The cinema of Lucrecia Martel provides a comprehensive analysis of the work of the acclaimed Argentine director, whose elusive and elliptical feature films have garnered worldwide recognition since her 2001 debut La cienaga. This volume considers existing critical work on Martel's oeuvre, and proposes new ways of understanding it, in particular through desire, the use of the child's perspective, and through the senses and perception. Martin also offers an analysis of the politics of Martel's films, showing how they can be understood as sites of transformation and possibility, develops queer approaches to Martel's films, and shows how they offer new forms of cinematic pleasure. The cinema of Lucrecia Martel combines traditional plot and gaze analysis with an understanding of film as a material object, to explore the films' sensory experiments and their challenges to dominant cinematic forms. -- .

This book explores crucial moments in the emergence of feminine culture in Colombia through the work of ground-breaking artist Debora Arango, best-selling novelist Laura Restrepo, and three generations of documentary filmmakers. Women artists, writers and filmmakers in Colombia have consistently foregrounded the relationship between gender and the often violent processes which have marked the country's history over the past century. This book explores crucial moments in the emergence of feminine culture in Colombia hitherto unexamined in English-language criticism through an examination of the work of ground-breaking artist Debora Arango, best-selling novelist Laura Restrepo, andthree generations of documentary filmmakers. Deborah Martin shows how Colombian women writers and artists have critiqued discourses that territorialize femininity and provided alternative models that free women from their passive or allegorical representational status as border guards, re-thinking feminine subjectivity and taking it to new symbolic territories. The book's approach---comparing art, literature and film---reveals a resistive trajectoryin dialogue with dominant tendencies in Colombian feminist theory, itself the product of an intellectual sphere conditioned by the need to think about political violence. DEBORAH MARTIN is a Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at University College London.

The cinema of Lucrecia Martel provides a comprehensive analysis of the work of the acclaimed Argentine director, whose elusive and elliptical feature films have garnered worldwide recognition since her 2001 debut La cienaga. This volume considers existing critical work on Martel's oeuvre, and proposes new ways of understanding it, in particular through desire, the use of the child's perspective, and through the senses and perception. Martin also offers an analysis of the politics of Martel's films, showing how they can be understood as sites of transformation and possibility, develops queer approaches to Martel's films, and shows how they offer new forms of cinematic pleasure. The cinema of Lucrecia Martel combines traditional plot and gaze analysis with an understanding of film as a material object, to explore the films' sensory experiments and their challenges to dominant cinematic forms. -- .

What is the child for Latin American cinema? This book aims to answer that question, tracing the common tendencies of the representation of the child in the cinema of Latin American countries, and demonstrating the place of the child in the movements, genres and styles that have defined that cinema. Deborah Martin combines theoretical readings of the child in cinema and culture, with discussions of the place of the child in specific national, regional and political contexts, to develop in-depth analyses and establish regional comparisons and trends. She pays particular attention to the narrative and stylistic techniques at play in the creation of the child's perspective, and to ways in which the presence of the child precipitates experiments with film aesthetics. Bringing together fresh readings of well-known films with attention to a range of little-studied works, The Child in Contemporary Latin American Cinema examines films from the recent and contemporary period, focussing on topics such as the death of the child in 'street child' films, the role of the child in post-dictatorship filmmaking and the use of child characters to challenge gender and sexual ideologies. The book also aims to place those analyses in a historical context, tracing links with important precursors, and paying attention to the legacy of the child's figuring in the mid-century movements of melodrama and the New Latin American Cinema.

Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.

Ada Mae Tyndall loves to argue. She doesn't have the best attitude about life and might be just a tad bitter. She's never been married and has convinced herself that she hasn't missed a thing. She surrounds herself with her flowers, her baking and the big, Victorian home she inherited from her parents. When her friend and attorney informs her a deceased town resident requested in his will that she have custody of his granddaughter, she asks herself, what would I do with a child? While seeking the advice of her attorney, she realizes she has feelings for him she never allowed herself to explore, and doesn't understand why God would bring her all this way through life alone, and then change His mind. With the support of her closest friends, she gives the girl a home. A custody battle with the child's biological mother threatens Ada Mae who wonders if opening her heart was right after all. Amidst tension, highly strung emotions and real Southern mayhem, Ada Mae fights for the child's future and discovers that God has destined the second half of her life to be the best

Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.