How do the islands and archipelagos of the New World figure in Latin
American cinema? Comprising 15 essays and a critical introduction, The
Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema addresses this
question by examining a series of intersections between insular spaces
and filmmaking in Latin America. The volume brings together
international scholars and filmmakers to consider a diverse corpus of
films about islands, films that take place on islands, films produced in
islands, and films that problematise islands.
The book explores a diverse range of films that extend from the Chilean
documentaries of Patricio Guzmán to work on the Malvinas/Falkland
Islands, and films by Argentine directors Gustavo Fontán and Lucrecia
Martel. Chapters focus on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Mexican Islas
Marías, and the Panamanian Caribbean; on ecocritical, environmental and
film historical aspects of Brazilian and Argentine river islands; and on
Cuban, Guadeloupean, Haitian, and Puerto Rican contexts.
The Film Archipelago argues that the islands and archipelagos of Latin
American cinema constitute a critically interesting, analytically
complex, and historically suggestive angle to explore issues of
marginality and peripherality, remoteness and isolation, and fragility
and dependency. As a whole, the collection demonstrates to what extent
the combined insular and archipelagic lens can re-frame and re-figure
both longstanding and recent discussions on the spaces of Latin American
cinema.
