I came to Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala (2011) with some trepidation. There was much discussion about it at LASA 2012 in San Francisco, as a disappointing film for several reasons. There was also a sense that many were jaded that the “single story” about Mexico was and continues to be the ongoing violence amongst cartels, which I…
Author: niamh
Bardem in Bond
Joint Blog Post with Fiona Noble Shadows and Mirrors: Otherness and Stardom in Skyfall *Spoiler alert In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Saïd exposes the constructedness and mutual dependence of the categories of the West and the Orient. His claim is as follows: as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea…
‘Brighter from the off’: Stacey Dooley and the Mexican-US border
This week I watched Stacey Dooley in the US: Border Wars on BBC3 (thanks to Victoria McCollum for drawing my attention to it). The documentary follows Stacey Dooley, a young investigative reporter, who speaks to people on both sides of the border: those who want to travel north, on the Mexican side, and those who want…
Juana in a Million and the Malinche Myth
On the 27th of October I attended Juana in a Million at the Brian Friel Theatre in Queens, that was part of the Belfast Festival. It was an excellent one woman show and a very physical, dense and moving piece that dealt with love, loss, immigration and disenfranchisement. The show’s website has a very concise…
WiSPS Write Day
I put up an account of the WiSPS Write Day on Storify. It can be read here.
Dominican Republic
I just came across this website http://www.cinemadominicano.com/HISTORIADOM/historia_INICIOS.html on cinema in the Dominican Republic. It’s an excellent resource on a lesser known cinema in Latin America and one which has grown exponentially in recent years.
Filmoteca and the Mexican Revolution
I have just discovered this resource by the Filmoteca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: http://www.cineyrevmex.unam.mx/home.seam. I have yet to fully explore it. It looks like a good starting point. But, at a glance I can see that the bibliography is not up to date. Missing are some recent books I reviewed here, as well…
Co-editing, Collaboration and Publishing
The context I’m coming to the end of my third co-edited book and am in the middle of a fourth. In addition to co-editing 5 issues of the journal Film and Film Culture, this has given me considerable experience of co-editing, so I thought it was time to reflect on what this means to me…
This World is My Place
I am co-editing ‘This World is My Place’: International Perspectives on Chicana/o Studies with Catherine Leen, NUI, Maynooth. The introduction is completed and we are awaiting the final versions of the contributors’ chapters. I have just finished reading Catherine’s chapter and it is an insightful comparison between Irish and Chicana artists who use religious iconography…