The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema responds to the renewed interest in class within and outside academia by examining the aesthetics and politics of class in a representative selection of films from the contemporary cinemas of Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. It explores the relationship of cinematic practices to conflicting socio-political transformations taking place in these five countries such as the intensification of neoliberalism, the Turn-to-the-Left, and the growth of the middle classes in the period from 2003 to 2015. Utilizing a critical comparative method , it sheds a critical light on the presumed depoliticization (or new, aestheticized politicization) of contemporary Latin American cinema. The combined textual and industrial analyses of films from strikingly different cinemas and directors through the lenses of class allows for a contextualization of this trend and the observation of its limitations. Furthermore, this book distinguishes cinematic figurations that correspond to new conceptualizations of class introduced in social studies from figurations of class that have yet to be conceptualized.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Class and Romance in Socialism 2. Space Defining Class: Middle-class Cinemas: Post-Tenebras Lux and Que horas ela volta? 3. Class and the State: State Institutions: Slum Pacification and Prison Riots in Brazil 4. The Return of the People: Wrestling with the State: “Up with Populism!” in Venezuela 5. The Globalization of Class on Screen: Amat Escalante’s “Engaged Visuality” 6. Class and Race: Exploring New Class Figurations in Asian-themed Films Produced in Latin America Conclusion References Index About the Author

About the Author :
María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez is lecturer and honorary assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Review :
Vázquez Vázquez (Univ. of Hong Kong) employs close textual analysis of selected Latin American fiction feature films produced from 2003 to 2015 to study the dynamics of class relations in cinema in terms of both aesthetics and politics. In addition, she analyzes issues of class in extratextual areas such as governmental cultural policies, modes of production, national and transnational funding schemes, distribution, and reception. Taking a multinational approach, the author examines films from Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela—countries characterized during this particular period by a major shift to the left of the political spectrum (the “Turn-to-the-Left”)—and also films from Cuba and Mexico, where long-established socialist and neoliberal programs, respectively, prevailed. Celebrated works by global auteurs (e. g., Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux) are studied, as are obscure features such as Yu Lik Wai’s Hong Kong–Brazil–France–Japan coproduction Plastic City. . . Vázquez Vázquez's research is in-depth, up-to-date, and appropriately documented in extensive notes and a bibliography. This book breaks new ground in the study of contemporary Latin American cinema. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. Academic books, whilst striving for objectivity, are written by real people, whose discursive explorations are closely intertwined with the specificity of their biography. María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez opens the investigation of class conscious Latin American cinema with disclosures related to her own social class and personal history, one that brings together Spain with the vast diasporic expanses of Asia and informs her cosmopolitan take on political issues and cinematic texts. I particularly appreciate this unique angle of inquiry. She most persuasively ventures into the fascinating territory of class-conscious filmmaking across Latin America, staying true to the ideology that marks some of the best cinema from the continent. Framed between the rise and fall of the so-called Left Turn in Latin America, this book deploys a sophisticated analysis to understand a rising awareness of class dynamics among a wide array of filmmakers from Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Dr. Mari´a Mercedes Va´zquez Va´zquez succeeds in interweaving seamlessly diverse formal considerations, with a rich historical and political understanding—including matters of production, distribution and reception. Her consideration of the national and transnational nature of these productions covers a significant gap in the study of 21st century Latin American cinema. This book offers a theoretically rich survey of directors and films that found international notoriety as well as those that have been little known outside Latin America. It examines the history, institutions, contexts, and practices that have reshaped Latin American cinema under neoliberalism, and it does so in an impressive, intellectually rigorous manner. María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez traces a journey through the cinema made in contemporary times in five emblematic countries of Latin America with the purpose of thinking about class ideologies, their representations at the textual level as well as their construction through modes of production, distribution, and exhibition. Intelligently and creatively, it tackles crucial issues that highlight the problems of inequality; the territorial struggles; the tense relations between the middle classes, workers, and the marginalized; and the fixing of spatial borders.