Memory in World Cinema

Film itself is an artifact of memory. A blend of all the other fine arts, film portrays and preserves human memory, someone’s memory, faulty or not, dramatically or comically, in a documentary, feature film or short. Hollywood may dominate 80 percent of cinema production but it is not the only voice. World cinema is about those other voices. Drawn initially from presentations from a series of film conferences held at the University of Texas at San Antonio, this collection of essays covers multiple geographical, linguistic, and cultural areas worldwide, emphasizing the historical and cultural interpretation of films. Appendices list films focusing on memory and invite readers to explore the films and issues raised.

Nancy J. Membrez is a professor of Spanish literature, culture, and Spanish and Latin American cinemas, as well as film production, at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She wrote the English subtitles for four Subiela films and produced three featurettes for the Kino Lorber DVD/Blu-ray of Man Facing Southeast. Her own film Portrait in Sepia Tone won Best Picture and Best Soundtrack at the International Filmmakers’ Film Festival in Kent, England, in 2008. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Edited by Nancy J. Membrez

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 277
Bibliographic Info: 54 photos, appendices, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7608-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3644-3
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1

In Search of Lost Time: Memory and Recall in French Cinema of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958)
Tim Palmer 5
The Seamless Web: Trauma, Memory and ­Self-Creation in El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro, 2006)
John Incledon 30
Transmission, Legacy and Desire in the Urban Cosmos of Amic/Amat (Beloved/Friend, Pons, 1998)
Melissa Wallace 44
Trauma, Amnesia and Alzheimer’s on Belgian TV: Tabula Rasa (2017)
Nancy J. Membrez 52
Film as Autobiographical Act: Pasolini’s Edipo Re (Oedipus, 1967)
Linda Belau 72
Memory, Children and Remorse in Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2013)
Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar 82
Chronicles of Boys Alone: Sciuscià (Shoeshine, De Sica, 1946) and Crónica de un niño solo (Chronicle of a Boy Alone, Favio, 1965)
Erin K. Hogan 91
Images of Childhood in Eliseo Subiela’s Films (1986–2001)
Liliana Judith Guzmán, translated by Nancy J. Memrez 103
In Memoriam: A Short Apocryphal Biography of Eliseo Subiela (1944–2016)
Nancy J. Membrez 113
Colonial Memory and Re-Birth in Ivy Marãey (Land Without Evil, Valdivia, 2013)
Keith John Richards 119
A Memento Mori: The Transnational Case of Macario (Gavaldón, 1960)
Nancy J. Membrez 132
The Commodification of Historical Memory on Film: The Case of the Mirabal Sisters in the Dominican Republic
Fernando ­Valerio-Holguín, translated by Nancy J. Membrez 161
Kairo (Pulse, Kurosawa, 2001) and Kairos: Postmodern Japanese Computer Culture, Memory and Entropy (Gilles A. Viennot, translated by James H. Membrez) 173
Memory in Three Japanese Films: Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950), Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988) and After Life (Kore’eda, 1998)
Nancy J. Membrez 187
An Interview with Bolivian Director Juan Carlos Valdivia
Keith John Richards 221
An Interview with Paula Félix-Didier, Director of the Museo del Cine
Pablo C. Ducrós-Hicken in Buenos Aires
Nancy J. Membrez 229

Appendix I. Films with the Theme of Memory 235
Appendix II. Films with the Theme of Memory Through the Eyes of a Child/Child Protagonist 249
About the Contributors 257
Index 259