Authorship, globalization, and the new identity of Latin American cinema

Over the last two decades formulas for international co-productions with European producers and state agencies have increasingly dominated much Latin American film production. ¹ These co-productions usually involve a dominant share of investment from European state television and quasi-state funding agencies, and more modest participation from various combinations of Latin American state organizations or individual producers. ² For European investors, such collaborative schemes reflect a diversity of overseas interests in the region, primary of which has undoubtedly been the desire to exploit images of Latin America as exotic cultural objects. On the Latin American side, these collaborations appear driven by the imperative to reconstitute local markets after the long-term loss of more than half the Latin American movie-going audience during the 1980s. ³ Film authors have reemerged as key players in this Latin American audiovisual cultural scene of recent years. Struggling to survive creatively, compelled by circumstance to serve as mediators between the business and art of Latin American film, they find themselves forced to negotiate their own political and artistic visions in accordance with the commercial demands of global film finance arrangements.