Estado del arte

Regional approaches to film studies have also shown how cinemas have been understood as a „transnational‟ phenomenon in contemporary literature. For instance, Trevor G. Elkington and Andrew Nestingen‟s Transnational Cinema in a Global North:

Nordic Cinema in Transition (2005) and Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai‟s East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (2008) examine national cinemas within a geographical framework. Within the discipline of film studies, the concept of Latin American cinema is a well-established area of enquiry, as is revealed by the increasing number of book titles in Anglophone scholarship devoted to this area, for example: A Companion to Latin American Film (Stephen M. Hart, 2004), Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity (Lisa Shaw, 2005), Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market (Deborah Shaw, 2007) and Latsploitation, Latin America, and Exploitation Cinema (Ruétalo and Tierney, 2009). Whilst it is clear that the notion of a „Latin America cinema‟ has a referential scope that helps to create space for films from that region in an increasingly globalised film market, the use of this all-encompassing category in published works in general has rendered films from some Latin American nations invisible, given that „Latin American‟ embraces the national cinemas of 20 countries,⁸ which, in general, are more interesting because of their differences than their similarities. Recognising this fact, this study suggests that the term „Latin America‟ is problematic because it takes almost no account of the variety of cultures and local specificities it encompasses. Nevertheless, the term is employed throughout the thesis as a means of engaging with and interrogating the notion of

„Latin America‟ and its historically attributed „third world‟ status. It is clear that the term reflects the fact that the official languages spoken in these countries derive from Romance languages. However, it is most likely that the term was not coined by

8 The number of Latin American countries varies according to different definitions. Here the term is taken as meaning a region in the American continent that encompasses countries whose official languages are Romance languages.

45 people from the region and, thus, has a Eurocentric character that critics must recognise. In his seminal work on postcolonial studies, Orientalism, Edward W. Said argues how the „Orient‟ was treated as a „given‟:

[…] the Orient is not an inert fact of nature […] The Orient was Orientalised not only because it was discovered to be „Oriental‟ in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be − that is, submitted to being − made Oriental ‟ (1978:

4-6).

It is possible that Said‟s argument above could be applied to the usage of the term „Latin America‟, as in scholarship the term is less challenged than naturalised.

Conversely, Mercosur/Mercosul was an Argentine and Brazilian initiative and, thus, can be seen as more legitimate than the term „Latin America‟. Since its creation in 1991, when post-dictatorship Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay signed the Treaty of Asunción, Mercosur members have mobilised discourses around regional integration, stressing the need to strengthen regional identity. In 1996, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru gained associate member status, a development which allowed these countries to join free trade agreements, although they remained outside the bloc's customs union. The creation of Mercosur is often associated with Argentine and Brazilian adoption of the neoliberal economic model and the countries‟

experience of globalisation. For the reasons outlined above, when assessing how Argentine and Brazilian films have negotiated regional identity in the context of globalisation, I prefer to focus on discourses involving the sub-regional integration led by Mercosur, the Common Market of the South, which has its own cultural-political agenda and aims to strengthen national cinemas through regional integration.

The creation of Mercosur followed two models of supra-national integration:

that of the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada, and that of the European Union (EU) (Galperin, 1999).

Given the importance of culture to the process of regional integration intensified by globalisation, leading theorists in Latin American cultural studies, Manuel Antonio Garretón, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Marcelo Cavarozzi, Néstor García Canclini, Guadalupe Ruiz-Giménez and Rodolfo Stavenhagen collaborated in writing a book

46 entitled El espacio cultural latinoamericano. Bases para una política cultural de integración (2003). According to one of the authors of this book, García Canclini, the notion of a Latin American cultural space should include not only Latin American territory, but also the „millions of Latin Americans who emigrated to the United States, Spain and other countries‟. ⁹ In this context, Garretón argues that in order to create a Latin American cultural space, it is necessary to displace exclusively economic logic:

To state that Latin America is a cultural space is far from being an arbitrary invention or a voluntary gesture, given that there are many features that are a part of what we can call „the patrimony of this space‟ which go beyond the geographic dimension. For example, the language, certain historical landmarks which were experienced by all the countries of the region, the deficit in instrumental rationality, and the role of the State that formed our societies. ¹⁰

In 1996, a protocol was adopted to provide the legal framework for cultural integration within the bloc, and one of its most recent initiatives was the creation of the Mercosur cultural seal, which was introduced in 2009 in order to allow free circulation of goods destined for exhibition at cultural events. However, the protocol has been heavily criticised by many scholars. For example, Martín-Barbero (2000) points out that it prioritises an elitist notion of culture as the fine arts, that is to say, of cultural products consumed by an educated minority (painting, literature, and performance, for example), thereby neglecting the audiovisual industries and the bulk of mass media originating in the private sector. Similarly, Miller and Yúdice argue that Mercosur‟s cultural efforts have „concentrated on the arts, for elite showcasing, and on communications, from a business perspective, leaving aside other forms of

9 La noción de espacio cultural latinoamericano abre, asimismo, el territorio llamado América Latina a los millones de latinoamericanos que migraron a los Estados Unidos, España y otros países (García-Canclini, 2005). Available at: http://www.comminit.com/infancia/node/195442 (accessed 28 November 2011).

10 Afirmar a América Latina como espacio cultural está muy lejos de ser un invento arbitrario o un gesto voluntarista, puesto que hay muchos rasgos que ya forman parte de lo que hoy podríamos llamar el patrimonio de este espacio, más allá de la dimensión geográfica. Por ejemplo, la lengua, ciertos hitos históricos que prácticamente todo el conjunto de países de la región ha vivido, el déficit de racionalidad instrumental, el papel del Estado y la política en la conformación de nuestras sociedades (Garretón, 2003). Available at:

http://www.revistatodavia.com.ar/todavia21/6.garretonnota.html (accessed 7 June 2010).

47 cultural expression‟ (2002: 178). According to Galperin (1999), it is precisely because of this disregard for culture produced by the private sector that previous regional integration initiatives in the audiovisual sector have failed in Latin America.

A number of scholars have argued that the failure to include the audiovisual industries in Mercosur‟s cultural policies reflects the lack of political will to do so. For whilst Eva Piwowarski, head of the Mercosur department of the Argentine National Institute for Film and Audiovisual (INCAA), acknowledges that „cinema cannot be separated from political will‟ (Piwowarski in Rubim, 2007), in Mercosur: Estado, economía, comunicación y cultura, Facundo Solanas and Mariana Vasquez argue that „although the technology exists to produce “a Mercosur audiovisual space,” in this moment there doesn‟t seem to be the political will to move this space forward‟

(Solanas and Vasquez in Falicov, 2002: 41). Nevertheless, Falicov ponders „despite this lack of official acknowledgment, there has been concerted effort by municipal and federal governments to address this issue and facilitate integration on the cultural level‟, and according to this author these efforts are twofold:

The primary goals are first that the national film industries create a common market for trade and circulation of their products to encourage the economic viability of audiovisual production in the region; and second, that national film industries work alongside governmental bodies to move toward the creation of a regional identity that is expressed both culturally and cinematically (2002: 3).

It was to these ends that RECAM (Reunión Especializada de Autoridades Cinematográficas y Audiovisuales del Mercosur), an institutional body that promotes integration amongst the film and audiovisual industries of the region, was created in 2003. More specifically, through this organisation‟s cultural integration proposal of 2005, the aim became the creation of a cinema market by dint of measures such as producing a system to certify the nationality of Mercosur products and establishing a regional screen quota, as well as promoting free circulation of film copies. Further, RECAM‟s establishment was based on three principles: reciprocity, complementarity

48 and solidarity.¹¹ Since Mercosur‟s main strategy is to compete effectively in the global market that is currently dominated by the north (as expressed in the motto „Our North is the South‟), Mercosur film policy makers have recognised the importance of promoting a network of cross-border film co-operation if they are to challenge Hollywood‟s dominance in national markets.

To this end, the Mercosur Film Market (MFM) was established, which was particularly aimed at the rapidly growing Chinese and Indian markets. Considered by Villazana (2007) as one of the most successful and consolidated models of integration in the region, the MFM is organised by the Mar del Plata film festival, INCAA and RECAM. The creation of this space is an attempt to meet the needs of member countries in regard to the exhibition and distribution sectors, and such a focus is, according Villazana a „novelty‟, because public policies in Latin America, more often than not, have prioritised the production sector over all others.

Furthermore, the MFM is an initiative created by Latin American countries and to date it has been controlled exclusively by them. However, as Villazana (op. cit.) points out, the main problem regarding this initiative is that it is more dependent on INCAA, a single institution, than on Mercosur itself.

In regard to Mercosur‟s „industrial profile‟, defined by Galperin as the

„distribution of economic and political resources among the trading partners‟ (1999:

627), critical studies of the audiovisual industries tend to point out the power imbalances that exist between Argentina and Brazil, on the one hand, and Uruguay and Paraguay on the other. Many scholars also would appear to concur with the notion that one of the main challenges regarding the regional integration of the film industries relates to the economic asymmetries found in the region. For example, in her study of the relationship between the Uruguayan film industry and Mercosur, Falicov stresses that „Uruguay realises that it has some catching up to do before it can realistically work with other Mercosur member countries that have well-developed film industries, namely Argentina and Brazil‟ (2002: 9). This imbalance is largely due to the fact that Uruguay and Paraguay are smaller countries, and thus, have a smaller internal market than Argentina and Brazil. In reality, the imbalance of

11 See '¿Qué es la RECAM?'. Available at: http://www.recam.org/?do=recam (accessed 09 October 2010).

49 power exists not only between countries, but also between regions within the national territory for, as Miller and Yúdice (2002) note, the Brazilian Amazon and north-east and the Argentine South are not particularly active in Mercosur.

Another issue concerning Mercosur is the democratisation of cinema both as a commodity and as a means of artistic expression. In their article „A indústria cinematográfica no Mercosul: economia, cultura e integração‟, César R. S. Bolaño, Cristina A. dos Santos and José M. Domingues (2006) point out that whilst integration policies talk about „diversity of voices, contents and formats in cinematic production, its consumption is, instead, taking place in an increasingly limited space, usually delimited by the shopping mall‟.¹² Indeed, the reality is that since the late 1990s, cinema-going in Argentina and Brazil has been dominated by the presence of megaplexes that are usually located in shopping malls in the main urban centres, partly justified by the lack of security elsewhere, as the middle-class visitors can be protected by the armed security guards that usually patrol such areas.

As an obvious consequence of their middle-class orientation, those cinemas exclude the poorer members of the population. There are 27 Federative Unities in Brazil, and in 4 of them are less than 10 cinema screens.¹³ By way of comparison, according to the UK Film Council statistical yearbook, there were 3,610 screens in the UK in 2009,¹⁴ whereas in Brazil in 2010 there were 2,206,¹⁵ and given that the population in Brazil is three times that of Britain, it is clearly apparent that the level of access to cinemas in Brazil is a comparatively major problem. Ironically, the logic of capitalism is that it requires the development of an internal market, but poor income distribution is stifling this development and were these matters to be addressed effectively this would lead to the democratisation of the national cinema. Gustavo

12„[...] políticas de integração, que falam em diversidade de vozes, conteúdos e formatos na produção cinematográfica, quando, pelo contrário, o consumo dessa produção se dá num contexto cada vez mais determinado e limitado pelo entorno comercial dos shoppings‟. (2006: 25).

13 Data compiled from http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/SAM/2010/SalasExibicao/208.pdf (accessed 13 March 2011).

14 UK Film Council Statistical Yearbook 2009, p.74.Available at:

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/media/pdf/2/p/2009.pdf (accessed 20 March 2011).

15 Data compiled from http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/SAM/2010/SalasExibicao/208.pdf (accessed 13 March 2011).

50 Dahl, an Argentine born filmmaker, naturalised Brazilian, and former president of the Brazilian National Cinema Agency (ANCINE), suggests that in order to enhance the national cinema‟s market share it is necessary to „de-elitise‟ it, for „Brazilians go to the cinema once every two years. However, research carried out by the exhibition sector show that, in reality, ten million Brazilians go to the cinema eight times a year‟.¹⁶ With this in mind, film consumption needs to be understood not only as a leisure activity, but also as a social practice.

Given the middle-class nature of film making and consumption in Argentina and Brazil, the question of who controls the filmic representations of imagined communities problematises confidence in the democracy of self-representation and the ethics relating to the representation of a community. In assessing the role of films in shaping imagined communities, it is important to recognise that they are not merely a commodity, but an important means of expression of identity and cultural diversity. For this reason, this study seeks to include films that engage with cultural diversity within a country, region, or diasporic or linguistic group in order to interrogate the articulations of „imagined communities‟.

The economic and social disparities between regions within the Southern Cone hinder regional integration and undermine discourses around „regionness‟, in Fawcett‟s terms (2004), and, as a consequence, the rhetoric of Mercosur. The connotations given by some recent films to the cross-border experience within the Southern cone, and the meaning of the border that has been assumed to support such interpretations, can be considered as a form of expression of a socio-political discourse pertaining to regional integration. Border-crossing within the Southern cone region has become a persistent motif in many contemporary Latin American films that reflected the changes of the imagined space of the region as well as the redefinition of political borders. Therefore, Chapter 7 will assess how a selected body of films have negotiated socio-cultural conflicts and cultural diversity within this region.

16 É evidente que a perversa concentração restringe o número de salas e espectadores. Tomados em conjunto, os brasileiros vão uma vez ao cinema a cada dois anos. Mas as pesquisas feitas pelo exibidores confirmam que, na verdade, dez milhões de brasileiros freqüentam as salas oito vezes por ano (Dahl, 2002). Available at http://www.ancine.gov.br/media/LEITURAS/arte_ou_industria.pdf (accessed 3 January 2010).

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