“El cine es el arte de los lugares” escribió alguna vez Víctor Gaviria, y efectivamente, yo descubría lugares nuevos en cada película de mi juventud: un parque en Nueva York, una avenida en París, una iglesia en un pueblo de España. Llegaban a mí como imágenes de espacios remotos…
For years I have been using in my classes several films from the “Americas” series, done by a group of academics and filmmakers and shown on PBS in 1992. At the time it was a great achievement, ten films which combined themes (economics, race/ethnicity, urbanization…
In my course on Latin American politics at Amherst, I invariably cover challenges to democracy such as populism, authoritarianism, and the less conventional topic of heteronormativity. Many films can be used to address these topics, but my favorites are: Eva Perón, O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias and XXY….
¿Mi película favorita del cine español? Dos: “La escopeta nacional”, de Luis García Berlanga, un delicioso y divertido fresco de personajes representativos de la España tardo-fraquista, estrenada en 1977. Franco había muerto dos años antes. Y “Volver” (2006), de Pedro Almodóvar…
For someone like me, who knows the names of fewer than half the people who live in her dormitory, it was all too easy to imagine living in Edifício Master, the twelve-story Copacabana apartment building featured in Eduardo Coutinho’s 2002 documentary of the same name…
Some movies seem to travel better than others. From the point of view of teaching a class on Brazilian cinema in a U.S. university to students with a wide range of backgrounds, it is never clear how they will interpret the tone of a scene or what jokes and references will get lost in translation…
Brazil has enjoyed a rich and independent tradition of documentary filmmaking from at least the first decade of the 20th century; over the past fifteen years, the country has witnessed a veritable explosion of documentary production in the national market. In fact, in 2005…
I’m rarely given to superlatives, especially those of the “all-time favorite” variety. My favorite color? Depends on the weather. My favorite ice cream flavor? Depends on what I had for lunch. My favorite Latin American movie? Depends on what happens to be consuming my…
In 1959, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. With its haunting bossa nova soundtrack by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá, the film became an international sensation. I saw it for the first time in 1962 while I was an undergraduate at Cambridge….
Como tantos otros de mi generación, me habría encantado que América Latina desarrollara un cine de gran pegada, que llegara cerca a los sueños de las multitudes. Lamentablemente no ha sido ése el medio cultural de masas más representativo de América Latina. Es otro…
