Contemporary Latin American Cinema and Resistance to Neoliberalism: Mapping the Field

This chapter investigates the relationship between neoliberalism and Latin America filmmaking from the 1990s onwards. Which impact did the privatizing of state-owned companies have on distribution and exhibition arrangements? How did narrative and aesthetic formats reflect these changes? In which way does contemporary Latin American cinema criticize but also benefit from neoliberal advancements? The author argues that there are loopholes within spaces of commodification that invite criticism and resistance. Initiatives on national, regional and pan-regional level support Latin American film and the ever-expanding funding scape offer opportunities to get film projects off the ground. Filmmakers use the subversive potential of genres to capture specifically Latin American experiences and sensibilities, reflecting on neoliberal ideology, its middle-class conventions and moral regimes