Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America

<p>The chapters in this book show the important role that political documentary cinema has played in Latin America since the 1950s. Political documentary cinema in Latin America has a long history of tracing social injustice and suffering depicting political unrest intervening in periods of crisis and upheaval and reflecting upon questions about ideology cultural identity genocide and traumatic memory. This collection bears witness to the region's film culture's diversity discussing documentaries about workers' strikes riots and military coups against elected governments; crime poverty homelessness prostitution children's work and violence against women; urban development progress (under)development capitalism and neoliberalism; exile diaspora and border cultures; trauma and (post)memory. The chapters focus on documentaries made in Argentina Brazil Chile Cuba Mexico and Venezuela as well as on the work of Latino and diasporic Latin American political documentarians. The contributors to the anthology reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of current Latin American film scholarship with some writing in Spanish and Portuguese from Argentina and Brazil (with their original works especially translated) and others writing in English from Australia Europe and the USA.</p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Social Identities</i>.</p>