CALL FOR PAPERS

Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference
OSAI INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY - Tokyo - 21-24 May 2009
http://www.cmstudies.org/
http:[log in to unmask]

Panel: Modernity’s Other Landscapes: Early Cinema and Race in Latin  
America

Organizer:  Giorgio Bertellini
Screen Arts and Cultures
University of Michigan
6545 Haven Hall
505 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

E-Mail Address: [log in to unmask]

Summary: Ana M. López’s groundbreaking essay “Early cinema and  
Modernity in Latin America” (2000) laid out a comparative view of the  
emergence of moving pictures in Latin America. She invited to  
identify the traits of Western modernity’s asynchronous and  
peripheral manifestations. While mainly premised on a remote access  
to Western technologies, communications, and lifestyles, moviegoing  
in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico prompted new practices of national  
self-representation. In addition to actualités of local interest, in  
fact, the earliest forms of national films productions were  
narratives of marked patriotism. Examples of these modern pageantries  
included Nobleza gaucha (Argentina; 1915); A vida do Barão do Rio  
Branco (Brazil; 1910), and Grito de Dolores (Mexico; 1907).

By combining Western cinematic practices with patriotic narratives of  
decolonization, Latin American film productions often relied on the  
representation of vast and pristine natural sceneries and typical  
social landscapes—variously featuring urban élites, European  
immigrants, gauchos, indigenous populations, and former slaves.  
Engaged in exhibiting the recurring tensions city/countryside and  
indigenous/urban life, Latin America’s cinematic modernity came to  
acquire its own, original, polyphonic traits, which often took form  
in narratives exalting non-urban or non-urbane, folkloric, and racial  
diverse characters.

Given the influence of European film manufacturers and first- 
generation immigrant filmmakers, what role did influential  
“scientific” notions of racial difference play in Latin nations’  
production of patriotic narratives? What other frameworks of  
acceptable, or even valuable, racial difference were deployed in  
these modern productions? Since traditional notions of cinematic  
modernity have been mainly articulated in temporal terms (i.e.  
positivist notions of progress, time travels, photography’s embalming  
of time), what can we learn from film productions aimed at  
celebrating new geographic places, national entities, and diverse  
societies? What happened when the modernity of Western cinematic  
attractions became refracted through Latin American peripheries?

Welcome contributions include, but are not limited to, case studies  
related to early/silent films, production companies, film figures  
(i.e. filmmakers, producers, actors/actresses) that attempts wider  
critical reflections in light of current debates about early cinema,  
modernity, and postcoloniality.

If interested, please send a 250-word abstract via email (to  
[log in to unmask]) by August 8. Notification of acceptance to the  
panel will be emailed by August 15.


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