Violence, Conflict and Discourse in Mexican Cinema (2002-2015)

Violence, Conflict and Discourse in Mexican Cinema (2002-2015) PDF Author: Miriam Haddu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 1137282118
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The last two decades have seen dramatic changes to Mexico’s socio-political landscape. A former president fleeing into exile, political assassinations, a rebellion in Chiapas, and the eruption of the so-called war on drugs provide key examples of critical events shaping the nation. This book examines Mexican cinema’s representations of, and responses to, these socio-political moments. Beginning with the definitive year 1994, which saw the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) declare war on the Mexican government, the early chapters in this book discuss the outcome of these episodes in subsequent years and how they find screen representation. The study then moves on to provide close readings of key filmic texts as reflections of the so-called narco-war and its effects on Mexican society. Focusing on both fiction and documentary filmmaking, this book explores notions of violence, victimhood, and the complex processing of grief in the context of enforced disappearances and the narco-conflict. In addition to examining films made in Mexico, this investigation incorporates the work of three of the nation’s most celebrated transnational directors: Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón. By examining their work on European soil as a comparative exercise, the analyses offer an understanding of the imprints left by warfare and trauma upon the collective and individual psyche, seen from a universal viewpoint. Using rigorous theoretical frameworks and succinct filmic analyses, this book will be essential reading for those interested in Mexican and Latin American film, as well as those working in the fields of Cultural, Screen, and Trauma Studies.

Violence, Conflict and Discourse in Mexican Cinema (2002-2015)

Violence, Conflict and Discourse in Mexican Cinema (2002-2015) PDF Author: Miriam Haddu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 1137282118
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
The last two decades have seen dramatic changes to Mexico’s socio-political landscape. A former president fleeing into exile, political assassinations, a rebellion in Chiapas, and the eruption of the so-called war on drugs provide key examples of critical events shaping the nation. This book examines Mexican cinema’s representations of, and responses to, these socio-political moments. Beginning with the definitive year 1994, which saw the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) declare war on the Mexican government, the early chapters in this book discuss the outcome of these episodes in subsequent years and how they find screen representation. The study then moves on to provide close readings of key filmic texts as reflections of the so-called narco-war and its effects on Mexican society. Focusing on both fiction and documentary filmmaking, this book explores notions of violence, victimhood, and the complex processing of grief in the context of enforced disappearances and the narco-conflict. In addition to examining films made in Mexico, this investigation incorporates the work of three of the nation’s most celebrated transnational directors: Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón. By examining their work on European soil as a comparative exercise, the analyses offer an understanding of the imprints left by warfare and trauma upon the collective and individual psyche, seen from a universal viewpoint. Using rigorous theoretical frameworks and succinct filmic analyses, this book will be essential reading for those interested in Mexican and Latin American film, as well as those working in the fields of Cultural, Screen, and Trauma Studies.

Documenting Violence in Calderón's Mexico

Documenting Violence in Calderón's Mexico PDF Author: Jessica Wax-Edwards
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1855663643
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
In Mexico, during the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and as a direct result of his 'war' on drugs, at least 60,000 people were killed, tens of thousands were 'disappeared' and countless more were subjected to kidnapping and sexual violence. This book analyses how artists and filmmakers, alongside affected citizens, attempted to navigate, articulate and contend with this unparalleled escalation in brutality. In Mexico, during the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and as a direct result of his 'war' on drugs, at least 60,000 people were killed, tens of thousands were 'disappeared' and countless more were subjected to kidnapping and sexual violence. This book analyses how artists and filmmakers, alongside affected citizens, attempted to navigate, articulate and contend with this unparalleled escalation in brutality. The texts studied here provide a critical visual archive of this first phase in the drug war and show how artists including Pedro Pardo, Fernando Brito, Mónica González and Natalia Almada attempted to challenge official narratives, foster emerging nodes of resistance and seek justice for citizens. Bringing together works of photography, photojournalism, documentary and short fiction cinema, the book argues for the vital role of cultural production in documenting institutional corruption, human rights abuses and narco-related violence in Mexican society and providing a space to grieve and remember the victims. As Mexico's socio-political landscape continues to deteriorate, the book shows how its visual cultural legacy provides a means of understanding and responding to the violence.

War in Film

War in Film PDF Author: Frank Jacob
Publisher: Büchner-Verlag
ISBN: 3963178523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The human experience of war is not only remembered by societies through memorials, but also through the depiction of wars and important battles of respective national histories on screen. Very often, the image presented is related to existent semiotics, and the respective sign systems determine the image of heroic actions and violence on the screen. The present volume provides a deeper insight into the forces at play when war films are presented on the big screen and intends to show why and how violent conflicts often have an afterlife as visual media as well.

Cinema of Interruptions

Cinema of Interruptions PDF Author: Lalitha Gopalan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838715061
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A framework for understanding the distinctiveness of Indian cinema as a national cinema within a global context dominated by Hollywood is proposed by this book. With its sudden explosions into song-and-dance sequences, half-time intermissions and heavy traces of censorship, Indian cinema can be identified as a 'Cinema of Interruptions'. To the uninitiated viewer, brought up on the seamless linear plotting of Hollywood narrative, this unfamiliar tendency towards digression may appear random and superfluous, yet this book argues that such devices assist in the construction of a distinct visual and narrative time-space. In the hands of imaginative directors, the conventions of Indian cinema become opportunities for narrative play and personal expression in such films as 'Sholay' (1975), 'Nayakan' (1987), 'Parinda' (1989), 'Hathyar' (1981) and 'Hey Ram!' (1999). 'Cinema of Interruptions' places commercial Indian film within a global system of popular cinemas, but also points out its engagement with the dominant genre principles implemented by Western film. By focusing on the action-genre work of leading contemporary directors J.P. Dutta, Mani Ratnam, and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, brazen national style is shown to interact with international genre films to produce a hybrid form that reworks the gangster film, the western and the avenging woman genre. Central to this study is the relationship Indian cinema shares with its audience, and an understanding of the pleasures it offers the cinephile. In articulating this bond the book presents not only a fresh framework for understanding popular Indian cinema but also a contribution to film genre studies.

Mexico Unmanned

Mexico Unmanned PDF Author: Samanta Ordóñez
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438486308
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Iconic images of machismo in Mexico's classic cinema affirm the national film industry's historical alignment with the patriarchal ideology intrinsic to the post-revolutionary state's political culture. Filmmakers gradually turned away from the cultural nationalism of mexicanidad, but has the underlying gender paradigm been similarly abandoned? Films made in the past two decades clearly reflect transformations instituted by a neoliberal regime of cultural politics, yet significant elements of macho mythology continue to be rearticulated. Mexico Unmanned examines these structural continuities in recent commercial and auteur films directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón, Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante, and Julio Hernández Cordón, among others. Informed by cinema's role in Mexico's modern/colonial gender system, Samanta Ordóñez draws out recurrent patterns of signification that reproduce racialized categories of masculinity and bolster a larger network of social hierarchies. In so doing, Ordóñez dialogues with current intersectional gender theory, fresh scholarship on violence in the neoliberal state, and the latest research on Mexican cinema.

Mexico on Film

Mexico on Film PDF Author: Armida de la Garza
Publisher: Arena books
ISBN: 0954316169
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Given its features as a modern mass medium and thus closely related to the nation, cinema has rightly been regarded as a privileged site for putting forward and contesting representations of national identity, or in short, as a main arena in which narratives of national identity are negotiated. What do films such as Amores Perros or Traffic say about Mexican identity? In what way could Bread and Roses or The Crime of Padre Amaro be part of its transformation? This book looks at representations of "e;Mexicanity"e; in Mexican cinema and also in Hollywood throughout the twentieth century and beyond, arguing that the international context plays at least as important a role as ethnicity, religion and language in the construction of images of the national self, although it is seldom taken into account in theories of national identity. The Mexican film may reveal much about Mexican society, e.g.,Traffic and the prevalence of drug trafficking, Bread and Roses, and the problems of migration; Amores Perros, in relation to metaphors of the nation as an extended family; The Crime of Father Amaro, in discussing the changing position of the Catholic Church; and Herod's Law, a scathing critique to the political system that dominated Mexico for the best part of the 20th century. Throughout, the book emphasises the contingent nature of hegemonic representations, and our ongoing need to tell and to listen to - or indeed, view - stories that weave together a variety of strands to convincingly tell us who we are.

Toward Cinema and Its Double

Toward Cinema and Its Double PDF Author: Laleen Jayamanne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214751
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Jayamanne brings together her discussions of Australian films, Sri Lankan films, European art films, silent film comedy, contemporary American films and her own films.

The Body and the Screen

The Body and the Screen PDF Author: Kate Ince
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623565812
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Examination of how the exploration of female subjectivity by selected French and British women film-makers has expanded and reinvigorated the "language" of contemporary cinema.

The Never Again Generation

The Never Again Generation PDF Author: Mark Bareta
Publisher: Ken Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9780997897739
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
The Never Again Generation provides a valuable window on information assurance about not just the Anglophone crisis but also a live account from a key actor and activist of Southern Cameroons - Ambazonia quest for independence. The author covers all the necessary components of the revolution starting from detecting the factors that sparked the beginning of the revolution by the lawyers and teachers strike in October 2016, internet blockage, Government crackdown and the demand for total restoration as the only outcome acceptable to Anglophones now called Ambazonians. The author engages his readers in an interactive examination of the various steps albeit cosmetic taken by the government to calm down the crisis and not to resolve it as demonstrated by announcement of recruitment of 1,000 bilingual science teachers, award of 2billion FCFA worth of subsidies to lay private and mission schools, announcement of the creation of Common Law sections in some state universities. Dr. David Makongo (Ph.D, LLM, JD, LLB), Philanthropist, Expert Negotiator, International Legal Consultant

Slow Cinema

Slow Cinema PDF Author: Tiago de Luca
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748696059
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Focused on a body of films bound together through a cinematic aesthetic of slowness, this book is a pioneering effort to situate, theorise and map out slow cinema within contemporary global film production and across world cinema history.