Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on the Contributors
- Introduction
- Part 1a Mapping Cinematic Journeys: Chronotopes of Journeys
- 1 Global Visions: Around-the-World Travel and Visual Culture in Early Modernity
- 2 Brief Encounters: The Railway Station on Film
- 3 Diasporic Dreams and Shattered Desires: Displacement, Identity and Tradition in Heaven on Earth
- 4 Chronotopic Ghosts and Quiet Men: José Luis Guerín’s Innisfree
- 5 Memories, Notebooks, Roads: The Essayistic Journey in Time and Space
- Part 1b Expanding Europe: Interstitial Production and Border-crossing in Eastern European Cinema
- 6 Shadows of Unforgotten Ancestors: Representations of Estonian Mass Deportations of the 1940s in In the Crosswind and Body Memory
- 7 The Holocaust and the Cinematic Landscapes of Postmemory in Lithuania, Hungary and Ukraine
- 8 Hesitant Journeys: Fugitive and Migrant Narratives in the New Romanian Cinema
- 9 Women on the Road: Representing Female Mobility in Contemporary Hungarian–Romanian Co-productions
- Part 2a Form and Narrative in Journey Genres
- 10 The Sense of an Ending: Music, Time and Romance in Before Sunrise
- 11 Moving in Circles: Kinetic Elite and Kinetic Proletariat in ‘End of the World’ Films
- 12 Gothic Journeys: Travel and Transportation in the Films of Terence Fisher
- 13 Transnational Productions and Regional Funding: Bordercrossing, European Locations and the Case of Contemporary Horror
- Part 2b The Politics of the Road Movie
- 14 Colonialism in Latin American Road Movies
- 15 Spaces of Failure: The Gendering of Neoliberal Mobilities in the US Indie Road Movie
- 16 Sic transit: The Serial Killer Road Movie
- Index
14 - Colonialism in Latin American Road Movies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on the Contributors
- Introduction
- Part 1a Mapping Cinematic Journeys: Chronotopes of Journeys
- 1 Global Visions: Around-the-World Travel and Visual Culture in Early Modernity
- 2 Brief Encounters: The Railway Station on Film
- 3 Diasporic Dreams and Shattered Desires: Displacement, Identity and Tradition in Heaven on Earth
- 4 Chronotopic Ghosts and Quiet Men: José Luis Guerín’s Innisfree
- 5 Memories, Notebooks, Roads: The Essayistic Journey in Time and Space
- Part 1b Expanding Europe: Interstitial Production and Border-crossing in Eastern European Cinema
- 6 Shadows of Unforgotten Ancestors: Representations of Estonian Mass Deportations of the 1940s in In the Crosswind and Body Memory
- 7 The Holocaust and the Cinematic Landscapes of Postmemory in Lithuania, Hungary and Ukraine
- 8 Hesitant Journeys: Fugitive and Migrant Narratives in the New Romanian Cinema
- 9 Women on the Road: Representing Female Mobility in Contemporary Hungarian–Romanian Co-productions
- Part 2a Form and Narrative in Journey Genres
- 10 The Sense of an Ending: Music, Time and Romance in Before Sunrise
- 11 Moving in Circles: Kinetic Elite and Kinetic Proletariat in ‘End of the World’ Films
- 12 Gothic Journeys: Travel and Transportation in the Films of Terence Fisher
- 13 Transnational Productions and Regional Funding: Bordercrossing, European Locations and the Case of Contemporary Horror
- Part 2b The Politics of the Road Movie
- 14 Colonialism in Latin American Road Movies
- 15 Spaces of Failure: The Gendering of Neoliberal Mobilities in the US Indie Road Movie
- 16 Sic transit: The Serial Killer Road Movie
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The leap to prominence of the Latin American road movie within film studies over the past five years (Brandellero 2013; Pinazza 2014; Garibotto and Pérez 2016; Lie 2017) has testified to the rethinking of the road movie as a global film category instead of a quintessentially US genre (Berry 2016). Such a reframing foregrounds the diversity of Latin American road movies and their contribution to global film production, and refutes the notion that these films are mere attempts to copy Hollywood. Clearly, treating film production from different parts of the world as Hollywood's ‘other’ is not a problem exclusive to the road movie genre or to Latin American cinema. In this respect, Lúcia Nagib, writing on world cinema, argues that ‘in multicultural, multi-ethnic societies like ours, cinematic expressions from various origins cannot be seen as “the other” for the simple reason that they are us’ (2011: 1). In a similar vein, this chapter will argue that Latin American road movies are integral to the development of the genre, and examine the way in which some of these films have dialogued with transnational aesthetics and themes.
This chapter's approach to Latin American road movies draws on Ella Shohat and Robert Stam's notion of ‘polycentric multiculturalism’, which is ‘reciprocal, dialogical’ and ‘sees all acts of verbal and cultural exchange as taking place not between discrete bounded individuals or cultures but rather between permeable, changing individuals and communities’ (1994: 49). Indeed, the increasing number of Latin American films in the road movie genre is particularly significant in relation to the transnational cultural exchanges and sociopolitical challenges faced by Latin American countries in the past twenty years. Road movies such as Historias mínimas/Intimate Stories (Carlos Sorín, 2002), Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) and Central do Brasil/Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998) were milestones for the consolidation of national cinemas in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico at the turn of the century. The national and international appraisal of Latin American road movies was accompanied by the success of transnational Latin American auteurs, including Cuarón, Campanella, Inárritu, Salles and Padilha.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Journeys on ScreenTheory, Ethics, Aesthetics, pp. 235 - 251Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018