"This work takes Latin American film scholarship to a new level of critical, conceptual, and methodological sophistication. Zuzana Pick frames key questions through a judicious, even inspired choice of films. Her interpretations are superb. Perceptive, analytically broad-ranging, critically compelling, they set a new standard for the field."

—Julianne Burton-Carrajal, editor of Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers

During the 1967 festival of Latin American Cinema in Viña del Mar, Chile, a group of filmmakers who wanted to use film as an instrument of social awareness and change formed the New Latin American Cinema. Nearly three decades later, the New Cinema has produced an impressive body of films, critical essays, and manifestos that uses social theory to inform filmmaking practices.

This book explores the institutional and aesthetic foundations of the New Latin American Cinema. Zuzana Pick maps out six areas of inquiry—history, authorship, gender, popular cinema, ethnicity, and exile—and explores them through detailed discussions of nearly twenty films and their makers, including Camila (María Luisa Bemberg), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), and Frida (Paul Leduc). These investigations document how the New Latin American Cinema has used film as a tool to change society, to transform national expressions, to support international differences, and to assert regional autonomy.