Contemporary Latin American Cinema

Latin American films such as Central do Brasil (1998), Nueve Reinas (2000), Amores perros (2000), Y tu mama tambien (2001), Hijo de la novia (2001), and Cidade de deus (2002) enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success when they debuted in the world film market. Considered transnational, these films benefited from substantial external capital and creative input. Followed in the mid- to late-2000s by a series of equally critical and commercially successful "deterritorialized" films by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles, and Walter Salles, the developing transnationalism of previous Latin American films and these directors' position in international cinema solidified. In its study of Latin American transnationalized filmmaking, this book focuses on the vector formed by Latin American, Hollywood, and Indiewood filmmaking. It argues that, although undoubtedly "commercial," films produced either within or under the supervision of Hollywood are not necessarily apolitical or totally divorced from notions of national and continental identity. Dolores Tierney emphasizes the auteurist nature of many of these deterritorialized transnational films, which plays a central role in their ability to engage with issues of national and continental being, as well as forge a transnational tradition beyond the geospatial limits of Latin America. In support of her arguments on transnational trends, Tierney deploys textual analysis and industrial case studies that consider the five directors who have most interacted with and, in their own way, influenced these developments, along with other influential filmmakers.