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…
Blog
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…