Linda M. Willem, ed.: Carlos Saura: Interviews

Review of: Linda M. Willem, ed. Carlos Saura: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003, 179 pp

La frontera en tres documentales de Lourdes Portillo

An exam of three documentaries by the Latin filmmaker Lourdes Portillo (Hispanic in the United States), touching the imagery of the American borderland in Latin conciousness: La ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988), The Devil Never Sleeps (1994), and Señorita extraviada (2002). Portillo´s work, which includes documentaries dealing with different Latin American issues (The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, in Argentina; After the Earthquake, in Guatemala), in the last decade focuses in issues related to Mexico-USA border culture. This essay finds its viewpoint in the praxis of editing within Portillo´s documentaries, who often blends techniques fully linked to feature films (especially melodrama) with techniques traditionally identified with testimony documentary (interviews, news reports, etc). The hybridization of both discourses allows the circulation of her films in Latin America culture as well as in American culture. The project that shapes Lourdes Portillo´s work in these documentaries is the engagement of technical hybridization with cultural hybridization to question Latin imagery in the United States.Éste es un examen de tres documentales de la cineasta latinoamericana Lourdes Portillo en torno al imaginario de la frontera americana en la conciencia latina: La ofrenda: Día de los Muertos (1988), El diablo nunca duerme (1994) y Señorita extraviada (2002). El trabajo de Portillo que incluye documentales referidos a distintas temáticas latinoamericanas (Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, en Argentina; Después del terremoto, en Guatemala), se centra durante la última década en temas relacionados con la cultura de la frontera entre México y EEUU. Este ensayo encuentra su razón de ser en la práctica del montaje en los documentales de Portillo; ésta mezcla a menudo en sus obras técnicas correspondientes al cine mayoritario (especialmente el melodrama) con técnicas tradicionalmente identificadas con el documental de testimonio (entrevistas, reportajes, etc.). La hibridación de ambos discursos permite la circulación de sus films tanto en la cultura latinoamericana como en la de EEUU. La propuesta que formula el trabajo de Lourdes Portillo en estos documentales es el engranaje de la hibridación técnica con la hibridación cultural para cuestionar el imaginario latino de EEUU

De como Antonio Banderas perdeu o sotaque - e outros fenômenos transnacionais

O texto discute, entre outras questões, a forma como se dá a construção de novas identidades e reterritorialidades das audiências pela mídia, a partir do estudo da filmografia de Antonio Banderas. As mudanças constantes das identidades sexuais e éticas de Banderas na Espanha e em Hollywood e o aumento da circulação de seus filmes internacionalmente mostram a subservação das comunidades imaginadas e a desestabilização do colonialismo cultural que tem marginalizado o cinema de língua espanhola

Los amantes pasajeros: An Update on Almodóvar’s Trans-Border Cinema

Los amantes pasajeros (2013) comes at a difficult moment in Almodóvar’s career, when his cinema appears disengaged from his local Spanish audience and when critics and viewers abroad have responded tepidly to his more recent films. In an effort to repair these audience links, the film mobilizes a dense textual layering and allusions that incorporate into a contemporary comedy Spanish nostalgic tropes from Almodóvar’s past, almost as if the authorial Almodóvar were spoofing an Almodóvar comedy. Characters and dialogue evoke the effervescent years of sexual freedom of the early post-Franco transition, the very years of the filmmaker’s meteoric rise to celebrity. Along with this local address, one of the film’s central aesthetic and cultural premises is the borderless contiguity between Spain and Mexico, the latter serving as a synecdoche for Latin America. Through intertextual associations, the film emphasizes the notion of Almodóvar’s cinema as a trans-border Hispanic phenomenon. It is, in fact, this deterritorialized pan-Latino audience to which his production company, El Deseo and Almodóvar have addressed their attention over the past decade. Los amantes pasajeros thus represents a crucial but illuminating self-referential pause in Almodóvar’s development, a film that underscores the return of his cinema to his Spanish roots in an immediately recognizable way, and which also reminds audiences of the ways his films have moved from their origin as a local Spanish phenomenon to an authentic transnational, trans- border object.</jats:p