Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2019

This introduction to the special issue on Uruguayan cinema outlines the unifying thematic (of exploring contemporary Uruguayan cinemas) and the manner of exploration (from outside the country looking in, and, from inside looking out – a ‘hermeneutic circle’). It also situates the issue with respect to the field of scholarly work on Uruguayan cinema (exploring reasons behind the relative lack of scholarly interest in Uruguayan filmmaking), and Latin American cinema more broadly, before briefly discussing the articles in turn.

This article focuses on the micro-budget Uruguayan horror movie, La casa muda/The Silent House (Hernández, 2010), as exemplar of the difficulties that Uruguayan filmmakers face in production and (international) distribution and the innovative means that they develop to negotiate these issues. Like many Uruguayan films, La casa muda premiered internationally (at the Cannes Film Festival) and, as outlined in the article, it follows a similar aesthetic and narrative ‘backgrounding’ of the nation (the deliberate erasure of indicators of national identity, such as national monuments) to that of Uruguayan art films. Nevertheless, its production history and journey to international prominence remains rather unique. This distinction reinforces the importance of the festival circuit in facilitating the production and distribution of Uruguayan art films, but, also – as is less often discussed – the television industry and especially the Internet as counter-balances to the dominance of Hollywood’s outreach in the region. Moreover, the ‘ambiguous’ nature of the film’s narrative and iconographic content illustrates how Uruguayan filmmakers simultaneously meet, and depart from, international audience expectations. Ultimately, La casa muda is not of interest specifically for being a Latin American horror film, but because it travelled internationally using the same distribution platforms (the festival circuit, DVD release) and aesthetic strategies as many preceding Uruguayan (and Latin American) art films, only this time to confound established expectations of films travelling these routes.

This article argues that the career of film director Fede Álvarez suggests the ‘impossibility’ of Uruguayan cinema: his relative success as a Hollywood film-maker could not be achieved were he to make films in Uruguay. Furthermore, I shall suggest that this ‘impossibility’ was already present in the short film that allowed Álvarez to progress from Montevideo to Los Angeles, namely ¡Ataque de pánico!/Panic Attack! (2009), which sees aliens attack and destroy Uruguay’s capital. I shall subsequently argue that Álvarez emblematizes how Uruguay ‘disappears’ from cinema screens in various ways, including as a result of the shape of the Uruguayan film industry and the size of the nation itself, while also suggesting that in the story of ¡Ataque de pánico!, this disappearance happens quite literally. This disappearance is linked to globalization, technology and the ongoing economic dependency of the global south on the global north, and as is reflected in Álvarez’s transition to Hollywood itself. In other words, Uruguay disappears from cinema screens in the same way that Uruguay disappears historically. This is demonstrated especially by the way in which a very ‘cinematic’ special effects film like ¡Ataque de pánico! circulates primarily not in cinemas but online. Cinema is in this way alien to Uruguay as Uruguay is alien to cinema – with ¡Ataque de pánico! thereby constituting a form of non-cinema.

This article charts the history of two Uruguayan film journals, especially during the period that followed the country’s return to democracy in the mid-1980s: Cinemateca Revista, published by the Cinemateca Uruguaya, and El País Cultural, the cultural supplement of Uruguay’s premier daily newspaper, El País. The article charts the similarities and differences between the two publications, analysing how on the whole the latter journal rejected a political/politicized criticism of films and film culture to achieve a desired objectivity, while the former overtly lobbied for changes in Uruguay’s film production and distribution policies. These differences are highlighted by close analyses of the writings of two journalists from the period: Homero Alsina Thevenet of El País Cultural and Manuel Martínez Carril of the Cinemateca Revista. The article explores how these differences are also manifested through the respective authors’ approach to authorship, genre and the relationship between cinema as art and cinema as industry, and in their writing styles.

This article aims to explore the construction of symbolic value in Uruguayan cinema in the early twenty-first century (2000–13) based on the opinions of a large number of cinephiles. The comments outline at least two kinds of cinephilia as ‘scholarly’ and ‘amateur’ moviegoers respond, respectively, to ‘intellectual’ and popular/mass visions of Uruguayan film. While cultural expressions – such as the distinction between high art and popular culture – are stripped of hierarchies, new forms of social legitimacy in the movies are tested, under the signs of innovation, creative originality, heightened differences and exoticism. The work of Pierre Bourdieu will be utilized to explore this cultural terrain. This article is based on the qualitative analysis of 1128 comments published on a specialized cultural Uruguayan website, made by spectators who were invited to discuss a sample of ten Uruguayan films produced and released in the twenty-first century, which have had significant screenings at festivals, which have won international awards and/or which have achieved local box office success. The results are part of a wider project called ‘CINE.M.A. Cinema and audiovisual mediations’ from the Universidad de la República (the Uruguayan State University).

This article includes interviews with three contemporary Uruguayan film directors, Guillermo Casanova, Federico Veiroj and Silvana Camors. They answer questions about the state of cinema in contemporary Uruguay, offering varying perspectives on different aspects of Uruguayan film culture, from issues surrounding funding and distribution to the role of digital technology and the importance of maintaining film archives. Although the film-makers identify numerous difficulties for Uruguayan film-makers, especially at the level of institutional and financial support, they nonetheless remain grimly optimistic that Uruguayan cinema has a future.

Jenkins of Mexico: How a Southern Farm Boy became a Mexican Magnate, Andrew Paxman (2017) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 544 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19045-574-3, h/bk, $34.95

Confessional Cinema: Religion, Film, and Modernity in Spain’s Development Years, 1960–1975, Jorge Pérez (2017) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 280 pp., ISBN: 978-1-48750-108-2, h/bk, $70.00

Affect and Belonging in Contemporary Spanish Fiction and Film. Crossroads Visions, Jesse Barker (2017) Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 226 pp., ISBN 978-3-31957-964-1, h/bk, £67.99

Cinema at the Edges: New Encounters with Julio Medem, Bigas Luna and José Luis Guerín, Abigail Loxham (2014) New York and Oxford: Bergahn, 202 pp. ISBN: 978-1-78238-304-8, h/bk, £64.00; eISBN: 978-1-78238-305-5, eBook, £52.00

Raúl Ruiz’s Cinema of Inquiry, Ignacio López-Vicuña and Andreea Marinescu (eds) (2017) Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 260 pp., ISBN: 978-0-81434-106-3, p/bk, $36.99

Cines del Sur: La integración cinematográfica entre los países del Mercosur, Marina Moguillansky (2016) Buenos Aires: Editorial Imago Mundi, 248 pp., ISBN 978-9-50793-227-4, p/bk, 430 ARS

Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, Deborah Shaw and Deborah Martin (eds) (2017) London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 288 pp., ISBN: 978-1-78453-711-1, h/bk, £62

El cine de Agüero: El documental como la lectura de un Espacio, Valeria De Los Ríos And Catalina Donoso (2015) Santiago de Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 167 pp., ISBN 978-9-56260-716-2, p/bk, 8.600 CLP

Chilefilms, el Hollywood criollo: Aproximaciones al proyecto industrial cinematográfico chileno (1942–1949), María Paz Peirano and Catalina Gobantes (eds) (2015) Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 286 pp., ISBN 978-9-56260-694-3, p/bk, 11.400 CLP

Crónica de un encuentro. El cine mexicano en España, 1933–1948, Ángel Miquel (2016) Mexico City: Dirección General de Actividades Cinematográficas, 284 pp., ISBN 978-6-07027-849-5, 798 MXN, p/bk, $9.99