ABSTRACT
Problematizing the easy symbiosis between "the long 1960s", typically crystallized in the term "1968", and the complex movement known as the New Latin American Cinema (NLAC), this chapter interrogates the historical trajectory of the movement vis-a-vis two axes of inquiry: the interplay between national/regional experiences and transnational flows around 1968, and the links between the NLAC movement, Latin Americanism, and Third Worldism in general. The ruptures of "1968" were built upon ideologies and social imaginaries that incorporated and reworked the avant-garde impetus of the early twentieth century in politics and art. This recovery of radical traditions in a search of "revolution" was common across the world in the 1960s, as exemplified by the left or national "new lefts", the Leninists, Third Worldists, Christians, Fanonists, Maoists, and Trotskyists. Just as the "new cinemas" of Latin America drew on languages and aesthetics developed in other regions, they also entered into dialogue with the 1960s discourses and social imaginaries of "Latin Americanism".
