International Film Conference (IV TECMERIN Academic Meeting): Digital Imaginaries of the South: Stories of Belonging and Uprooting in Hispanic Cinemas, October 18-20, 2017, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid / Casa de América (Madrid)
Over the past twenty years, digital technology has become the standard in the film production, circulation, and consumption processes. Within this context, Hispanic cinemas have undergone deep changes, both within the countries with an established cinematic tradition, as well as in those that, due to several reasons, had not developed a robust cinematography throughout the 20th century. The analogue paradigm became deeply contested and a new digital framework, which was widely discussed by institutions, film critics, and academics, emerged. This moment coincides with the widespread generalization of national and transnational neoliberal policies that, far from backing diversity, have increased the gap between those “connected” and those “disconnected” (to draw upon Néstor García Canclini’s term); a gap also experienced by those that, even if connected, still occupy subaltern positions.
The speeding of these processes has resulted in an increase of mobility, at work both in the geographical displacement of film professionals and in the emergence of new narrative models that deal with questions of belonging and uprooting, springing precisely from these experiences of displacement. The cinemas of the Global South, and, most specifically, Hispanic cinemas, have actively taken part in these processes, ultimately playing a relevant role in terms of narrative and aesthetic models, and the production, circulation and consumption of film.
Following the main research axes of the R+D project “Transnational relations in Hispanic digital cinemas: the axes of Spain, Mexico, and Argentina” (CSO2014-52750-P), the International Conference Digital Imaginaries of the South: Stories of Belonging and Uprooting in Hispanic Cinemas conference will discuss these themes:
- The representation of migrations, displacements, exile, and diaspora.
- Transnational flows of cultural, economic, and human capital in the production and circulation of cinema.
- The reconfiguration of the regional, national, and transnational Hispanic interactions within the new century.
- Public discourses and film policies within the region.
- Hybridization and identity in the narratives on colonization, decolonization, and revolutionary processes.
- Activism and digital praxis.
- Genres, authors, stars.
- Film cultures and cinephilia: festivals, publications, and digital platforms.
- Minor cinemas: indigenismo, experimental, and/or militant cinemas.
- Historiographic, theoretical, and methodological problems of so-called Hispanic, Iberian, and Latin American cinemas.
Leo Matiz (1917-1998) muralista de la lente, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City. Closes 17 September 2017
