Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema

Contributions by Jack A. Draper III, Sophie Dufays, Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir, Amanda Holmes, Alejandra Josiowicz, Juli A. Kroll, Walescka Pino-Ojeda, Rachel Randall, Traci Roberts-Camps, Carolina Rocha, Georgia Seminet, Laura Senio Blair, Sarah Thomas Edited by Carolina Rocha, Georgia Seminet

Not available to order

Publication date:

26 August 2014

Length of book:

236 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739199527

Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema is the first volume to delve into the construction of children's subjectivity and agency in Latin American film, and addresses such questions as: How and to what extent do films express the point of view of the child? How do plots and film practices represent children’s subjectivity and agency? Childhood studies has demonstrated the importance of examining the lives of children. Building on those insights, together with current research from film studies and Latin American cultural studies, the essays in this volume analyze the development of agency and voices of minors in contemporary Latin American film. The theoretical perspectives used—gender studies, psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, film studies, play and performance studies, and emotion studies, among others—take into account innovative approaches to filmic techniques as they explore the varied representations of children.

Part I: Coming to Voice on Screen: Minors and the Struggle for Agency

Chapter 1: Can Children Speak in Film? Children’s Subjectivity in Mutum (2007) and O
contador de histórias (2009)
Carolina Rocha
Chapter 2: From the Child Who Dies to the Adolescent Who Kills: Children’s Perception and Melancholy in La ciénaga and La rabia
Sophie Dufays
Chapter 3: Scribbles from a Little Girl: Violence and The Politics of Girlhood in Albertina Carri’s Géminis and La rabia
Alejandra Josiowicz

Part II: Children and Family Dynamics

Chapter 4: “Yo no soy invisible:” Imaginative Agency in Las malas intenciones García-Montero (2011)
Sarah Thomas
Chapter 5: Playing Woman in María Novaro’s Lola
Amanda Holmes
Chapter 6: “Be a Man!”: Masculinities and Class Privileges in Post-Coup Chilean
Cinema
Walescka Pino-Ojeda, translated by Camilo Díaz Pino

Part III: Mobile Youth: Migration, Poverty and Violence

Chapter 7: Subjectivities in the Making: Tales of Transformation in Recent Central American Cinema
Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir
Chapter 8: Bordering Adolescence: Latin American Youth in Road Films La misma luna and Sin nombre
Laura Senio-Blair
Chapter 9: Embodying Childhood Social Agency in Gustavo Loza’s Al otro lado (2004)
Juli A. Kroll
Chapter 10: Adolescent Subjectivity and Sexual Violence in Marisa Sistach’s Perfume de violetas (Nadie te oye) and La niña en la piedra (Nadie te ve)
Traci Roberts-Camps

Part IV: Minors' Subjectivity in Focus: Documentary and Neorealist Cinema

Chapter 11: The Advent of Child-Centric Perspectives in Brazil’s Urban-Realist Cinema: Building on Feminist Representations of Outlaw Emotions in Drama and Documentary
Jack A. Draper III
Chapter 12: Agency, performance and Social Recognition in Priscila Padilla”s
La eterna noche de las doce lunas (2013)
Rachel Randall

The volume definitely advances the focus on childhood and adolescent subjectivities from a rich and current theoretical approach, including gender studies, psychoanalytical and post-colonial theory, film studies, play and performance studies, and emotion studies. In short, the volume is a first in the fast-evolving field of youth subjectivities in Latin American cinema, as well as a successful attempt to historicize Latin American subjectivity processes as expressed through the voice and point of view of the children and adolescents depicted in the cinema of the region. Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema is history in the making, literally.