Film & Cinema: Latin America and Spain

Writing National Cinema traces the twenty-year history of the Peruvian film journal Hablemos de cine alongside that of Peruvian filmmaking and film culture. Similar to the influential French journal Cahiers du cin ma, Hablemos de cine began with a group of young critics interested in claiming the director's use of mise-en-sc ne as the exclusive method of film analysis rather than thematic or star-oriented topics hence, the title of the publication, derived from their battle cry at post-screening discussions: "Let's talk about film." Their critical authority grew with the rise of local filmmaking and the nationalist fervor of the late 1960s and early 1970s. When government sponsorship spurred feature filmmaking in the mid-1970s, their perspective eschewed the politically militant readings that characterized most writing and film from the rest of Latin America at the time. By the 1980s, the critics at Hablemos de cine had helped to engender a commercial, Hollywood-influenced cinematic vision best exemplified by Peruvian auteur Francisco Lombardi and stimulated a unique, if isolating, national identity through film. The first book-length study of Peruvian film culture to appear in English, Middents's work offers thoughtful consideration of the impact of criticism on the visual stylings of a national cinema.

Presents indigenous women leaders from various countries, as well as a group of Guatemalan women participating in a meeting with other women from Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama. Addresses these women's experiences and their attempts to improve their lives and the circumstances of their families and communities.

With intimate access and striking imagery, Sin País (Without Country) explores one family's experience as they are separated by deportation. Sam and Elida Mejia escaped a violent Civil War in Guatemala and came to California. After raising their family for nearly 20 years in the Bay Area, ...

In 1977, photojournalist Susan Meiselas traveled to Nicaragua to photograph the civil war between General Anastasio Somoza García's dictatorship and the Sandinista opposition. Her book, "Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979" resulted from her two years there. Mieselas returns to Nicaragua a decade later...

This is the story of Yuma a strong-willed and rebellious girl from the poor neighborhoods of Managua who dreams of being a boxer. Yuma is the 1st Nicaraguayan feature production of the last 20 years.

Tells the story of the search for children who disappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War. Survivors of massacres carried out by U.S.-trained Salvadoran Army batallions, many were 'sold' into adoption in the U.S. and Europe. Niños de la Memoria weaves together three separate yet intertwined journeys in the search for family, identity and justice in El Salvador, and asks the larger question: How can a post-war society right the wrongs of the past?