Martin, Michael T.  New Latin American Cinema.
Vol. 2: Studies of National Cinemas. 
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997.

Latin American cinema started in the 1890s when European producers exhibited films to the local bourgeoisie in Rio (Brazil), Montevideo (Uruguay), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Mexico City, and Havana (Cuba), and local film production was started in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, and Mexico.  European films served as the models for Latin American filmmakers, followed later by Hollywood companies that dominated distribution.  Local production was established in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. 

Latin American film was ignored by the critics of the US and Europe until the 1960s.  Only in the 1970s, documentaries of Third World cinema were recognized at international film festivals and later shown in art houses.  The New Latin American Cinema is a national and continental project committed to a social practice that opposes capitalism and foreign domination and affirms national and popular expression.  Violence is the authentic and empowering expression of the oppressed (Cinema Novo) [Glauber Rocha].  Third World Cinema is Imperfect Cinema.  This kind of film is nationalist, realistic, critical, and popular.  It should also transform social practices and make passive spectators into active transformers of society.  Documentaries should be didactic and testimonial.  They constitute oppositional film (vs. US & European commercial films).  Yet, Europe should be supportive in the distribution process of Latin American film.

A sort of polycentric multiculturalism conceives of identity as a multilayered and transnational concept.  Identities are multiple, unstable, historically situated, the products of ongoing differentiation and polymorphous identification which is reciprocal and dialogical.  National cinema must allow for racial difference and cultural heterogeneity.  It must be dynamic and see the nation as an evolving, imaginary construct rather than an original essence.  National cinema addresses the demands of a national culture (not merely entertains it).  It combats disinformation. 

During the administration of Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964), the Mexican film industry suffered.  State intervention had preserved the film industry (the Banco Cinematográfico, then under Federico Heuer) and prevented Hollywood producers and distributors from monopolizing filmmaking and exhibition in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.  The industry also lost Luis Buñuel, who began to make movies outside Mexico, especially in France.  In Mexico he had made 23 films from 1946 to 1965, including Los olvidados (1950), Viridiana (1961), El ángel exterminador (1962), Nazarín (1958), Simón del desierto (1962), etc.  Subsequently, Mexico produced serials designed for television and movie series like Santo (a wresting hero).  To cut costs, Mexico also filmed co-productions outside Mexico (in Puerto Rico, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Venezuela). 

Some of the film groups in Mexico have been the following:

1. 1) “Nuevo Cine”  (1960s). 
2. 2) Cinemateca de México (1963). 
3. 3) Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC), a cinema department under the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) [1963].

Some noteworthy directors and films are: Luis Alcoriza, Mecánica nacional (1971), Felipe Cazals, Canoa (1975) [this film won a Silver Bear at the 1976 Berlin Film Festival]  and Ante el cadáver de un líder (1973), Alberto Isaac, Tívoli (1974) [a cabaretera film], Felipe Cazals, Las Poquianchis (1977), Miguel Littín, Actas de Marusia (1975).

During the Echevarría years there were also co-productions with Cuba and the US.

After Echevarría, the presidency of José López Portillo (1976-1982) reversed the cinematic policies of the Echevarría presidency.  State sponsorship was removed and private producers returned to the scene.  Also, CONACITE I was dissolved in 1979.  Making ca. 86 films a year (since 1977) and having ca. 20,602 workers (in 1977), there was a total investment in the movie industry amounting to 69.000.000 USD in 1979.  Foreign receipts increased in 1977-1980 by 35.6% from 10.4 to 14.1 million USD.  This success has been due to a commercialist thrust that exploits traditional genres and soft-core sex.  There is also a renewed emphasis on co-production (to lessen the individual risk of individual producers and to assure distribution in the co-producing countries).  Movies made in this period were Survival (1975), Hostages (1980), and Guyana (1979) [sensationalist films]. 

Another interesting development is the entrance into the arena of film of the giant TV conglomerate called Televisa, S. A.  Televisa produces and owns most Mexican commercial television.  It has also acquired a 75% controlling interest of the television Spanish International Network (SIN), which has 57 affiliates in the US.  Televisa’s distribution subsidiary, Televicine Distribution International Corporation, recently bought out Columbia Pictures Spanish Theatrical Division.  Also, the government-owned US distributor, Azteca Films, has some 50% of the market.  The US Hispanic market is estimated at 25 million people and represents 40% of Mexico’s film export sales.  There are 450 Spanish-language theaters in the US that bring about 45 million USD a year.  Hence, commercialism has won out in Mexico and the movie industry is enjoying an economic recovery.  This is the logical, usual pattern for a capitalist country. 

There are 8 to 10 million Indians in Mexico (ca. 10% of the population) belonging to more than 50 distinct Indian groups, each with its own language and tradition.  The vast majority of the population in Mexico (80%) is of mixed descent (European and Indian [mestizo], European and African [mulato], Indian and African [zambo], Mestizo and European [castizo]. Mulatto and European [morisco], Mulatto and Indian [chino], Mestizo and Mulatto [cuarterón], Mestizo and Indian [coyote], etc.).  About 10% of the population is either European (peninsular) or European-American (criollo).  The criollos constitute the ruling class.  Mestizos who align themselves to the ideology of the criollos come next.  Unassimilated Indians are excluded from or ignored by the dominant Latino culture.

In film (from the 1960s through the 1980s), Indians have been shown as stereotypical minor characters, submissive, “funny,” rural simpletons, and servants, but NOT as villains.  There is, however, an Indian genre film that was initiated by Carlos Navarro, director of Janitzio (1934) and which crystallized with Emilio Fernández’s María Candelaria (1943).  In these films, the encounter between Indian and non-Indian results in death, customarily of the Indian, who is often a woman.
 

Dolores del Río as María Candelaria

Scene from María Candelaria

The Mexican state (since President Lázaro Cárdenas [1934-1940]) has tried to assimilate the Indian by a policy of indigenismo.  However, it has not always worked because in order to assimilate the Indian into the Latino culture (that is, in order to be “Mexicanized”) , he must give up his original identity, culture, language, and religious belief system.  Thusly, the Indian has, for the past 500 years, been either oppressed or neglected.

Films that have treated race issues seriously and critically have been Alejandro Galindo’s El juicio de Martín Cortés (1973), Julián Pastor’s La casta divina (1976) and Los pequeños privilegios (1977), Ismael Rodríguez’s El niño Tizoc (1971) and Animas Trujano (1961) [with Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune], Rolando Klein’s Chac, dios de la lluvia (1974), Raúl Araiza’s Cascabel (1976), and Luis Alcoriza’s Tarahumara (1964)

Besides oppression and neglect, the official glorification of the Indian (overvaluation) has served to marginalize him.  Also, by making Indians exotic they become peculiar and strangers in their own land.

It should be noted, moreover, that the term “Indian” in Mexico has lost its original ethnic signification.  Indian is used as a sociological or economic term to denote either “primitive” or “poor” (i.e., “underdeveloped”).   UntilMexican Indians share in the shaping of the national destiny, they will continue to be disenfranchised, ignored, excluded, and voiceless.

The year 1931 marks the birth of the national sound film industry, the largest in the South American continent until its decline in the 1940s (one year after the country’s first military coup d’État.  Latin America’s first socially critical film genre, the “socialist-folkloric,” peaked in the 1930s and early 1940s with this popular social criticism genre.

Juan Domingo Perón

Colonel Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974) first appeared in Argentine politics as a participant in the military coup of 1943.  He subsequently became Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare and introduced the first legislation governing the Argentine film industry.  In 1946 (until 1955) Perón becomes President and introduces a period of fierce economic and cultural nationalism, a populist brand of politics, and remarkably progressive labor and social welfare policies.  But in Perón’s tenure as president the film industry turned its back on the popular form and national themes of the 1930s in favor of European sources and a bourgeois form.  It was not until 1973, when Perón returned to power (after 18 years of exile), that the film industry became distinctly Argentine in style, popular, critical, and socially engaged.  In 1973, also, production levels and attendance figures soared.  However, political repression returned with the death of Perón (1974) and the reestablishment of a military Junta that lasted from 1976 to 1983. During this period, production fell to its lowest level in 20 years and foreign markets (essential for the survival of Argentina’s film industry) were lost.  The domestic market became dominated by second-rate US films.  Censorship doomed state co-production assistance.  The popular Argentine taste was also debased.

Perón was first overthrown by the military in 1955.  Fernando Birri, in 1956, founded La Escuela Documental de Santa Fe, a documentary film school.  He had been influenced by the Centro Sperimentale in Rome, where he had studied previously.  This cinema was more critical and less popular.  In the 1950s, Nuevo Cine also appeared in Argentina, a movement of young Argentine directors influenced by auteurist European cinema.  Theirs would be an intellectual and introverted cinema.  They engaged in adaptations of the urbane works of famous Argentine novelists like Julio Cortázar. 

In the 1960s, Cine Liberación was created.  This is the famous guerrilla Third Cinema whose aim was to liberate its spectators from neo-colonial systems of oppression (i.e., capitalism and foreign enterprise) and to offer resistance to the military government (which upheld those values and practices).  Their most famous film was Fernando Solanas & Gregorio Getino’s La hora de los hornos (1968).  In 1973, the military government abdicated and Perón returned to the presidency alter 18 years in exile (in Spain).  Upon Perón’s return, censorship was abolished, film production grew again, and efforts were made to limit the influence of foreign films in the domestic market.  This was a cultural renaissance for Cine Liberación.  The film industry revived the traditional Argentine film genres and themes (e.g., Torre Nilsson’s Boquitas pintadas (Heartbreak Tango, 1974).  Upon Perón’s death 18 months later, the Peronist Right and the Peronist Left engaged in an undeclared civil war and the military took over again in 1976 (until 1983), overthrowing Isabel Martínez de Perón (born in 1931), Juan Domingo Perón’s successor (1974-1976).

During the military dictatorship, Argentine distributors began to distribute large numbers of foreign films, especially from the US.  Very few Argentine films were shown, as well as practically no Cuban films (the latter on account of political censorship).  Production in this period was geared for the bourgeoisie and European markets (again), while the Argentine working class and Latin American markets were neglected. Some successful Argentine films were María Luisa Bemberg’s Camila (1984), Luis Puenzo’s La historia official (1985), and Fernando Solanas’s Tangos, el exilio de Gardel (1985). 

Tangos, el exilio de Gardel

This report was written by Jorge Ventura, Secretary General of SICA, the Argentine film workers’ union.  SICA is affiliated with CGT (Confederación General de Trabajadores), the only national trade union in Argentina. 

SICA was instituted in the 1930s, when shooting days in Argentina could be 18 hours long.  In the 1940s, film was very popular.  The film industry had about 5,000 technicians who produced 42 feature films per year (in a country of 15 million inhabitants.  In 1983 (the last year of the military directory), only 12 feature films were produced.  The population then was 30 million.  In 1983, 42% of the films came from the US.  The film work force was reduced to 1,200 people.  Film labs laid off about 50% of its work force.

The Constitutional Government of the past 2 years (1984-86) has taken steps to protect citizens’ rights.  The Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía has been returned to the control of film people and a 10% tax on film admissions has been reintroduced for use by INC.  In 1984, 26 feature films were made. In 1985, only 15 films were made since the local market was in the control of multinational film firms interested in their own films.

The current state of the Argentine film industry is as follows:
1. Full thematic freedom exists.
2. State production credits have been implemented to help independent directors and producers).
3. Producers can receive advance payments from distributors to defray the cost of the final processing of the film.
4. Some technicians, actors, and directors defer their salaries to keep a film in production.
5. Large producers and the themes they adapt are those that present the least commercial risk.

The average cost of a film is approximately $280,000 USD, out of which 22% is paid to a technical team averaging 28 people.  The average length of production, including shooting and pre- and post-production is 7 weeks. 

Distribution:

There are three types of film distributors in argentina:
1. Those that distribute mostly Argentine and some foreign films.
2. National distributors that distribute exclusively foreign films.
3. Subsidiaries of US companies that distribute their own films.

Argentine distributors who buy films on the international market, mostly European films, are subjected to a “package” buying system.  The packages contain a fixed number of films, containing only 1 or 2 films of interest and 7 or 8 films with little or no commercial or artistic value.  In this way, fill-in material must be screened in order to recoup costs, further limiting the access of national films to the country’s movie screens.  This trash also contributes to a debasement of taste and represents an unnecessary drain of foreign exchange.  Neither the Argentine distributors of foreign films nor the US subsidiaries reinvest a single dollar of their huge profits in national film production, because there is no obligation for them to do so.

Some 4,400 foreign films have played in the Argentine market in the past 15 years, averaging 293 per annum.  All these films are linked to the firms that help determine the protectionist policies of the US, expressed through measures such as dumping, overpricing of products, over-valuation of the dollar, arbitrary and excessive interest rates, and the decline in prices paid for raw materials coming from the so-called Third World. 

In 1985, 157 films were released.  7 were Argentine and 75% of the remaining 146 were from the US and the European Economic Community (EEC), countries with whom Argentina has the greatest foreign debt.  Of this total, only 6 were Brazilian and none were from other Latin American countries, Africa, or Asia.

Exhibition:

There are now 1,117 movie theaters in Argentina.  In 1967, there were 2,200.  In less than 20 years, the total number of cinemas has been reduced by nearly 50%.  Why?  Because of the lack of adequate protection of Argentine cinema in its own market; the growing invasion of foreign films; the increase of illiteracy in the interior of the country; rising unemployment and a decline of salaries; the increase in admission prices; and the thematic impoverishment of the national cinema.  Also, on account of the home video, people are moving away from public entertainment.

Exhibition is the strongest sector of the film industry since it recoups 50% of the net revenue of a film.  90% of what is exhibited is foreign and they have no interest in maintaining Argentine films.  For this reason, SICA established a Comité Permanente de Defensa del Cine Argentino (Argentine Cinema Defense Group) in 1968 to fight against censorship and blacklisting.  Its purpose is to support the rights of film workers in Argentina, increase the professional capacity of its members, implement a system that would provide Argentine cinema better access to its own market, prevent the infiltration of foreign made dupes, which destroys sources of work for Argentine technicians, and to legislate the compulsory exhibition of the Argentine short film.  SICA support co-productions between countries.

Suzana Amaral directed Hour of the Star, Brazil’s Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film in 1986.  It received numerous awards at the Berlin Film Festival (1986), Brasilia Film Festival (1985), International Women’s Film Festival (1986), and the Havana Film Festival (1986).  She shot the film on a budget of $150,000 in four weeks.  It was based on a novel by Clarice Lispector.  It deals with cultural differences between the provincial North and the urban South of Brazil.  The South is always seen as wonderful to Northerners.  But Amaral would suggest that Northerners stay in the North, where life is better for them. 

One thing Amaral notices about Brazilians is that they are too passive.  They are not fiery, like the Argentines.  Brazilinas deny there is racism but it is harder for Africans to change their social status in Brazil than in the US, where racism is acknowledged as a reality.  In Brazil there is no racism as long as people remain in their place.

Also, Brazilinas do not react vs. military regimes as they do in Argentina.  It’s not a question of censorship.  It’s more a lack of interest.  The Portuguese accepted miscegenation and assimilation.  Blacks need to get angrier and rebellious (and not be passive). 

Being a woman in Brazil is no different than being a man, according to Amaral.  One has to do one’s work and be assertive, that’s all. 

The film industry is weak in Brazil, but not the TV industry, where the money is (because of advertisement).  The two don’t mix well. Embrafilme no longer supports the film industry (it no longer exists).  There is also a greater interest in foreign (mainly US) films in Brazil, as in the rest of the world.  Although exhibitors in Brazil have a quota system by which they have to play national films, they prefer to pay a fine or make their own films (chanchadas [musicals] or pornochanchadas [erotic musicals]) than to play national Brazilian films and lose money.  Also, many theaters have closed down, unable to compete with TV or videos (which are less expensive to make than films).  Cinema Novo directors are now making commercials and making lots of money.  No one worries or cares about social issues anymore; only about making money. 

Chanchada

In Brazilian cinema, Indians had the legal status of  “wards of the State.” They were not allowed to represent themselves and were often represented by blacks.  In a similar vein, in the US white actors performed in blackface.

Brazil is an Afro-Iberian nation.  The Portuguese practiced miscegeneation with the Africans and Indians of Brazil.  Brazil is similar to the US in that they imported large numbers of Africans as slaves.  They also abolished slavery at about the same time: 1863 in the US, 1888 in Brazil.  Both nations also received many immigrants, apart from the dominant Europeans (English or Portuguese) and native Indians and imported Africans: Italians, Germans, Japanese, Slavic, Arabic, and Jewish. 

New York and São Paulo are similar.

Brazilians rejected segregation and adopted a paternalistic whitening. 

Blacks are seen in the US as forming part of a binary system: people are either black or white.  Brazil has 4 basic racial groups: brancos (54.8%), pardos (mulattoes: 38.6%), pretos (blacks: 5.9%), and amarelos (yellows, asiatics: 0.67%) but it is strongly implied that  "white is better."  Racism in Brazil is akin to sexism in the US.  It’s “paternalistic,” not based on fear or hatred.  In Brazil one’s soul may be black, but its ideal ego is still white.  Blacks are underrepresented in the media in Brazil, which prefers Scandinavian-like models.

Up to the 1940s in the US, blacks were seen as domestics or comic persons (e.g., Birth of a Nation [1915], Gone with the Wind [1939]).  Older US films also glamourized slavery and the South. 

Gus, a "renegade negro" captured by the Ku Klux Klan 
in D. W. Griffith's US silent classic, Birth of a Nation (1915), 
was played by US-European actor Walter Long in blackface 
(Museum of Modern Art, Foilm Stills Archive)

The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith, 1915, silent black and white film. The scene depicts the "renegade Negro," Gus, played by white actor Walter Long in blackface, in the hands of the Klan, from Part II of The Birth of a Nation. Museum of Modern Art, Film Stills Archive. 

Common black stereotypes in the US and Brazil:

• The noble, faithful slave: Uncle Tom, Uncle Remus / Pai João, Preto velho (Old Joe / Old black).
• The mammy (devoted woman slave or servant) / Mae preta (black mother).
• The mulatto (uppity, but also sinister and dangerous, as in Birth of a Nation)
• The mulatta (lascivious Jezebel), sexually desirable and dangerous. 
• Street-smart hustler / malandro.  Trickster figure.
• The Negão (big black) or the Buck.  Assimilable in the US.  Brute strength and hyperbolic sexuality. 
• The martyr
• The black with a white soul.
• The Noble savage.
• The crioulo doido / "crazy nigger").  Clown.
• The Musa / no US equivalent.

The Musa

• Early Studio System:
• Cinédia (1930s)
• Atlântida (1940s)
• Vera Cruz (1940s)
• Embrafilme (Empresa Brasileira de Filmes: 1969-1980)
• Concine (Conselho Nacional do Cinema)
• Fundaçao Brasileira de Cinema) [1960s]
• Instituto Nacional do Cinema (1966-)

---

Getúlio Vargas
(1883-1954)
President of Brazil: 1930-1945, 1950-1954

During the heyday of Embrafilme, the state would provide to producers and directors low interest loans, advances on distribution, and co-productions arrangements with private companies.  The subsidy programs would cover from 25% to 60% to 100% of the entire film production. 

During 1969-1975 there was a repressive military rule in Brazil.

In Brazil, the exhibitor is the enemy of the national film industry since he loses money when he shows Brazilian instead of foreign (mostly US) films.  There is, a quota system in Brazil that forces exhibitors to show national films for 140 every year.  However, the exhibitors prefer to pay a fine than show national films.  If they are wealthy enough, they produce their own movies, usually chanchadas (musicals), pornochanchadas (erotic musicals), soft- and hard-core pornography, and children films, all of which make money.  Quality national film or Cinema Novo works are consider boring and unentertaining.

Since its origins at the end of the 19th century, Mexican cinema has been one of the most important cultural manifestations and art forms in the nation.  Thematically, Mexican film has addressed questions of traditions, values, societal issues, gender roles, political topics, the historical past, identity, national character, and culture.

Mexico has three distinct cinemas, which are as follows:

• Private Sector Productions: These films account for 90% of the entire film production in the country.  Their heyday was in the 1970s and early 1980s.  Since then, they have experienced a decline in box-office and video revenue nationally and internationally.  One exception is María Elena Velasco, “La India María,” the one superstar of private industry productions.  The objective of these films is to make them as inexpensive as possible and hope to maximize the profit on them (how?  God knows).  The storyline is standard and repetitive; there is a heavy dosage of nudity, sex, violence, and raunchy language. Thematically they focus on crime, immigration, humor, urban and rural violence, some politics, and rancheras (singing Westerns popular during Mexico’s Golden Age [1940s-1950s]). The audience of these products are the popular sectors of Mexico and US latino immigrants.
• State Co-productions: Since the 1970s, the Mexican state became intimately involved in the production, exhibition, and distribution of films.  In the last two decades, the state has been the principal supporter of quality artistic cinema.  The measure of the success of these films is not determined by box-office returns but by critical acclaim.
• Independent Productions:  These films are produced without the support of commercial or state sponsors.  They are produced or co-produced by the two leading Mexican film schools: the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos of the National University (CUEC) and the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC).  Directors who film independently in Mexico are Paul Leduc and Humberto Hermosillo.

The Tragic Decade: 1976-1985:

The period of 1971 to 1976 was a good one for Mexican cinema on account of the Luis Echevarría presidency, which was supportive of film.  His brother, Rodolfo Echevarría, was then Director of the Banco Cinematográfico,  The State sponsored many film projects.  However, the next sexenio (6-year presidential term), under President José López Portillo (1971-1982), was tragic for Mexican cinema, especially on account of the president’s sister, Margarita López Portillo, director of the Dirección General de Radio, Televisión y Cinematografía (part of the Ministry of the Interior), who spoke against political or social issues in the cinema, wanted “family-oriented films,” and withdrew support for the two production companies, Conacite I and Conacite II, thus eliminating almost all state-sponsored film production.  Many filmmakers then joined Televisa, Mexico’s largest private television and media conglomerate.  Film quality, now almost exclusively (95%) in the hands of the private sector, deteriorated.  Another tragic event was a fire at the Cineteca Nacional, the principal Mexican film depository, which destroyed 5,000 prints and other valuable materials.

A more positive outlook took place under President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988).  The Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE) was created. Its main function was to oversee all cinema policy and matters including production, exhibition, and distribution.  The first appointed director was filmmaker Alberto Isaacs, who, unfortunately, made several wrong decisions.  In 1984 he was replaced by Enrique Soto Izquierdo, a corrupt politician.  However, during this administration, Arturo Ripstein’s El imperio de la fortuna (1985), an impressive film was made.

The Generation of the Crisis:  Collective characteristics:

• Their films addressed the social disintegration of traditional institutions and social relationships.
• Their stories are developed through the individual character study of the central male character.  Women’s roles are secondary.
• This generation had a supportive relationship with the previous generation of filmmakers.
• They debuted their works in the most difficult political and economic period in Mexico.

• A cinema in search of a lost audience.  From the Golden Age of 1949-1954, Mexican films had had the largest audience in Latin America.  However, they started imitating Hollywood products and became repetitive and unoriginal.  Subsequently, by the 1970s, Mexicans preferred foreign films to Mexican cinema.
• As audiences preferred US and foreign films, exhibitors and distributors followed suit.  Subsequently, only the lesser quality theaters would show Mexican films while the luxury theaters would show exclusively foreign films.
• The State became committed in producing alternative artistic cinema.  Hence, it was involved in “artistic supervision.” 
• Since the 1980s, Mexico has suffered a profound economic crisis.  The State has used its subsidies for basic expenditures, reducing sucha areas as culture. 

The Generation of the 1990s:

• These directors received their training at the two leading Mexican film schools: the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica and the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos.
• These directors have more control over all aspects of film production.
• They have formed new production partnerships (co-productions, especially with Spanish TV).
• They have been influenced by documentary filmmaking.
• Over one third of Mexican directors of this generation are women María Novaro (Danzón, 1991), Guita Schyfter (Novia que te vea, 1993), etc.
• Some famous Mexican directors are Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también), Luis Estrada Rodríguez (La ley de Herodes), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores perros), Luis Carlos Carrera (El crimen del padre Amaro), and Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, El espinazo del diablo).
• The cinematic themes and genres of the 1990s are: the rise of feminism, the participation of women in all aspects of contemporary Mexican filmmaking, women’s stories, historical revisionist narratives, comedy, contemporary political and social issues, alternative lifestyles and values, different social roles (for men and women), adventure and science-fiction.

Claudette Maillé (as Oshinica Mataraso) & (Maya Mishalska (as Rifke Groman)
in Novia que te vea (May I See You a Bride)

In 1983, Argentina returned to constitutional democracy after a decade of military rule.  Filmmaking was one of the ares of cultural production that received special attention.  The breaking of taboo and prohibition, the freeing of the imagination to fantasy, a respect for the mundane and everyday, the introduction of humor and music, the construction of new narrative strategies, and the reconsideration of the relationship to the audience contributed to forging a new “collective subjectivity.” The new elected government of Argentina promoted the stimulation of film production through the Instituto Argentino de Cinematografía.  Although the Instituto suffered economically by the year 1988, some quality films were produced during this period, e.g.: Luis Puenzo’s La historia official (The Official Story), which won the 1986 Oscar for Best Foreign Film; María Luisa Bemberg’s Camila (1984); Eliseo Subiela’s Hombre mirando al sudeste (Man Facing Southeast, 1986), and Fernando Solanas’s Tango, el exilio de Gardel (Tango, The Exile of Gardel, 1986).  These movies were commercial successes, technically glossy, and, at the same time, addressed sociopolitical issues. 

After 1983, Argentine directors did not invest heavily in experimental cinematography.  However, they stood in opposition to the commercial Hollywood norm; hence, they produced “counter-cinema.” Counter-cinema is marked by interiorization and criticism of Hollywood codes like narrative cinema, emotional identification, masking the means of production, a singular, unified, and homogeneous diegetic space, textual closure and a self-contained fiction that leads to pacifying the spectator.  Counter-cinema uses the means of postmodernism to deconstruct these codes.  It questions history and politics.  It appeals to allegorical configurations.  It makes the personal political and the particular historical, for everything forms part of the social fabric.  Counter-cinema also recodifies film genres (science fiction, soap operas, melodramas, and erotic pornography).

Film in Argentina is seen as high or elite culture.  It is the most representative manifestation of Argentine culture. 

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