Cinephilic retreats and transient connections in Hispanic cinemas
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In what follows I explore the ways in which cinephilia, an area of discussion that has flourished again with the digital turn,1 works as an idiom that is conscientiously performed by a mobile Hispanic cinema seeking to position itself in the relational networks of ‘World Cinema’ (a label that, like ‘Hispanic’, has undergone much scrutiny and deconstruction). Such networks – comprising private and public funders, film festivals, boutique distributors and specialist venues – draw cultural capital from showcasing the new ‘found objects’ of cinephilia. In 2014 one such object was the Mexican fiction film Güeros, by first-time director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Produced with support from the Mexican Film Institute, Ruizpalacios’s debut feature had a highly successful festival run, showing at over twenty festivals from its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2014 (where it took the award for Best First Feature) to its widespread recognition at the Mexican Film Awards in May 2015.2 I encountered the film in a packed screening at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where it received the Latin Horizons Prize for the best Latin American film, and was the audience’s choice for the Youth Award. And yet Güeros’s success with festival audiences cannot be, indeed should not be, disentangled from its uneasy relationship with cinephilia.
Source: Screen
Author: Belén Vidal
Language: English
Topic: Cinema and Media Studies
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Award: G7046047098
OpenAlex ID: W2808449703