Film-poetry/poetry-film in Latin America. Theories and practices: An introduction

This special issue of Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas is dedicated to the seldom-studied relationship between poetry and cinema in Latin America. Although studies both of the ‘poetics of cinema’ and of literary adaptation in cinema have become established areas of film scholarship in recent years, the diverse modes of formal, aesthetic and ideological exchange between the poetic and the cinematic have received little critical attention. The authors included in this issue analyze the work of film-makers from the 1960s to the present day who have included poetry in their film narratives or aimed to recreate the aesthetics of poets cinematically. We ask, in the broadest terms, how film and poetry transform one another, and how these two expressive media behave when placed into dialogue. We hope that the lines of enquiry that these articles open up will reinvigorate the discussion by shedding light on the cross-fertilization between written and filmed poetry, and by extending the scope of the traditionally prose-oriented debate on adaptation.