The “Mobility Turn” in Contemporary Latin American First-Person Documentary

Abstract

Pablo Piedras focuses on the study of mobility and displacement in contemporary Latin American documentary film. He posits that a “mobility turn” exists in the region and that mobility has, in fact, become a way to capture and question identity and memory, as well as the visual regimes that have dominated representative nonfictional films from the region. Following a brief outline of the historical trajectory that territorial mobility has taken in Latin American documentary filmmaking, the specific analyses focus on two Argentine films that capture different tendencies within the recent mobility turn: Familia tipo (Cecilia Priego, 2009) and La chica del sur (José Luis García, 2012).