Expanding Cinemas
Experimental Filmmaking across the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic since 1960
Explores experimental cinema and alternative film formats from across the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic, from the 1960s to the present.
Description
This is the first book on experimental cinemas of Latin American and Spain to offer a comprehensive look at old and new technologies, including Super 8, VHS, cell phones, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and more. From the militant films of the 1960s to today's expanded reality experiences, filmmakers in Argentina, Spain, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico have continually used alternative formats both to dialogue with international movements and to counter commercial cinematic trends. To make this argument and cover this vast geographic and historical terrain, Eduardo Ledesma adopts a transnational and intermedial approach, examining exchanges and associations between cineastes to better understand how their films were created and circulated. Ledesma works to untangle both the relations between media and the associations of experimental cinema to cultural phenomena such as diaspora, exile, displacement, and immigration. Throughout the book, connections are further made to other global avant-garde and alternative cinemas and formats, including in the United States.
Eduardo Ledesma is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Radical Poetry: Aesthetics, Politics, Technology, and the Ibero-American Avant-Gardes, 1900–2015, also from SUNY Press.
Reviews
"Experimental collectives, understudied auteurs, film shorts, cell phones, and VR: this book is a must read for anyone interested in global cinema's past and future. Eduardo Ledesma's cinema-eye zooms in and out, from a transatlantic view to the single frame—cutting cinematic history, biography, industry, culture, and politics together. A sweeping history of radical intermediality and immersive viewing." — Benjamin Fraser, University of Arizona