Abstract
When thinking about a prism, a beam of white light being refracted into a wide range of colors comes to mind. Inspired by this image, we first began to think about this project on the precarious, taking it as a complex and multifaceted notion through which new light could be shed on the study of the cinemas produced across the Americas. While the conventional definition of the precarious is associated with scarcity and insecurity, this volume looks at the idea from a non-monolithic angle, exploring its productivity and its potential for original critical approaches, with the aim of providing new readings to these varied, rich, and complex cinemas. Historically, cinema in the Americas has been signed by a state of precariousness. Perhaps, except for the films coming out of Hollywood (an assertion that could also be challenged), this condition affects every level of filmmaking, touching on the spheres of production, distribution, and reception. Notwithstanding the growing accessibility of video and digital technologies, access to the material means of film production is still limited. Equally, questions about the precarious could be traced in cultural and archival policies, film legislation, as well as in thematic and aesthetic choices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsWorks Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “La précarité est aujourd’hui partout.” Contre-feux. Grenoble: Les Éditions Raisons d’agir (1997): 95–101.
Burton, Julianne. Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Film Makers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. London and New York: Verso, 2004.
Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Live Grievable? London: Verso, 2009.
Chanan, Michael. Twenty-Five Years of the New Latin American Cinema. London: BFI and Channel 4, 1983.
Crofts, Stephen. “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14, no. 3 (1993): 49–67.
Curtin, Michael, and Kevin Sanson. Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.
Gabriel, Teshome H. Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982.
Gill, Rosalind, and Andy Pratt. “Precarity and Cultural Work in the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work.” Theory, Culture & Society 25, no. 7–8 (2008): 1–30.
Hall, Stuart. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, edited by Anthony King, 19–40. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997.
Hayward, Susan. “Framing National Cinemas.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 88–102. New York and London: Routledge, 2000.
Higson, Andrew. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 63–74. New York, London: Routledge, 2000.
Hjort, Mette, and Scott Mackenzie. Cinema and Nation. New York and London: Routledge, 2000.
King, Anthony D. ed. Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. University of Minnesota, 1997.
Martin, Michael T. ed. New Latin American Cinema, Volume 1: Theories, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Mestman, Mariano. “From Italian Neorealism to New Latin American Cinema: Ruptures and Continuities During the 1960s.” In Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style, edited by Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar, 163–177. Jackson: University Press of Mississipi, 2012.
Middents, Jeffrey. “The First Rule of Latin American Cinema Is You Do Not Talk About Latin American Cinema: Notes on Discussing a Sense of Place in Contemporary Cinema.” Transnational Cinemas 4, no. 2 (2013): 147–164.
Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell. Global Hollywood. London: BFI, 2001.
Neilson, Brett, and Ned Rossiter. “From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labour, Life and Unstable Networks.” The Fiberculture Journal, no. 5 (2005)—online resource.
Pick, Zuzana M. The New Latin American Cinema: A Continental Project. Austin: Univdersity of Texas Press, 1993.
Pines, Jim, and Paul Willemen. Questions of Third Cinema. London: BFI, 1989.
Schwarz, Daniel. “A Humanistic Ethics of Reading.” In Mapping the Ethical Turn : A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory, edited by Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack, 3–15. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. New York and London: Routledge, 1994.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The National and the Universal: Can There Be Such a Thing as World Culture?” In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, edited by Anthony King, 91–106. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997.
Zizek, Slavoj. “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism.” New Left Review 225 (1997): 28–51.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Burucúa, C., Sitnisky, C. (2018). Introduction: Forms of the Precarious in the Cinemas of the Americas. In: Burucúa, C., Sitnisky, C. (eds) The Precarious in the Cinemas of the Americas. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76807-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76807-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76806-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76807-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)