Abstract:
This dissertation is the result of a study of selected Latin American and Spanish films that deal with the topic of exile. Following a thematic and stylistic criterion closely related to Hamid Naficy's notion of"accented cinema," I analyze how certain characteristics of exile--its"material poetics"--are manifested and expressed in the chosen corpus, including films by Fernando Solanas, Ra£l Ruiz, Basilio Mart¡n Patino, and Ricardo Larra¡n. My study is organized around the three fundamental dimensions of cinematic narrative--time, space, and sound--as a basis from which to examine questions central to the exilic experience, regarding identity, nation, and memory. I argue for a theory or at least a coherent conceptualization of exilic cinema anchored in both a general cinema theory as well as in a group of concrete films, from which a Latin American and Spanish cinema of exile as an independent category can be established.The introduction provides an overview of the concept of exile, drawing on the work of Paul Tabori, Edward Said, Gaston Bachelard and Julia Kristeva among others, while establishing a theoretical framework for the analysis and enunciating the elements of an exilic cinema. The first chapter explores the topic of communication in exile, i.e. those zones of relativization of the break and recuperation of the past. I analyze cinematic recreations of those communications, focusing on the use of letters, telephone, and other forms of contact. The second chapter focuses on the spaces of exile themselves. Marc Auge ́s notions of"place" and"non-place" together with Naficy ́s"Chronotope" classification serve as the primary theoretical basis for the filmic analysis. This chapter highlights and examines the limitation of the spatial dichotomy, the partition of inside-outside, that the classic conception of exile supposes. The third and final chapter examines the role of sound in cinematic expressions of exile. Following Marvin D ́Lugo ́s notion of"aural dimension" and feminist theory about the voice in cinema, I argue that there is a particular auditory dimension of exile: a system of sounds that includes not only music from the soundtrack but also the presence of noises, voices and audible environmental referents.
