Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Temporalities in Latin American Film

Author(s): Joanna Page and Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Source: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 16 (2012), pp. 203-210
Published by: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43855373
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 Temporalities
in Latin American Film

in Latin American film? The existence of this special section would seem to beg the
Is in question.question.
thereTheLatinreaderanything Americanwonder
might reasonably The reader
if some distinctively
unifying featuresfilm?
will might
emerge The reasonably existence Latin American wonder of this about special if some the section unifying construction would features seem of will temporality to beg emerge the
from the diversity of films explored here - and our critical responses to them - that draw
on common frameworks or bear witness to a shared experience.
Most of the hallmarks we would want to identify are not specific to Latin Ameri-
can film, but typical of many cinemas beyond Hollywood and Europe. These include an
experience of time that is shaped by the virtual erasure of pre-colonial history, and the
simultaneous presence of the "archaic" and the "modern" in the urban environment and in
social practices, as well as the sense - as Octavio Paz describes it - of being "moradores de
los suburbios de la historia" and "los intrusos que han llegado a la función de la modernidad
cuando las luces están a punto de apagarse" (265-66). One could also point to cycles of
stagnation and acceleration set in motion by the ebbs and flows of global capital, unsteadied
by often-precarious states, to the irruptions of repressive regimes and revolutions, and to
the frequent truncation of development projects, versus the dizzying speed of multinational
incursions into local markets. The cultural theorist and anthropologist Néstor García Can-
clini defines "hybridity" in this context as the ability to "enter and exit modernity," that is,
to exist culturally within different yet overlapping temporal realms. The shattering of linear
time into multiple, incompatible temporalities is characteristic of the postcolonial condition
and of national and regional cultures located at the so-called periphery and semi-periphery
of modernity; an exploration of the clash between these has framed the work of filmmakers
from across the world, including Ousmane Sembène (Senegal) and Satyajit Ray (India) as
well as Jorge Sanjinés (Bolivia).
Yet it would also be misleading to suggest that an interest in exploring alternative or
non-linear temporalities has been the preserve of postcolonial or "peripheral" cinemas. Many
European directors, for example, have explored in similar depth the disjunctive temporalities
and the false memories that may result from traumatic experience, personal or collective;

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 16, 2012

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204 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

a phenomenon
cinematic approaches to the Holocaust are
boundaries.
important precursors to films made in re-
in both
sponse to the torture and disappearance ofthe so-called First World and the
thousands in the Southern Cone dictator-
ships. The characteristically slow temporal-
notions of temporality associated with
ity of the work of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia)
has been cited as an important influence analogue film by undermining the indexi-
on films by Mexicos Carlos Reygadas
(Mexico) or Lisandro Alonso (Argentina).
Allan Cameron has found a trend towards
increasing temporal complexity in narrative
films produced in many countries since the
early 1990s, in examples as diverse as Pulp
Fiction , Russian Ark, Run Lola Run and Code
Unknown as well as 21 Grams> directed by
Gonzalez Iñárritu, whose experiments with
episodic narration were already evident in
his pre-Hollywood Mexican film Amores
perros . These "modular narratives," which
"articulate a sense of time as divisible and
subject to manipulation" stage encounters draw on global and postcolonial discourses
"between linearity and non-linearity, narra-
tive and database, memory and forgetting,
temporal anchoring and temporal drift,
simultaneity and succession and chaos and
order" (Cameron 1, 170). Similarly, critic
Todd McGowan has coined the category
of "atemporal cinema" to make reference
to that very same canon, in order to em-
phasize a procedure that seeks to "distort
time not simply because of the exigencies
of plot but in order to reveal the circular
logic of what psychoanalysis calls the drive"
(10). In other words, just as postcolonial
and non-European cinemas manage the
problem of contemporaneity embedded
in their historical experience through nar-
rative interventions in temporality, global
atemporal cinema signals an understanding
of the present desperately connected to
trauma and loss.
The advent of digital filmmaking
and its impact on the temporalities in-
scribed within the cinematic image is also
that transcends regional
Enthusiastically embraced
Third (being significandy cheaper and more
accessible), digital techniques often disrupt
cality of photography, altering past images
and fabricating alternative ones. Cinemas
vast archive of images make it, as Laura
Mulvey suggests, an ideal starting-point
for the urgent political need to re-examine
the aesthetics and politics of the twentieth
century (154). Filmmakers from across the
world are engaged in increasingly diverse
and imaginative uses of that archive, as
new digital technologies make rummaging
around in it much easier.
For the most part, then, explorations
of temporality in Latin American cinema
and experiences in ways that exceed regional
specificity. This does not mean, however,
that such specificity does not exist at a more
local level. It remains entirely meaningful
to find in Sanjinés's La nación clandestina
(Bolivia, 1989) an attempt to build a new
cinematic grammar based on Andean no-
tions of temporality (Wood), or to observe
in Víctor Gavinas La vendedora de rosas
(Colombia, 1998) the peculiarly paradoxi-
cal and dysphasic effects of globalized time-
as-speed as experienced by street children
in Medellin (Kantaris 184-86).
What we might posit with a little
more conviction are some common critical
perspectives in recent scholarship on tem-
porality in Latin American film, although
again we would hesitate to declare these
as unique to the field. In fact, we should
note from the outset the relative scarcity of
studies on the subject (a situation which
this special section is designed, in part, to
remedy), which have been squeezed out in

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Joanna Page and Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado 205

of European
recent decades by a much greater focus on and North American theories
questions of space. These questions
ofhave
the modern experience of (capitalist)
time.the
powerfully influenced the study of time: In his discussion of Bolivia (Adrián
temporalities now under analysis areCaetano,
thor- 2001) and La mujer sin cabeza
(Lucrecia Martel, 2008), Daniel Quiros
oughly spatialized ones. They emphatically
do not conform to the nineteenth-century,
follows Doreen Massey s censure of Fredric
Jameson
historicist conception of temporality that and David Harvey, whose dis-
proposed a linear advance through cussions
a series of postmodern, globalized time
of developmental "stages." In the do not sufficiently allow that "the ways
univer-
salizing accounts of Hegel, Marx,
in social
which people are placed within 'time-
Darwinism and Orientalism, the past
spacewas
compression are highly complicated
and extremely varied" (Massey 150; see
portrayed as "the progressive, inexorable
Quiros
ascent from savagery to civilization, sim-238-39). More broadly, a number
plicity to complexity, primitiveness to
of scholars have chosen to develop readings
civilization, and darkness to light"
of(Warf
temporality in Latin American films that
engage
and Arias 2). It was this thinking that was critically with European discourses
challenged by the "spatial turn" that has
of modernity, colonialism and capitalism. If
swept across so many disciplines since the hegemony was (and is) deepened
European
1980s. Space was found to be elastic and legitimated through a characteriza-
rather
than Euclidean, composed of complex
tion of colonized peoples as backward or
premodern,
overlayings of physical space, social space Eva Karene Romero reminds
and virtual space. A similar operation
us in her essay presented here that "the pre-
has exploded the linear, universal modern
time of as a coherent cultural sphere does
historicism into myriad and conflicting
not preexist the modern, but is instead a
temporalities. What is more, after Einstein,
discursive construction of modernity itself."
Schrödinger, and chaos theory, time canThe
no particular conditions of postcolo-
longer be organized neatly into modernist
niality in Latin America (its relatively much
dichotomies of public and private, ratio-
earlier and longer period of colonization),
nalized and contingent, or deterministic
together with the more recent waves of
and random. Michel Serress topological
mass European immigration to Brazil and
time is one of the clearest expressions of
Argentina in particular, have resulted in a
this spatialized temporality: one that maydiscursive engagement with Euro-
strong
be stretched, crumpled or folded to pean modernity that, as Paz explains, "se
bring
distant points into proximity or cast adja-
realiza en el interior de la misma lengua"
cent ones asunder. In his work, and (Paz,
that of
"La búsqueda del presente"). This dual
Bruno Latour, innovation does not come - "Somos y no somos europeos,"
identity
from overcoming the past but from Paz puts it simply - provides a unique
rework-
perspective
ing its relationship with the present in new from which to challenge the
and surprising ways. discourses of the conqueror. There is a long
The spatialization of time has
andlaid
influential tradition of thought on mo-
the groundwork for the analysis dernity
of tem-in Latin America (Antonio Cornejo
porality in Latin American film asPolar,
part Fernando
of Ortiz, Ángel Rama, Néstor
a broader critique of modernity. García
Several
Canclini) that rejects the hegemonic
studies have questioned the universality
view of modernity as the destructive impo-

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206 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

sition of an external force on traditional,

una manera de problematizar los
autochthonous ways of life. Both Enriquevínculos equívocos que éste armó
con las tradiciones que quiso excluir
Dussels theorization of "transmodernity"
o superarar para constituirse. (23)
and Aníbal Quijano s analysis of the integral
role played in capitalism by "archaic" ele-
This approach allows us to rethink mo-
ments of racism and slavery have attempted
dernity as a project that is not necessarily
to account for the simultaneous presence
antagonistic
of older and newer forms of production in to tradition, and is not destined
to overcome it by the operation of some
modernization. Dussel explodes the "myth
implacable
of modernity" (65-66) which ignores the law of evolution (190). In a
crucial participation of the colonized similar
worldway, the insights of Quijano, Dussel
and others have revealed as much about the
in what is seen as a European phenomenon,
nature of European modernity as they have
and deconstructs the "fallacy of develop-
about
mentalism," according to which "the the Latin American experience.
path
of European development must be followed What would this "critique from with-
in" look
unilaterally by every other culture" (67- like, in the work of Latin American
filmmakers
68). However devastating the impact of and their critics? Unsurprisingly,
colonialism, many Latin American perhaps,
think-it is often associated with metacin-
ematic and multidisciplinary approaches. It
ers have chosen to eschew the European
is characteristic of recent studies of tempo-
conception of modernity as the destruction
rality in Latin American cinema to bring
of the past. They have instead challenged
together
discourses that allow parts of the world to questions of time and duration as
they arise across discourses of modernity,
be portrayed as backward or anachronistic,
narrative forms, lived experience, spectator-
a label that provides as easy a justification
for neocolonial enterprise in our ownship,
time the cinematic apparatus and modes
as it did for imperial ventures in theofpast.
film production. This emphasis is often
It is on the basis of this tradition of
inspired by the films' own self-conscious
treatment of the temporality of image-
critical engagement with the European
making. Many of the essays in this section
project of modernity that we might, finally,
draw attention to the suggestive work of
venture a hypothesis concerning the treat-
ment of temporality in Latin American
cinematic montage, mise-en-scène or digital
cinema. We should perhaps expect image-manipulation
Latin in challenging simplis-
American cinema and the critical studies
tic notions of time as supersession. Their
it inspires to emerge as privileged sites for approach is also often informed by the close
a critique of the European conception of relationship traced between cinema and
modernity from within . Garcia Canclini modernity in seminal works such as Cinema
finds in postmodernity a useful framework and the Invention of Modern Life (Charney
for thinking about the "heterogeneidad and Schwartz 1995) and The Emergence of
multitemporal" of the Latin American Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency ;
experience of modernity (72), but also of the Archive (Doane 2002). Doane argues
the exclusionary politics of modernity itself. that cinema plays a paradoxical role, right
He defines postmodernity not as a trend or from its beginnings, as both a product of
stage of history that replaces the modern modern temporality (the enslavement to
world, but as: rationalized, "clock" time) and a crucial

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Joanna Page and Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado 207

space for its critique (the simultaneous

its many more discussions than could be in-
fascination with the much less measurable
cluded in this volume. These might include
Deleuzian
or predictable time of contingency). Such approaches, for example, such as
paradoxes are often highlighted in
theLatin
one recently taken by Cynthia Tompkins
in her book on experimental Latin American
American films and film criticism, bringing
cinema,
an acute awareness of the degree to which or the concept of "time crystals"
used by scholars like Alejandra Jabłońska to
the construction of alternative temporalities
discuss
in film or the critique of existing ones are the relationship between cinema, the
past and
ultimately caught up in the very systems of identity. This dossier has no pre-
tensions
linear time or capitalist modernity that they to exhaustiveness, but the articles
seek to contest (see the essays by presented
Romero here are all explorations of the
and Cilento in particular in this volume).
conceptual and critical value of temporality
We might also suspect thatasLatin
a category of analysis, through case stud-
American films that explore non-linear
ies of both canonical and recent films. By
temporalities are less often concerned
applying
with the lens of temporal analysis to a
group
combating European notions of time of films produced in Latin America
with
both
alternative, indigenous ones, and more within national and transnational
often
traditions,
with deconstructing the linear conception of each article addresses the way in
time as progression that has underpinned
which coloniality, belatedness, simultaneity,
narrative and other categories bound to the
European discourses of modernity, colonial-
question of time assist in elucidating and
ism and capitalism. Although this hypothesis
remains to be tested - and counter-examples
interpreting cinematic works of the region.
Precisely
immediately spring to mind - it may at leastbecause these questions have been
raised only intermittently in relation to the
help us to theorize shifts in the representa-
tion of temporality in Latin American
scholarship
film of Latin American cinema, this
special to
over the twentieth century and through section seeks to provide readers with
the twenty-first, or to account fornew
regional
forms of approaching temporality from
differences. What vectors of transforma-
the perspective of regional production. The
tion - geographical, historical, Marxist
essays presented here do not only seek to
vs. post-Marxist? - take us from the stark original readings of their studied
contribute
opposition in Araya (Margot Benacerraf,
films. They also seek to provide examples
Venezuela, 1957) between the timeless
of different ways of articulating the ques-
tion
rhythms of the natural world and the of time in order, perhaps, to open new
disrup-
tive imposition of modern mechanization,
gateways for the study of Latin American
to the Utopian imaginary of Condormovies.
Crux,
leyenda del fiituro (Juan Pablo Buscarmi The
and dossier opens with two studies
Swan Glecer, Argentina, 2000), in at which
the bookends of Argentine film history.
Latin Americas pre-Colombian heritage is
Nicolas Poppe offers a study of temporality
in of
seamlessly interwoven into a vision Argentine
the film musicals in the 1930s.
continents future, nature and technology
Using the idea of punctuation, Poppe dem-
are harmoniously combined, and onstrates
archaicthe way in which the irruption of
practices made fully contemporary?sound and song in the 1930s brought about
The discursive and formal exploration
a crucial transformation in temporal experi-
encemer-
of temporality in Latin American film and representation in the period. The

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208 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

to di-
gradual incorporation of music into the the re-actualization of Columbus set
forth by the film crew. The essay is fol-
egetic structure of cinema, in his argument,
lowed by two reflections on the question
creates alternative spaces and temporalities
(a utopia in some cases) that transformofthe
history in Mexican cinema. Brian Price
experience of the audience. Given the studies
iconic the question of heterotemporal-
status of films and stars of the period,ity in the films of Luis Estrada, one of
such
as Libertad Lamarque, Poppe s text provides most successful directors. Price
Mexico's
a path to understanding the profound im-that the political efficacy of Estrada's
argues
trilogy lies in his strategic deployment of
pact that musical cinema had at a moment
of formation of national and cultural diverse
con- historical temporalities within the
contemporary:
sciousness in Argentina and elsewhere in the the alemanista iconography
to talk about priista corruption, the 1950s
continent. At the other end of Argentinas
American suburban utopias to critique
cinematic tradition, Joanna Page brings
the the
to the fore the use of temporality in ideals of the neoliberal model and the
commemoration of Mexico's history to
country's science-fiction cinema. Focusing
expose the deep social penetration of the
on films by Esteban Sapir and Fernando
drug war. In doing so, Price shows the way
Spiner, Page demonstrates that retrofutur-
in only
ism and reflexivity become devices not which cinema's ability to deploy diverse
to articulate a critique of contemporary
temporalities within the same frame realize
a political potential that is only possible
capitalism, but also to put forward forms
through heterotemporality. Drawing on the
of temporality that foster Utopian potential
example of the film El violin , Victoria Gar-
through science fiction. Through a theoreti-
rett
cal conversation with Fredric Jameson, shows ways in which history unfolds
Page
shows how films radically differentinto
fromdifferent regimes of time (in this case
a mythic, cyclical time tied to slowness).
the ones discussed by Poppe may actually
achieve similar aims: the establishment of
Garrett argues that films like El violin use
the critical intervention of temporality to
cinematic time as Utopian time. By interven-
construct an ethical position for the viewer
ing in the interpretation of a foundational
in relation to the past and the present.
and a contemporary moment in Argentine
cinema, these essays show how temporalityThe dossier closes with two texts
and utopia raise fundamental questionsthat
withdeal with the question of time in the
neoliberal crucible, discussing the role of
regard to issues of modernity and cultural
experience. contemporaneity and time. Ignacio M.
These Utopian approaches to cin- Sánchez Prado addresses this through
ematic temporality are followed by essays the study of what he calls the "neoliberal
on the question of the historical. In his sublime," that is, a hyper-aesthetic mode
analysis of Iciar Bollains Even the Rain , of cinema based on the deconstruction of
Fabrizio Cilento explores the tension male middle-class subjectivities through
between historical and cinematic tem- the fragmented remembrance of a failed
poralities. Focusing on Bollains movie-
love affair. Focusing on films by Mexican
within-the-movie device, Cilento showsdirectors Alfonso Pineda Ulloa and Jesús
how the historical drama of colonization Magaña Vazquez, Sanchez Prado contends
in contemporary Bolivia acquires a crucial that these film representations of love
articulation to the contemporary, thanks represent a temporal articulation of late

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Joanna Page and Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado 209

Works Cited
capitalism, through the failure of becoming
a citizen of the neoliberal order. Finally,
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Cameron,
to the film Hamaca paraguaya , to show
temporary Cinema . Basingstoke; New
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Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
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210 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

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