This book gathers eleven scholarly contributions dedicated to the work of Mexican director Arturo Ripstein. The collection, the first of its kind, constitutes a sustained critical engagement with the twenty-nine films made by this highly acclaimed yet under-studied filmmaker. The eleven essays included come from scholars whose work stands at the intersection of the fields of Latin American and Mexican Film Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, History and Literary studies. Ripstein’s films, often scripted by his long-time collaborator, Paz Alicia Garciadiego, represent an unprecedented achievement in Mexican and Latin American film. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ripstein has successfully maintained a prolific output unmatched by any director in the region. Though several book-length studies have been published in Spanish, French, German, and Greek, to date no analogue exists in English. This volume provides a much-needed contribution to the field.

Latino American cinema is a provocative, complex, and definitively American topic of study. This book examines key mainstream commercial films while also spotlighting often-underappreciated documentaries, avant-garde and experimental projects, independent productions, features and shorts, and more. Latino American Cinema: An Encyclopedia of Movies, Stars, Concepts, and Trends serves as an essential primary reference for students of the topic as well as an accessible resource for general readers. The alphabetized entries in the volume cover the key topics of this provocative and complex genre—films, filmmakers, star performers, concepts, and historical and burgeoning trends—alongside frequently overlooked and crucially ignored items of interest in Latino cinema. This comprehensive treatment bridges gaps between traditional approaches to U.S.-Latino and Latin American cinemas, placing subjects of Chicana and Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban and diasporic Cuban, and Mexican origin in perspective with related Central and South American and Caribbean elements. Many of the entries offer compact definitions, critical discussions, overviews, and analyses of star artists, media productions, and historical moments, while several foundational entries explicate concepts, making this single volume encyclopedia a critical guide as well.

Twelve years ago, Amores Perros erupted in the cinemas across the world and announced the arrival of Mexican film-makers. The film-makers profiled in that book have now come of age and have made a decisive impact on the international cinema scene The last few years Mexican film-makers winning the Best Director Oscars 5 times, and Best Picture 4 times: Alfonso Cuaron with Gravity and Roma. Alejandro Inarritu with Birdman and The RevenantGuillermo del Toro with The Shape of WaterThis revised edition of The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema brings this astounding story up to date, as well as profiling the next generation, waiting in the wings.

Written by Hispanic and non-Hispanic scholars, these twelve essays -- six in English and six in Spanish -- disclose how over the past four centuries static and formulaic images of women in Hispanic art and literature have given way to lively and original portrayals. The leading ladies explored in this volume include women who are objects of the male gaze, women who gaze upon the male body, women who are characters, and women who are writers, painters, and filmmakers. The essayists offer a panorama that stimulates the senses and challenges assumptions as they reveal strategies used by both male and female writers and artists to unmask conventions, identify spaces, and remake paradigms.Marina Mayoral's introduction traces the representation of the beloved woman in Spanish lyric poetry from the Middle Ages to the present. The contributors and topics that follow include Amy Robinson on the silencing of female voices such as those of Cecilia Valdés and Carmen; Vilma Navarro-Daniels on the writer and historian Carmen Martín Gaite; Lynn Walford's analysis of Mario Vargas Llosa's leading ladies; Katherine Ford's exploration of Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera; Julia Carroll on Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi; George Thomas on the poetry of the seventeenth-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Alison Tatum-Davis on Carmen Laforet's Nada; Mónica Jato's examination of three female characters from Alfonso Sastre's trilogy Los crímenes extraños; Caryn Connelly on the collaborations of Mexican scriptwriter Paz Alicia Garcíadiego and film director Arturo Ripstein; Sharon Keefe Ugalde on cinema gender referents in the work of certain Spanish women poets; Carmen García de la Rasilla's study of female surrealist artists; and Mayte de Lama on three short-story characters of the fiction writer Marina Mayoral.Covering numerous genres, reaching across three continents, and using a variety of critical strategies, Leading Ladies presents a dazzling array of artistic endeavors in which women are of central importance.

With the recent release of spectacular blockbuster films from Gladiator to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the epic has once again become a major form in contemporary cinema. This new volume in the AFI Film Readers series explores the rebirth of the epic film genre in the contemporary period, a period marked by heightened and conflicting appeals to national, ethnic, and religious belonging.The orginal essays in this volume explore the tension between the evolving global context of film production and reception and the particular provenance of the epic as an expression of national mythology and aspirations, challenging our understanding of epics produced in the present as well as our perception of epic films from the past. The contributors will explore new critical approaches to contemporary as well as older epic films, drawing on ideas from cultural studies, historiography, classics, and film studies.

This study of Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu explores his role in moving Mexican filmmaking from a traditional nationalist agenda toward a more global focus. In studying the international scope of Iñárritu's influential films Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, the authors trace common themes such as human suffering and redemption, chance, and accidental encounters. The authors also analyze the director's visual style and his use of multiple characters and a fragmented narrative structure. The book concludes with an interview of Iñárritu that touches on the themes and subject matter of his chief works.

In 1931 Antonio Moreno completed Santa, Mexico's first true sound film. In it he established one of the foremost genres of Latin American cinema--the popular melodrama--which continues to this day. Latin American filmmakers came to the fore in the fifties and sixties and, as 1992's Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) showed, Latin American films continue to be a major part of the international film scene. In this work over 300 of the most significant films from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and other Latin American countries are covered. Each entry includes the English title, director, year of release, running time, language, country and a detailed plot synopsis. Notes about the production and the filmmakers are also provided for many entries.

Volume 5 of 6 of the complete premium print version of journal forum for inter-american research (fiar), which is the official electronic journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). fiar was established by the American Studies Program at Bielefeld University in 2008. We foster a dialogic and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Americas. fiar is a peer-reviewed online journal. Articles in this journal undergo a double-blind review process and are published in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

Mexican filmmaking is traced from its early beginnings in 1896 to the present in this book. Of particular interest are the great changes from 1990 to 2004: the confluence of talented and dedicated filmmakers, important changes in Mexican cinematic infrastructure and significant social and cultural transformations. From Nicolas Echevarria's Cabeza de Vaca (1991), to the 1992 releases of Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro's Cronos and Alfonso Arau's Como agua para chocolate, to Alfonso Cuaron's Y tu mama tambien (2001), this work provides a close look at Mexican films that received international commercial success and critical acclaim and put Mexico on the cinematic world map. Arranged chronologically, this edition (originally published in 2005) covers the entire scope of Mexican cinema. The main films and their directors are discussed, together with the political, social and economic contexts of the times.

How do the islands and archipelagos of the New World figure in Latin American cinema? Comprising 15 essays and a critical introduction, The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema addresses this question by examining a series of intersections between insular spaces and filmmaking in Latin America. The volume brings together international scholars and filmmakers to consider a diverse corpus of films about islands, films that take place on islands, films produced in islands, and films that problematise islands. The book explores a diverse range of films that extend from the Chilean documentaries of Patricio Guzmán to work on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, and films by Argentine directors Gustavo Fontán and Lucrecia Martel. Chapters focus on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Mexican Islas Marías, and the Panamanian Caribbean; on ecocritical, environmental and film historical aspects of Brazilian and Argentine river islands; and on Cuban, Guadeloupean, Haitian, and Puerto Rican contexts. The Film Archipelago argues that the islands and archipelagos of Latin American cinema constitute a critically interesting, analytically complex, and historically suggestive angle to explore issues of marginality and peripherality, remoteness and isolation, and fragility and dependency. As a whole, the collection demonstrates to what extent the combined insular and archipelagic lens can re-frame and re-figure both longstanding and recent discussions on the spaces of Latin American cinema.