Cinematic Landscape and Emerging Identities in Contemporary Latin American Film offers a series of perspectives, produced from a diverse array of aesthetic and theoretical approaches, that build on previous studies about cinematic landscape and space while addressing it from a regional perspective. This book explores how contemporary Latin American filmmakers have included, created, or transformed different types of landscapes in their works. The chapters highlight the centrality of landscape as a meaningful space in film, composed in addition to the image, sound, and movement. The core of the edited collection revolves around films where landscape emerges as a crucial element to transmit the urgency of issues affecting diverse Latin American societies. The representation of emerging social actors, such as Indigenous groups, Afro-Latin Americans, LGBTQIA+, migrants, environmentalists, and women, offers a localized view of sociocultural, political, and environmental challenges from marginalized and dissenting voices.
Maria Soledad Paz-Mackay is associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages at St. Francis Xavier University. Argelia Gonzalez Hurtado is associate professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at St. Mary?s College of Maryland.
This illuminating volume makes a convincing case for the relevance of landscape in cinema as an important aesthetic, narrative, metaphorical, metonymical, and sensorial device, while at the same time offering a fresh perspective on vital questions of identity in contemporary Latin American film. Each essay mobilizes the distinctive symbolism of the region to draw attention to ongoing issues of discrimination, power and culture, with a most welcome focus on sociocultural, political, and environmental challenges from marginalized and dissenting voices. This fine collection makes an important contribution to the study of Latin American cinema and culture. --Sarah Barrow, University of East Anglia, UK This is an excellent and timely contribution to the dynamic field of Latin American Cinema studies. The researchers highlight how landscapes in contemporary cinemas from the region dynamically shape the films that we see. No longer considered settings or backdrops, these authors show how these landscapes are just as important to the works as are the plots and character development. The researchers bring news perspectives to the cinematography of space in current cinemas of the region. --Michelle Leigh Farrell, Fairfield University
