3.0

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How can films create and reframe historical narratives? How do films convey collective histories, such as the struggle to defend the rights of nature in the Amazon rainforest, the post-revolutionary racialization of Afro-Cuban farmworkers in the outskirts of La Habana, or the bloody 1973 coup d’état in Chile? How can experimental aesthetics settle with a population struggling with hunger in Brazil? This seminar delves into the documentary mode within Latin American cinema, exploring the intricate relationship between personal and collective memories, politics, and the poetics of filmmaking. Despite being broadly defined by a commitment to concepts like “fact” and “reality,” documentaries blur the distinction between fictional and non-fictional narratives. Documentaries denounce, interpret, and construct the telling of historical events; they also investigate, reflect, and reenact autobiographical accounts. Our course takes a multidisciplinary approach, analyzing several films as both works of art and historical documents, that is, works that recount the region’s social, aesthetic, political, and economic realities. We will examine various topics, including memory, identity, politics, ethics, aesthetics, nature, human and more-than-human rights, and social justice, by analyzing productions from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, México, and more. We’ll draw from various fields and disciplines, including film and media studies, performance studies, philosophy, anthropology, and memory studies. This course presents an exceptional opportunity to expand our knowledge and understanding of Latin America by analyzing some of the most thought-provoking films ever made.