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Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema brings together fourteen scholars to analyze Latin American cinema in dialogue with recent theories of posthumanism and ecocriticism. Together they grapple with how Latin American filmmakers have attempted to "push past the human," and destabilize the myth of anthropocentric exceptionalism that has historically been privileged by cinema and has led to the current climate crisis. While some chapters question the very nature of this enterprise—whether cinema should or even could actualize such a maneuver beyond the human—others signal the ways in which the category of the "human" itself is interrogated by Latin American cinema, revealed to be a fiction that excludes more than it unifies. This volume explores how the moving image reinforces or contests the division between human and nonhuman, and troubles the settler epistemic partition of culture and nature that is at the core of the climate crisis. As the first volume to specifically address how such questions are staged by Latin American cinema, this book brings together analysis of films that respond to environmental degradation, as well as those that articulate a posthumanist ethos that blurs the line between species.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Latin American Cinema Beyond the Human
Carolyn Fornoff and Gisela Heffes

Part I: Genre Beyond the Human

1. Movies on the Move: Filming the Amazon Rainforest
Patrícia Vieira

2. Visualizing the Geosphere: The 1985 Earthquake in Mexican Cinema
Carolyn Fornoff

3. Revisiting Nature and Documenting the Americas: From Alexander von Humboldt to the Contemporary Latin American Documentary
Juana New

4. Slow Violence in the Slow Cinema of Lisandro Alonso
Amanda Eaton McMenamin

Part II: Encountering Difference

5. Humanimal Assemblages: Slaughters in Latin American Left-Wing Cinema
Moira Fradinger

6. Reordering Material Hierarchies in Jossie Malis Álvarez's Animated Series, Bendito Machine
Katherine Bundy

7. Mapping Queer Natures in Papu Curotto's Esteros
Vinodh Venkatesh

8. Counterflows: Hydraulic Order and Residual Ecologies in Caribbean Fantasy Landscapes
Lisa Blackmore

9. Differential Viscosities: The Material Hermeneutics of Blood, Oil, and Water in Crude and The Blood of Kouan Kouan
Mark Anderson

Part III: Screening the Pluriverse

10. Human Rights at the End of the World: Patricio Guzmán and the "Imperative to Reimagine the Planet"
Fernando J. Rosenberg

11. Sea Turtles and Seascapes: Representing Human-Nature Relations in the Central American Caribbean
Mauricio Espinoza and Tomás Emilio Arce

12. Refracting Lenses on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: Documenting Social Ecologies and Biospheres in El ojo del tiburón and El canto de Bosawas
Julia M. Medina

13. The Sacred Space of Motoapohua: Intercorporeal Animality and National Subjectivities in Nicolás Echevarría's Eco de la montaña
Iván Eusebio Aguirre Darancou

14. Undisciplined Knowledge: Indigenous Activism and Decapitation Resistance
Gisela Heffes

Contributors
Index

Sujets

Film

Caribbean

SS Central America

Central America

History of film

History of the Americas

Latin America

South America

Visual culture

América del Sur

Película fotográfica

Latin American

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438484051
Langue	English

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Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema
SUNY series in Latin American Cinema

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado and Leslie L. Marsh, editors
Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema
Edited by
CAROLYN FORNOFF AND GISELA HEFFES
Cover image: Still from Bendito Machine V, “Pull the Trigger,” created by Jossie Malis. Reprinted with permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fornoff, Carolyn, editor. | Heffes, Gisela, 1971– editor.
Title: Pushing past the human in Latin American cinema / edited by Carolyn Fornoff and Gisela Heffes.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series in Latin American cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020058285 | ISBN 9781438484037 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484051 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Latin America—History and criticism. | Climatic changes in motion pictures. | Ecology in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.L3 P87 2021 | DDC 791.43098—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058285
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to our families, our friends, and the worlds that sustain us.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Latin American Cinema Beyond the Human
Carolyn Fornoff and Gisela Heffes
GENRE BEYOND THE HUMAN
1. Movies on the Move: Filming the Amazon Rainforest
Patrícia Vieira
2. Visualizing the Geosphere: The 1985 Earthquake in Mexican Cinema
Carolyn Fornoff
3. Revisiting Nature and Documenting the Americas: From Alexander von Humboldt to the Contemporary Latin American Documentary
Juana New
4. Slow Violence in the Slow Cinema of Lisandro Alonso
Amanda Eaton McMenamin
ENCOUNTERING DIFFERENCE
5. Humanimal Assemblages: Slaughters in Latin American Left-Wing Cinema
Moira Fradinger
6. Reordering Material Hierarchies in Jossie Malis Álvarez’s Animated Series, Bendito Machine
Katherine Bundy
7. Mapping Queer Natures in Papu Curotto’s Esteros
Vinodh Venkatesh
8. Counterflows: Hydraulic Order and Residual Ecologies in Caribbean Fantasy Landscapes
Lisa Blackmore
9. Differential Viscosities: The Material Hermeneutics of Blood, Oil, and Water in Crude and The Blood of Kouan Kouan
Mark Anderson
SCREENING THE PLURIVERSE
10. Human Rights at the End of the World: Patricio Guzmán and the “Imperative to Reimagine the Planet”
Fernando J. Rosenberg
11. Sea Turtles and Seascapes: Representing Human-Nature Relations in the Central American Caribbean
Mauricio Espinoza and Tomás Emilio Arce
12. Refracting Lenses on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: Documenting Social Ecologies and Biospheres in El ojo del tiburón and El canto de Bosawas
Julia M. Medina
13. The Sacred Space of Motoapohua: Intercorporeal Animality and National Subjectivities in Nicolás Echevarría’s Eco de la montaña
Iván Eusebio Aguirre Darancou
14. Undisciplined Knowledge: Indigenous Activism and Decapitation Resistance
Gisela Heffes
Contributors
Index
Illustrations Figure 3.1 Selk’nam man with ritual body paint, photographed by Martin Gusinde in the Catholic mission of Dawson Island (1918–1924). Patricio Guzmán, El botón de nácar, 2015, video still. Figures 5.1 and 5.2 Sergei Eisenstein, Strike , 1924, USSR, video still. Figure 5.3 Margot Benacerraf, Araya , 1959, Venezuela, video still. Figures 5.4 and 5.5 Glauber Rocha, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol , 1964, Brazil, video still. Figures 5.6 and 5.7 Fernando Solanas and Gustavo Getino, La hora de los hornos , 1968, Argentina, video still. Figure 6.1 Jossie Malis Álvarez, Bendito Machine , “Obey His Commands,” 2009, video still. Figure 6.2 Jossie Malis Álvarez, Bendito Machine , “Fuel the Machines,” 2012, video still. Figure 6.3 Jossie Malis Álvarez, Bendito Machine , “Pull the Trigger,” 2014, video still. Figure 7.1 Haptic visuality and the aesthetics of New Maricón Cinema. Papu Curotto, Esteros , 2016, video still. Figure 7.2 The geography of the natural in the title sequence. Papu Curotto, Esteros , 2016, video still. Figure 7.3 Interstices of the aquatic and the erotic. Papu Curotto, Esteros , 2016, video still. Figure 8.1 Johanné Gómez Terrero, Caribbean Fantasy: Una historia del amor en el Río Ozama, 2016, video still. Figure 11.1 Esteban Ramírez, Caribe , 2004, video still. Figure 11.2 Dania Torres, Lih Wina , 2012, video still. Figure 12.1 Alejo Hoijman, El ojo del tiburón , 2012, video still. Figure 12.2 “But here we do not want more harassment. We are not going to leave this place.” Nirio Simion, chief of the Mayangna Sauni As territory. Brad Allgood and Camilo de Castro, El canto de Bosawas , 2014, video still. Figure 13.1 The final shot reveals Santos de la Torre’s mural in its totality. Nicolás Echevarría, Eco de la montaña , 2014, video still. Figure 13.2 Close-up of Santos de la Torre’s mural: humanimal and vegetal intersubjectivities. Nicolás Echevarría, Eco de la montaña , 2014, video still. Figure 14.1 Close-up of a police officer during the repression of local villagers and activists. Stephanie Boyd, Operación diablo , 2010, video still. Figure 14.2 Police ready themselves to violently repress protestors. Danielle Bernstein and Anne Slick, When Clouds Clear , 2008, video still.
Acknowledgments
The idea for this volume began with a panel on Contemporary Latin American Cinema Beyond the Human at the 2017 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Chicago. There, we came together with Iván Aguirre and Jorge Marcone to discuss the unprecedented boom in ecologically oriented films occurring throughout Latin America. We wanted to better understand what this greening meant for Latin American film studies, as well as what Latin American approaches to environmental issues brought to broader theories of ecocriticism. We are grateful to the panelists and conference attendees for the vibrant conversation that took place in that room four years ago, which provided us with the necessary push to bring this project to fruition. It has been a pleasure working and thinking with our contributors about Latin American cinema’s engagement with the human and more-than-human world.
We are thankful to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and to Rice University for their generous patronage of this work. Thank you as well to Jossie Malis Álvarez for allowing us to reprint his striking work from Bendito Machine on the cover. Thank you to Andrew Ascherl for meticulously indexing this book. An earlier version of Lisa Blackmore’s chapter was previously published in Spanish in Revista Iberoamericana .
Finally, we would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the editorial team at SUNY. Our project was shepherded through the publication process by Rebecca Colesworthy, editor extraordinaire. James Peltz kindly stepped in to support us during Rebecca’s maternity leave. Eileen Nizer guided us through production. The two anonymous external readers helped us identify the volume’s blind spots and solidify its argument. We are grateful to Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado and Leslie L. Marsh for including this volume in their vibrant series on Latin American Cinema.
Introduction
Latin American Cinema Beyond the Human
CAROLYN FORNOFF AND GISELA HEFFES
After years of visiting zoos in Mexico City, Caracas, and New York—strolling and sketching animals, gathering ideas for poems—in 1938, the Mexican writer José Juan Tablada declared that zoos were, in fact, hellish. Contrary to expectation, he wrote in a crónica published in Excélsior , little could be learned from seeing animals in captivity because the “diabolical torment of claustrophobia” rendered them unnaturally sluggish. 1 If his readers actually wanted to learn about animals, Tablada suggested, they should watch the films by Martin and Osa Johnson, which “reveal the secrets of the jungle.” 2 Naturalist explorers and documentary filmmakers from Kansas, the Johnsons pioneered the nature film genre with films like Congorilla (1932) and Baboona (1935). The first to film Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya by air, they inaugurated the now-iconic aerial shots of herds traversing the African plains. Their adventure-documentaries simulated the face-to-face encounter with wild animals and interpreted the behavior shown on-screen. 3
Taken with these moving images, Tablada concluded that cinema was a better pedagogical tool than the zoo. Unlike the zoo, “a color and sound film,” he wrote, “captures the marvelous colors of hides and plumages, the savage and mysterious polyphony of the virgin jungle.” 4 Tablada proposed that film was the optimal medium, ethically and aesthetically, for experiencing nonhuman wildlife—better than seeing it in the flesh. Cinema was less interventionist; the camera observed without disrupting. The cinematic experience of the nonhuman, he wrote,