There has been a significant surge in recent Argentine cinema, with an explosion in the number of films made in the country since the mid-1990s. Many of these productions have been highly acclaimed by critics in Argentina and elsewhere. What makes this boom all the more extraordinary is its coinciding with a period of severe economic crisis and civil unrest in the nation. Offering the first in-depth English-language study of Argentine fiction films of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first, Joanna Page explains how these productions have registered Argentina’s experience of capitalism, neoliberalism, and economic crisis. In different ways, the films selected for discussion testify to the social consequences of growing unemployment, rising crime, marginalization, and the expansion of the informal economy. Page focuses particularly on films associated with New Argentine Cinema, but she also discusses highly experimental films and genre movies that borrow from the conventions of crime thrillers, Westerns, and film noir. She analyzes films that have received wide international recognition alongside others that have rarely been shown outside Argentina. What unites all the films she examines is their attention to shifts in subjectivity provoked by political or economic conditions and events. Page emphasizes the paradoxes arising from the circulation of Argentine films within the same global economy they so often critique, and she argues that while Argentine cinema has been intent on narrating the collapse of the nation-state, it has also contributed to the nation’s reconstruction. She brings the films into dialogue with a broader range of issues in contemporary film criticism, including the role of national and transnational film studies, theories of subjectivity and spectatorship, and the relationship between private and public spheres.

This text explores the cultural politics of over 60 years of filmmaking in Argentina. The author explores how national culture on film has been shaped, articulated and debated through the lens of state policy and the dynamics of the global film market.

Examines how recent Argentine horror films engage with the legacies of dictatorship and neoliberalism. Argentina is a dominant player in Latin American film, known for its documentaries, detective films, melodramas, and auteur cinema. In the past twenty years, however, the country has also emerged as a notable producer of horror films. Blood Circuits focuses on contemporary Argentine horror cinema and the various “cinematic pleasures” it offers national and transnational audiences. Jonathan Risner begins with an overview of horror film culture in Argentina and beyond. He then examines select films grouped according to various criteria: neoliberalism and urban, rural, and suburban spaces; English-language horror films; gore and affect in punk/horror films; and the legacies of the last dictatorship (1976–1983). While keenly aware of global horror trends, Risner argues that these films provide unprecedented ways of engaging with the consequences of authoritarianism and neoliberalism in Argentina. “Blood Circuits is an important and much-needed contribution to the fields of Latin American cinema and popular culture, and genre film studies with a focus on horror cinema. It offers original and innovative directions that will pave the way for new studies in different areas of film studies: the internationalization of horror that unfolds a problematic relationship between the United States and the Global South, the use of punk horror as a form of affect, and the development of new kinds of pleasures and displeasures in the spectator.” — Victoria Ruétalo, coeditor of Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas, and Latin America

Respected film critic Gonzalo Aguilar offers a lucid and sophisticated analysis of Argentine films of the last decade. This is the most complete and up-to-date work in English to examine the 'new Argentine cinema' phenomenon. Aguilar looks at highly relevant films, including those by Lucrecia Martel and Sergio Rejtman.

This book considers how architectural landmarks, imagined buildings and urban landscapes take part in the production of meaning in contemporary Argentine cinema. From the iconic Buenos Aires Obelisk to the Hilton International Hotel, the shopping center to the café and the Le Corbusier-designed Curutchet House to the gated community, architecture in these films evokes the political. Tracing architecture’s expression through six films produced since the 1990s—Pizza birra faso, Mundo grúa, Nueve reinas, La niña santa, La antena and El hombre de al lado—Amanda Holmes studies how architecture in cinema elicits political memory, underscores marginalization and class discrepancies, creates nostalgia for neighborhoods and re-evaluates existing communities. Generously illustrated and carefully researched, the book offers an in-depth reading of key contemporary Argentine films and a fresh architectural approach to film analysis.

"Foster discusses ten Argentine films, including Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Official Story, and Man Facing Southeast to examine the transformation of social topics into motion pictures and the relationship between commercial filmmaking strategies and Argentine redemocratization."--Publishers website.

An in-depth study of the presence and representation of Jews in contemporary Argentine film, focusing on films shot since the year 2000. Runner-up for the AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Doctoral Publication Prize for 2017 Notwithstanding the current visual prominence of Jewish life and Jewish culture on the Argentine big screen, surprisingly little has been written about Jewish film characterization in academic scholarship. In order to fill this lacuna, Portrayals of Jews in Contemporary Argentine Cinemaexplores the depiction of the Jews of Argentina in modern Argentine cinema with particular attention to the ways in which Jews and Jewishness interact with issues of national identity. The central aim of the book is to investigate how Argentine cinema negotiates the argentinidad of Jewish Argentines, thereby adding to the mosaic that is the imagined community of Argentina. To this end, key films by both Jewish and non-Jewish directors are scrutinized, shedding light on three main areas: the masculinity of the Jewish gaucho, the effects of the 1994 AMIA bombing and family relations, including fatherhood and the intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles. Organized around these topics, the book comprises four chapters and with the exception of the first, which is a historical exposition of Jewish presence in Argentina and Argentine film, all subsequent ones take a theme-centered approach. Mirna Vohnsen is a faculty member in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Maynooth University.