The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema

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How do the islands and archipelagos of the New World figure in Latin American cinema Comprising 15 essays and a critical introduction, The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema addresses this question by examining a series of intersections between insular spaces and filmmaking in Latin America. The volume brings together international scholars and filmmakers to consider a diverse corpus of films about islands, films that take place on islands, films produced in islands, and films that problematise islands. The book explores a diverse range of films that extend from the Chilean documentaries of Patricio Guzmn to work on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, and films by Argentine directors Gustavo Fontn and Lucrecia Martel. Chapters focus on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Mexican Islas Maras, and the Panamanian Caribbean; on ecocritical, environmental and film historical aspects of Brazilian and Argentine river islands; and on Cuban, Guadeloupean, Haitian, and Puerto Rican contexts. The Film Archipelago argues that the islands and archipelagos of Latin American cinema constitute a critically interesting, analytically complex, and historically suggestive angle to explore issues of marginality and peripherality, remoteness and isolation, and fragility and dependency. As a whole, the collection demonstrates to what extent the combined insular and archipelagic lens can re-frame and re-figure both longstanding and recent discussions on the spaces of Latin American cinema.

Reviews

From Cuba to Rapa Nui/Easter Island, from 1930s Hollywood Mr. Moto murder-mysteries to contemporary Patricio Guzmn documentaries, The Film Archipelago draws on the uniqueness of islands (their distinctive memories, their liminality, relationality, imaginary) to provide a timely perspective on our tumultuous world from the Global South. This standout book is a truly engaging, wonderfully varied, and deeply insightful contribution to Film Studies (as it turns increasingly away from the nation towards the wider world), which will also resonate strongly across Latin American and Island Studies. A captivating read! -- David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow, UK
Focusing on island spaces and territories from Martn Garca to the Antilles, the essays collected here brilliantly investigate their cinematic representation, meanings and how their study further questions the critical paradigm of national cinemas. A major contribution to Latin American film studies and studies of space in film. -- Deborah Martin, University College London, UK
This well-curated and insightfully organized volume invites us to reconceptualize Latin America and the Caribbean from an innovative, rigorous, and unexplored perspective: cinematic islandscapes. Essential reading for anyone seeking breadth and depth in Latin American and Caribbean film. -- Veronica Garibotto, The University of Kansas, USA

Author Bio

Antonio Gmez is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Film at Tulane University, USA. Francisco-J. Hernndez Adrin is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, UK.