Latin American Cinema

I

Introduction

Latin American Cinema, historical development of the cinema in Latin America. The first public screenings by agents of the Lumière Brothers were held in Mexico City in August 1896, and Lumière cameramen scoured Latin America for new audiences and exotic locations in which to film. They were soon joined by local film-makers, who carved out a niche with which their international competitors—from France, Italy, and, increasingly, the United States—were not concerned, such as regional topics, football competitions, civic ceremonies, and military parades. Cinema was becoming firmly established in the developing cities of Latin America and in rural areas by the turn of the century.

II

The Silent Era

Most local film production in Latin America until the early 1930s took the form of documentary and newsreel, reflecting the self-images of societies, especially those of the aristocracy: their fashions, power, ease, and comfort in modern cities as well as a spectacular rural landscape. Fictional films were provided up to World War I mainly by the French and Italian industries, the Italian melodramas and stars being particularly popular. From the outset of the war, the strength of Hollywood increased and came to dominate the local markets. Local directors could not effectively compete with the vertical integration and lavish production values of Hollywood, but maintained a stubborn toehold in the market with fictional films based on history, recognizable locations, and plots that drew on popular song, dance, and literature. Directors of this period include José A. Ferreyra in Argentina, with La Muchacha del Arrabal (1922; The Girl from the Neighbourhood); Enrique Rosas in Mexico, with El Automóvil Gris (1918; The Grey Car); and Humberto Mauro in Brazil, with Lábios sem Beijos (1930; Lips Without Kisses). Directors in Latin America initially greeted the advent of sound with optimism. Sound, they hoped, would deal a death blow to foreign films, by introducing song and the vernacular specific to local audiences.

III

Latin American Sound Cinema

In the event, such confident predictions proved largely false as the coming of sound rather strengthened the market position of films from the United States and abroad. A small space did open up, which allowed for the development of industries in Mexico, Argentina, and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, but the expense and sophistication of new technologies were too much for most of the smaller or poorer countries in the region, which took many years to make the conversion to national talking pictures. The successes of sound cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s were driven by musicals, song and dance, comedy, and historical and family melodramas. Music was fundamental: tango in Argentina; samba and chanchada (popular vaudeville) in Brazil; and canción ranchera (cowboy song), bolero, and imported Caribbean rhythms of rumba and mambo in Mexico. Argentine and, in particular, Mexican studio productions became popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Mexico’s stars—such as the singers Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante, the musician Agustín Lara, the comedians Cantinflas and Tin Tan, and the screen goddesses Dolores del Río and María Félix—photographed by the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa and directed by Fernando de Fuentes (Allá en el Rancho Grande, 1936; Over on the Big Ranch), Emilio “El Indio” Fernández (María Candelaria, 1943), Roberto Gavaldón (La Otra, 1946; The Other Sister), and many others, became an integral part of Latin American popular culture. These productions had a dynamism in the 1930s and 1940s, but became formulaic and repetitive in the 1950s, causing young directors to look for new forms of expression.

This impetus, which gained momentum and coherence in the 1960s, became known as the new cinema movement. It sought to capture everyday social reality, using an artisan, flexible, low-budget form of filming, and was fuelled by the twin utopian desires of the 1960s for modernity and social change, as reflected in an early enthusiasm for the Cuban revolution. Among the notable film-makers of the period were Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, and Ruy Guerra in Brazil; Santiago Alvarez and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in Cuba; Fernando Birri and Fernando Solanas in Argentina; Miguel Littín and Raúl Ruiz in Chile; and Jorge Sanjinés in Bolivia. Landmark films of the period included Guerra’s Os Fuzis (1963; The Guns), Alea’s Memorias del Subdesarrollo (1968; Memories of Underdevelopment), and Solanas’s La Hora de los Hornos (1968; The Hour of the Furnaces).

The revolutionary enthusiasm of the 1960s was largely extinguished in the 1970s as a wave of military dictatorships swept through Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, causing many directors to readapt to the different conditions of exile. However, cinema also benefited from increasing state support in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and the Andean countries. Some film-makers continued the oppositional practices of the 1960s, but most worked to insinuate their social criticism into mainstream genres with a proven popular appeal, such as political thrillers, comedy, and melodrama.

The 1980s heralded a move towards democratization in the region, and film would benefit in certain countries, most notably Argentina and Brazil, from the decrease in censorship and a growth of state subsidy. Among the many directors to reach national and international audiences in this decade were the Argentines María Luisa Bemberg (especially with Camila, 1984) and Luis Puenzo, whose film La Historia Oficial (The Official Version) won the Foreign Film Academy Award (Oscar) in 1985; the Brazilians Ana Carolina, Tizuka Yamasaki, and Suzana Amaral; the Peruvian Francisco Lombardi, with La Boca del Lobo (1988; The Lion’s Den); and the Venezuelans Román Chalbaud, Clemente de la Cerda, and Fina Torres. The directors who had emerged in the 1960s also developed significant projects, such as Fernando Solanas’s Sur (1988; South).

In the 1990s, a cold neo-liberal wind swept the Latin American continent, heralding a retreat of the state in many countries. Film production was affected in different ways. In Mexico, cinema blossomed in the early 1990s, stimulated by a successful blend of state and public funding, producing international box-office hits such as Danzón (1991) and Como Agua para Chocolate (1991; Like Water for Chocolate). While it became difficult to sustain regular production—only director Arturo Ripstein managed to make feature films consistently throughout the period—Mexican cinema could still produce popular films in the local market, such as the yuppie sex comedy Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas (1998; Sex, Shame and Tears), and at the international box office, with Y Tu Mamá También (2001; And Your Mother Too), directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who had forged a successful career in Hollywood. The film featured Gael García Bernal, who emerged as the leading Latin American star of the new millennium.

In Brazil, the withdrawal of state funding led to a collapse of the local industry in the early 1990s, but by the middle of the decade, fiscal incentives in the form of tax breaks for film investment led to a renaissance in film, in terms of both quantity and quality. One new director of the period, Walter Salles, in particular enjoyed international success with his Central do Brasil (1998; Central Station), while veteran film-makers Bruno Barreto (O que é isso companheiro, 1997; Four Days in September) and Carlos Diegues (Orfeu, 1999) used the genres of the thriller and the musical to great effect. In Argentina, film-makers survived the economic collapse of 2001-2002 through imaginative international co-productions and indirect state subsidy, which redirected advertising revenue from television and radio into film. New directors such as Pablo Trapero and Lucrecia Martel, often supported by Argentina’s leading producer Lita Stantic, took their place alongside established film-makers like Eliseo Subiela and Alejandro Agresti. Throughout the continent, multiplexes replaced neighbourhood cinemas and helped to stem, and later reverse, the decline in audience attendances that had been a feature of the 1980s and early 1990s. Increased ticket prices at the multiplexes meant that cinema was addressing primarily middle-class audiences. Figures for Argentina, published early in 2004, showed an upturn in the box office—from 30 million admissions in 2002 to 33 million in 2003, and a prediction of 35 million in 2004—with local production taking an increasing share of the market, an average of 15 per cent, while Hollywood accounted for some 80 per cent. Hits such as Fabián Bielinsky’s Nueve Reinas (2002; Nine Queens) helped to sustain the dynamism of local production.

Film-making across the continent, especially outside the “Big Three” industries of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, remained, however, sporadic and high risk. The Brazilian Sérgio Bianchi’s aptly named Crónicamente Inviável (2000; Chronically Unfeasible) described a world of globalization in which all aspects of the nation and, on a meta-textual level, all aspects of high production, “quality”, film-making are viewed as chronically unviable. His predictions, while pointing out real problems, were, perhaps, too bleak. Cinema in Latin America was in a much healthier state in January 2004 than it had been 10 or even 20 years earlier: it was finding new audiences at home and abroad.