Latin+American+Cinema+of+the+2002

Latin American Cinema of the 2000s 

"In //La Cienaga//, Lucretia Martel melds personality and geography, performance and mise-en-scene into a singular whole, fused by a unity that uses camerawork and editing rhythms to incorporate the audience into the world of the film with visceral precision and physical acuity. The routines of daily life are condensed into stencils of behaivor and the essence of human nature distilled into a toxic elixir: a life-and-death struggle that emerges, as nature and nurture slug it out, storm clouds mass, and disaster endlessly threatens. Viewers cannot watch the film without feeling the heat or checking the sky for rain" (B. Ruby Rich)  [|Martel article] **Entrance Card**: Compare //The Caveman's Valentine// and //Away from Her//. On your card, list at least five things these two films have in common and explain briefly why you think they share these similarities.

Discuss

A. Overview of chapters 23 and 24, //Cinema of Latin America//

B. Clips from a variety of Latin American films: 1) //Amores Perros // (Mexico, Alejandro Gonalez Inarrita, 2000),

A horrific car accident connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities, all in the name of love.

2) //Live-In Maid// (Argentina, Jorge Gaggero, 2004), Jorge Gaggero’s //Live-In Maid// highlights a growing relationship between two women of differing classes, a friendship that is heightened by the consequences of Argentina’s 2001 economic disaster. According to A. O Scott of //The New York Times,// the filmmaker “invites you to contemplate, within the context of two perfectly ordinary lives, the paradoxes of friendship and the challenge of maintaining dignity in a world that conspires to undermine it.” The film centers on the changing dynamic between Beba (Norma Aleandra), a middle class divorcee who has now lost her money, and Dora (Norma Argentina), a rural working class “moral pillar” who leaves Beba to find work and complete the work on her house. Although Dora does have a partner, Miguel (Raul Panguinao), Dora and Beba share the strongest of connections, a friendship that continues and is demonstrated by small gestures: a cake for Beba’s birthday, a gift of furniture for Dora when Beba must move to a smaller apartment.



//Live-In Maid// is a stronger film than //The Help// because of its close attention to character instead of stereotype or archetype, but both films begin to illustrate the issue of environmental racism and its ramifications for environmental justice. In both //The Help// and//Live-In Maid//, social, racial, and economic classes are bifurcated not only by laws and mores of society, but also by their connection to either a rural or an urban sense of place. In both films, the maids must travel distances by foot and by bus to reach their employers’ homes. In //The Help//, that journey is wrought with danger from the KKK, as exemplified by Medger Evers’ assassination and its consequences. In //Live-In Maid//, Dora’s walk from the bus stop to her home goes through bare fields of mud and packed dirt, so Dora covers her shoes with plastic booties to protect them. In //The Help//, the rural homes these maids occupy are clean but sparse, with chipping paint and dusty lawns, even around Aibileen Clark’s (Viola Davis) house. In //Live-In Maid//, Dora’s home is also sparkling clean but unfinished, partly because Jorge did not buy or lay the rest of the flooring, partly because Beba could no longer pay her.

These few scenes begin to broach one of the problems thinly illustrated by the films: environmental racism and injustice. According to the EPA, “Environmental justice ensures that no population, especially the elderly and children, are forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the negative human health and environmental impacts of pollution or other environmental hazard.” Environmental justice breaks down into three distinctive categories: procedural inequity, geographical inequity, and social inequity. These categories serve as the basis for the UN Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, which state (1) Human rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainable development and peace are interdependent and indivisible. (2) All persons have the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment. The right and other human rights, including civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, are universal, interdependent and indivisible. (3) All persons shall be free from any form of discrimination in regard to actions and decisions that affect the environment. (Cifuentes and Frumkin 1-2) Although Beba exclaims that the air is cleaner outside Dora’s rural home than in Buenos Aires, the home and its surroundings tell a different story, one that aligns with the chipped (lead?) paint on the walls in the rural Mississippi Aibileen’s home. They struck me as hidden inequities that have a lasting effect on health and well-being, mirroring racial and class bias around them.



This glimpse of environmental injustice brings to mind a more blatant and instructive look at the effects of environmental inequities, //The Oblongs// (2001), a short-lived animated television series, which centered on the Oblong family. The Oblongs lived in a poor valley community called Hill Valley where everyone is physically deformed or disabled because of toxins in their air and water resulting from the lavish lifestyle of the rich community above them known as "The Hills.” The Hills’ residents exploited and harmed the valley community with absolutely no regard for their safety or well-being. Although neither //The Help// or //Live-In Maid// explicitly address the environmental injustices broached by the bifurcated sense of place in both films, they provide a glimpse of another form of racism and classism, environmental racism and injustice, a form of racism that continues near waste dumps, factories with toxic smoke and water emissions, mountaintop removal and natural gas fracking sites, and nuclear and coal-generated energy plants around the world.

 3) //Silent Light// (Mexico, Carlos Reygadas, 2007)

Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr), a Mennonite living in Mexico, is tormented with guilt over his extramarital affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz). His father (Peter Wall), best friend (Jacobo Klassen) and wife (Miriam Toews) know the truth, but Johan's suffering has to do with his faith, which he can't reconcile with his deeds.  4) //Lake Tahoe// (Mexico, Fernando Eimbcke, 2008)  A day in the life of Juan is anything but normal. After crashing the family car into a post, he must find someone who can help him fix it. Throughout the day he's led on a journey that he never expected. He meets many different people who seem to have one thing in common: they all want something from him.

5) //The Maid// (Chile, Sebastian Silva, 2009).

In Sebastian Silva’s //The Maid// (2009), a fictional narrative based on the filmmaker’s own experiences with his family’s live-in maid, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) suffers from headaches and an eventual temporary paralysis as a result of her more than 20 years working as a live-in-maid for a rich Santiago family patterned on Silva’s own and filmed in his family home. The film demonstrates Raquel’s loss of identity and family connections and her attempts to replace those losses with her employers and their children, so much so that she wards off her employers’ attempts to hire another maid to help her with her grueling tasks of cleaning, cooking, and child care.

Yet the entrance of another maid, Lucy (Mariana Loyola) amplifies the clear displacement suffered by Raquel on display in the film. Lucy enters Raquel’s home and is subjected to some of the same games that intimidated other maids hired to help Raquel. Lucy, however, reintroduces Raquel to the concept of family and home, first by becoming her friend and then by inviting her to her own rural family home for Christmas. After a long bus ride, Lucy and Raquel enjoy a holiday on a family farm that contrasts with the city mansion they leave behind and the distant relationship shared between Raquel and the family she serves. What stands out, however, is a phone call between Raquel and her mother during the Christmas celebration. For the first time on screen, Raquel asks her mother about her health and her siblings’ well-being, and when her mother seems not to answer, Raquel apologizes—for what we’re not sure—highlighting the losses felt by those displaced in quiet but powerful ways.

 In groups, discuss what the powerpoint and film clips reveal about Latin American films of the period.

Argentine Film video from German Film Festival: []

Film Screening: //The Swamp// (Argentina, Lucrecia Martel, 2001)

Assignment: Read chapter 2, //Indiewood, USA// and find and read an essay on one of next week’s films and prepare for EC.