Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema

Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema

Author: Jason Borge

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-07-23

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1135891672

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This book analyzes the initial engagement with Hollywood by key Latin American writers and intellectuals during the first few decades of the 20th century. The film metropolis presented an ambiguous, multivalent sign for established figures like Horacio Quiroga, Alejo Carpentier and Mário de Andrade, as well as less renowned writers like the Mexican Carlos Noriega Hope, the Chilean Vera Zouroff and the Cuban Guillermo Villarronda. Hollywood’s arrival on the scene placed such writers in a bind, as many felt compelled to emulate the "artistry" of a medium dominated by a nation posing a symbolic affront to Latin American cultural and linguistic autonomy as well as the region’s geopolitical sovereignty. The film industry thus occupied a crucial site of conflict and reconciliation between aesthetics and politics.


Book Synopsis Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema by : Jason Borge

Download or read book Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema written by Jason Borge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-07-23 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the initial engagement with Hollywood by key Latin American writers and intellectuals during the first few decades of the 20th century. The film metropolis presented an ambiguous, multivalent sign for established figures like Horacio Quiroga, Alejo Carpentier and Mário de Andrade, as well as less renowned writers like the Mexican Carlos Noriega Hope, the Chilean Vera Zouroff and the Cuban Guillermo Villarronda. Hollywood’s arrival on the scene placed such writers in a bind, as many felt compelled to emulate the "artistry" of a medium dominated by a nation posing a symbolic affront to Latin American cultural and linguistic autonomy as well as the region’s geopolitical sovereignty. The film industry thus occupied a crucial site of conflict and reconciliation between aesthetics and politics.

Hollywood Goes Latin

Hollywood Goes Latin

Author: María de las Carreras

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-05-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 2960029674

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In the 1920s, Los Angeles enjoyed a buoyant homegrown Spanish-language culture comprised of local and itinerant stock companies that produced zarzuelas, stage plays, and variety acts. After the introduction of sound films, Spanish-language cinema thrived in the city's downtown theatres, screening throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in venues such as the Teatro Eléctrico, the California, the Roosevelt, the Mason, the Azteca, the Million Dollar, and the Mayan Theater, among others. With the emergence and growth of Mexican and Argentine sound cinema in the early to mid-1930s, downtown Los Angeles quickly became the undisputed capital of Latin American cinema culture in the United States. Meanwhile, the advent of talkies resulted in the Hollywood studios hiring local and international talent from Latin America and Spain for the production of films in Spanish. Parallel with these productions, a series of Spanish-language films were financed by independent producers. As a result, Los Angeles can be viewed as the most important hub in the United States for the production, distribution, and exhibition of films made in Spanish for Latin American audiences. In April 2017, the International Federation of Film Archives organized a symposium, "Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-Language Cinema in Los Angeles," which brought together scholars and film archivists from all of Latin America, Spain, and the United States to discuss the many issues surrounding the creation of Hollywood's "Cine Hispano." The papers presented in this two-day symposium are collected and revised here. This is a joint publication of FIAF and UCLA Film & Television Archive.


Book Synopsis Hollywood Goes Latin by : María de las Carreras

Download or read book Hollywood Goes Latin written by María de las Carreras and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s, Los Angeles enjoyed a buoyant homegrown Spanish-language culture comprised of local and itinerant stock companies that produced zarzuelas, stage plays, and variety acts. After the introduction of sound films, Spanish-language cinema thrived in the city's downtown theatres, screening throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in venues such as the Teatro Eléctrico, the California, the Roosevelt, the Mason, the Azteca, the Million Dollar, and the Mayan Theater, among others. With the emergence and growth of Mexican and Argentine sound cinema in the early to mid-1930s, downtown Los Angeles quickly became the undisputed capital of Latin American cinema culture in the United States. Meanwhile, the advent of talkies resulted in the Hollywood studios hiring local and international talent from Latin America and Spain for the production of films in Spanish. Parallel with these productions, a series of Spanish-language films were financed by independent producers. As a result, Los Angeles can be viewed as the most important hub in the United States for the production, distribution, and exhibition of films made in Spanish for Latin American audiences. In April 2017, the International Federation of Film Archives organized a symposium, "Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-Language Cinema in Los Angeles," which brought together scholars and film archivists from all of Latin America, Spain, and the United States to discuss the many issues surrounding the creation of Hollywood's "Cine Hispano." The papers presented in this two-day symposium are collected and revised here. This is a joint publication of FIAF and UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Latin American Cinema

Latin American Cinema

Author: Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0520963539

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This book charts a comparative history of Latin America’s national cinemas through ten chapters that cover every major cinematic period in the region: silent cinema, studio cinema, neorealism and art cinema, the New Latin American Cinema, and contemporary cinema. Schroeder Rodríguez weaves close readings of approximately fifty paradigmatic films into a lucid narrative history that is rigorous in its scholarship and framed by a compelling theorization of the multiple discourses of modernity. The result is an essential guide that promises to transform our understanding of the region’s cultural history in the last hundred years by highlighting how key players such as the church and the state have affected cinema’s unique ability to help shape public discourse and construct modern identities in a region marked by ongoing struggles for social justice and liberation.


Book Synopsis Latin American Cinema by : Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez

Download or read book Latin American Cinema written by Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts a comparative history of Latin America’s national cinemas through ten chapters that cover every major cinematic period in the region: silent cinema, studio cinema, neorealism and art cinema, the New Latin American Cinema, and contemporary cinema. Schroeder Rodríguez weaves close readings of approximately fifty paradigmatic films into a lucid narrative history that is rigorous in its scholarship and framed by a compelling theorization of the multiple discourses of modernity. The result is an essential guide that promises to transform our understanding of the region’s cultural history in the last hundred years by highlighting how key players such as the church and the state have affected cinema’s unique ability to help shape public discourse and construct modern identities in a region marked by ongoing struggles for social justice and liberation.

Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960

Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960

Author: Rielle Navitski

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-06-19

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0253026555

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Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America examines how cinema forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century. Predating today's transnational media industries by several decades, these connections were defined by active economic and cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region, from the first screenings of the Lumière Cinématographe in 1896 to the emergence of new forms of cinephilia and cult spectatorship in the 1940s and beyond. Examining these transnational exchanges through the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national, and global, and between the popular and the elite in twentieth-century Latin America. In addition, primary historical documents provide vivid accounts of Latin American film critics, movie audiences, and film industry workers' experiences with moving images produced elsewhere, encounters that were deeply rooted in the local context, yet also opened out onto global horizons.


Book Synopsis Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960 by : Rielle Navitski

Download or read book Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960 written by Rielle Navitski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America examines how cinema forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century. Predating today's transnational media industries by several decades, these connections were defined by active economic and cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region, from the first screenings of the Lumière Cinématographe in 1896 to the emergence of new forms of cinephilia and cult spectatorship in the 1940s and beyond. Examining these transnational exchanges through the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national, and global, and between the popular and the elite in twentieth-century Latin America. In addition, primary historical documents provide vivid accounts of Latin American film critics, movie audiences, and film industry workers' experiences with moving images produced elsewhere, encounters that were deeply rooted in the local context, yet also opened out onto global horizons.

Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film

Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film

Author: Carmen A. Serrano

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0826360440

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This work traces how Gothic imagination from the literature and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century US and European film has impacted Latin American literature and film culture. Serrano argues that the Gothic has provided Latin American authors with a way to critique a number of issues, including colonization, authoritarianism, feudalism, and patriarchy. The book includes a literary history of the European Gothic to demonstrate how Latin American authors have incorporated its characteristics but also how they have broken away or inverted some elements, such as traditional plot lines, to suit their work and address a unique set of issues. The book examines both the modernistas of the nineteenth century and the avant-garde writers of the twentieth century, including Huidobro, Bombal, Rulfo, Roa Bastos, and Fuentes. Looking at the Gothic in Latin American literature and film, this book is a groundbreaking study that brings a fresh perspective to Latin American creative culture.


Book Synopsis Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film by : Carmen A. Serrano

Download or read book Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film written by Carmen A. Serrano and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work traces how Gothic imagination from the literature and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century US and European film has impacted Latin American literature and film culture. Serrano argues that the Gothic has provided Latin American authors with a way to critique a number of issues, including colonization, authoritarianism, feudalism, and patriarchy. The book includes a literary history of the European Gothic to demonstrate how Latin American authors have incorporated its characteristics but also how they have broken away or inverted some elements, such as traditional plot lines, to suit their work and address a unique set of issues. The book examines both the modernistas of the nineteenth century and the avant-garde writers of the twentieth century, including Huidobro, Bombal, Rulfo, Roa Bastos, and Fuentes. Looking at the Gothic in Latin American literature and film, this book is a groundbreaking study that brings a fresh perspective to Latin American creative culture.

Modernity at the Movies

Modernity at the Movies

Author: Camila Gatica Mizala

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2023-06-27

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0822989735

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Cinema can both reflect the world as it is and offer escape from it. In Modernity at the Movies, Camila Gatica Mizala explores the ideas of reflection versus escapism and examines how modes of understanding the current moment emerged through the practice of going to the movies in Santiago and Buenos Aires between 1915 and 1945. Using cinema and variety magazines published in both cities, she analyzes the technology, architecture, attendance, behavior, language, censorship, and overall experience of cinema-going. These publications regularly engaged with important topics such as morality and urbanization and helped build a cinematographic audience. Gatica Mizala brings together the perception and reception of cinema as a modern art form, shifting the focus from the production of films to the experience of the audience when viewing them. By focusing on the audience instead of the films, this study is able to articulate the ways that cinema, as a modern activity, was incorporated into everyday life and discuss what it meant to be modern in early to midcentury Latin America.


Book Synopsis Modernity at the Movies by : Camila Gatica Mizala

Download or read book Modernity at the Movies written by Camila Gatica Mizala and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema can both reflect the world as it is and offer escape from it. In Modernity at the Movies, Camila Gatica Mizala explores the ideas of reflection versus escapism and examines how modes of understanding the current moment emerged through the practice of going to the movies in Santiago and Buenos Aires between 1915 and 1945. Using cinema and variety magazines published in both cities, she analyzes the technology, architecture, attendance, behavior, language, censorship, and overall experience of cinema-going. These publications regularly engaged with important topics such as morality and urbanization and helped build a cinematographic audience. Gatica Mizala brings together the perception and reception of cinema as a modern art form, shifting the focus from the production of films to the experience of the audience when viewing them. By focusing on the audience instead of the films, this study is able to articulate the ways that cinema, as a modern activity, was incorporated into everyday life and discuss what it meant to be modern in early to midcentury Latin America.

Media Laboratories

Media Laboratories

Author: Sarah Ann Wells

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2017-02-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 081013456X

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Media Laboratories explores a pivotal time for South American literature of the 1930s and ’40s. Cinema, radio, and the typewriter, once seen as promising catalysts for new kinds of writing, began to be challenged by authors, workers, and the public. What happens when media no longer seem novel and potentially democratic but rather consolidated and dominant? Moving among authors from Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and among the genres of fiction, the essay, popular journalism, and experimental little magazines, Sarah Ann Wells shows how writers on the periphery of global modernity were fashioning alternative approaches to these media. Analyzing authors such as Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, and Felisberto Hernández, along with their lesser-known contemporaries, Media Laboratories casts a wide net: from spectators of Hollywood and Soviet montage films, to inventors of imaginary media, to proletarian typists who embodied the machine-human encounters of the period. The text navigates contemporary scholarly and popular debates about the relationship of literature to technological innovation, media archaeology, sound studies, populism, and global modernisms. Ultimately, Wells underscores a question that remains relevant: what possibilities emerge when the enthusiasm for new media has been replaced by anxiety over their potentially pernicious effects in a globalizing, yet vastly unequal, world?


Book Synopsis Media Laboratories by : Sarah Ann Wells

Download or read book Media Laboratories written by Sarah Ann Wells and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Media Laboratories explores a pivotal time for South American literature of the 1930s and ’40s. Cinema, radio, and the typewriter, once seen as promising catalysts for new kinds of writing, began to be challenged by authors, workers, and the public. What happens when media no longer seem novel and potentially democratic but rather consolidated and dominant? Moving among authors from Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and among the genres of fiction, the essay, popular journalism, and experimental little magazines, Sarah Ann Wells shows how writers on the periphery of global modernity were fashioning alternative approaches to these media. Analyzing authors such as Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, and Felisberto Hernández, along with their lesser-known contemporaries, Media Laboratories casts a wide net: from spectators of Hollywood and Soviet montage films, to inventors of imaginary media, to proletarian typists who embodied the machine-human encounters of the period. The text navigates contemporary scholarly and popular debates about the relationship of literature to technological innovation, media archaeology, sound studies, populism, and global modernisms. Ultimately, Wells underscores a question that remains relevant: what possibilities emerge when the enthusiasm for new media has been replaced by anxiety over their potentially pernicious effects in a globalizing, yet vastly unequal, world?

Mock Classicism

Mock Classicism

Author: Nilo Couret

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-03-16

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0520969162

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In Mock Classicism Nilo Couret presents an alternate history of Latin American cinema that traces the popularity and cultural significance of film comedies as responses to modernization and the forerunners to a more explicitly political New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s. By examining the linguistic play of comedians such as Cantinflas, Oscarito and Grande Otelo, Niní Marshall, and Luis Sandrini, the author demonstrates aspects of Latin American comedy that operate via embodiment on one hand and spatiotemporal emplacement on the other. Taken together, these parallel examples of comedic practice demonstrate how Latin American film comedies produce a "critically proximate" spectator who is capable of perceiving and organizing space and time differently. Combining close readings of films, archival research, film theory, and Latin American history, Mock Classicism rethinks classicism as a discourse that mediates and renders the world and argues that Latin American cinema became classical in distinct ways from Hollywood.


Book Synopsis Mock Classicism by : Nilo Couret

Download or read book Mock Classicism written by Nilo Couret and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mock Classicism Nilo Couret presents an alternate history of Latin American cinema that traces the popularity and cultural significance of film comedies as responses to modernization and the forerunners to a more explicitly political New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s. By examining the linguistic play of comedians such as Cantinflas, Oscarito and Grande Otelo, Niní Marshall, and Luis Sandrini, the author demonstrates aspects of Latin American comedy that operate via embodiment on one hand and spatiotemporal emplacement on the other. Taken together, these parallel examples of comedic practice demonstrate how Latin American film comedies produce a "critically proximate" spectator who is capable of perceiving and organizing space and time differently. Combining close readings of films, archival research, film theory, and Latin American history, Mock Classicism rethinks classicism as a discourse that mediates and renders the world and argues that Latin American cinema became classical in distinct ways from Hollywood.

The Lost Cinema of Mexico

The Lost Cinema of Mexico

Author: Olivia Cosentino

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1683403398

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The Lost Cinema of Mexico is the first volume to challenge the dismissal of Mexican filmmaking during the 1960s through 1980s, an era long considered a low-budget departure from the artistic quality and international acclaim of the nation’s earlier Golden Age. This pivotal collection examines the critical implications of discovering, uncovering, and recovering forgotten or ignored films. This largely unexamined era of film reveals shifts in Mexican culture, economics, and societal norms as state-sponsored revolutionary nationalism faltered. During this time, movies were widely embraced by the public as a way to make sense of the rapidly changing realities and values connected to Mexico’s modernization. These essays shine a light on many genres that thrived in these decades: rock churros, campy luchador movies, countercultural superocheros, Black melodramas, family films, and Chili Westerns. Redefining a time usually seen as a cinematic “crisis,” this volume offers a new model of the film auteur shaped by productive tension between highbrow aesthetics, industry shortages, and national audiences. It also traces connections from these Mexican films to Latinx, Latin American, and Hollywood cinema at large. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Contributors: Brian Price | Carolyn Fornoff | David S. Dalton | Christopher B. Conway | Iván Eusebio Aguirre Darancou | Ignacio Sánchez Prado | Dolores Tierney | Dr. Olivia Cosentino Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Book Synopsis The Lost Cinema of Mexico by : Olivia Cosentino

Download or read book The Lost Cinema of Mexico written by Olivia Cosentino and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lost Cinema of Mexico is the first volume to challenge the dismissal of Mexican filmmaking during the 1960s through 1980s, an era long considered a low-budget departure from the artistic quality and international acclaim of the nation’s earlier Golden Age. This pivotal collection examines the critical implications of discovering, uncovering, and recovering forgotten or ignored films. This largely unexamined era of film reveals shifts in Mexican culture, economics, and societal norms as state-sponsored revolutionary nationalism faltered. During this time, movies were widely embraced by the public as a way to make sense of the rapidly changing realities and values connected to Mexico’s modernization. These essays shine a light on many genres that thrived in these decades: rock churros, campy luchador movies, countercultural superocheros, Black melodramas, family films, and Chili Westerns. Redefining a time usually seen as a cinematic “crisis,” this volume offers a new model of the film auteur shaped by productive tension between highbrow aesthetics, industry shortages, and national audiences. It also traces connections from these Mexican films to Latinx, Latin American, and Hollywood cinema at large. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Contributors: Brian Price | Carolyn Fornoff | David S. Dalton | Christopher B. Conway | Iván Eusebio Aguirre Darancou | Ignacio Sánchez Prado | Dolores Tierney | Dr. Olivia Cosentino Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Alton's Paradox

Alton's Paradox

Author: Nicolas Poppe

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1438485050

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Alton's Paradox builds upon extensive archival and primary research, but uses a single text as its point of departure—a 1934 article by the Hungarian American cinematographer John Alton in the Hollywood-published International Photographer. Writing from Argentina, Alton paradoxically argues of cine nacional, "The possibilities are enormous, but not until foreign technicians will take the matter in their hands and with foreign organization will there be local industry." Nicolas Poppe argues that Alton succinctly articulates a line of thought commonly held across Latin America during the early sound period but little explored by scholars: that foreign labor was pivotal to the rise of national film industries. In tracking this paradox from Hollywood to Mexico to Argentina and beyond, Poppe reconsiders a series of notions inextricably tied to traditional film historiography, including authorship, (dis)continuation, intermediality, labor, National Cinema, and transnationalism. Wide-angled views of national film industries complement close-up analyses of the work of José Mojica, Alex Phillips, Juan Orol, Ángel Mentasti, and Tito Davison.


Book Synopsis Alton's Paradox by : Nicolas Poppe

Download or read book Alton's Paradox written by Nicolas Poppe and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alton's Paradox builds upon extensive archival and primary research, but uses a single text as its point of departure—a 1934 article by the Hungarian American cinematographer John Alton in the Hollywood-published International Photographer. Writing from Argentina, Alton paradoxically argues of cine nacional, "The possibilities are enormous, but not until foreign technicians will take the matter in their hands and with foreign organization will there be local industry." Nicolas Poppe argues that Alton succinctly articulates a line of thought commonly held across Latin America during the early sound period but little explored by scholars: that foreign labor was pivotal to the rise of national film industries. In tracking this paradox from Hollywood to Mexico to Argentina and beyond, Poppe reconsiders a series of notions inextricably tied to traditional film historiography, including authorship, (dis)continuation, intermediality, labor, National Cinema, and transnationalism. Wide-angled views of national film industries complement close-up analyses of the work of José Mojica, Alex Phillips, Juan Orol, Ángel Mentasti, and Tito Davison.