ABOUT THIS BOOK

Latin American indigenous media production has recently experienced a noticeable boom, specifically in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. Indianizing Film zooms in on a selection of award-winning and widely influential fiction and docudrama shorts, analyzing them in the wider context of indigenous media practices and debates over decolonizing knowledge. Within this framework, Freya Schiwy approaches questions of gender, power, and representation.

Schiwy argues that instead of solely creating entertainment through their work indigenous media activists are building communication networks that encourage interaction between diverse cultures. As a result, mainstream images are retooled, permitting communities to strengthen their cultures and express their own visions of development and modernization. Indianizing Film encourages readers to consider how indigenous media contributes to a wider understanding of decolonization and anticolonial study against the universal backdrop of the twenty-first century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

FREYA SCHIWY is an assistant professor in the media and cultural studies and Hispanic studies departments at the University of California, Riverside.

REVIEWS

"Schiwy's analyses of how indigenous populations in Latin America have met the challenge of decolonizing knowledge will set the stage for any future work on the 'indianizing' of audiovisual technology. Given its comparative scope, intellectual breadth and theoretical acuity, I predict the concepts in Indianizing Film will become as influential for twenty-first century discussions of post-colonialism as Edward SaidÆs ôOrientalismö was for the twentieth."

— Ana Lopez, Tulane University

Schiwy's analysis of indigenous media contributes provocative, rich, close readings of several key concepts from Latin American literary and cultural studies, including: transculturation, literacy, testimonio, the lettered city, and global multiculturalism. . . . Her compelling analysis of the thematic, discursive, and structural components of individual videos is nuanced and smart.

— Marcia Stephenson, Purdue University

"Schiwy's analyses of how indigenous populations in Latin America have met the challenge of decolonizing knowledge will set the stage for any future work on the 'indianizing' of audiovisual technology. Given its comparative scope, intellectual breadth and theoretical acuity, I predict the concepts in Indianizing Film will become as influential for twenty-first century discussions of post-colonialism as Edward SaidÆs ôOrientalismö was for the twentieth."

— Ana Lopez, Tulane University

Schiwy's analysis of indigenous media contributes provocative, rich, close readings of several key concepts from Latin American literary and cultural studies, including: transculturation, literacy, testimonio, the lettered city, and global multiculturalism. . . . Her compelling analysis of the thematic, discursive, and structural components of individual videos is nuanced and smart.

— Marcia Stephenson, Purdue University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments — vii
Introduction — The Question of Technology — 1

1 Indigenous Media and the Politics of
Knowledge — 33
2 Casting New Protagonists — 63
3 Cinematic Time and Visual Economy — 85
4 Gender, Complementarity, and the Anticolonial
Gaze — 109
5 Nature, Indians, and Epistemic Privilege — 139
6 Specters and Braided Stories — 163
7 Indigenous Media and the Market — 185

Afterword — 212
Notes — 223
Bibliography — 249
Filmography — 267
Index — 273