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The Politics of Representation in Latin American Visual Cultures 

Room 204, ARB 

11am-1pm on Tuesdays, Lent term 

 

Week 1 - Violent Materialities: Conflict, Victimhood and the Documentary Body (Dr Geoffrey Maguire) 

Films 

Teatro de guerra (dir. Arias, Argentina,2018) 

La memoria de los huesos (dir. Beraudi, Argentina, 2016) 

Réquiem NN (dir. Echavarría, Colombia, 2013) 

 

Key issues 

  • Reflexivity and the documentary genre 
  • Testimony as performance, performance as testimony 
  • Trauma, victimhood and the autobiographical body 
  • The archive and the repertoire 
  • Materiality, loss and the desaparecido 
  • Violence and the production of space 

 

Bibliography
 

Week 2 - Waste Not Want Not (Prof Geoffrey Kantaris)  

This seminar looks at some key documentary films from Brazil (and optionally one from Mexico) dealing with the representation of waste, pollution and garbage. 

Primary texts 

  • Eugenio Polgovsky, Resurrección (Mexico, 2016) 

  • Marcos Prado, Estamira (Brazil, 2004) 

  • Lucy Walker et al., Lixo Extraordinário (Waste Land, Brazil and UK, 2010) 

  • Eduardo Coutinho, Boca de Lixo (Brazil, 1992) (optional) 

Key issues 

  • Ethics of waste, garbage and “refuse” 

  • The “aesthetics” of garbage and representational economy 

  • The relationship between commodities and garbage 

  • The waste cycle: what leaks out? 

  • The human-waste interface: people as garbage 

  • Can garbage speak? 

  • Recycling garbage into art / film 

  • Garbage and space
     

Bibliography

 

Week 3 - Sex and Scandal: Exploitation Cinema in Latin America (Dr Oliver Wilson-Nunn) 

Films 

Intimidades de una cualquiera (dir. Armando Bó, Argentina, 1974) 

Correccional de mujeres (dir. Emilio Vieyra, Argentina, 1986) 

El llanto de la tortuga (dir. Francisco del Villar, Mexico, 1975) 

 

Content warning 

These films contain multiple references to and sometimes explicit images of sexual violence and trafficking.  

 

Key issues 

  • Exploitation, sexploitation, ‘latsploitation’ 
  • ‘Negative’ images 
  • Hetero/Bi/Homo-sexual spectatorship 
  • Pastiche, parody, and self-reflexivity 
  • Sex symbols  
  • Sex work and trafficking 
  • Sexuality, dictatorship, and democracy 
  • Religion and reproduction 
  • Victimhood, revenge, and agency 
     

Bibliography
 

Week 4 - Questioning Past Utopias: Race and Genre in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema 

Afro-Futurism in the Brazilian Context (Prof Maite Conde) 

 

Key Issues 

  • Race in Brazilian Cinema 

  • Science Fiction in Latin American Cinema 

  • Afro Pessimism 

  • Utopia / dystopia 

  • African diaspora 

  • Trauma  

  • Memory 

Films 

  • Branco Sai, Preto Fica (dir. Adireley Queiroz, 2015) 

  • Marte Um (dir. Grabriel Martins, 2022) 

  • Medida provisória (Execitive Order; dir. Lázaro Ramos, 2020) 

Other Films 

  • Bom dia, Eternidade (dir. Rogério de Moura, Rogério 2010). 

  • Yansan (dir. Carlos Eduardo Nogueira, 2006) 

  • Space is the Place (dir. Sun Ra, 1974) 

  • The Last Angel of History (dir John Akomfrah, 1995). 

  • The Brother from Another Planet (dir. John Sayles, 1984) 
     

Bibliography
 

Week 5 -  Sexuality, Cinema and the Transnational Queer (Dr Geoffrey Maguire)  

 

Films 

XXY (dir. Lucía Puenzo, Argentina, 2007) 

Praia do Futuro (dir. Karim Aïnouz, Brazil, 2014) 

Taekwondo (dir. Marco Berger, 2016) 

 

Key Issues 

  • Queer corporeality in Latin American film 

  • Filmic embodiment and the haptic 

  • Representations of sex, sexuality and nature 

  • Cinematic sexualities and masculinities 

  • Transnational queer cinema and the ‘global gaze’ 

 

Bibliography
 

Week 6 - Contemporary Documentary Film and the Law (Dr Oliver Wilson-Nunn) 

 

Films 

Los cuerpos dóciles (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2016) 

Presunto culpable (dir. Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith, Mexico, 2008) 

Juízo (dir. Maria Augusta Ramos, Brazil, 2008) 

 

Key issues 

  • Documentary reflexivity, performance, and observation 
  • Cinematic evidence, defence, and accusation 
  • Structural relationships between law and cinema 
  • Documentary ethics 
  • Judicialization and juridification 
  • Human rights 
  • Criminalisation 
  • Race, class, and the law 

Bibliography