced recruitment of her character María: “I did not have that experience, but my family did, albeit indirectly. Alias María offers a small 224 C. de ORO part of that confict from the perspective of children. Most productions of this theme center on kidnapped people and combats, but here we can see other aspects that many people do not know” (Hoyos 2015). Some of the aspects Torres alludes to are related to sexual exploitation and the lack of attention to the needs of women fghting in the guerrilla. With the character of María, Rugeles gives insight into a hostile environment in which women, including minors, are harassed and disenfranchised. María is portrayed as a vulnerable subject in a military context that is dominated by men, who, despite and because of the restrictions imposed upon her, defends the life of the baby growing inside of her. Thus, the director gives an account of María’s life, as an abused female guerrilla combatant and her determination to fght for her freedom. In doing this, the flmmaker provides an example for a narrative that, as Nick Couldry argues in a different context, counters the silencing of voices promoted by neoliberalists’ reductionist view of social aspects (2010, 7). The flm and the initiatives accompanyingPROOF it, are evidence that flm may serve as a critical and educational tool for civil engagement and social transformation as well as a channel to mitigate negative effects of neoliberalism on deprived sectors, including lack of investment in education and state institutions that support and protect minors and women in peripheral communities. The director emphasized the need to take action by putting into place a number of accompanying social programs for minors in rural areas of Colombia who are at risk to be recruited by the guerrilla. The flmmaker used his flm production as a platform to launch social activities, setting an example for flmmaking that links to pressing sociopolitical problems. Alias María is part of a multi-platform proposal titled “Alias.” Linked to the subject of theREVISED flm, this initiative includes a number of activities which seek to prevent children and youths’ forced recruitment into armed groups. The flm has been used to organize and create campaigns such as “Más niños menos guerra” (More Children Less War), “Ningún niño debería saber pelear una guerra” (No child should know how to fght a war) and “+Niños, Alias” (+Children, Alias). The cam- − − paigns and workshops serve as “tools for young people at risk of getting involved in any new form of violence. These tools can allow them to fnd a way to reinvent themselves amidst diffcult circumstances and transform their paths, understanding that in the same way they can 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 225 create an image or a character, they can also create their own life story” (www.aliasmaria.com). The production team interviewed demobilized women who had been recruited as children, enlisted and later were forced to abort pregnancies, and revealed that many children from rural areas voluntarily enlist in armed groups. The “Alias” initiative aims to educate children in peripheral areas of Colombia about the dangers of war so that minors consider options other than enlisting in illegal armed groups. With these programs, the flmmaker and his team highlight the vulnerability of children. Likewise, they shed light on the practice of child recruitment to gain the audience’s support for the flmmaker’s social campaigns. The programs that accompany the movie also include workshops that allow participants to convert language and audiovisual tools into communicative strategies, community networks that can act as protective sites for minors and training for leaders so that they can use this experience with other young people within and outside their communities. These strategies have the goal of providing agency and voice to children at risk of being recruited by guerrillaPROOF groups, and are tightly linked with the flm text to form an unusual example of cinematic way of resistance to neoliberal policies. The director and his team returned to flming sites when the flm was completed, to teach local children the basics of flmmaking and acting. The videos, workshops, short flms and campaigns can be characterized as examples of citizens’ media that make it possible for people “to feel, share, and experience an alternative to the terror imposed by war” (Rodríguez 2011, 34). According to Clemencia Rodríguez, “when citizens’ media are genuinely open to community participation and situated in local knowledges, languages, and aesthetics, they help keep children and youth away from armed groups. These media cultivate alternative understandingsREVISED of difference, encourage nonaggressive ways of being and interacting, and model nonviolent confict management” (2011, 3). The social projects initiated by Rugeles enable citizens to use audiovisual media in order to strengthen their social fabric. This free sharing of technical resources and flmmaking expertise in regions where education and culture are commodities offers an invaluable model for community building and support in sociopolitically unstable areas with no state presence nor support. It is a strategy which brings the social struggles of excluded groups into public view and implements mechanisms oriented to recognize “people’s capacities for social cooperation based on voice” (Couldry 2010, 2). 226 C. de ORO

Conclusions Film policies implemented in Colombia in the last two decades facilitate access to global networks for the fnancing, distribution and exhibition of Colombian cinema as a cultural commodity. Neoliberal strategies in the Colombian flm industry focus on trade liberalization and tax reform to encourage market investors and represent an opportunity to strengthen and promote Colombian cinema internationally through a state flm policy that favors and gives incentives to private investment. In light of these conditions, I examined the flm Alias María as an enterprise that manages to beneft from these policies while addressing urgent social issues. Rugeles’s flm refects both the neoliberal process of production and exhibition of cultural commodities and exercises resistance to alleviate the consequences of neoliberal processes on disenfranchised social groups. Alias María illustrates the use of flmmaking as a platform to foster social activism and transformation in socially unstable contexts, therefore bringing disadvan- taged social sectors into public visibility. PROOFThis flm both depicts the problems faced by women in war and portrays a female fgure who presents a positive role model for younger generations. The participation of young children from at-risk areas as non-professional actors and initiatives such as workshops, videos, short flms and educational campaigns for minors and community leaders emphasize the director’s social commitment, and testify to his desire to reveal conficting realities using audiovisual media as educational instruments of resistance, civic action and social transformation. REVISEDNotes 1. See, for instance, Los actores del conficto (Lisandro Duque, 2008), La pasión de Gabriel (Luis Restrepo, 2009), Retratos en un mar de mentiras (Carlos Gaviria, 2010), Los colores de la montaña (Carlos Arbeláez, 2011) and Pequeñas voces (Jaime Carrillo y Óscar Andrade, 2011). 2. Clemencia Rodríguez defnes citizens’ media as, “those media that facilitate the transformation of individuals into ‘citizens’. Citizens’ media are communication spaces where citizens can learn to manipulate their own languages, codes, signs, and symbols, empowering them to name the world in their own terms. Citizens’ media trigger processes that allow citizens to recodify their contexts and selves. These processes ultimately give citizens the opportunity to restructure their identities into empowered 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 227

subjectivities strongly connected to local cultures and driven by well-defned, achievable utopias. Citizens’ media are the media citizens use to activate communication processes that shape their local communities” (2011, 24). 3. FOCINE was the state-run flm company that operated from 1978 to 1993. It closed due to fnancial and bureaucratic mismanagements. 4. The increase in the percentage of productions from 2006 onwards was noteworthy (between 4.8 and 12.2%) when compared to the percentage of productions from 1993 to 2003 (between 0.37 and 3.4%). Since 2004, the Film Promotion Fund has provided incentives for the domestic promotion of Colombian flms. Although 78.5% of the flms released in the last decade have received this stimulus, reception continues to be low (proimagenescolombia.com). 5. Hermann Herlinghaus (2002) defnes the melodramatic as an interpretative, historical, epistemological, narrative and performative category of cultural studies located in the margins of codifed studies that focuses on stories occurred in the precariousness of human life, in stories without author where a remarkable part of the experiences of modernity is hidden. PROOF 6. Alias María’s producer Rhayuela is a Colombian private production company with almost twenty years of experience producing flms, commer- cials and music videos (rhayuelacine.com). 7. Coproducers get loans with no interest in installments of 60% (at the time they sign the contract or the frst day of the main shooting), 20% (once the movie is fnished) and 20% (when Ibermedia receives the fnal fnancing plan). Loans granted by Ibermedia usually do not exceed 50% of the total cost of the production or US$150,000 for full-length flms (programaibermedia.com). 8. Rugeles and his team worked with NGOs such as Ayara Artistic and Social Foundation (Bogotá, Colombia), an organization of young Afro- Colombians that carries out social, artistic, educational and income-gen- erationREVISED activities based on hip-hop culture, with the aim of empowering and improving life opportunities for at-risk girls, boys and young people, many of whom are from ethnic minorities. The mission of Ayara is to strengthen and develop hip-hop as a constructive artistic movement that raises awareness of social problems and generates change, contributing to the elimination of social, racial and gender inequalities and to the construction of peace (https://www.globalgiving.org/donate/28301/ fundacion-artistica-y-social-la-familia-ayara/). 9. Aristizábal explains that due to the limitations of the Colombian state to provide security, in some instances, multinational companies have chosen 228 C. de ORO

to pay high sums of money to insurgent organizations to avoid sabotage of their facilities and products, kidnappings or threats to their executives (2007, 165). 10. Nombre de guerra: Alias Yineth (Daniela Castro y Nicolás Ordóñez, 2015) is a documentary that talks about the war in Colombia from the point of view of Yineth, a peasant girl recruited by the guerrilla at the age of twelve. The recent years have signifed a great change for Yineth, from her life in the jungle to her achievement of having a role in society. An adult now, Yineth works for the government in programs for demo- bilization and rehabilitation of war combatants. (aliasyineth.webs.com/ sinopsis).

Works Cited Aristizábal, José. 2007. Metamorfosis, Guerra, Estado y globalización en Colombia. Bogotá: Ediciones Desde Abajo. Bloch-Robin, Marianne. 2014. “El nuevo minimalismo hispánico o cómo un antigénero se podría convertir en nuevo género.”PROOF In Cine iberoamericano con- temporáneo y géneros cinematográfcos, edited by Nancy Berthier and Antonia Del Rey-Reguillo, 193–207. Valencia: Tirant Humanidades. Brooker, Peter. 2003. A Glossary of Cultural Theory. London: Oxford University Press. Castañeda, Liliana. 2009. “The Post-Neoliberal Colombian Film Policy.” Revista de Estudios Colombianos 33/34: 27–46. Cinéflos. 2015. “Alias María-José Luis Rugeles-Entrevista.” Accessed October 3, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v 7JpCQBzcUYs. = Corrales, Javier. 2016. “Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives.” In Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics, edited by Peter Kingstone and Deborah Yashar, 133–57. New York: Routledge. Couldry, Nick. 2010. Why Voice Matters, Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism.REVISED London: Sage. Culture Law in Colombia. Law 397. 1997. Diario Ofcial 43102, August 7, 1997. http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/es/ley-397-de-1997- ley-general-de-cultura. Film Law in Colombia. Law 814. 2003. Diario Ofcial 45.237, July 2, 2003. http://www.mincultura.gov.co/areas/cinematografia/Legislacion/ Documents/Ley%20de%20Cine.pdf. Herlinghaus, Hermann. 2002. Narraciones anacrónicas de la modernidad, Melodrama e Intermedialidad en América Latina. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio. 12 BETWEEN ARMED CONFLICT, SOCIAL AWARENESS … 229

Hoyos, Andrés. 2015. “La transformación de Karen Torres en busca de Alias María.” El Tiempo, November 12, 2015. http://www.eltiempo.com/ entretenimiento/cine-y-tv/karen-torres-interpreta-a-alias-maria/16429041. Ledesma, Eduardo. 2012. “Through ‘Their’ Eyes, Internal and External Focalizing Agents in the Representation of Children and Violence in Iberian and Latin American Film.” In Representing History, Class, and Gender in Spain and Latin America, Children and Adolescents in Film, edited by Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet, 151–69. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rêgo, Cacilda, and Carolina Rocha. 2011. New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Bristol: Intellect. Rodríguez, Clemencia. 2011. Citizens’ Media Against Armed Confict, Disrupting Violence in Colombia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ruffnelli, Jorge. 2011. “Nuevas señas de identidad en el cine de América Latina. Notas sobre cómo el cine épico devino minimalista.” In Tendencias del cine iberoamericano en el nuevo milenio, coord. J. C. Vargas, 121–32. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara. Schroeder Rodríguez, Paul. 2016. Latin American Cinema, A Comparative History. Oakland: University of California Press.PROOF

REVISED CHAPTER 13

Maximiliano Schonfeld’s Films of the Volga Germans in Entre Ríos: About the Neoliberal Devil in Argentine Cinema

Claudia Sandberg PROOF

Germania (2012), the frst feature-length flm by Argentine director Maximiliano Schonfeld, opens with the image of a grain feld in the early morning hours. This will be the last day Lucas and Brenda and their mother, Margarita, spend on this land. They belong to a small Volga German community, farmers settled in the province of Entre Ríos, 300 km north of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. Their chickens suffer an unknown disease which forces Margarita to sell their farm, leave the village and fnd employment elsewhere. Germania narrates the departure of this family from their house, neighbors and friends, as they leave behind potential, long-lasting and unfnished relationships. The pictures of REVISEDa pristine rural landscape in Entre Ríos documents a community on the brink of profound changes. Rural communities like the Volga Germans are vulnerable to current neoliberal agricultural policies. Large- scale agriculture practices threaten their existence as family-owned businesses, while the desire to be part of modern consumer culture loosen the

C. Sandberg (*) University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

© The Author(s) 2018 231 C. Sandberg and C. Rocha (eds.), Contemporary Latin American Cinema, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77010-9_13 232 C. SANDBERG generational bonds of these traditionally close-knit communities, alienating younger people from the experiences, customs and language of their elders. This chapter deals with Schonfeld’s work about the Volga-German community in Entre Ríos. His flms form a compelling case study within a tendency of flmmaking that observes and criticizes political, economic and social tenets of neoliberalism in Argentina. In 2001, the free-market reforms of Carlos Menem’s government had led to a massive economic crisis. The currency plummeted, companies went bankrupt and unemployment rose to 20%, creating a multitude of problems from which the country has still not recovered. These developments deepened already existing divisions in Argentine society, as Maristella Svampa notes: “The neoliberal political hand … heightened existing inequalities, and brought about new processes of exclusion, which affected a wide range of social sectors” (2005, 10).1 Argentina’s downfall revealed the country’s vulnerability in the dynamics of global capital fows and by extension Latin America’s ongoing dependency on the globalPROOF North, which refects the “uneven geographical development” of neoliberalism emanating from a few major centers, such as the UK and the US (Harvey 2005, 99–100). In a reaction to these calamities, the flms of a young generation of flmmakers started to revisit imaginations of Argentina as a national space. Filmmakers such as Adrian Caetano highlight the social fragmentations that the 2001 crisis had laid bare. They turn to groups and communities that are marginal to public attention, occupying spaces outside of market success and consumer culture. Caetano’s Pizza, Birra, Faso (1997) is one of the frst flms which tackle these issues in their very texture— working with scarce resources, non-professional actors and in an experimental mode—which was a way to “establish a new critical relation between theREVISED image and reality” (Oubiña 2013, 40). Scholars such as David Oubiña and Jens Andermann see this flm tendency as a return to the “real,” which documents the economic crisis and neoliberal developments in Argentina in the wake of the 2001 fnancial mega crisis, the “‘bursting’ of the speculative bubble, which exposed the fantasy character of neoliberal economics and its claims to have elevated Argentina into the ‘First World’—instead bringing to the fore the true realities of exclusion, poverty, and hunger; the open secret of neoliberal globalization” (Andermann 2013, 158). Oscillating between fction and documentary these flms approximate subjects of social and economic marginalization and neoliberal structures 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 233 in their aesthetic language. Film scholar Gonzalo Aguilar notes: “The presence of immigrants, the breakdown of institutions, the change in the status of labor, the role of memory are not subjected to declaration of principles; instead they are an object of investigation realized with cinematographic form” (2008, 123). There is also an emphasis on and an interest in the experiences of the everyday, which is a paradigm shift from previous, progressive traditions of flmmaking in Latin America, the so-called New Latin American Cinema a cinema with an ideological program and with strong political messages (Schroeder Rodríguez 2016, 167–244). Schonfeld’s flms are part of this socially engaged and formally innovative tendency of contemporary Argentine cinema, one that questions conventional self-representations of the Argentine nation as an educated bourgeois community of Italian and Spanish descent; directing its gaze away from the urban middle-class family as the preferred social formation of neoliberalism to highlight the social and cultural heterogeneity of the Argentine population. The infux of immigrants from Bolivia,PROOF Paraguay and Peru, Eastern Europe or Asia to Argentina is a result of historical and ongoing economic, social and political crises that keep producing regional and global migration streams. Many individuals and groups have arrived in Argentina from different parts of the world and are eking out small existences under the radar of public recognition ever since. They are often employed in precarious positions, as domestic helpers, nannies and construction workers suffering problems of inequality and discrimination. In the gritty Bolivia (Adrián Caetano, 2001), Freddy is employed in a small café and exploited by his boss. Habitación disponible (Eva Poncet, Marcelo Burd and Diego Gachassin, 2004) follows the daily lives of an engineer from Peru, a musician from Paraguay and a psychologist from the Ukraine. La niña pez (Lucía Puenzo, 2009) is theREVISED love story between the Paraguayan woman Ailin and Lala, the daughter of a well-off Argentinian family, for whom Ailin works as a maid. Perhaps the most upbeat among these flms, Daniel Burman’s El abrazo partido (2004) observes the diasporic character of Argentine society, in a narrative that unites Chinese, Polish and Jewish shop owners in a small mall in Buenos Aires’s Jewish neighborhood Once. As Carolina Rocha comments on the main protagonist, Ariel, a character who grapples with his desire to go to Europe: “[T]he flm stresses his belonging to the Argentine community” (2012, 153). Rocha’s idea can be expanded to other fgures in this and other flms which aim to represent contemporary Argentina as a microcosm of people with different ethnic, cultural and linguistic roots. 234 C. SANDBERG

While Argentine flms have begun to utilize notions of spatiality to emphasize experiences of social marginality, inequality and displacement in urban areas, fewer have touched on the impact of neoliberalism in the countryside.2 Schonfeld’s flms about the Entre Ríos-based Volga German community provide a point of departure for such an investigation. Film critic Rosa Gronda notes in the local El Litoral about Germania:

In a setting that is not often frequented by our national cinema and that most often favors urban centers, this flm is an aesthetic experience of a different dimension for the urban spectator, not only because of its narrative ambiguity, but also because it achieves to convert the captured space into genuine poetics. (2013)3

Drawing on Gronda’s quote, I argue that the work of this flmmaker adds an important perspective to the themes of social marginality, and neoliberal critique, one that plays out in a rural setting. Employing open narrative patterns and enticing visual vocabulary,PROOF his flms describe the Volga Germans as a cultural and linguistic hybrid group with a history of displacement and economic hardship, while refecting on their affective, close-knit relationship with the Entre Ríos landscape. I begin my analysis by introducing Schonfeld’s flmmaking as engagement with the Entre-Ríos based Volga German community that utilizes local resources and promotes local talent. With reference to the short flms Esnorquel (2006), Entreluces (2006) and the aforementioned feature Germania, I argue that Schonfeld’s work anticipates the detrimental effects of current neoliberal forces on the lives of the local community. Consumer culture has begun shaping the desires of younger Volga Germans; the concentration of capital in the agricultural sector threat- ens the existence of small-scale, family businesses, and creates environmental problems.REVISED The flms of this director complicate understandings of the rural as a social periphery, opposing homogenizing social imaginaries and the loss of community-based living and working structures in rural environments.

Putting the Provinces on the Map Schonfeld’s interest in flming the local community has personal and biographical dimensions. He was born in Crespo, a town in the province of Entre Ríos with about 18,000 inhabitants, most of who are descendants 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 235 of the Volga Germans. The flmmaker said he “remember[ed] in his own biography a moment in which he looked at the place where he was born, from outside” (Schonfeld in Schejtman 2013), which became a quest for the world of his father, and a way to look for his own identity as member of the Volga German community.4 This has so far resulted in an output about the region and its people that he processed in different formats and genres. The shorts, Esnorquel, Entreluces and Invernario (2011), his television series, El lobo (2012) and Ander Egg (2012), the feature flms, Germania and La helada negra (2015), and the documentary La siesta del tigre (2016) portray the community of formerly European immigrants of German and Russian descent linked to the landscapes of Entre Rios. The personally motivated projects advance a concept of flmmaking that is nourished by local resources and ideas. For the making of Entreluces and Esnorquel, Schonfeld teamed up with fellow Crespo-born colleague, Eduardo Crespo (whose last name matches that of his home city) and Iván Fund, flmmakers of Schonfeld’s generation who he met when studying at thePROOF public flm school ENERC, and who share Schonfeld’s interest in Crespo’s heritage, a concern about the economic and social health of the Entre Ríos’s region and an intimate connection with the rural environment.5 While Schonfeld directed and wrote the scripts for the short flms, Crespo and Fund did the photography, the sound work and the editing. Crespo was also Schonfeld’s assistant director on the feature Germania, a flm that I analyse later in this chapter. This close collaboration refects on frst-time projects of a young flmmaker as adventures with friends. The work with Crespo and Fund as fellow Crespo flmmakers gave Schonfeld’s flms their local character. These initial projects were initiatives fnancially supported by the regional government,REVISED the city of Crespo and the Instituto Audiovisual de Entre Ríos. This enabled Schonfeld to further refne his flmmaking skills, which would prove benefcial for his subsequent ventures into feature-length flm. Germania was backed by Pasto Cine, a Buenos Aires-based production house that shares the ethos of independent flmmaking, which produced Schonfeld’s opera prima (feature flm debut) and later La helada negra.6 Pasto Cine assisted the flmmaker to obtain grants from established institutions, such as the Argentine national flm institute Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA) and the Rotterdam-based Hubert Bals Fund. Since then, the Volga German director has become one of the cultural references for the rurally 236 C. SANDBERG based communities of the Entre Rios province, whose flms give visibility to the cultural productivity, cinematic appeal and the concerns of the region and its community. Página 12 notes:

One needs to talk about a serious move in Crespo. In this little munici- pality of not more than 20,000 inhabitants that is basically known as the national capital of poultry, a trio of flmmakers [Maximiliano Schonfeld, Eduardo Crespo, Iván Fund] have surfaced within the last few years, who have a personal and audible voice. (Brodersen 2016)7

Schonfeld makes a cinema that combines the local spatial morphology with questions about the social and economic wellbeing of the local Volga German community. He is particularly concerned about the neoliberal pressures and desires which younger generations are exposed to, an issue that I examine in the following flm analysis.

Generational Shifts and CommPROOFodity Culture In an article about the Volga German colonies in Entre Ríos written for the journal Todo es historia, Verónica Fernández Armesto notes that this community, in which the church and the village are social and cultural cornerstones and life is organized around work in the felds, has under- gone profound changes in recent years. She notes that there is a tendency among the youth to reject the traditions of their elders (2000, 71). Along these lines, Schonfeld’s flms suggest that the younger Volga Germans are seduced by commodity culture. They would like to be part of “mainstream” Argentine youth, escaping the rigid social norms of their community and an existence that is marked by scarcity and manual labor. His images document the daily routines and chores of the young people, who drive tractors,REVISED herd animals, and pick fruits and vegetables, showing them to be a frm part of the family business. The chicken farm occupies a central part in Schonfeld’s imagination of this community that symbolizes repet- itive, boring work and could also represent, according to Ezequiel Iván Duarte, a “prison of values” (2014). Scenes in the chicken barn appear in Esnorquel, Entreluces and Germania, and frame the young people walking along the isles between clucking hens, while being entrenched in their own world of ideas, wishes and hopes. In Esnorquel, a young man who is col- lecting eggs peeks between the wooden bars to observe a young woman who passes by. In Entreluces, the adolescent Rocío, diligently checks each 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 237 egg for any cracks taking the stacks to her mother. In Germania, the chicken barn is a visual signifer for the family’s social and economic bank- ruptcy. Many hens have died, others are ill, the cages are empty. Brenda crushes an egg, frustrated about her mother’s decision to take her away from her home and her friends. The gender-neutral and almost masculine way in which Rocío and Brenda are dressed and the absentminded looks on their faces suggest they are independent young women, who have their own ideas about their futures and wish to be elsewhere (Fig. 13.1). The allure of consumerism for the youngest members of the local Volga German community has been a subject of Schonfeld’s flms since the beginning of his career. In his frst short, Esnorquel, the director created the universe that he would revisit and expand in his subsequent work: images of the Volga Germans in remote areas and their simple, “unplugged” lives; children who play soccer and listen to Argentine popular music; daily chores on a farm involving the entire family; people who leave the community, and the youngsters’ desire to connect to a world beyond the borders of their village.PROOF Esnorquel links such an imagined world with objects that offer the promise of plugging into global culture. Devices such as radios and mobile phones signal that

REVISED

Fig. 13.1 A pensive Brenda collects eggs in Germania (Maximiliano Schonfeld, 2012) 238 C. SANDBERG material goods has begun shaping the desires of the community. In the frst sequence of the flm, titled Regalos de más alla (“Presents from somewhere else”), a boy waves farewell from the rear window of a car to a family who waves back, standing on a dusty road, which is followed by images that narrate moments of silence and sadness at the end of Christmas celebrations. The table is still set after a festive meal, and used wrapping paper and wooden toys are spread on the foor. Children contemplate their shiny new Christmas presents; a girl opens the cover of her new mobile phone and holds a radio, that is the center of attraction later, when she along with a group of other children listen to a local soccer match. The scenario ends when the radio falls down a bridge, a sign perhaps that this device is out of place in this environment. Entreluces expands on the theme of a growing commodity culture as a clash with views and values of the Volga Germans, to which the earlier Esnorquel had only alluded. By juxtaposing dream spaces and the immediate reality of young protagonists, Schonfeld’s flm draw melancholic images of childhood nostalgia, physical urgesPROOF of young adults and their desire to belong to a more urban Argentine youth and part of Western popular culture. Entreluces follows Rocío and Miguel, young adults who dutifully support their parents and take part in cultural-religious activities, a domestic domain in which they know their roles, responsibilities and expectations. After the workday is over, they drive into town, an unknown and limitless world of alcohol, popular music and sex. Rocío’s face lights up when they pass the illuminated signs of local and global brands. They meet other friends in a bar and spend the night eating out in cheap fast-food chains, buying chewing gum, sweets and alcohol at a gas station, dancing in a club to techno music and fickering laser lights. A scene in which the young people hang out in the streets—which is reminiscentREVISED of a scenario in Caetano’s Pizza, Birra, Faso—suggests that this group of young people exist at the margins of Argentine society. At dawn, after having experienced a sexual adventure in a car, a disap- pointed Rocío walks home by herself. In portraying adolescents who are caught between the daily responsibilities of rural farm life and the attrac- tions of an urban lifestyle, Entreluces makes them taste and question the world of consumer goods and promises of instant gratifcation. These images are refections of a generation that has to come to terms with their cultural background. The participation of local members of the Volga German community as cast members adds a layer of authenticity and meaning to the flms. The performances, faces, bodies, 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 239 movements and language of these non-professional actors literally person- ify experiences of the local community. As a cinema blogger said about the use of local youth in Schonfeld’s flms, “It is diffcult to determine the similarities and differences between the actors and the characters. The depicted intergenerational problems, do they originate from a real situation? The rupture in the use of languages, the different tastes of music … Do they not actually represent existing tensions of daily life that have nothing to do with the televised fction of these fgures?” (2014).8 In producing a fuidity between performance and identity, Schonfeld’s flms are part of a socially engaged Argentine cinema that lingers “between fction and reality, between cinema and society” (Verardi 2009, 186). In this scenario, young Volga Germans bear the consequences of the economic struggles of their families on and off-screen.

The Presence of the Devil While continuing to focus on the universe ofPROOF young people, Germania refects on the Volga Germans as agricultural communities severely affected by neoliberal policies and practices. The flm narrates the last day Lucas, Brenda (Brenda Krütli) and their mother, Margarita (Margarita Greifenstein), spend with friends, neighbors and lovers. As a widow, Margarita is the main breadwinner of her family. Because their chickens have died, Margarita decides to leave their home village to look for another source of income. The flm unites fgures of the previously made Invernario (2011), expanding on themes and tropes introduced in the short flm, such as their shortage of money, an undefned relationship between the adolescent siblings, the daughter’s attraction to a migrant worker and the children’s widening rift with their mother who drags them away REVISEDfrom their childhood home. With a flm title so ambiguous that it seems to be announcing a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, Germania provides insight into the hybrid cultural traditions of the Volga Germans that have evolved over generations. They communicate in a Germanic dialect that had picked up Slavic and Spanish vocabulary and syntax on the voyage from German provinces to Russia in the eighteenth century and on to Latin America two hundred years after that (see Fernández Armesto 2000, 60–72). Religious belief is a guide in moments of mayhem, for which Bible text offers explanations of why illness, death and bad harvests have struck members of the community. Having lived in small, isolated settlements, often suffering attacks from 240 C. SANDBERG other cultural and religious groups in Russia and being dependent on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, their lack of control over such events made mysterious and inexplicable ideas an integral part of their cultural-religious belief system. As Fernández Armesto notes, “The Christian principle of the divine will, their departure to the provinces, the sense of destiny, the looming presence of the devil are deeply-rooted beliefs” (2000, 68).9 The vicar explains to Lucas that the death of their chickens has Biblical meaning. He explains why they should leave in order to spare the others: “Some people in the villages are very scared about the plague. They even relate it to biblical passages. It is all there … in the Bible.” Germania’s closing sequence underlines the sense of fate the community and their members are subordinated to. In the early morning on the day of their move, Margarita carries a candle to an altar of the Virgin Mary situated at a road crossing. The flm ends with a colorful image of the family house lit by the rays of the morning light. A high-pitched female voice performs the choral Hosianna, gelobet sei der da kommet10 on the aural backdrop of tweeting birds, producing the sensation that this communityPROOF has disappeared at the hands of God, the abandoned house as the only memory that is left of this family. For local flm critics, Germania is an encounter with the Other, a flm about a nomadic and culturally sealed community (Battle 2013; Bernades 2013). According to Rodrigo Chavero, these people, who nourish traditions and rites of a distant European past, are only coincidentally settled in Argentina. He calls them a “Teutonic idiosyncrasy in a local scenario” (Chavero 2013). As a story about a displaced Germanic community, Germania drew comparisons with Stellet Licht (Carlos Reygadas, 2007), a flm which deals with a Mennonite community in Mexico (e.g. Battle 2013; Sendros 2013; Scholz 2013). Germania’sREVISED cultural mixing also made it interesting to international audiences. Robert Koehler notes in his review of Germania in the US-based entertainment business news website, Variety: “With its heavy Euro overlay on a Latin America-set tale, this is prime fare for continental buyers, and can look forward to an excellent fest journey.” Indeed, the flm garnered a lot of attention in the international flm festival circuit arguably because of its elaborate visual style and its perception as a transnational “tale.” Germania was named Best First Film in the 2012 Filmfest Hamburg. The same year, it participated in the BAFICI and won the Special Jury Prize, and screened in flm festivals in Gothenburg, Nantes, Toulouse, Río de Janeiro and Chicago. 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 241

It is in sync with the sensibilities of contemporary international art cinema, which is, as Lutz Koepnick observes, “a transnational and multi- lingual project whose principal aim is to probe the rhythms and speeds, the memories and anticipations, that make life tick under conditions of unbound meditation and fast-tracked scenarios of change” (2013, 656). What has been mostly overlooked by national and international critics, however, is the local scenario and signifcance. More than a self-indul- gent auteur flm, Germania is invested in portraying social and economic questions relevant to an Argentine rural community. The flm criticizes the vortex of ubiquitous and incessant neoliberal developments that they are exposed to. Germania’s observations closely align with experiences and resources of rural communities and small-scale farmers in Latin America and a growing concern about their disintegration due to massive economic shifts in the agricultural sector. Walter Pengue notes about the extensive knowledge and well-established farming practices held by smaller, family- based frms: PROOF

Traditional campesino culture has demonstrated a high degree of sustainability within its own historical and ecological contexts, and fulflled the vital needs of the population even under adverse environmental conditions. Farming practices were built on sophisticated social, geographical and cultural frameworks, appropriate processing technologies, and a precise knowledge of resources, consumption and labor habits, all adjusted to the conditions of each locale. (2004, 6)

As Margarita and her children need to give up their farm and fnd employment elsewhere, Germania alludes to the loss of this knowledge and experience that were acquired over generations, refecting developments acrossREVISED Latin America, where peasant households who cannot support themselves with the income from farming are forced to give up the farming business, or to lease their land while becoming waged workers (see Kay 2015, 76). Margarita plans to take her two children to Brazil where she hopes to get work in soybean production: she mentions to her son, Lucas, in her curious German dialect: “In the village there are many people who have made money in soy. The houses are beautiful and even have a TV inside.” Her mentioning of soybeans can be read as a reference to a growing concentration of capital, business and aggressive globalized food production that drives the agricultural sectors in Argentina 242 C. SANDBERG and Brazil, with a detrimental effect for local farmers. The cultivation of genetically modifed crops favors big, foreign-based agricultural companies that push the local, smaller ones out of business. Moreover, large-scale soybean production causes irreversible damage to the natural environment (Newell 2009; Motta 2016) that Germania alludes to through its spatial grammar. The landscape shots in Germania visualize the intimate connection between the Volga German rural community, the aldea (village) and the Entre Ríos territory, which, as a way to depict this land as their home, points to their familiarity with it as farm land. Precisely framed shot compositions, a “staring” camera, the use of natural light at dusk or dawn and a great feld of depth calls attention to this environment, which “interrupts, as place, the narrative continuity” (Andermann 2014, 52). Andermann notes with reference to two recent flms that landscape “direct[s] our gaze toward the material world of the characters’ spatial surroundings and toward their bodily interactions with those surroundings as saturated with meaningPROOF (65).”11 In a similar way, the attention that landscape images provoke in Germania marks the importance of this environment as the living and working space of their inhabitants. At the same time, these arresting images channel anxieties about the community’s disappearance into environmental concerns. Without their protection, this land is orphaned. Germania’s visual projections forecast capitalist trajectories as an unknown variable that decides the future of this community. Has “the presence of the devil” come in the guise of late capitalism to erase communal ways of life and work; is it the demon that after having withstood bad harvests, attacks and migration for two-hundred years will be the reason for the demise of the VolgaREVISED Germans? Conclusions Schonfeld’s flms draw a picture of a community whose future is uncertain. This is alluded to most strongly in Germania. The aforementioned image of a cornfeld in the early morning and the voices of young people laughing are followed by an extreme close-up of the sad face of Lucas, who seems to look back at this last night with his friends, trying to memorize these hours as he is about to leave his childhood home. During this last day, the flm shows Brenda and her best friend hidden in a haystack; Lucas, who 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 243 plays soccer with other locals, bathes in the river, and sits with his dog in the high grass. The images highlight the Schonfeld’s intimate familiarity with this environment. The flmmaker’s endeavor was, in this critical moment, to project the community’s “pain of the past, the lived present, and a projection of the future” (Schonfeld in Boetti 2013, 30). His flms present a world that is still intact, at once a nostalgic view of childhood memory and an anxious reminder of encroaching changes. Families move elsewhere because the farming business does not provide enough income. Younger people, including Schonfeld himself, decided to leave their homes to fnd jobs in more lucrative sectors and industries. The portrayed landscape maps this looming calamity, adding ecological concerns that may ensue if these settlers leave. Yet, not all is lost. The story of the Volga Germans is not fnished, because their young protagonists provide a sense of hope, after all. Some might leave but others might be catalysts of a transformation process that revitalizes the community. As part of this younger generation of Volga Germans, Schonfeld’s activities contribute PROOFto strengthening the social and cultural fabric of his community. His work with local casts and crews, including his access to international resources, bring the issues of the local Volga Germans to the attention of national and international audiences. In this fashion, the flms demonstrate, challenge and mitigate the undeniable impact of market forces on the Volga Germans as an agricultural community. The work of the young director demonstrates a socio-critical approach to flmmaking, which moves between documentary and fctional modes to generate an audiovisual memory of the Volga German community that preserves their customs, language and work patterns. Schonfeld raises their profle as a socially and geographically marginalREVISED group, which is also a reference to the conditions of other rurally located groups and communities—campesinos, gauchos and indigenous populations of the so-called “interior,” who are similarly affected by neoliberal measures (see Kay 2004). In a climate of individualism in which neoliberalism favors the experiences of the urban middle classes, Schonfeld’s flmmaking could be integrated into the production of a group of engaged artists whose work supports a vision of Argentina as a culturally diverse and integrative society. While market-oriented ideologies are unrelenting and ubiquitous, their flms oppose the fast rhythm and preferred imaginaries of the neoliberal world order. 244 C. SANDBERG

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Alejandro Areal Vélez for many fruitful discussions about this subject and for facilitating contact with director Maximiliano Schonfeld.

Notes 1. All quotes are translated from Spanish to English by the author. Original quote: “Las manos politicas neoliberales… acentuar las desigualdades existentes, al tiempo que generó nuevos procesos de exclusión, que afec- taron a un conglomerado amplio de sectores sociales.” 2. Among flms which have utilized the rural landscape to mark questions of social marginality are Lucrecia Martel’s flms La ciénaga (2001) and La mujer sin cabeza (2008). Filmed in the deserts of her native Salta, they refer to the hidden existence of members of the local indigenous communities, who serve in Argentina’s middle-class households. In Lisandro Alonso’s La libertad (2001) and Carlos Sorin’s Bonbon el perro (2004), the windy and desolate plains of Patagonia allude to colonial aspirations, neoliberal politics, the exploitation of natural resources and mass privatization of state-owned land and the expulsionPROOF of native populations (see Page 2009, 110–25; Haase and Sartingen 2012; Gattás Varga 2017). In other flms, such as Pablo Trapero’s Nacido y criado (2006), Fabian Bielinsky’s El aura (2005) or the more current El invierno (Emiliano Torres, 2016) and La novia del desierto (Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato, 2017), the Patagonian countryside is drawn as a liminal, exotic space and serves as background to urban subjectivities and anxieties (Dieleke 2013, 61; Andermann 2014, 55). 3. Original quote: “En un marco muy poco recorrido por el cine nacional, casi siempre focalizado en centros urbanizados, el flme es también una experiencia estética de otro orden para el espectador citadino, no sola- mente porque hace de la ambigüedad un planteo narrativo, sino por lograr que la captación del espacio se convierta en una verdadera poética.”REVISED 4. Original quote: “Schonfeld recuerda en su propia biografía un momento de mirar más de afuera el lugar en el que había nacido.” 5. Working as a producer, editor, cinematographer and director, Eduardo Crespo’s documentary, Crespo: La continuidad de la memoria (2016), reconstructs familial and local history, linked to Crespo and the local Volga German community, their religion and traditions. His earlier Tan cerca como pueda (2012), flmed in Entre Ríos, was another homage to the region. Iván Fund codirected Los labios (2010) with Santiago Loza, which won the Un Certain Regard in Cannes, a flm which examines medical history in the Entre Ríos territory. 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 245

6. Pasto Cine has also produced Santiago Mitre’s feature El estudiante (Santiago Mitre, 2011), and more recently, El rey del Once (Daniel Burman, 2015). See http://pastocine.com.ar. 7. Original quote: “Hay que empezar a hablar seriamente de la movida de Crespo. De ese pequeño municipio entrerriano de poco más de 20 mil habitantes, conocido fundamentalmente por ser la Capital Nacional de la Avicultura, ha surgido durante los últimos años un puñado de realizadores cinematográfcos con una voz no sólo personal sino bien audible.” 8. Blogger Ezequiel Iván Duarte (2014) notes about the effects produced by Schonfeld’s casting of young Volga Germans with regards to the television series El lobo: “Es muy difícil determinar qué coincidencias y diferencias hay entre el carácter y las inquietudes de los personajes y sus no-actores. Los confictos intergeneracionales que se muestran, ¿se des- prenden de una situación real? La ruptura en el uso del idioma, las dis- tancias en gustos musicales, … ¿no son, acaso, una representación de tensiones existentes en la vida cotidiana no intervenida por la fcción tele- visiva de esas personas?” 9. Original quote: “La aceptación cristiana de la voluntad divina, el aban- dono a la providencia … el sentido dePROOF predestinación, la presencia amenazante del demonio eran convicciones frmemente arraigadas.” 10. The choral was composed by Christian Friedrich Gregor (1723–1801), German organist, composer and hymn writer. 11. Andermann’s ideas are based on the work that Martin Lefebvre has done about landscape in flm. He analyzes Lisandro Alonso’s Los Muertos (2004) and Andrea Tonacci’s Serras da Desordem (2006).

Works Cited Aguilar, Gonzalo. 2008. New Argentine Film. Other Worlds. Translated by Sarah Ann Wells. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Andermann,REVISED Jens. 2013. “December’s Other Scene. New Argentine Cinema and the Politics of 2001.” In New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality Effects, edited by Jens Andermann and Álvaro Fernández Bravo, 157–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Andermann, Jens. 2014. “Exhausted Landscapes: Reframing the Rural in Recent Argentine and Brazilian Films.” Cinema Journal 53 (2): 50–70. Battle, Diego. 2013. “Germania.” La Nacion, February 21, 2013. Bernades, Horacio. 2013. “Llega el crepúsculo a una granja litoraleña.” Página 12, February 21, 2013. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/ espectaculos/5-27868-2013-02-21.html. Boetti, Ezequiel. 2013. “El viaje inminente y la desintegración.” Página 12, February 19, 2013. 246 C. SANDBERG

Brodersen, Diego. 2016. “La diosa blanca.” Página 12, June 26, 2016. https:// www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/radar/9-11599-2016-06-26. html. Chavero, Rodrigo. 2013. “Germania: idiosincrasia teutona en escenario local.” El Espectador Avezado, February 20, 2013. Dieleke, Edgardo. 2013. “The Return of the Natural: Landscape, Nature and the Place of Fiction.” In New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Reality Effects, edited by Jens Andermann and Álvaro Fernández Bravo, 59–71. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Duarte, Ezequiel Iván. 2014. “Parricidios.” El Zapato de Herzog, March 4, 2014. https://elzapatodeherzog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/parricidios/ blog_de_cine. Fernández Armesto, Verónica. 2000. “Los alemanes del Volga en las colonias de Entre Ríos.” Todo es Historia 398: 60–72. Gattás Vargas, Maia. 2017. “Un cine-monstruo para un territorio monstruoso. Un análisis de dos audiovisuales sobre la Patagonia chilena.” LaFuga 20. http://www.lafuga.cl/un-cine-monstruo-para-un-territorio-monstruoso/849. Gronda, Rosa. 2013. “En vísperas de la disolución.” El Litoral, March 12, 2013. http://www.ellitoral.com/index.php/diarios/2013/03/12/escenariosysoPROOF - ciedad/SOCI-06.html. Haase, Jenny, and Kathrin Sartingen. 2012. “Filmische Patagonienreisen. Kontinentale, nationale und regionale Bewegungen durch den argentinis- chen Süden.” In Filme in Argentinien. Argentine Cinema, edited by Daniela Ingruber and Ursula Prutsch, 123–45. Wien and Berlin: LIT Verlag. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kay, Cristóbal. 2004. “Rural Livelihoods and Peasant Futures.” In Latin America Transformed: Globalization and Modernity, edited by Robert N. Gwynne and Cristóbal Kay, 232–50. London and New York: Routledge. Kay, Cristóbal. 2015. “The Agrarian Question and the Neoliberal Rural Transformation in Latin America.” European Review of Latin American and CaribbeanREVISED Studies 100: 73–83. Koehler, Robert. 2012. “Germania.” Variety, April 29, 2012. http://variety. com/2012/flm/reviews/germania-1117947469/. Koepnick, Lutz. 2013. “German Art Cinema Now.” German Studies Review 36 (3): 651–60. Motta, Renata. 2016. Social Mobilization, Global Capitalism and Struggles Over Food: A Comparative Study of Social Movements. London and New York: Routledge. Newell, Peter. 2009. “Bio-Hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina.” Journal of Latin American Studies 41 (1): 27–57. 13 MAXIMILIANO SCHONFELD’S FILMS OF THE VOLGA GERMANS … 247

Oubiña, David. 2013. “Footprints: Risks and Challenges of Contemporary Argentine Cinema.” In New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality Effects, edited by Jens Andermann and Álvaro Fernández Bravo, 31–41. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Page, Joanna. 2009. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Pengue, Walter. 2004. “A Short History of Farming in Latin America.” Report for GRAN, April. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.grain.org/ article/entries/413-a-short-history-of-farming-in-latin-america. Rocha, Carolina. 2012. “From the Margins to the Center: Daniel Burman.” In Filme in Argentinien—Argentine Cinema, edited by Daniela Ingruber and Ursula Prutsch, 147–62. Wien: LIT Verlag. Schejtman, Natali. 2013. “Vida de este pueblo.” Página 12, February 17, 2013. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/radar/9-8613-2013-02- 17.html. Scholz, Pablo O. 2013. “Germania.” Clarín.com, February 22, 2013. https:// www.clarin.com/espectaculos/cine/Critica_0_HJLuv65iw7e.html. Schroeder Rodríguez, Paul A. 2016. A Comparative History of Latin American Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.PROOF Sendros, Paraná. 2013. “Cine de sugerencias para contemplativos.” Ámbito Financiero, February 21, 2013. Svampa, Maristella. 2005. La sociedad excluyente. La Argentina bajo el signo del neoliberalismo. Buenos Aires: Alfaguara. Verardi, Malena. 2009. “El nuevo cine argentino. Clave de lectura de una época.” In Una década de nuevo cine argentino (1995–2005), edited by Ignacio Amatriain, 171–89. Buenos Aires: CICCUS.

REVISED CHAPTER 14

Community Film in Southern Greater Buenos Aires: Emerging Voices and the Economy of Film as Resistance to Neoliberalism

Andrea MolfettaPROOF

This essay describes and analyzes the production styles of two community flm collectives from southern Greater Buenos Aires, which were very active and growing between 2005 and 2015: Cine en Movimiento (CEM) and Cluster Audiovisual de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (CAPBA). These collectives were formed as civil society organizations of flmmakers creating audiovisual projects in ways that favoured horizontality and network building as production strategies which acted against the monopolizing impact of neoliberalism on culture and communication. In audiovisual terms, the market-orientedREVISED nature of the neoliberal economy in the media industry presents a dialectic contradiction insofar as it builds huge transnational communication conglomerates that exclude common people, even though more people can produce and publicize their projects. To this effect, the framework provided by the Ley de Servicios y Medios de Comunicación Audiovisual

This chapter was translated by Victoria Vajda McNab.

A. Molfetta (*) CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

(“Audiovisual Communication Services Law” or simply “Media Law”), Law 26522 (2009), as well as the digital inclusion policies launched during the period, turned Argentine community flm into a vehicle of resistance against these media conglomerates by opening a space to produce emanci- pated subjectivities that oppose the stigmatization of identities and territories. This chapter investigates how the Argentine community of flmmakers, that is composed of local residents, implements diverse economic models for audiovisual production, as well as conveys meanings that put the concept of “community” in a key position to defend cultural diversity. Community flmmaking foregrounds a poetics of reterritorialization, a collaborative production model and a network structure as main strategies for social inclusion that increase the number of voices and create a public space for cultural expressions.

Community Filmmaking in Context: Legal Framework and CultPROOFural Diversity During the Kirchner governments (2003–2015), the Argentine state took on a leading role in regulating and resisting the advance of national and transnational corporations over electricity, public services, transport, communications and acquired rights. It also had an active role to promote wealth distribution and broaden social and civil rights. The state pushed forward policies for housing, labor, education, health, culture, communication and science, outlining a model to push back neoliberal structures in the country. Cristina Kirchner’s governments (2007–2015) strengthened civil rights and the welfare of the Argentine people: her government renationalized the country’s largest energy company and enacted the Media Law, among other measures.1 Via theREVISED Media Law, the government fostered plurality, regulation and an effective fnancial management of the Argentine audiovisual landscape. Characterized by this center-left progressivism, the Kirchner governments expanded the Argentine audiovisual landscape in every way, from integrating technical infrastructure (terrestrial and satellite) into the legal framework and creating thousands of jobs in the cultural arena—key steps towards promoting cultural diversity in Argentina. The governments of the Frente Para la Victoria (Kirchner’s party) were defned by this broad rollout of state policies for social and digital inclusion, in an attempt to offset existing discriminations and 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 251 inequalities in the communication sector. Until then, this market was dominated by conglomerates operating strongly aligned to models of revenue and proftability.2 In this manner, the Argentine state of the “K” years stimulated a diverse and nationwide cultural production. In addition to the Media Law, one should mention the creation of Free-to-Air Digital Television3—whose content was promoted by the Instituto Nacional del Cine y de las Artes Audiovisuales (National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts—INCAA)—the communication infrastructure created through the plan Argentina Conectada (“Connected Argentina”), including satellite and terrestrial cabling State-owned companies drove the installation of antennae, radio and TV signals of all reach but also the inclusion programs Conectar Igualdad (“Connect Equality”), Núcleos de Acceso al Conocimiento (“Access to Knowledge Hubs”) and the Programa Puntos de Cultura (“Cultural Spots Program”).4 These policies renovated the Argentine media landscape in terms of infrastructure and content production by strengthening community cultural production, and pluralizing media and communication structures. PROOF In particular, the Media Law worked on different levels to achieve these goals (Marino et al. 2010).5 First, it established a limit to the growth of multimedia communication conglomerates. Under article 89, licenses for the radio-electric spectrum were distributed equally: 33% went to the state, 33% went to private for-proft businesses and 33% went to private not-for-proft communication media. Secondly, a federal agency for audiovisual communication and services (AFSCA) was founded, which oversaw a competitive fund for the development of audiovisual communication (FOMECA), a measure to promote community flm and communication. In his frst-year report, Martín Sabatella, General Director at AFSCA, listed the various activitiesREVISED this institution had undertaken already a year after its implementation, which included popular audiovisual communication workshops, community communication meetings, the creation of FOMECA, a series of tax regulations and inter-ministerial accords to promote new media, among other measures to use the communication space set aside for not-for-proft community flm and communication under the Media Law (Saab 2017). Jyostna Kapur and Kevin Wagner note: “As neoliberalism has emerged as the hegemonic world order, the contradictions of capital—its tendency to disintegrate the world while it radically integrates it—have erupted globally in social tensions, people’s protests and widening chasms” (2011, 11). Thus, these 252 A. MOLFETTA communication policies regulated contradicting dialectics of neoliberalism in the feld of communication. In this context, community flmmaking can be understood as a demonstration of resistance. The new Media Law gave rise to discussions about the structure of the media landscape and control over public opinion and consensus in Argentina. Among the disputed elements in this new audiovisual program, three were most prominent: allowing for different interpretations of the past; introducing a postcolonial critique; and fghting against the stigmatization of poverty and promoting cultural diversity. Hence, between 2003 and 2015, the state promoted community flm as a mechanism to resist market-based strategies in the media landscape, by redistributing rights and amplifying the technological bases for communication.6 As a result, a growing community productivity was part of the exponential expansion of Argentinian audiovisual production, which in 2014 made the country the fourth-largest producer of audiovisual content in the world (Respighi 2014). For the community flmmaking that we will analyzePROOF in this chapter, the legal framework of the Media Law was vital for its upsurge, sustainability and promotion. Argentine community flmmaking thrives on a strategy of reterritorialization, collaborative production models and network structures. These initiatives are carried out by local and student collectives, civil society organizations, networks, clusters, small businesses and workers’ cooperatives, and are agents of resistance to stigmatization of and misinfor- mation about conditions and experiences of peripheral neighborhoods. The community flmmakers are producers or intermediaries, sharing their technical and artistic knowledge with others, and in this way increasing the number of voices and projects. These community members become producers, REVISEDflmmakers and protagonists of narratives about themselves and their territories. Moreover, community flmmaking makes audiovisual productions fnancially viable. With an initial but minimal support from the government, they start producing and exhibiting, using the tools and dynamics of their communities to develop and produce their next flms. How can these initiatives be sustained after the initial involvement of the state? What solutions have been created in terms of community flmmaking in Greater Buenos Aires? In the following, I compare two organizations of flmmakers that share the ethos of community flmmaking. 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 253

CEM and CAPBA: Two Production Models of Argentine Community Filmmaking7 Cine en Movimiento (“Moving cinema”—CEM) and Cluster Audiovisual de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (“Audiovisual Cluster of Buenos Aires Province”—CAPBA), led by Ramiro García and José Celestino Campusano, respectively, are the two main organizations of community flmmaking in southern Greater Buenos Aires. Both organizations share a similar community aesthetics and culture, but they have taken different methodological pathways. I compare the organizational goals and flmmaking strategies that CEM and CAPBA implemented in their neighborhoods and in their work with the local people. The notion of “community” here takes on broader political meanings in Argentine community flmmaking, as this essay aims to reveal. CEM is an organization composed of communicators and flmmakers funded through subsidies from the aforementioned AFSCA and other state bodies. Founded in 2002, it has providedPROOF short, approximately month-long audiovisual literacy workshops combining theory and practice to several groups and community institutions located in the peripheral suburbs of Buenos Aires.8 CEM shares its equipment and resources with local residents and other groups, and is involved in projects over the entire flmmaking production process—from flming to editing to exhibiting. In doing so, CEM became cultural intermediaries in the interaction between the state, its communications policies and community organizations, in promoting audiovisual literacy and advancing community communication strategies. Its organizing committee is comprised of approximately ten members from the flm industry, who support artistic and cultural initiatives of local residents through their hands-on approaches,REVISED lending their support to form new small neighborhood production companies and community media outlets. Almost all of its flms are short flms. The artistic language of CEM-produced short flms is classic and simple. They produce mostly fction and documentary genres—experimental styles are not very common. The main goal is to kick-start flm projects as collective process. In order to guarantee social impact, CEM tries to give its flms a polished look, and they celebrate the launch of the flms as a communal event. In this collective creation process, the CEM flmmakers brainstorm topics, stories and anecdotes for the screenplay, as 254 A. MOLFETTA well as providing technical and artistic assistance to the group in the various stages of the flming process. The themes, shooting locations and non-professional actors are the key elements in this communal way of flmmaking. Local stories, landscapes, dialects and actors create a distinct cultural and communal identity, and empower their protagonists to produce, narrate and share their own stories. Thus, the community flmmaking developed by CEM generates what Félix Guattari (2013, 17) calls “assemblages of enunciation”—in this case, audiovisual, collective, hori- zontal and communal assemblages—which generate our narratives. The short flms are launched in the same neighborhoods where they were made. An important part of the community cultural experience is when local residents meet themselves on screen. The short flms are also sent to national and international community flm festivals, and afterwards they are stored and made available through Youtube channels. CEM organizes national and Latin American community flm conferences and festivals. The organization helps new collective organizations on their feet, and assists others in forming cooperativesPROOF and small audiovisual production companies.9 While CEM organizes, assists and promotes literacy to new collective organizations, CAPBA brings trained flm industry members together around professional projects. CAPBA draws on community culture to trigger a flmmaking aesthetics that counterbalances the way mainstream producers tend to represent peripheral neighborhoods, their inhabitants, landscapes and stories. CAPBA’s goal is to support audiovisual literacy and provide strategic advice for artists who want to produce their frst full-length flm. CAPBA brings together flmmakers, producers, sound engineers, actors, media people, musicians and cinematographers, and coordinates them in projects to provide constant professional training. These projectsREVISED are discussed in open meetings, to share artistic, technical and organizational knowledge among the group. Thus, CAPBA is a place that shares creative projects and is a platform for job exchange, which unites professionals interested in engaging in collaborative projects. One such project was the aptly named Talentos Integrados (“Integrated Talents”), a program through which several members of CAPBA to produce full-length flms that could be produced in fve days. This way, almost twenty full-length flms were made in 2014 through the dynamic integration of labor and creative forces of this audiovisual initiative. CAPBA members meet monthly at the Buenos Aires Chamber of Commerce, where they exchange ideas for new projects and discuss the 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 255 outcomes of fnished ones. Unlike CEM that is supported by state funds, CAPBA maintains its autonomy through the production of teasers and commercial full-length flms. It is important to mention that the INCAA subsidies system requires a minimum of previous production experience to be eligible for funding, but which most CAPBA members do not have. Among other conditions, applicants need to be part of a registered production company have technical knowledge and start-up capital, which CAPBA as an umbrella organization is able to provide. Thus, without initial means other than human and technical resources available among its members, CAPBA promotes the production of commercial flms, thereby making its members community culture workers rather than independent artists. CAPBA has produced full-length documentaries and fction flms in almost all genres, from melodrama to horror, police flms and sci-f, with an impeccable technical quality, flms which participated in festivals and were exhibited in movie theatres in Argentina and abroad. Like CEM, CAPBA offers professional trainingPROOF courses but on a different level of production. They promote the formation of production clusters nationwide, including the Federación Argentina de Realizadores Audiovisuales (Argentine Federation of Audiovisual Producers—FARA), which brings all local clusters together once a year. In order to promote FARA’s creation, CAPBA’s creative head, Campusano, had produced an ambitious cinematographic project named “Mega-Producción Multi- Provincial” (multi-province mega-production), that united artists and technicians chosen to display the diversity of their provinces and which resulted in the flming of the full-length flm El Sacrifcio de Neuen Puyelli (2016). Campusano, who founded CAPBA, is a flm director and screenwriter and refers to himself as a community flmmaker. Originally from Quilmes,REVISED a suburb in the south of Buenos Aires, Campusano flms stories in his neighborhood in which, applying a “crude” artistic style (his production company is called CineBruto) how their inhabitants live without state assistance or help from the community, and being victims of poverty and crime.10 These are neighborhoods that are vulnerable to violence, where jobs are scarce and no rights are protected. In Campusano’s stories about this community, he deals with issues that matter to the local residents, which are often stories of social inequality and institutionalized power. Campusano’s work refects his belief and philosophy that flm is and always will be a collective art form. He relies on the collaboration of the CAPBA team and local residents in his 256 A. MOLFETTA productions. He translates the experiences of the local residents into full- length flms, showing Buenos Aires’ outskirts from the perspective of an insider. One of Cmpusano’s flms, Ghosts of the Road (2013), also made in the suburbs of Buenos Aires with local people as protagonists, tells the story of a kidnapping in a complex criminal plot that involves the government and the police. Originally flmed as a series for Televisión Digital Abierta, Campusano soon made it into a full-length flm to promote its exhibition in movie theatres. The flm co-stars Vikingo, a friend of the director and iconic character of his previous flms. With a not-so-happy dénouement, the kidnapped protagonist is eventually freed, though the flm suggests that this is an exception and that the human traffcking network still operates under the nose of a corrupt state that does not fulfl its obligations. The director attends almost every screening of his flms, especially the events in the suburbs, to make sure that the audiences have a chance to discuss the issues presented in his flms. Campusano’s cinema can be considered as a socio-critical and communityPROOF cinema, because of the themes presented as well as the ways in which his flms are produced, screened and debated. Campusano’s cinema reveals a raw realism that originates in a deliberate untidiness” of its cinematography. The work with nonprofessional actors also contributes to give his flms this rustic or “crude” feel. He won awards for best director at Argentina’s two leading flm festivals, the Mar del Plata International Film Festival and the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI). In this and other CAPBA flms, it is the community culture that makes for their unusual local fair and unique poetic strength, narratives in which the Greater Buenos Aires landscape appears as seen by its own inhabitants. CEM’s shortREVISED flms, although (mostly) not reaching the same poetic level of some of CAPBA’s full-length flms, are still part of a cinema from the outskirts, a way of talking about the suburbs to the suburbs. In the next part, I will discuss how such a community culture proposes alternatives that challenges the standards of commercial cinema.

Inverting the Idea of the Urban Periphery From the viewpoint of the mass media, Greater Buenos Aires is a territory that produces poverty (Bentes 2009, 92). However, as I have analysed above, the community flm organisations CEM and CAPBA 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 257 process a wealth of expressive experiences of these neighborhoods, promote practices in different locations and spaces and provide for possibilities of exchanges that in fact represent rather vibrant imaginaries of the urban peripheries. In the universe of experiences and flms collectively produced by both organizations, the concept of an “urban periphery” becomes inverted. These areas are territories of potential and give rise to a poetics that renew the notion of the art flm. For example, in 2013, CEM built an Audiovisual Production Center at La Casona de Varela with support from the government as well as from community organizations in Florencio Varela. The main goal was to host young people who, through CEM’s workshops, wanted to gain experience in the audiovisual sector. In an article about these workshops featured in the largest Argentine newspaper, it was reported that “a group of young people will be able to produce their own audiovisual products with complete autonomy.” In the same year, CAPBA made it possible for Campusano to launch his flm Ghosts on the Road, flmed in the Greater Buenos Aires neighborhoods of Varela and Haedo. AskedPROOF about his work and his notion of community, Campusano said:

What we are doing in the province of Buenos Aires is using its potential. … It is the third most populated conurbation in Latin America. Until not long ago, the cinema from the outskirts had no presence, no identity, and now it has a very strong, unique identity. We put it into the limelight, very proudly, because we believe in the place we live in, in the complex nature of it and what it represents for all our colleagues from the other provinces (2017).

CAPBA and CEM multiply voices, because their work models draws from what each person has and knows, which forges cultural plurality and diversityREVISED on different screens, i.e. movie theatres, to the Internet and television. The community, its landscape and stories are sources for a narrative, an auteur style, a dialect and even new biotypes on screen. There are two modes of production: one cooperative, the other one more welfare-based. This leads to different processes of technology and knowledge transfer utilised to establish a socially shared space of audiovisual communication within the community. Thus, both civil society organizations, CEM and CAPBA, trail different paths within community flmmaking as a tool for social inclusion and fghting the widespread stigmatization of poverty; CEM creates new 258 A. MOLFETTA groups of producers, while CAPBA produces professional flms with local resources. In interviews for this chapter, the presidents of both organizations, García and Campusano, link the inclusive ethos of community flmmaking to different aspects of the cinematographic process. García (CEM) refers to inclusion in terms of narrative, based on the work his organization undertakes to promote the materialization of new voices/narrators. He talks about the plurality and diversity that is being achieved through literacy and technical and artistic learning, which stimulate the creation of new small production houses in community radio, flmmaking or television. For these ends, CEM draws on the historical experience of popular video in South America. For Campusano of CABPA, on the other hand, the community model has a collaborative basis organized around solidarity among locals.

Conclusions The flmmaking approaches of both groupsPROOF are remarkable because through their spirit and spontaneity they created a situated, territorial cinema with these local residents in their neighborhoods. In both cases, this unique territoriality as well as the collective nature of community flm serve as a resistance to the cultural effects of neoliberalism in the Argentine audiovisual landscape, which insists on homogenizing and stigmatizing the urban peripheral cultures. CEM and CAPBA bring together precarious workers from an infor- mal culture economy through projects, and in their flms they adopt a political discourse that addresses the needs of their neighborhood and communities. Assisted by CEM, veterans of the Falklands War in the neighborhood of Quilmes in Greater Buenos Aires narrate their recent past, dealingREVISED with the trauma their experience during the civil-military dictatorship of 1976–1983. Youths from Florencio Varela flm production centers and a group of older persons from Berazategui make flm as a way to share their lives as elderly citizens. As Jorge Alemán notes, these processes of community flmmaking, which change the participants’ lives through portraying a collective subjectivity, fght neoliberal subjectivity, which is based on a circular logic of possibility (“everything can be bought”) (2014, 35). In the capitalist neoliberal discourse, according to Alemán, “the possibility to experience things through symbolic aspects is removed from the subject” (35). This is exactly why community flmmaking works as resistance, as 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 259 it empowering people to invent and recreate symbolic meanings and to contribute to audiovisual media. These processes of community flmmaking in Buenos Aires provide for a renovation of aesthetics, as they narrate from places at the outskirts of Buenos Aires in their own, unique style. Ivana Bentes (2009) reminds us of the fact that we no longer have tales of poverty; community flmmaking inverted the territory that the mass media has established as a factory of poverty into a factory of new poetics, turning community members into subjects of communication and producers of their own narratives. In this respect, Argentine community flmmaking fghts neoliberal communication strategies, which weaken social subjectivities of these territories in order to control them, producing images of what has been called porno-misery or cosmetics of hunger.11 The local initiatives transform these hypothetical territories of poverty into culturally rich spaces, where local flmographies are being made and new production models are being tested. These community flmmaking practices PROOFin Argentina then embody a new model that depends neither on the state nor on the industry. Instead, it is a third model that Bentes calls network culture (2009, 55). These networks are no longer productions in which the public sector is an essential actor; they break with the idea of the “national.” The flmmaking communities of the outskirts have built networks with other collectives in the country and in the region. CAPBA has established links to other provincial clusters, as a way to promote coproduction models that remove their focus from the Argentine capital city of Buenos Aires. As for CEM, the festivals Ojo al Sancocho and the Festival Inter-barrial Audiovisual (“Inter-Neighborhood Audiovisual Festival”—FIBAV) are initiatives between peripheral neighborhoods from several Latin American capitalREVISED cities, creating another set of audiences.12 These initiatives promote independence and the capacity for local actors to continue producing their own flms, shows or musical concerts, whenever the community organizations leave these territories, an experience that Bentes describes as a democratic radicalization of social cultural production (2015). In this sense CEM and CAPBA function in a peer- to-peer network dynamic, which Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens describe as follows:

Use value is produced through the free cooperation between producers who have access to shared capital; this community manages itself (has no 260 A. MOLFETTA

corporate or state hierarchy); generates a third model of authority, as decision-making is governed by the community; these networks make their own productions available outside the organization, universalizing the capital they generate (2014, Part One).

Such a system of common property is part of the structure in the case of CEM and CAPBA. The technical, material or symbolic goods do not belong to one person or entity. Rather, they are distributed among peers in the form of workshops or the possibility to work on professional projects. Thus, the network or P2P models put into practice by community flmmaking in Greater Buenos Aires promotes the rise of a cooperativism that categorically breaks with the atomizing seclusion of the neoliberal subjectivity, making the community a flmmaking landscape, in poetic and economic terms. To conclude, the experiences of the community flm collectives and their networks which I discussed in this chapter are collective enterprises based on proximity bonds and a communal ethics that feeds the endog- enous forces of solidarity with remarkable strength.PROOF The networks defy the logic of a market economy, and the networks of networks give this territory greater visibility and, in turn, increase their political and economic weight. For this reason, it is imperative that the many community flmmaking collectives recognize each other and liaise together. In southern Greater Buenos Aires, these production collectives are still relatively isolated. The networks play a vital role in allowing for the sharing of human, artistic and technical resources for community use and as a resistance to the dynamics that neoliberalism imposes on culture.

Notes 1. Today,REVISED with the neoliberal turn under President Mauricio Macri, a great share of the social development carried out in previous years has been destroyed through defunding and the political reorganization of the state, deactivation of social inclusion plans, budget cuts and under-execution in areas such as health and education, unprecedented international bor- rowing in Argentina and myriad legal reforms in discussion, such as labor reform. The neoliberal model being introduced by Macri is only possible through the repression of social protest and its stigmatization by the media. Hence the annulment of some of the most revolutionary aspects of the Media Law 26522 was one of his main goals, and took effect in the frst week of his mandate. In particular, the DNU 247 (Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia) was issued by the executive without debate in the 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 261

Congress and passed in his frst week in power, in December 2015. See José Crettaz (2015): http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1858627-con-un- dnu-el-gobierno-disuelve-la-afsca-y-cambia-la-ley-de-medios and article “Ratifcaron DNU que modifca Ley de Medios y crea el Enacom.” Published in Ámbito Financiero in (2016): http://www.ambito. com/834143-ratifcaron-dnu-que-modifca-ley-de-medios-y-crea-el-enacom. 2. Argentina’s land area is equivalent to one-third of the European Union, and its population distribution is extremely uneven, with 40% of the population concentrated in Buenos Aires and its surrounding suburbs. 3. Free-to-Air Digital Television (TDA) tackled the entire cable TV con- glomerate disseminated throughout Argentina since the 1980s. It is broadcast for free and reaches areas that the open-signal television anten- nas and cable TV did not cover. 4. This is the only one of these programs that is still in operation to date (April 2017). All the rest have been deactivated by Macri’s neoliberal government. 5. For further reading about the preparation, debate, promulgation and implementation of Media Law 26522, seePROOF (in Spanish): “Los servicios de comunicación audiovisual y su trascendencia en Latinoamérica” (2011), available at: http://observatoriosocial.unlam.edu.ar/descargas/19_sinte- sis_70.pdf. Accessed September 29, 2017. 6. On the other hand, Argentine community flmmaking is part of a regional South American movement which now has its own festivals and digital distribution platforms. This movement is inspired by the Latin American movement of popular video, which followed the democratic transition processes in the 1980s, with the same goal of using audiovisual production as a tool for social change. 7. Our investigation project El cine que nos empodera: mapeo, antropología visual y ensayos sobre el cine comunitario del Gran Buenos Aires Sur y Córdoba (“Empowering cinema: mapping, visual anthropology and essaysREVISED about community flmmaking in southern Greater Buenos Aires and Cordoba”)—Proyecto de Investigación Plurianual del CONICET— Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científcas y Técnicas. PIP-0733 (2014–2016)—produced an audiovisual ethnography which allowed us to identify the main production hubs in Argentina’s largest cities to establish a comparative analysis (still in progress). 8. They have also acted and continue to act in several regions of the country and elsewhere in Latin America, building one of the strongest and most established civil society organizations for community flmmaking on the continent. The surrounding suburbs of Buenos Aires is the region where they have developed most of their work. 262 A. MOLFETTA

9. A range of specializing courses for community organizations is also offered at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, through the faculty of Social Communication. These courses focus on both the management and creative aspects of these community agents, making the university a perme- able territory where social organizations have a place for critical thinking, structuring and activating new projects. 10. Later, he began working nationwide, flming across the country, in Patagonia, and simultaneously kicked off a series of continental productions, flming in Mexico, Bolivia and the USA, always putting forth his cooperative way of thinking about audiovisual production and promoting the development of similar organizations throughout the continent. 11. The term porno-misery was created by the flmmakers Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo in the 1970s to refer to the need to produce new poetic aesthetics to address social matters, without the victimizing spectacularization of the “poor.” This manifesto is available (in Spanish) at http:// tierraentrance.miradas.net/2012/10/ensayos/que-es-la-porno-miseria.html. Cosmetics of hunger was used frst by Ivana Bentes to refer to the spectacularization of poverty present in the new Brazilian cinema, in opposition to Glauber Rocha’s “aesthetics PROOFof hunger.” 12. There are several networks: Red Villa Hudson brings together the institutions of the eponymous neighborhood, coordinating them strategically to provide for their basic needs. Red Tercer Cordón, in Claypole, links four cultural centers. Red Colmena links audiovisual workers’ cooperatives from seven provinces; it is affliated with the National Confederation of Workers’ Cooperatives. Red PAC (“Community Audiovisual Producers”), now called Red Focus, is a place to share struggles and solutions in the sector at an interprovincial level.

Works Cited Alemán, Jorge.REVISED 2014. En la frontera. Sujeto y capitalismo . Buenos Aires: Gedisa. Bauwens, Michel. 2006. “The Political Economy of Peer Production.” Post- Autistic Economics Review 37: 33–44. http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/ issue37/Bauwens37.htm. Bentes, Ivana. 2009. “Redes colaborativas y precariado productivo.” Revista Periferia 1 1, No. 1. http://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/periferia/ article/view/3418/2344. Bentes, Ivana. 2015. Mídia multidão: estéticas da comunicação e biopolíticas. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X. Campusano, José Celestino. 2017. “El cine es un tejido vivo. Como una piel.” La Tinta, February 20, 2017. http://latinta.com.ar/2017/02/ jose-celestino-campusano-el-cine-es-un-tejido-vivo-como-una-piel/. 14 COMMUNITY FILM IN SOUTHERN GREATER … 263

Crettaz, José. 2015. “El Gobierno modifcó la ley de medios y eliminó la Afsca con un DNU.” La Nación, December 31, 2015. http://www.lanacion.com. ar/1858627-con-un-dnu-el-gobierno-disuelve-la-afsca-y-cambia-la-ley-de- medios. Guattari, Félix. 2013. Schizoanalytic Cartographies. Translated by Andrew Goffey. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Gumucio Dragon, Alfonso, ed. 2014. “El cine comunitario en América Latina y el Caribe.” Fundación del nuevo Cine Latinoamericano. Documento No. 14 - FES - C3. Bogotá: Fundación Friedrich Ebert. http://library.fes.de/pdf- fles/bueros/la-comunicacion/10917.pdf. Kapur, Jyotsna, and Keith B. Wagner. 2014. “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, 1–16. London: Routledge. Kostakis, Vasilis, and Michel Bauwens. 2014. Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Network_Society_and_Future_ Scenarios_for_a_Collaborative_Economy. “Los servicios de comunicación audiovisual y su trascendenciaPROOF en Latinoamérica.” 2011. Revista Observatorio Social, Síntesis Clave No. 70. http://observatoriosocial.unlam.edu.ar/descargas/19_sintesis_70.pdf. Marino, Santiago, Guillermo Mastrini, and Martín Becerra. 2010. “El proceso de regulación democrática de la comunicación en Argentina.” Revista Ofcios Terrestres 16 (25): 11–24. Ospina, Luis, and Carlos Mayolo. 2012. “Qué es la porno-miseria?” Revista Tierra en Transe. http://tierraentrance.miradas.net/2012/10/ensayos/que- es-la-porno-miseria.html. Page, Joanna. 2009. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentina Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. “Ratifcaron DNU que modifca Ley de Medios y crea el Enacom.” 2016. Ámbito Financiero, April 6, 2016. http://www.ambito. com/834143-ratifcaron-dnu-que-modifca-ley-de-medios-y-crea-el-enacomREVISED . Respighi, Emanuel. 2014. “La TV local, todo un bien e exportación.” Página 12, April 8, 2014. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/ espectaculos/8-31842-2014-04-08.html. Saab, Delfna. 2017. “Empoderamiento es un término neoliberal, yo prefero hablar de fuerza colectiva.” La Tinta, October 10, 2017. https:// latinta.com.ar/2017/10/empoderamiento-termino-neoliberal- prefero-hablar-fuerza-colectiva/. Sabatella, Martin. 2013. “Primer año de gestión al frente de la Autoridad Federal de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual.” http://ricardoportomedios.com. ar/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Informe-de-gestion_primer-anio_web.pdf. 264 A. MOLFETTA

Sacroisky, Ariana, and Andrea Urturi. 2014. “Crédito y comunidad. Debates, esquemas y experiencias en el campo de las fnanzas solidarias.” Centro de Economia y Finanzas para el desarrollo de la Argentina. Documento de Trabajo 56 . http://www.socioeco.org/bdf_fche-document-3451_es.html. Tasat, José Alejandro. 2008. “Políticas culturales de los gobiernos locales en el conurbano bonaerense.” Cuadernos del Instituto de Políticas Culturales Patricio Loizaga de la Universidad Nacional de Tres Febrero (UNTREF) 2008, Section: Gestión y políticas culturales. Aportes y debates. 185–91. http://www.untref.edu.ar/documentos/indicadores2008/Politicas%20cul- turales%20de%20los%20gobiernos%20locales%20en%20el%20conurbano%20 bonaerense%20Jose%20Alejandro%20Tasat.pdf.

PROOF

REVISED Index

A Arbeláez, Carlos, 218, 226 abrazo de la serpiente, El, 16, 218 Arévalo, Julieta, 85, 94, 95, 97 abrazo partido, El, 10, 233 Argentina,PROOF 3, 6, 7, 14, 16, 19, Academy Awards, 28, 33, 103, 135, 122, 124, 171–180, 185–187, 136, 221. See also flm festivals; 189–191, 216, 220, 232, 233, Hollywood 240, 241, 243, 244, 250–252, actores del conficto, Los, 218, 226 255, 256, 259–261 adaptation, 84–86, 94, 95 Buenos Aires, 19, 171, 175 Aguilar, Gonzalo, 176, 233 Chamber of Commerce, 254 Alebrije Producciones, 28. See also Crespo, 236 production companies dictatorship Frente Para la Victoria, Alemán, Jorge, 258 250 Alias María, 18, 158, 215–229 Entre Ríos, 232 Allende, Salvador, 206, 207 Kirchner governments, 250. See also Almeida, Andrés, 84 Argentine economic crisis 2001 Amar te dueleREVISED, 78 Patagonia, 244 amigos del muerto, Los, 28 Salta, 244 Amores perros, 5, 120, 128 Argentine cinema, 14, 177, 178, 181, Amores que matan, 28 183, 189, 231, 239. See also Andean regions, 61. See also Peru Argentine flm industry Andermann, Jens, 172, 232, 242, 244, Argentine economic crisis 2001, 14, 245 172, 232. See also Argentina Andrade, Óscar, 226 Argentine flm industry, 7, 18, 190 An Unknown Country–the Jewish Exiles audiovisual production, 250, 252 of Ecuador, 18, 155, 162–167 CineBruto, 255

Cine en Movimiento (CEM), Aura, El, 244 249–260 auteur, 34, 40, 93, 108, 120, 122, Cine Gaumont, 1 129, 131, 182, 199, 241, 257 Cinema Digitization Programme, author cinema, 148. See also auteur 186 Avatar, 179 Cluster Audiovisual de la Provincia Avelar, Idelber, 57 de Buenos Aires (CAPBA), Azu mare! 1 and 2, 61 249–260 collaborative production, 250, 252 digitization, 171–173, 187, 189 B distribution, 2, 15, 171 Bachiller, Diego, 187 Espacios INCAA, 172, 181–183, BAFICI. See Buenos Aires 189 International Festival of exhibition, 2, 7, 15, 18, 19, 171– Independent Cinema 173, 177, 181, 183, 189 Baja corazón, 28 Federación Argentina de Balda, Kyle, 176 Realizadores Audiovisuales, 255 Banzer, Hugo, 30 Instituto Audiovisual de Entre Ríos, Barea, Marita, 121 235 Barreto,PROOF Fernando, 121 Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Bauman, Zygmaunt, 85, 201 Audiovisuales (INCAA), 235 Bauwens, Michel, 259 Law 26522, 250 Bazin, André, 120 Media Law, 250–252 Bedoya, Ricardo, 44, 47, 121, 132 movie theatres, 256 Benjamin, Walter, 54 national cinema spaces screening Bentes, Ivana, 76, 256, 259, 262 quota, 171 Berger, James, 55, 59 Televisión Digital Abierta, 256 Berlin, 40, 122, 139, 211 theatrical screens, 172, 189. See also Berlin Film Festival, 9, 10, 131. See Argentine cinems also flm festivals; Golden Bear Arieles, 103, 106, 107. See also flm B-Happy, 211 festivals; Mexican flm industry Bielinsky, Fabián, 14, 62, 244 Aristizábal, José,REVISED 222, 227 biopic, 198, 208. See also genre armed confict, 45, 158, 218, 221, 222 Bize, Matías, 13 art cinema/flm, 34, 108, 114, 128, Blanco, Alan, 159, 160, 162 149, 241, 257 Bloch-Robin, Marianne, 220 audience(s), 5, 7–12, 14, 18, 29, 40, Bogotá, 157, 158, 161, 185, 227. See 61, 68, 69, 71, 75, 83, 87, 94, also Colombia 102–108, 113–115, 120–122, Bolivia, 3, 16, 28–31, 33–35, 233, 124, 135, 139–141, 143, 145, 262. See also Cochabamba; 155, 160, 162, 167, 179, 182, Cochabamba Water War 2000 188, 203, 210, 218, 220, 221, Bollaín, Icíar, 11, 14, 16, 27, 28, 30 225, 240, 243, 256, 260. See also bonaerense, El, 14 middle-class audience Bonbon el perro, 244 Index 267 botón de nácar, El, 211 caso Pinochet, El, 211 Brazil, 3, 6, 7, 16, 19, 65–67, 77, Casseta, Alejandro, 188 122, 128, 160, 176, 185, 216, Castañeda, Liliana, 217 241, 242 Castro, Alfredo, 204, 205, 208 Brazilian flm industry, 217. See Castro, Daniela, 228 also EMBRAFILME; Globo; Catatonia Films, 107. See also produc- retomada tion companies Bridgeman, Duncan, 86 CEM. See Cine en Movimiento Brzozowska, Blanka, 155 Centro do Brasil, 9 Buenos Aires, 1, 15, 175, 178, 190, chacotero sentimental, El, 211 191, 211, 231, 233, 235, 249, Chaski Group (Grupo Chaski), 253, 255–262. See also Argentina 121–123, 132 Buenos Aires International Festival of Chávez, Hugo, 3 Independent Cinema (BAFICI), Chenillo, Mariana, 11, 17, 84, 90, 92, 1, 211, 240, 256. See also flm 96 festivals Chernin, Andrew, 199, 200 Burman, Daniel, 10, 233, 245 Chile, 4, 6, 7, 16, 20, 135–150, 176, Burucúa, Constanza, 124, 129, 131 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 205, Butler, Judith, 92 207–211PROOF Chilean economic system, 144 Chilean neoliberalism, 136, 137 C Chilean referendum 1988, 18, 135 Caetano, Adrian, 14, 15, 232, 233 collective memory, 200 Caetano, Miguel Alfonso, 155 concertación, 142 Caiozzi, Silvio, 198, 207, 211 coup d’état, 205 Caluga o menta (El Niki), 211 neoliberal cultural practices, 137 Cama adentro, 78 neoliberal expansion, 144 Cameron, James, 179 Pinochet dictatorship, 139, 141 Campanella, Juan José, 5 socialist democracy state terrorism, Campos, Enid “Pinky”, 17, 121–132 197 Campusano, José Celestino, 253, transición, Unidad Popular, 143 255–258REVISEDChile, la memoria obstinada, 211 Cannes Film Festival, 9, 68, 135, 137. Chilean cinema, 13, 18, 135–139, See also flm festivals 141, 142, 145–149, 198. See also CAPBA. See Cluster Audiovisual de la Chilean flm industry Provincia de Buenos Aires Chilean flm industry Cárdenas, Israel, 14, 161 CinemaChile, 138 Cardoso, Gustavo, 155 cultural commodifcation, 147 Cardoso, Lucrecia, 188 flm production, 136–138, 145, 149 Carretón, Manuel Antonio, 142 flm professionals, 135–137, 139, Carrillo, Jaime, 226 142 Casé, Regina, 72, 78 history, 136, 139, 142, 200 268 Index

ProChile, 135, 138. See also Chilean Colombia, 3, 6, 7, 16, 18, 19, 132, cinema 153–162, 167, 176, 185, 186, Chilewood, 8. See also production 215–217, 220, 222, 224–228 companies Guerrilla, 215, 219, 222, 224 Chocó, 218 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Ciangherotti, Cassandra, 29 Colombia (FARC), 219 Cidade de Deus, 5, 72, 76, 128 Valle de Leyva, 157 ciénaga, La, 73 warfare, 19. See also Bogotá Cinco días sin Nora, 93, 94 Colombian flm industry, 226 cine clasemediero, 66, 75 Dirección de Cinematografía, 216 Cine en Movimiento (CEM), 249, flm policy flm production, 226 253–260. See also Argentine flm FOCINE, 217 industry Law 814, 153, 217, 221 Cine Gaumont, 1 Proimagenes Colombia, 216 Cinema Novo, 71 colonial matrix of power, 32 Cinemark, 7, 171, 178–180 colonialization, 9, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, cinematic space, 65. See also space 129, 157. See also colonial matrix cinematography, 45, 66, 70, 74, 76, of power; decolonialization; 105, 108, 256 neo-colonialPROOF economic interests; Cinépolis, 7 Spanish conquest citizenship of fear, 113 colores de la montaña, Los, 218, 226 Ciudad Satélite, 84, 86, 87. See also comedy, 15, 28, 61, 108, 126. See also Mexico genre Ciudad Universitaria, 86. See also communal networks, 19, 260 Mexico community flmmaking, 249–260 clan, El, 178 Contactado, 126 class transformations, 65 Continuidad de la memoria, La, 244 Clavijo, Carlos, 219 co-productions, 127 Climas, 122, 131 Corrales, Javier, 222 club, El, 15 Corro, Pablo, 198 Cluster Audiovisual de la Provincia Cortona, Emiliana, 182–183 de BuenosREVISED Aires (CAPBA), 249, cosmetics of hunger, 259, 262 253–260. See also Argentine flm Costa Rica, 7 industry Couldry, Nick, 85, 120, 189, 224, Cochabamba, 16, 27–31, 37, 38. See 225 also Bolivia Coundouriotis, Eleni, 164 Cochabamba Water War 2000, 27, 29. Crespo, Eduardo, 234–236, 244, 245. See also Bolivia See also Argentina Coffn, Pierre, 176 crowdfunding, 11, 18, 154–157, Cold War, 6, 208 159, 163. See also Indiegogo, collective subjectivity, 258 Kickstarter Collor de Mello, Fernando, 6 Cuarón, Alfonso, 5, 10, 66, 93, 120 Index 269

Cuba, 6, 122. See also Cuban Duque, Lisandro, 218, 226 Revolution Cuban Revolution, 208. See also Cuba cultural production, 146, 154, 251, E 259 Ecuador, 7, 16, 18, 153–156, 159, custodio, El, 78 163–167 Ecuadorian cinema, 154 Ecuadorian Council on Cinema, D 154 decolonization, 17, 27, 31, 32, 203 flm production, 154, 167 de Dios Larraín, Juan, 140 Law 29, 153 de la Calle, Luis, 65 Elliott, Barney, 14, 126, 128, 131 de las Casas, Bartolomé, 29 El Salvador, 7 del Solar, Salvador, 14, 44, 124, 125 EMBRAFILME, 6. See also Brazilian del Toro, Guillermo, 5, 10, 93 flm industry Desmazures, Guillaume Thomine, emigration, 15 185, 186 En la cama, 13 deuda, La, 14, 126, 127, 131 En tierra extraña, 28 Diarios de motocicleta, 15 EntrelucesPROOF, 19, 234–236, 238 Días de Santiago, 44, 122, 124, 125, Entre Ríos, 19, 231, 234–236, 242, 131, 132 244. See also Argentina Diegues, Carlos, 76 entusiasmo, El, 211 digital platforms, 7, 126 Erice, Víctor, 28 digitization, 173, 177–181, 184–187, Esnorquel, 19, 234–238 189 Espinoza, Fernando, 121 Direse, Ariel, 180, 187 estudiante, El, 245 Dirty Hands, 18, 155, 159–162 exile, 15, 142, 164 displacement, 15, 67, 144, 165, 201, 206, 208, 210, 218, 234 d’Lugo, Marvin, 12 F docudrama, 16, 27, 198, 208. See also Fábrega, Paz, 11 genre REVISEDFainchtein, Lynn, 86, 87, 96 documentary, 12, 13, 28, 29, 31, 34, Falicov, Tamara, 9, 129 36, 121, 146, 162–167, 206, FARC. See Revolutionary Armed 208, 211, 220, 228, 232, 235, Forces of Colombia 243, 244, 253. See also genre Farnsworth, Elizabeth, 211 dolares de arena, O, 14 fatness, 85, 87–92, 94–97 Doméstica, 78 fat shaming, 84, 90 Dorff, Stephen, 127 fat studies, 88, 96, 97 drama, 6, 28, 29, 36, 44, 46, 78, 93, favela, 75, 76 124, 126, 158, 204, 208. See also female directors, 158. See also women genre directors; women flmmaking 270 Index

Fernández Almendras, Alejandro, 211 Galt, Rosalind, 15, 19, 147 Fernández, Omar, 30 Galuszka, Patryk, 155 Fernando ha vuelto, 211 Gálvez, Héctor, 122, 124 Fifty Shades of Grey, 182 García Bernal, Gael, 28, 40, 86, 138, flm festivals, 9, 10, 28, 114, 115, 143, 208 119, 137, 139, 140, 156–158, García Canclini, Néstor, 8, 20, 66 161, 162, 166, 216, 220, 221, García, Ramiro, 253 240, 254, 256. See also Academy Gaviria, Carlos, 218, 226 Awards gay and lesbian flm festivals, 158. See Berlin Film Festival, 9, 10 also flm festivals Buenos Aires International Festival genre, 5, 14, 15, 20, 35, 36, 53, 56, of Independent Cinema 78, 84, 104, 108, 113, 130, 156, (BAFICI), 1, 256 198, 203, 205, 210, 218, 235, Cannes Film Festival, 9, 68, 135, 253, 255. See also biopic 137 comedy, 14, 15, 108 Gay and Lesbian flm festivals, 158 docudrama, 16, 198 Golden Bear, 9 drama, 14 Goya Awards, 161 horror, 205, 255 Havana Film Festival, 211 melodramaPROOF neoliberal genres, 14 Hubert Bals Fund, 9, 123 police flms, 255 Mar del Plata International Film political drama, 208 Festival, 256 progressive genre, 20 Rotterdam Film Festival, 9, 131 road movie, 15, 20 Viña del Mar Film Festival, 9 romantic comedy, 14 flmic space, 66. See also space science fction, 53, 56 Firefy, The, 18, 155–159 sci-f, 46, 255 Flores de otro mundo, 28 thriller, 15, 198 FondsSud, 8 urban western, 15 forensic memory, 206 western, 15, 20 Forster, Marc, 30 Germania, 19, 231–243 Foucault, Michel, 69, 92 Gershon, Ilana, 203 Friedman, Milton,REVISED 144, 209 Ghosts of the Road, 256 Fujimori, Alberto, 43, 120, 121, 123, global capitalism, 131 132 global economy, 56, 148 Fund, Iván, 235, 236, 244 globalization, 32, 158, 172, 189, 222, fundraising, 157, 160, 163 232. See also global economy; Furtado, Jorge, 62 global capitalism Global South, 27, 31, 32, 38 Globo, 8. See also Brazilian flm G industry Gaggero, Jorge, 78 Gloria, 10 Galaz, Cristián, 198, 211 Index 271

Golden Bear, 9, 122. See also Berlin Higson, Andrew, 145 Film Festival; flm festivals Historia del miedo, 78 Gómez, Anderson, 219 Hjort, Mette, 131 González Iñarritu, Alejandro, 5, 10, Hola, ¿estás sola?, 28 120, 127, 203 Hollywood, 5, 7, 8, 18, 20, 28, 34, Goya Awards, 28, 161. See also flm 93, 102, 104–106, 121, 122, festivals 127, 143, 146, 171, 175, 176, Graef-Marino, Gustavo, 211 178, 185, 186, 188, 189 Grovogui, Siba, 27, 31, 32 Digital Cinema Initiatives, 185, 188 Guatemala, 3, 7, 9, 15 flm production, 146 Guattari, Félix, 254 Motion Picture Association of Güeros, 17, 102, 106–108, 110, 112, America (MPAA), 7 115, 116 studios, 7, 178, 185, 189. See also Guerra, Ciro, 16, 156, 218 Academy Awards Guzmán, Abimael, 61, 132 Holmes, Amanda, 73 Guzmán, Laura Amelia, 11, 14 Honduras, 3, 7, 15 Guzmán, Patricio, 207, 211 horror, 54, 204, 205, 255. See also genre Hoyos, PROOFAndrés, 223, 224 H Hubert Bals Fund, 9, 123, 131, 235. Habitación disponible, 233 See also flm festivals; Rotterdam Haddu, Miriam, 67, 77 Film Festival Halle, Randall, 8, 10 Hamann, Trent H., 202 Hancock, David, 186 I Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus– Best ICAIC. See Instituto Cubano de Arte e of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D, Industria Cinematográfcos 178, 179 IMCINE. See Instituto Mexicano de Hartley, John, 123 Cinematografía Harvey, David, 6, 45–47, 49, 71, 120, INCAA. See Instituto Nacional de Cine 124, 127, 130, 137, 201, 232 y Artes Audiovisuales Havana FilmREVISED Festival, 211. See also flm Incredible Jessica James, The, 86 festivals Indiegogo, 155. See also crowdfunding Hecho en México, 86 indigenous populations, 243. See also helada negra, La, 235 Tainos; Quechuas; Quechua flm Hendricks, Bruce, 178 extras; Mexican indigenous people Hendrix, Johnny, 218 inquilinos, Os, 78 Herlinghaus, Hermann, 218, 227 Instituto Audiovisual de Entre Ríos, Hermida, Ana María, 18, 155, 156, 235. See also Argentine flm 167 industry Hesmondhalgh, David, 11 Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria heterotopia, 69 Cinematográfcos (ICAIC), 6 272 Index

Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía Kostakis, Vasilis, 259 (IMCINE), 6, 107. See also Krstić, Igor, 76 Mexican flm industry Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), 1, 6, 9, L 172, 174–177, 179–184, 186– laberinto del fauno, El, 5 188, 190, 191, 235, 251, 255. labios, Los, 244 See also Argentine flm industry Lagos, Lola, 220 international flm market, 137, 143 Lake Tahoe, 77 International Monetary Fund, 4, 30 Lanfranco, Patricio, 211 invasion, 67, 69, 77, 78, 164 Lapenna, Juan Cruz, 183 invasor, O, 78 Larraín, Hernán, 140, 141 Invernario, 235, 239 Larraín, Pablo, 5, 15, 18, 135, 140, Invierno, el, 244 142, 198 Italian Neorealism, 47 Larraín, Ricardo, 211 late capitalism, 56, 71, 136–138, 148, 149, 242 J Latin America, 1–7, 12, 14, 17, 27, Jameson, Frederic, 4, 12, 56, 66, 67, 33,PROOF 34, 66, 72, 120, 126, 130, 71 155, 157, 167, 178, 184–186, jaula de oro, La, 15 198, 208, 217, 220–222, 232, Jiménez Castro, Adolfo, 68 233, 239–241, 261 Johnny 100 pesos, 211 Latin American cinema, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, Joji Fukunaga, Cary, 15 11, 14, 16, 19, 27, 36, 65, 78, Joseph, Peter, 31 122, 123, 127, 128, 131 juez y el general, El, 211 Latina body, 17, 88, 89 Justiniano, Gonzalo, 198, 211 Latinidad, 88 Laverty, Paul, 28, 40 Ledesma, Eduardo, 223 K Leduc, Paul, 103–106 Kapur, Jyotsna, 4, 5, 44, 45, 138, 154, Lee, Spike, 159, 160 173, 251REVISEDLegaspi, Alejandro, 121 Kaspar, Stefan, 121, 122, 125, 132 Lelio, Sebastián, 10, 13, 211 Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo, 28 León Frias, Isaac, 121, 132 Kercher, Dona, 127 Lerman, Diego, 15 Kickstarter, 155, 157, 158, 160, Levy, Daniel, 166 161, 163, 166, 167. See also Lewis, Jon, 120 crowdfunding libertad, La, 244 Kirchner, Cristina, 180, 190, 250 Lima, 46, 48, 51, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, Kirchner, Néstor, 3, 180, 181, 190 61, 121, 123, 127, 132, 133. See Klinger, Barbara, 20 also Peru Knowles, Beyoncé, 89, 91 limpiador, El, 17, 45, 46, 52–58 Index 273

Littin, Miguel, 211 memory, 44, 45, 53, 55, 57–59, 141, Llosa, Claudia, 9, 11, 61, 122 142, 144, 164, 166, 197, 198, Loach, Ken, 28, 40, 41 200, 206, 207, 210, 211, 217, lobo, El, 235, 245 233, 240, 243 Lopez, Jennifer, 88, 89 Mendéz, Josué, 44, 122, 126 Loza, Santiago, 244 Mendonça Filho, Kleber, 66, 71, 77, Lübbert, Orlando, 198, 211 78 Luna, Diego, 86 Menem, Carlos, 20, 170, 190, 232 Lund, Kátia, 76, 128 Messuti, Pablo, 178 Lyotard, Jean-François, 71 Mexican cinema, 67, 84, 89, 103–105, 113, 114. See also Mexican flm industry M Mexican Film industry, 17, 83, 93, Machuca, 141, 211 102, 103, 106, 108, 112, 113, MacLaird, Misha, 65, 104, 116 115, 116 Macri, Mauricio, 1, 182, 184, 188, Centro de Capacitación 260, 261 Cinematográfca, 93 Madeinusa, 61, 122, 126 Law of Cinematography 1992, 105 Magallanes, 14, 15, 44, 124, 125, 131 MexicanPROOF cinema, 67, 84, 89, 103, Malbrán, Ernesto, 205 105, 113, 114 Maldonado, Ricardo, 61 Mexican Film industry:Law of Mandarin Cinéma, 28. See also produc- Cinematography 1992, 105. tion companies See also Instituto Mexicano de Man Who Copied, The, 62 Cinematografía (IMCINE) Mar del Plata International Film Mexican indigenous peoples, 31. See Festival, 256. See also flm festivals also indigenous populations Márdila, Camila, 72 Mexico City, 69, 84, 86, 91, 107, 108, marginality, 44, 234, 244 112, 181. See also Mexico Marsh, Leslie L., 65, 66, 71, 72, 77 Mexico, Conaculta, 107. See also Martel, Lucrecia, 11, 73, 77, 244 Ciudad Satélite; Ciudad masculinity, 56, 59 Universitaria; Mexico City; Massey, Doreen,REVISED 67, 68 Tlatelolco massacre 1968 Mataharis, 28 middle-class audience, 65, 70. See also Maxwell, Richard, 154, 173 audiences Mayolo, Carlos, 262 middle classes, 13, 17, 74, 76, 205. See McClennen, Sophia, 122, 128, 131 also urban middle classes McRobbie, Angela, 92, 156 Mignolo, Walter, 27, 31, 32, 35 megalopolis, 86 migration, 7, 121, 162, 167, 233, 242 Meirelles, Fernando, 5, 76, 128 Miller, Toby, 154, 173 melodrama, 14, 20, 113, 255. See also Minions, 176, 178, 180 genre Moguillansky, Marina, 173, 175, 190 274 Index

Mollick, Ethan, 155 205, 210, 222, 224, 232–234, Morales, Evo, 3, 30, 31 243, 249, 251, 252, 258, 260 Moreira, Iván, 141, 149 agricultural policies, 231 Morena Films, 28. See also production austerity, 2, 101 companies consumers, 4, 115, 130 Moreno, Rodrigo, 78 consumption, 2, 5, 17, 85 Motion Picture Association of deregulation, 101, 102, 201 America (MPAA), 7, 105. See also disappearance of public sphere, 201 Hollywood dismantling of the social state, 56 MPAA. See Motion Picture Association homo economicus, 201, 202 of America hyper-consumer society, 51 mudo, El, 46, 61 ideology, 4, 5, 61, 101, 102, 109, muertos, Los, 245 115 mujer fantástica, Una, 10 individualism, 13, 46, 243 Mujer sin cabeza, La, 244 market logic, 201, 202 multiplex, 5, 7, 104, 121, 171, neoliberal capitalism, 44, 56, 88–90, 173–175, 189 96 Muylaert, Anna, 11, 17, 66, 72, neoliberal city, 86 74–78 neoliberalPROOF creative labor market, 92 neoliberal cultural production, 154 neoliberal ethics, 49 N neoliberal marketplace, 89, 94, 97, nana, La 203 Nacido y criado, 244 neoliberal practices, 38, 46, 216 NAFTA. See North American Free neoliberal social identities, 54 Trade Agreement neoliberal society, 17, 54, 58, 154, Nagib, Lúcia, 78, 128 200 Naishtat, Benjamín, 78 neoliberal subjects, 17, 86, 88, 202 Navarro, Vinicius, 66–68 privatization, 101, 102, 116, 137, neo-colonial economic interests, 31 244 neoliberal flm industry, flm produc- subjectivities, 96, 148, 149, 162, tion, 17REVISED, 27, 33, 102, 149 199, 250 neoliberal genres, 5. See also genres neoliberal times, 53 neoliberalism, 1–5, 8, 11, 12, 14–19, Neruda, 18, 203 27, 44, 46, 53, 56, 61, 66, 67, Neruda, Pablo, 208 71, 75, 77, 83–85, 90, 96, 101, Netfix, 7, 94, 107, 158 102, 104, 106, 108, 109, 111, New Argentine Cinema, 14 112, 115, 116, 120, 121, 123, New Latin American Cinema, 12, 47, 130, 131, 136, 137, 143–145, 71, 121, 146, 198, 219, 233 148, 149, 154, 162, 167, 172, Newest Chilean cinema, 146 173, 189, 197, 199, 201, 202, Newman, Kathleen, 65, 77 Index 275

Nicaragua, 7, 40 Patagonia, 244. See also Argentina niña pez, La, 233 Pequeñas voces, 226 Nine Queens, 62 Peru, 3, 6, 9, 16, 17, 43–46, 49, 50, NN, 122, 124 53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 120, 121, No, 5, 18, 135–150, 203, 208–209, 123–127, 130, 132, 233 211, 224 Andean regions, 61 Nombre de guerra– Alias Yineth, 228 Lima, Revolutionary Government of North American Free Trade the Armed Forces, 122, 132 Agreement (NAFTA), 102, 105, Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), 106, 116 124, 132 Nostalgia de la luz, 211 Peruvian flm industry Novia del desierto, La, 244 cinema legislation, 121, 130 Nueve reinas, 14 coproduction, 126 exhibition, 130 flm production, 17 O funding, 17, 121, 126, 131 Obvious Child, 86 Law 26270, 121 Octubre, 17, 45, 46–52, 54, 59, 60 producer, 6, 17, 121, 130 Olivera, Oscar, 30 Pinochet,PROOF Augusto, 18, 135–137, Olivero, Elsa, 127 139–144, 146, 147, 199, 208, olivo, El, 28 209, 211 Operation Condor, 208 Pizza, birra, faso, 14, 232, 238 Ordóñez, Nicolás, 228 police flms, 255. See also genre Orfeu, 76 political cinema, 67, 136, 137, 146, oso rojo, Un, 15 148, 149 Ospina, Luis, 262 political drama, 208. See also genre political spaces, 67, 72. See also space porno-misery, 259, 262 P Portela, Gibrán, 107 Pachamama, 31, 35 portfolio career, 92, 123 Padilha, José, 10, 76 Post Mortem, 18, 140, 203, 205–207 Page, Joanna,REVISED 11, 14, 19, 83, 146, Post Tenebras Lux, 17, 65–77 172, 173, 244 private space, 47, 67. See also space Paloma de papel, 122, 124 production companies, 7, 253, 254 Panama, 159 Alebrije Producciones, 28 Paraguay, 3, 233 Catatonia Films, 107 Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor?, 17, Chilewood, 8 83–97 Mandarin Cinéma, 28 pasión de Gabriel, La, 218, 226 Morena Films, 28 Pasto Cine, 235, 245. See also produc- Pasto Cine, 235, 245 tion companies Rhayuela, 220, 227 Pastor, Susana, 121 Vaca Films, 28 276 Index

Programa Ibermedia, 8, 131, 221 Rix, Rob, 130 progressive genre, 20. See also genre road movie, 15, 20. See also genre Robespierre, Gillian, 86 Robles Godoy, Armando, 126 Q Rocha, Carolina, 11, 18, 19, 65, 83, Quantum of Solace, 30, 31 233 Quechua flm extras, 29. See also indig- Rocha, Eryk, 31 enous populations Rodrigo D No Futuro, 223 Quechuas, 29. See also indigenous Rodríguez, Clemencia, 225, 226 populations romantic comedy, 14. See also genre Que horas ela volta?, 17, 65–77 Rondón, Mariana, 126 Quemada-Díez, Diego, 15 Ronnie Monroy ama a todas, 126 Qué pena, 8 Ross, Miriam, 123 Rotterdam Film Festival, 9, 131. See also flm festivals; Hubert Bals R Fund Ramos, María, 11 Rousseff, Dilma, 3, 74 Redentor, 78 Ruffnelli, Jorge, 219 Rêgo, Cacilda, 6, 19, 65, 83, 216 Rugeles,PROOF José, 18, 215, 219, 220 Réimon, 78 Rubio, Luis, 65 Relatos salvajes, 14, 176 Ruiz, Erik, 219 resistance, 4, 11, 12, 16, 19, 31, 35, Ruiz, Óscar, 218 49, 145, 173, 189, 216, 223, Ruizpalacios, Alonso, 17, 102, 107 225, 226, 250, 252, 258, 260 rural space, 77. See also space Restrepo, Luis, 218, 226 reterritorialization, 250, 252 retomada, 6. See also Brazilian flm S industry Saba, Adrián, 14, 17, 45 Retratos en un mar de mentiras, 218, Sabatella, Martín, 251 226 Sacrifcio de Neuen Puyelli, El, 255 Revolutionary Armed Forces of sagrada familia, La, 13 ColombiaREVISED (FARC), 219. See also Salinas de Gortaris, Carlos, 6 Colombia Salles, Walter, 9, 15 Revolutionary Government of the Salta, 244. See also Argentina Armed Forces, 122, 132. See also Sánchez Prado, Ignacio, 10, 14, 65, Peru 77, 84–86, 93, 94, 96, 116, 126 rey del Once, El, 10, 245 Schechter, Daniel, 86 Reygadas, Carlos, 10, 17, 66–71, 76, Scherson, Alicia, 11, 13, 211 78, 240 Schonfeld, Maximiliano, 19, 231–239, Rhayuela, 220, 227. See also produc- 242–245 tion companies Schroeder Rodriguez, Paul, 6, 10, 13, Rincón, Daniela, 84, 90–92, 96 14, 199, 203, 233 Index 277 science fction, 53, 54, 56. See also spatial segregation, 66 genre strategies of containment, 66, 76 sci-f, 46, 255. See also genre urban periphery, 256–258 Scorer, James, 15 urban space, 15, 17, 46, 52, 60, 66 Scorsese, Martin, 182 Spanish conquest, 29, 54, 114 secreto de sus ojos, El, 5 spatial segregation, 66. See also space Sendero Luminoso, 124, 132. See also Spike Lee Fellowship Award, 159 Shining Path; Peru Stantic, Lita, 17, 124, 125, 131 Serrano, José Luis, 154 Stellet Licht, 240 Serras da Desordem, 245 strategies of containment, 66, 76. See Shaw, Deborah, 5, 19, 78, 87, 93, 131 also space Shining Path, 54, 61, 124, 132, 133. Strouse, James C., 86 See also Sendero Luminoso; Peru student movement 1968, 111 siesta del tigre, La, 235 Supporting Characters, 86 Silva, Lula de, 3 sur, El, 28 Silva, Sebastián, 13, 78, 211 Svampa, Maristella, 232 Sin nombre, 15 Szifron, Damián, 14, 176 sirga, La, 158 Sznaider, Natan, 166 Skármeta, Antonio, 8 PROOF social critique, 53, 54, 128, 198, 199, 218 T social fragmentation, 101, 102, 109, Tainos, 29, 33. See also indigenous 110, 112, 114 populations social mobility, 72, 74, 75, 77. See also Tambien la lluvia, 14, 16, 17, 27–40 upward mobility Tan cerca como pueda, 244 social transformation, 224, 226 Tan de repente, 15 Soledad, 14 Taxi para tres, 211 Solomonoff, Julia, 11 Taylor-Wood, Sam, 182 som ao redor, O, 71, 77, 78 Te doy mis ojos, 28 sombra del caminante, La, 218 Teles, Karine, 72 Soñador, El, 14 teta asustada, La, 10, 15, 61, 122 Sontag, Susan,REVISED 56 Thielen Armand, Jorge, 14 Sorensen, Inge, 155 Third World, 31, 102 Sorin, Carlos, 244 thriller, 15, 124, 198, 204. See also space, 12, 18, 33, 45, 47, 48, 60, genre 66–70, 72–77, 142, 145, 183, Tlatelolco massacre 1968, 17, 111. See 189, 200, 232, 234, 242, 244, also Mexico 250, 251, 257 Tonacci, Andrea, 245 cinematic space, 17, 65, 67 Tony Manero, 18, 140, 203–210 flmic space, 66 Torres, Karen, 219, 223 private space, 13, 47, 48, 67 Torres, Willebaldo, 68 rural space, 19, 77 Torterola, Diego, 173, 182 278 Index

Tosar, Luis, 28, 29 Viña del Mar Film Festival, 9. See also Tovar y de Teresa, Rafael, 103, 106 flm festivals transnational flm, 33 violence, 15, 29, 54, 59, 76, 113, 114, Trapero, Pablo, 14, 178, 244 131, 132, 147, 159, 161, 162, trauma, 53–55, 57, 59, 60, 132, 143, 167, 204, 205, 224, 255 144, 197, 210, 211, 218 Virtual Print Fee model, 172, 185 Trejo, Roberto, 13, 138 Volga Germans, 231–245 Tropa de Elite, 10, 76 vuelco del cangrejo, El, 218 turistas, Las, 13

W U Wagner, Keith, 4, 5, 44, 45, 138, 154, Ugás, Marité, 126 173 United States, 7, 15, 107, 143, 155, wealth, 4, 15, 50, 57, 87, 122, 127, 156, 158, 161, 163–167, 176 160, 250, 257 upward mobility, 73. See also social wealth distribution, 57, 250 mobility Weber, René, 121 urban landscape, 47, 86 western, 15, 16, 20, 32, 34, 35, 142, urban middle classes, 243. See also 238PROOF. See also genre middle classes Wheeler, Duncan, 29, 33, 34, 36, 41 urban periphery, 256, 257. See also Whisky, 5 space Wladytka, Joseph, 18, 155, 162 urban space, 15, 52, 66. See also space Wolf of Wall Street, The, 182 urban western, 15. See also genre women flmmaking. See female direc- Uruguay, 11, 188 tors; women directors Wood, Andrés, 198, 211 World Bank, 4, 172 V Vaca Films, 28. See also production companies Y Valenti, Jack, 105 Y tu mamá también, 5, 15, 120 Valle de Leyva,REVISED 157. See also Colombia Vandoorne, Pierre Emile, 130, 133 Vega, Daniel, 17, 45, 46, 51 Z Vega, Diego, 17, 45, 49, 51 Zegers, Antonia, 205 Vega, William, 158 Zeitgeist– Addendum, 31 Venezuela, 6, 126 Zeitgeist– The Movie, 31 Ventana Sur, 8, 9 Zelig, Eva, 18, 155, 162–167 viajes del viento, Los, 218 Zinn, Howard, 28 vida de los peces, La, 13 zona, La, 78

Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Sandberg, C

Title: Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Resisting Neoliberalism?

Date: 2018

Citation: Sandberg, C. (2018). Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Resisting Neoliberalism?. (1), Palgrave Mac.

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/214457

File Description: Accepted version