New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas (Traditions in World Cinema)

Several Latin American films ('Amores Perros', 'Y Tu Mama Tambien', 'Cidade de Deus', 'Central do Brasil', 'Nueve Reinas', 'El Hijo de la Novia') enjoyed an unprecedented level of critical and commercial success in the world film market. These films were considered transnational as they benefited from substantial external capital or creative. Followed in the 2000s by a series of equally critical and/or commercially successful 'deterritorialised' films by some of the same directors, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles the incipient transnationalism of the first films and the directors' position in international cinema was confirmed. This book incorporates the Latin America/Hollywood and Indiewood vector of filmmaking into its study of the region's transnationalised filmmaking. It argues that although undoubtedly 'commercial', films produced either within, or under the structures of Hollywood are not necessarily apolitical nor totally divorced from key notions of national or continental identity. Tierney shows that it is the auteurist nature of many of these deterritorialised transnational films which plays a key role in their ability to engage with issues of national and continental identity and to forge a transnational tradition beyond the geospatial limits of the region. To support its arguments about the transnational trend, the book uses textual analysis and industrial case studies looking both at the five directors who have most publically interacted and, in their own ways influenced, the trend as well as those of other filmmakers who are also involved in it.