Accented cinema and beyond: Latin American minor cinemas in Sweden, 1970–1990

The aim of this article is to map and present professional and non-professional Latin American film-making that took place in Sweden from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Most of the films from this period have been excluded from the established, canonical film history, both nationally and internationally. Another aim of the article is to argue for the importance of the concept of ‘minor cinemas’. This concept has the benefit of overcoming generalizing and reductive models of analysis and the historiography of Latin American film-making beyond that continent. Owing to an extensive focus on political documentary, third cinema, or the aesthetics of accented cinemas, the diversity of Latin American film-making in countries like Sweden has been neglected. Thus, this article calls for a transnational historiography that also encompasses minor histories and presents a critique of Hamid Naficy’s seminal theory of an accented cinema. In terms of theory, the article argues for a return to the theoretical interventions of the concept of minor cinemas made by David E. James and for a reactualization of Zuzana M. Pick’s early study on exilic Chilean cinema.