Joanna Page,
Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema.
Duke University Press, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-4472-8
US$22.95 (pb)
248pp
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press
http://www.dukeupress.edu/books/)

In 1993, influential Argentine social theorist Néstor García Canclini asked the question: “¿Habrá cine latinoamericano en el año 2000?” (will there be Latin American Cinema in the year 2000?). Considering this question almost a decade later, after the international success of films like Nueve reinas (Argentina 2000) and Y tu mamá también (Mexico 2001), the temptation might be to dismiss such concerns as irrelevant. However, Canclini uses this question to highlight the risks to ‘public interest’ that arise when cultural production is left in the hands of the market. While state funding of film industries in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico has increased (indeed providing much strength to these industries), the continuing predominance of neoliberal discourse within global systems of inequity means that the risk cited by Canclini continues.

Joanna Page, in her new book Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (2009), engages with these concerns through the analysis of a number of contemporary (mid-1990s to the present) Argentine fiction films. Page states her aim in writing this book as, “to uncover some of the many ways in which contemporary Argentine films… have often worked to denaturalize the discourses and practices of neoliberal capitalism and thereby to support the activity of a public sphere” (p. 200). The severe economic crisis in Argentina that culminated in December of 2001 – largely as a result of the aggressive adoption of neoliberal policies in the 1990s – has had a profound affect on the country, its cinema, and forms a crucial part of the context within which Argentine films are made. Joanna Page’s impeccably written book, maintains a keen eye on this context in her analysis of both well-known and more obscure films associated with New Argentine Cinema.

The book is divided into seven chapters, all of which incisively address specific themes (such as nationhood, labour, crime, migration, memory and private space) prevalent in contemporary Argentine cinema. The first chapter, ‘Nation, State, and Filmmaking in Contemporary Argentina’, is particularly insightful and draws upon the specific conditions of filmmaking in Argentina in order to argue for the importance of national frameworks when considering Argentine film. Through her analysis, she offers an astute critique of the inadequacies of globalization discourse and transnationalism as theoretical perspectives in relation to the Argentine case – a critique which could be extended beyond the scope of this book. This chapter, and indeed the majority of the book, enter into an important dialogue with wider globalization debates. Furthermore, this chapter’s consideration of the conditions of filmmaking and distribution networks provides a comprehensive (and important) contextualized view which often is omitted from much film analysis.

Another highlight of this book is the chapter entitled ‘Memory and Subjectivity’. In this chapter Page sets her sights on representations of post-dictatorship memory in contemporary Argentine cinema. Here, shifts in content and form representative of New Argentine Cinema (a theme discussed extensively throughout the book) contribute to current debates around post-dictatorship memory and “the need to remember differently” (p. 167). Her analysis of Potestad (Luis Céser D’Angiolillo, 2002) and Los rubios (Albertina Carri, 2003) raise many critical questions in relation to predominant forms of collective memory, its connection to individual memory, erasures, and how such films can work to promote more sophisticated (and ethical) modes of remembering. Her analysis in this chapter offers the reader ways to think critically about memory work, and how film – itself a mode of memory construction – can be used to challenge hegemonic memory practices.

This is a book about film – its form, content and movement – as well as contemporary Argentine society. It usefully adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, offering a multifaceted and contextualized engagement with the topic. Furthermore, the author’s support for a theoretical reengagement with national frameworks that do not essentialize the nation (example of such engagement can be found in the very films analysed by Page) provide a necessary counterpoint to the current suite of depoliticized globalization discourses. It is from this position that Page describes fiction film as “reestablishing a limited public sphere. It does so by staging in its very form the struggle between art and its market, thereby creating and fomenting public debate on the proper role of the state in relation to national culture and denaturalizing the discourse of globalization” (p. 197). Ultimately, this book argues (much like Canclini) in defence of film as a public good that is crucial to dialogue in the public sphere.

This book is likely to become required reading for students of Latin American film, and of interest to anyone concerned with debates of globalization, nationhood, film theory, and memory studies. In addition, this book offers to those readers unfamiliar (and even those familiar) with Argentine film some new titles to add to their respective viewing lists. This is great news because, as Page’s book attests, there are certainly some very interesting things happening in Argentine cinema today.

Violeta Politoff,
Melbourne University, Australia.

References:
García Canclini, Néstor (1993) ‘¿Habrá cine latinoamericano en el año 2000?’ Jornada Semanal 193 (February 17, 1993): pp. 27–33.

Created on: Thursday, 10 December 2009