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Latin American Silent Cinema: Triangulation and the Politics of Criollo Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez
Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez*
Affiliation:
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
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Abstract

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Despite its important role in the construction of imagined communities throughout the region, the study of silent cinema in Latin America has barely gone beyond an initial stage of unearthing national and regional cinemas to a more comparative and critical study of trends and ideologies from a transnational perspective. This essay outlines such a comparative history by using the spatiotemporal metaphor of triangulation as a framework for theorizing the politics of criollo aesthetics, and by combining a diachronic examination of major trends with synchronic close readings of paradigmatic films. The periodization and selection of films respond, in turn, to a broader consideration of how ideology, aesthetics, and economics intersect in the evolution of filmic practices in Latin America during the silent era. Finally, in the conclusion, I argue that the most important legacy of this period of Latin American cinema on subsequent filmmaking in the region is not so much the elaboration of a criollo aesthetics, which would not survive beyond the silent period, but rather the development of the strategy of triangulation, whereby Latin American filmmakers navigated a global cinematic landscape from a position of marginality.

Resumo

Resumo

A pesar de la importancia que tuvo el cine mudo latinoamericano en la formación de comunidades imaginadas en el continente, el estudio de este cine se ha mantenido en una fase inicial de desenterrar y analizar cines nacionales y regionales. Este ensayo pretende dar el próximo paso en la historiografía del cine mudo latinoamericano, con un estudio comparado y crítico que usa la metáfora espacio-temporal de la triangulación como punto de partida para teorizar la política de la estética criolla que caracteriza este cine. El ensayo combina un estudio diacrónico de las principales tendencias con lecturas sincrónicas de películas paradigmáticas. La periodización y la selección de las películas responden, a la vez, a una consideración más amplia de la relación entre ideología, estética y economía en la evolución de las prácticas fílmicas en América Latina durante el periodo mudo. Por último, concluye con una discusión de cómo el principal legado de este cine en la subsiguiente producción de cine latinoamericano no es tanto la elaboración de una estética criolla, pues ésta no sobrevivirá más allá del periodo mudo, sino más bien el desarrollo de la estrategia de triangulación, a través de la cual los directores y productores de cine aprendieron a navegar un terreno cinematográfico global desde una posición de marginalidad.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , 2008 , pp. 33 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press

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