Overview
- Offers new perspectives on the relationship between film, culture, and national identity in contemporary Cuba
- Explores a range of films chosen to convey the diversification of subject matters, genres, and approaches in 21st-century Cuban cinema
- Demonstrates through creative manifestations on screen of a persistent anxiety around national identity, even as that identity is itself transformed by connections to the outside world
- Accounts for a changing industrial landscape in which the national film institute coexists with international co-producers and small, ‘independent’ production companies
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
National Identity in 21st-Century Cuban Cinema tours early 21st-century Cuban cinema through four key figures—the monster, the child, the historic icon, and the recluse—in order to offer a new perspective on the relationship between the Revolution, culture, and national identity in contemporary Cuba. Exploring films chosen to convey a recent diversification of subject matters, genres, and approaches, it depicts a changing industrial landscape in which the national film institute (ICAIC) coexists with international co-producers and small, ‘independent’ production companies. By tracing the reappearance, reconfiguration, and recycling of national identity in recent fiction feature films, the book demonstrates that the spectre of the national haunts Cuban cinema in ways that reflect intensified transnational flows of people, capital, and culture. Moreover, it shows that the creative manifestations of this spectre screen—both hiding and revealing—a persistent anxiety around Cubanness even as national identity is transformed by connections to the outside world.
Reviews
“More than a half-century after revolutionary films astounded international audiences, Cuba’s filmmakers remain both vocal and visionary. This compelling study positions lesser-known directors alongside maestros, and juxtaposes works made inside as well as outside the national film institute (ICAIC). In doing so, it proffers an insightful panorama of the vibrant 21st-century island production that emerges despite (or perhaps because of) seismic shifts in notions of national identity, transnational cultural practices, and Cuba’s place in the world.” (Ann Marie Stock,author of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition)
“Exemplary of new scholarship on Cuban cinema, Dunja Fehimović’s book boldly tackles historical, ideological, aesthetic continuities and disruptions, unmasking the challenges confronting contemporary Cuban audiovisual production. Beginning with Antonio Benítez Rojo’s iconic work on the Caribbean/Cuba as a ‘repeating island’, she analyzes specific films and complex socio-cultural-political debates, shining a new light upon our understanding of Cuban cinema in the 21st century.” (Ana López, Professor of Communication and Director of the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute, Tulane University, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dunja Fehimović is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Newcastle University, UK. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is co-editor of the Screen Arts issue of the Hispanic Research Journal, and co-edited a volume entitled Branding Latin America: Strategies, Aims, Resistance (2018).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: National Identity in 21st-Century Cuban Cinema
Book Subtitle: Screening the Repeating Island
Authors: Dunja Fehimović
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93103-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-93102-9Published: 25 August 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-06589-8Published: 30 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-93103-6Published: 10 August 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 281
Number of Illustrations: 32 illustrations in colour
Topics: Latin American Cinema and TV, Latin American Culture, Popular Culture , Genre, Latin American Politics