• Course Description:

    Revolutionary vampires in Havana fight the mafia to gain control of a potion that will allow them to enjoy the Cuban sun; a young indigenous couple suffers the terrible persecution of their community in Mexico; an Argentine taxidermist planning a lucrative heist confronts humans’ fraught relationship to non-human animals. Latin American filmmakers have often been on the forefront of efforts to use film to entertain and emotionally engage audiences while heightening their awareness of—and prompting them to take action to resolve—socio-economic problems and political oppression. In this course we will explore the wildly inventive ways in which different types of filmmaking (fiction, documentary, animation and hybrids) and a variety of cinematic genres (comedy, melodrama, horror and exploitation, noir) have been deployed by Latin American filmmakers to create politically-engaged cinema. Although extraordinary films have been produced throughout Latin America, this semester we will pay special attention to works from three countries: Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. This will also allow us to explore in greater depth the complexities of each context.

  • Instructor(s): SUSAN MARTIN-MÁRQUEZ