From El Megano and Black God, White Devil to City of God and Babel, Latin American films have a rich history. In this concise but comprehensive account, Stephen M. Hart traces Latin American cinema from its origins in 1896 to the present day, along the way providing original views of major films and mini-biographies of major film directors.
           
Describing the broad contours of Latin American film and its connections to major historical developments, Hart guides readers through the story of how Hollywood dominance succumbed to the emergence of the Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano and how this movement has led to the “New” New Latin American Cinema of the twenty-first century. He offers a fresh analysis of the effects of major changes in film technology, revealing how paradigm shifts such as the move to digital preceded new cinematographic techniques and visions. He also looks closely at the films themselves, examining how filmmakers express their messages. Finally, he considers the decision by a group of directors to film in English, which enhanced the visibility of Latin American cinema around the world. Featuring 120 illustrations, this clear, cogent guide to the history of this region’s cinema will appeal to fans of Central Station and Like Water for Chocolate alike.

Rewrites Latin American film from the perspective of nationhood.

In the current "global" moment, the study of Latin American cinema has become insistently national—a phenomenon fully explored in this collection of essays by some of the most interesting and innovative scholars of media and Latin American culture working today.

The contributors to Visible Nations consider different national film and video histories in Latin America since the silent period. From the perspectives of feminism, psychoanalysis, new historicism, and reception theory, among others, they consider the styles through which—and the ends toward which—the nation has been represented, desired, and contested in films, film industries, and alternative video work in Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba. The result is nothing less than a rewriting of Latin American film history. Contributors: Patricia Aufderheide, American U; Charles Ramírez Berg, U of Texas at Austin; Gilberto Moises Blasini; Julianne Burton-Carvajal, U of California, Santa Cruz; Seth Fein, Georgia State U; Claire F. Fox, Stanford U; Brian Goldfarb, U of Rochester; Ilene S. Goldman; Monica Hulsbus; Ana M. López, Tulane U; Kathleen Newman, U of Iowa; Laura Podalsky, Bowling Green State U; Harmony H. Wu.