There are two artists who moved from Europe to Mexico exhibiting their work as part of the Liverpool Biennial 2018: Francis Alÿs at the VG&M and Melanie Smith at the Bluecoat. Alÿs from Belgium and Smith from the UK. As a country more associated with departures than arrivals, especially with the current US President, Donald…
Category: Latin American Film
Central American Children and the Mexico-US border: Learn More
The uproar surrounding the detention of children at the Mexican-US border has brought attention to the migration of Central Americans to the US. The majority are from what is called the Northern Triangle – Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala – and are seeking asylum because of increased violence in their home nations. Many of these…
Kóblic: A Troubling Perpetrator Story
I am currently on a trip to Buenos Aires as part of a project on commemorative practices. My work will focus on Mexico, but Argentina is a locus for much of the critical work around this in Latin America and I wanted to see some of the physical spaces first hand. Whilst here, I got…
Latin American Cinemas, European Markets
Looking forward to this event in Manchester at the end of April. For more details on booking and attendance, click here. I’m going to be talking about this project I have been working on.
Streaming Mexican and Cuban Film
I have just finished writing a chapter on streaming Latin American film in Ireland and the UK. This has involved reading right up to the last minute on how data and algorithms are used to determine what is shown and trying to keep up with controversies, such as the one that blew up in January…
Curation and Film Festivals
As someone who is developing a project on curation, this article from NACLA about the growing influence of the Guadalajara Film Festival and its role in supporting Mexican filmmaking is very apropos: http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/29/guadalajara-takes-new-leading-role-mexican-film
Dictatorships in the Hispanic World
This arrived in the post on Friday. It’s great to see the book in its final form. Here is the table of contents to give a sense of the range of topics covered. My own chapter considers two films Voces inocentes (Luis Mandoki, 2004) and La lengua de mariposas (José Luis Cuerda, 1999). The first…
The lady with the tutti-frutti hat
Review: Lisa Shaw Carmen Miranda London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. I recently reviewed the first three books in this series: Martin Shingler’s Star Studies: A Critical Guide, Ginette Vincendeau on Brigitte Bardot, Susan Smith on Elizabeth Taylor and Pam Cook’s Nicole Kidman. The review will appear in the Celebrity Studies journal. Shingler’s text is an overview…
Latin American Women Filmmakers on the Global Stage, University of Portsmouth
Since the 1970s and 1980s with the arrival on the international scene of such notable filmmakers as Sara Gómez (Cuba), María Luisa Bemberg (Argentina), Lourdes Portillo (Mexico) and Maryse Sistach (Mexico), there has been a growing interest in Latin American Women Filmmakers. More recently, there has been a further increase with the international success of…
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.