The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

This book explores the role of emotion and affect in recent Latin American cinemas (1990s-2000s) in the context of larger public debates about past traumas and current anxieties. The author examines some of the most significant trends in contemporary Latin American filmmaking, including the emergence of the thriller as a preferred genre to address the legacies of the 1960s and 1970s; the rise of “youth” films about globally-connected and disaffected young adults; and the proliferation of transnational productions by “traveling” filmmakers that encourage audiences to feel for “others.” The book features close textual analysis of individual films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico as well as commentary on the changing structure of Latin American film industries. It frames those analyses within a discussion of recent critical and theoretical debates about affect, sentimentalism and compassion, particularly as they relate to film.

Laura Podalsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University. She has published essays on a wide variety of topics, including Mexican youth films and classic melodrama, pre-revolutionary Cuban cinema, and Brazilian filmmaker Ana Carolina, in journals such as Framework, Screen, Cinemais (Brazil), and Archivos de la Filmoteca (Spain). She is the author of Specular City: Transforming Culture, Consumption, and Space in Buenos Aires, 1955-1973 (2004), a study of film and urban culture in post-Peronist Argentina.