Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960 , livre ebook

COSMOPOLITAN FILM CULTURES IN LATIN AMERICA, 1896-1960
New Directions in National Cinemas R OBERT R USHING , editor
COSMOPOLITAN FILM CULTURES IN LATIN AMERICA,
1896-1960
Edited by
RIELLE NAVITSKI and NICOLAS POPPE
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
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2017 by Indiana University Press
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Navitski, Rielle editor. | Poppe, Nicolas editor.
Title: Cosmopolitan film cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960 / edited by Rielle Navitski and Nicolas Poppe.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series: New directions in national cinemas | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041001 (print) | LCCN 2016054378 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253025722 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026460 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026552 (eb)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures-Latin America-History-20th century. | Motion pictures-Social aspects-Latin America.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.L3 C68 2017 (print) | LCC PN1993.5.L3 (ebook) | DDC 791.43098/0904-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041001
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To the archivists, librarians, collectors, and cinephiles who make the recuperation of lost histories of film culture possible
CONTENTS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction / Rielle Navitski and Nicolas Poppe
Part I. The Silent Era: Between Global Capitalism and National Modernization
Primary text: The Lumi re Cinematograph, El Monitor Republicano (Mexico City), August 16, 1896
1 Gabriel Veyre and Fernand Bon Bernard, Representatives of the Lumi re Brothers in Mexico / Aurelio de los Reyes
Primary text: Tic-Tac (Carlos Villafa e), The Show on June 15th, Pel culas (Bogot ), June 1919
2 Films on Paper: Early Colombian Cinema Periodicals, 1916-1920 / Juan Sebasti n Ospina Le n
Primary text: Enrique M ndez Calzada, The Lover of Rudolph Valentino, from And Christ Returned to Buenos Aires (1926)
3 Manipulation and Authenticity: The Unassimilable Valentino in 1920s Argentina / Giorgio Bertellini
Part II. The Interwar Period: Between Hollywood and the Avant-Garde
Primary text: Felipe de Leiva, Memoirs of an Extra, Cinelandia (Hollywood), November-December 1927
4 Mediating the Conquering and Cosmopolitan Cinema : US Spanish-Language Film Magazines and Latin American Audiences, 1916-1948 / Rielle Navitski
Primary text: Oct vio de Faria, Russian Cinema and Brazilian Cinema, O Fan (Rio de Janeiro), October 1928
5 Parallel Modernities?: The First Reception of Soviet Cinema in Latin America / Sarah Ann Wells
Primary text: Guillermo de Torre, The Cineclub of Buenos Aires, La Gaceta Literaria (Madrid), April 1, 1930
6 A Gaze Turned Toward Europe: Modernity and Tradition in the Work of Horacio Coppola / Andrea Cuarterolo
Part III. The Golden Age of Latin American Film Industries: Negotiating the Popular and the Cosmopolitan
Primary text: John Alton, Motion Picture Production in South America, International Photographer (Hollywood), May 1934
7 John Alton in Argentina, 1932-1939 / Nicolas Poppe
8 The Golden Age Otherwise: Mexican Cinema and the Mediations of Capitalist Modernity in the 1940s and 1950s / Ignacio M. S nchez Prado
Primary text: Gabriel Garc a M rquez, The Mambo, El Heraldo (Barranquilla), January 12, 1951
9 Bad Neighbors: P rez Prado, Cinema, and the Politics of Mambo / Jason Borge
Part IV. The Afterlives of Moving Images: Cinephilia and Cult Spectatorship
Primary text: Thomas E. Sibert, Fox Film de Cuba, S.A. s Continuing Competition for Scholarships to Summer School at the Universidad de La Habana (unpublished circular, June 1956)
10 Film Culture and Education in Republican Cuba: The Legacy of Jos Manuel Vald s-Rodr guez / Irene Rozsa
11 The Secret History of Aztl n: Speculative Histories, Transnational Exploitation Film, and Unexpected Cultural Flows / Colin Gunckel
I NDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HANKS ARE IN ORDER , first and foremost, to our contributors for their labor and dedication, their suggestions of primary texts for inclusion in this volume, and their efforts in securing rights and permissions for copyrighted material.
The publication of this volume was made possible in part by the generous support of Middlebury College s Scholarly Publication Fund.
At Indiana University Press, we thank editor Raina Polivka for championing the project from its very first stages, editor Janice Frisch and director Gary Dunham for guiding it to completion, and Kate Schramm for her assistance during the production process. We would also like to express our gratitude to Zuzana Pick for her insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
Preliminary versions of Rielle Navitski s essay Mediating the Conquering and Cosmopolitan Cinema : US Spanish-Language Film Magazines and Latin American Audiences, 1916-1948, Sarah Ann Wells s essay Parallel Modernities?: The First Reception of Soviet Cinema in Latin America, and Ignacio M. S nchez Prado s essay The Golden Age Otherwise: Mexican Cinema and the Mediations of Capitalist Modernity in the 1940s and 1950s, were presented at the 2014 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference at a panel organized by the editors. We thank the audience members in attendance for their feedback on the presentations.
The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permissions granted to reproduce copyrighted material and items from archival collections in this book. We thank the Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Secretar a de la Hacienda y Cr dito P blico (Mexico City); Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia; Biblioteca Nacional de Espa a; Fundaci n Cinemateca Argentina; Guillermo G mez-Pe a; Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira; Philippe Jacquier and the Jacquier-Veyre Archive; Museo del Cine Pablo Ducr s Hicken (Buenos Aires); Billy Rose Theater Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; Pedro Noa Romero; and Video Data Bank for permission to reproduce images.
The editors thank the author and the Instituto de Investigaciones Est ticas-Universidad Nacional Aut noma de M xico for permission to publish a slightly modified English translation of Aurelio de los Reyes s essay Gabriel Veyre y Fernand Bon Bernard, representantes de los hermanos Lumi re en M xico, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Est ticas 67 (1995), 119-137.
The editors also thank the author and the Centro de Fotograf a in Montevideo, Uruguay, for permission to publish a slightly modified English translation of Andrea Cuarterolo s essay Con la mirada en Europa: Modernidad y tradici n en la obra de Horacio Coppola from her book De la foto al fotograma. Relaciones entre cine y fotograf a en Argentina ( 1940-1933 ) (Montevideo: Centro de Fotograf a, 2013), 223-250.
Brief portions of Sarah Ann Wells s essay Parallel Modernities?: The First Reception of Soviet Cinema in Latin America appeared in a slightly different form in her article Mass Culture and the Laboratory of Late Modernism in Patr cia Galv o s Parque industrial . Luso-Brazilian Review 53, no. 1 (2016): 55-76. 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reproduced courtesy of University of Wisconsin Press.
Oct vio de Faria, Cinema russo e cinema brasileiro, O Fan (Rio de Janeiro), October 1928, 1, 3, appears in translation by permission of Andr do Carmo Seffrin.
Guillermo de Torre, El cineclub de Buenos Aires, La Gaceta Literaria (Madrid), April 1, 1930, 5, Herederos de Guillermo de Torre, appears in translation by permission of Miguel de Torre Borges.
Gabriel Garc a M rquez, El mambo, in Obra Period stica Vol. 1, Textos Coste os, 1948-1952 , Gabriel Garc a M rquez y Herederos de Gabriel Garc a M rquez, appears in translation by permission.
Thomas E. Sibert s Fox Film de Cuba, S.A. s Continuing Competition for Scholarships to Summer School at the Universidad de La Habana and the images reproduced in chapter 10 have been preserved thanks to the admirable work of the researcher Pedro Noa Romero in his digitization of materials belonging to the archives of the Extension School of the Universidad de la Habana and are reproduced with permission.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Nicolas would like to express his gratitude to colleagues at Middlebury College and beyond. From scholars whose research has formed and challenged his work to colleagues whose support has been inestimable, this project has only emerged through people like Joshua Finnell, Enrique Garc a, Lisa Kuriscak, Chris Luke, David