Ciclo de Cine para Crisisss: América Latina, arte y confrontación 1910-2010

In the 1960s, a handful of Latin American features won critical acclaim at prestigious international film festivals. Building on lessons drawn from Italian neo-realism and revolutionary Soviet montage, these were films made “with a camera in one hand and a rock in the other”, to use the words of the 1969 manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema” [Hacia un tercer cine]. But what this First World recognition of the “aesthetics of hunger,” “imperfect cinema,” and “Third Cinema” (as a loose grouping of Latin American films was called in its different manifestos and manifestations) too often failed to acknowledge was that social confrontation, anti-imperialism, class conflict and ideological debate had been recurring themes in Latin American cinema since shortly after the medium’s birth. The film program for crisisss. Latin America, Art and Confrontation. 1910-2010 offers a selective overview of some outstanding moments in this history, incorporating works in any number of genres and styles: newsreels, experimental cinema, educational shorts, documentaries, fake documentaries, art films, actualities, animation, revolutionary epics, feature-length fiction films, and more. What the individual titles that make up this diverse film program all share is a common social engagement. Like the rich survey of visual arts with which they are paired here, they seek innovative, often radical, formal strategies to engage Latin America’s complex histories, societies and politics, repeatedly crossing national borders and enduring prolonged exiles.