An Argentine Passion Maria Luisa Bemberg and Her Films

by King, John; Whitaker, Sheila; Bosch, Rosa

• ISBN13: 9781859843086
• ISBN10: 1859843085
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-01-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

Maria Luisa Bemberg, who died in 1995, was one of Latin America's best known and most popular film-makers. The only woman director in the region to have achieved consistent success both nationally and internationally, she is all the more remarkable for having made her first feature at the age of fifty-eight. Born into a traditional, aristocratic Argentine family, her late-blossoming career focused above all on women's issues. The six films she made between 1980 and 1993 all have female protagonists who seek to transgress limits: from Camila O'Gorman, executed in the nineteenth century for her love of a Cathoolic priest, to the remarkable nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Mexico's foremost colonial poet and intellectual, whose enquiring mind was a threat to the discipline of the Church. Bemberg was, as in the title of her second film, senora de nadie, nobody's woman, someone who found her own way in a national film industry dominated by men, and who brought a new way of seeing, a distinctive visual style, to international film-making. This is the first major study of Maria Luisa Bemberg's work. It containes, uniquely, the views of those who worked with her #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; her producer, cinematographer, script writer, and actors #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; alongside her own comments about the film industry and her work in it. In addition to a range of Argentine, British and North American scholars offer readings of each of her films and assess her contribution to contemporary international cinema.

Author Biography

John King is Professor of Latin American Cultural History at the University of Warwick.

Sheila Whitaker, who first screened Bemberg’s films in Britain, was for many years Director of the London Film Festival and Head of Programming at the National Film Theatre in London.

Rosa Bosch, well known for a wide variety of Latin American cinema programming, produced The Buena Vista Social Club and works in international film production and distribution.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
Filmography	ix
Sheila Whitaker
Preface	xi
Sheila Whitaker
Maria Luisa Bemberg and Argentine Culture	1	(32)
John King
Working with Maria Luisa Bemberg	33	(40)
Lita Stantic
Jorge Goldenberg
Felix Monti
Julie Christie
Gabriela Massuh
Mercedes Garcia Guevara
Alejandro Maci
Intimista transformations: Maria Luisa Bemberg's first feature films	73	(37)
Catherine Grant
On Camila: the red, the black, and the white	110	(12)
Alan Pauls
Re-engendering history: Maria Luisa Bemberg's Miss Mary	122	(15)
Elia Geoffrey Kantaris
Maria Luisa Bemberg's interpretation of Octavio Paz's	137	(37)
Sor Juana
Denise Miller
Maria Luisa Bemberg's De eso no se habla: from fiction to film, some notes	174	(7)
Jason wilson
Convocar tanto mundo: narrativising authoritarianism and globalisation in De eso no se habla	181	(12)
Kathleen Newman
El impostor: from cuento to filmscript	193	(23)
Fiona J. Mackintosh
Being an artist in Latin America	216	(9)
Maria Luisa Bemberg
Notes on contributors	225	(4)
Index	229