Sarah Barrow

Fifty key British films

This book, part of the successful Key Guides series from Routledge, provides a chance to delve into 50 British films considered a true reflection of the times. With case studies from the 1930s heyday of cinema right up to the present day, this chronologically ordered volume includes coverage of: - The Lodger (Hitchcock) - Drifters (Grierson) - Listen to Britain (Jennings) - The Third Man (Reed) - Pressure (Ove) - Bahji on the Beach (Chadha) - London (Keiller) - Ratcatcher (Ramsey) In this text, some of the seminal works by Britains best and lesser known talents are scrutinised for their outstanding ability to articulate the issues of the time from key standpoints. This is essential reading for anyone interested in film and the increasing relevance of the British film industry on the international scene.

New configurations for Peruvian cinema: the rising star of Claudia Llosa

ABSTRACT After a decade-long hiatus during which the existence of a home-grown cinema in Peru had been threatened by a lack of government and public support, a new generation of directors broke onto the scene in the twenty-first century with a distinctive approach to both the production and circulation of their films, as well as to their relationship with the ‘national’, in terms of policy, funding and audience engagement. This study takes one of those directors, Claudia Llosa, as the main case study, and considers the development of her profile as an internationally recognized Peruvian film-maker whose award-winning debut works (Madeinusa, 2006 and La Teta Asustada/Milk of Sorrow, 2009) sparked controversy and critical debate for their challenging portrayals of the Quechua culture of Peru. This article examines her successes on the international festival and commercial exhibition circuits, considers some of the scholarly and critical responses to her work, and asks what impact Llosa has had on the development of cinema in Peru through her engagement with the transnational.

The Impossible Constellation: Practice as Research as a Viable Alternative

This chapter draws attention to the features, values and debates of Practice as Research, arguingfor its approaches, methods and outputs to be considered as equivalent to those used by more traditional humanities scholars, i.e. the ‘academic book’. Indeed, it asks us to rethink our fetishisation of the physical book artefact as the pre-eminent model of publication in academic terms, and suggests we explore and support the development of other forms that might be more relevant to the digital age, and that attempt to break down the walls between theory and practice. It ends with a focus on the video essay form, which has the potential to reshape the subjects of Media and Film Studies in particular.

Transnational Financial Structures in the Cinema of Latin America: Programa Ibermedia in Study, Libia Villazana (2009)

101 study proposes. By fluently navigating the complexities of the transforming Nordic welfare state in an era of increasing globalization, Nestingen’s refreshing perspective allows us to build a suitably wide analytical picture of the challenges and opportunities facing Nordic popular culture in the ‘information age’. Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia is ultimately an important contribution to the burgeoning study of Nordic popular culture: one which proposes many incisive and suggestive implications for scholars working in Nordic cultural studies, and in the wider field of transnational cinema and literature studies.

Political Violence, Cinematic Representation, and Peruvian National Identity: La Boca del Lobo (Francisco Lombardi, 1988) and La Vida es una Sola (Marianne Eyde, 1993)

In May 1980, as Peru was returning to democracy after twelve years of military rule, a fundamentalist splinter group of the pro-Maoist Peruvian Communist Party, Sendero Luminoso, broke into a polling station in the Andean town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, and destroyed the ballot boxes. This act of aggression is usually taken as marking the onset of twelve years of armed struggle, which evolved into a “dirty” political war between the military and Sendero that persisted through three presidencies (Belaunde 1980–1985, Garcia 1985–1990, and Fujimori 1990–2000), until the capture of the insurgent group’s leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1992. This chapter will look at how some aspects of this bloody conflict have been dealt with by two of Peru’s most important filmmakers. However, before doing so it is important to outline some of the key factors underpinning the development of Sendero; in particular, its inextricable links to the complexities of Peru’s national identity, and the importance of its response to the growing alienation of the Andean communities as compared to the relative prosperity of city-based mestizos and coastal criollos.

Negotiating Neoliberal Demands on Contemporary Cinema: The Role and Influence of the Socially Committed Film Producer in Peru

The range of opportunities available to Latin American filmmakers since the late 1990s has enabled the flourishing of cinema production in this region. This chapter focuses on identifying the socially committed contemporary film producer as key to the progress made in an increasingly neoliberal economic and political landscape. The main case study is Enid “Pinky” Campos, producer of some of the most significant Peruvian productions of recent years—Dias de Santiago, NN, Magallanes—in terms of their critical, commercial and funding success both within and beyond national borders. Crucially, it asks whether a deeper understanding of the role of the producer might reveal an alternative way of negotiating the evolving relationships, tensions and power dynamics between Latin American cinema and global markets.

Growing Pains: Young People and Violence in Peru’s Fiction Cinema

The process of ‘coming of age’ has been used as a narrative device in much of the contemporary fiction cinema that has emerged from Peru since 2000. While critical attention has been paid to the topic of violence itself as a metaphor for the struggle for identity and nation formation in Latin America, and the image of the young person is a widely debated device for exploring the processes of self-discovery, this essay looks specifically at the use of the image of adolescence at the centre of this period of turbulence in Peru through analysis of two of the landmark films of this era: Paper Dove (dir. Francisco Aguilar 2003) and Bad Intentions (dir. Rosario Garcia Montero 2011).

Portfolio careers and a new common cause: the conditions for screen workers in Peru

The development of cinema in Peru tells a story that reflects the precarious nature of the relationship between government and cultural producers. Throughout its first century, Peruvian cinema enjoyed just a few brief moments of apparently emerging stability, dashed each time by legislative action and/or sociopolitical unrest. In the 1990s, an increasingly neoliberal economic climate and restrictions resulting from the remnants of harsh political violence of the 1980s gave rise to even more challenging circumstances for filmmakers in Peru. Indeed, John King’s observation that “local production remained intermittent” (2000: 281) during that time was something of an understatement. None of this was helped by the abrupt repealing in the early 1990s of a cinema law established in 1972 that included incentives, quotas, and subsidies designed to develop an infrastructure for national cinema production. This chapter explores the impact of these legislative actions on film in Peru, with a focus on the period between 1992 and 2016 when the situation for filmmakers was particularly challenging and with a new government just elected bringing fresh uncertainty. It reflects on the various responses to the changes in state support, in particular on the attempts by producers to patch together mosaics of funding sources that rely less and less on the state. It asks whether we should still perceive of filmmaking in Peru as a situation of “crisis” given the relative boom in production and exhibition of homegrown cinema in recent years, and what form that crisis now takes.

Constraints and possibilities: Lima Film Festival, politics and cultural formation in Peru

Abstract The Festival de Cine de Lima (Lima Film Festival) launched in 1997 and, from humble beginnings, each year now introduces around 300 films to diverse audiences across the Peruvian capital and beyond. In 2014, for the first time in its history, 4 of the 19 films selected for the feature competition were made by Peruvian directors, signalling a growing recognition of national talent by programming panels and critics that had tended to look beyond national borders for inspiration and challenge. Despite the relative paucity of coordinated film production activity in Peru, it is argued here that the flourishing of Lima Film Festival provides evidence of a deep sense of film appreciation that conveys a commitment to all forms of cinema. This essay reflects critically on the local, national and international impact of this Festival, its influence on the development of film policy in Peru and explores its role as a ‘key building block of film culture’ across a complex national framework.

Reframing transitions and contesting memories: The archive and the archival object in Peruvian cinema

This article considers the stories behind the production and screening of two very different Peruvian films that reveal much about the way the archive, the archival object and archival fragment have worked to disrupt and force a reconsideration of key moments in Peruvian political history of the twentieth century. One, a feature film by Francisco Lombardi, Ojos que no ven/Eyes That Don’t See (2003), provides a provocative perspective on the impact of the televisual revelations of the corruption at the heart of President Fujimori’s government (1990–2000). The second, a documentary made by Kurt Hermann at the behest of the military, Alerta en la Frontera/Border Alert (1941) offers a patriotic recording of the border campaign against Ecuador, which was banned at the time and had its first public screening 70 years later. This analysis suggests that the delay in viewing events of such national importance forces not only a reconsideration of those events and their disruptive effect on a collective, official sense of national history and identity but also a questioning of the way that contemporary political figures and events might be considered. This article also takes account of the key role of Peru’s national film archive in shaping the nature of national heritage, culture and memory.