Sandra del Valle Casals

PhD Research

My study seeks to explore the signs of Otherness represented in post-dictatorship Chilean cinema in relation to the ideal of the nation, that has underpinned the configuration of the dominant versions of national identity.

Whilst the decade of 1990 was a period of strong re-configuration of the national identity and the borders of the nation in Chile, this also opened up a niche in dispute for the cinematographic representations of the modern nation emerging from a militarised national past and the production of new subjectivities.

Drawing on critical theories of representation, I will aim at examine the conflictive, historical, and negotiable ways in which Otherness has been constructed in relation to national identity in contemporary Chilean cinema in order to shed light upon new forms of citizenship, migrant's subjectivities, and desires in the context of neoliberal ideology and crisis of globalisation.

Before beginning postgraduate study at Cambridge, I completed a BA in Journalism, at the University of Havana, Cuba; an MA in African Studies at El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico; and a Major in International Relations and a Minor in Women and Politics at York University, Canada.

I am also active in film production. My latest films as executive producer are Chameleon, by Jorge Riquelme (Chile, 2016); Jesús, by Fernando Guzzoni (Chile, 2016); and Chile Factory (Chile, 2015).