New Argentine Cinema

Argentine filmmaking over the past two decades has enjoyed worldwide success. New Argentine Cinema explores this cinema from the mid-1990s to the present, from a film-analytical as well as a cultural studies perspective. It reveals the elements that have made for this success, in relation to the country's profound political, social and cultural crisis during the same period

Jens Andermann argues that cinema, more than any other art form, has proved a particularly effective medium for engaging with the way crisis has been lived and experienced, due to its own exposure to economic and technological change. Thus, the most recent wave of films also differs markedly from the Argentine cinema of the preceding decade, following the end of the dictatorship in 1983. Studying films including Lucrecia Martel's La cienaga (The Swamp), Lisandro Alonso's La libertad (Freedom), Albertina Carri's Los rubios (The Blondes), Martin Rejtman's Silvia Prieto and Pablo Trapero's Nacido y criado (Born and Bred), among others, he identifies a shift in aesthetic sensibilities between these directors and those of the previous generation, as well as a profound change in the way films are being made, and their relation to the audio-visual field at large. In combining close comparative analyses with a review of the changing models of production, editing, actorship and location, this book uncovers the ways in which Argentine films have managed to construct a complex, multilayered account of their own present, still troubled by the unresolved legacies of the past

`This is scholarship of a very high quality. Andermann picks his way judiciously through existing critical work but never fails to impress with his own lively and attentive readings.' -- Joanna Page, author of Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema

`If you want to know why Argentine cinema over the past 15 years has proved so vibrant and so innovative, look no further than Jens Andermann's timely book.' -- Maria Delgado, Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts, Queen Mary, University of London

Jens Andermann is Professor of Latin American and Luso-Brazilian Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London and an editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. He has published widely on Latin American visual, literary and material culture, including the books The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (2007) and Mapas de poder: Una arqueologia literaria del espacio argentino (2000)