-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Falicov, Tamara L. The Cinematic Tango: Contemporary Argentine Film. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. 188 pp. £45.00 (hardback); £16.99 (paperback). ISBN 978–1–904764–92–2/93–9, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 4, October 2007, Page 472, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm079
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In The Cinematic Tango, Falicov examines the Argentine film industry from the 1940s to 2006, focusing on cinema's threefold function as art, culture and commerce. She analyses the way and degree to which state cultural policy (through subsidies) shaped national cinema and culture in the country. Chapter 1 offers an overview of Argentine cinema over the span of fifty years: the shift from silent films to sound and the popularity of genre films in the 1930s; the US policy during World War II not to sell raw film stock to Argentina, which put an end to the época de oro of Argentine cinema; the New Wave of cinema and “cinema of underdevelopment” in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Chapter 2 examines the film industry in post-dictatorship Argentina (1983–89) and offers an analysis of a paradigmatic film of this period, Luis Puenzo's Historia oficial. Chapter 3 concentrates on the commercialisation of national cinema during Menem's neoliberal presidency (1989–99), which resulted in the emergence of Argentine blockbuster movies. Chapter 4 concludes by tracing the trends in the New Independent Argentine Cinema, which is characterised by low-budget, experimental films depicting “an Argentina with social problems, namely unemployment and disaffected youth, framed within a nihilist poetic”. This is a valuable tool for Hispanists, Latin Americanists and those interested in cultural and film studies (translations of non-English texts are provided).
