The cinema that we access mostly is determined by commercial interests that permeate the exhibition circuits and the times on the billboard, as well as the money obtained by the productions and the media coverage of them. Therefore, making and watching cinema outside the parameters of the industry is a complex task, but not impossible.
There are spaces where priority is given to cinema that escapes from the narrative and production models of large companies. For example, the Neighborhood Film Festival, which took place from December 3 to 10. Within its programming, two sections were focused on showing films that moved away from the centralization of culture. The first, Somos Barrio, showed films made by residents of Iztapalapa or on neighborhood themes; the second, Tercer Cine, exhibited films from all over Latin America that process the common concerns of the inhabitants of their towns.
The combination of short films in both programs would be very stimulating for those wishing to explore the thickness of neighborhood cinema, especially for what distinguishes it from films of commercial interest.
The first thing I notice is that neighborhood cinema has a social and political concern that surrounds everything. Even when the main theme of a film is not necessarily the denunciation of some injustice, in the personality of its protagonists and in the context that surrounds them, the echoes of Latin American violence are noticeable. I think, could we have a worldview alien to underdevelopment? At that moment, a dialogue in the film that I watch says: “the country is in chaos”, and I conclude that no, that as proposed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in Memories of underdevelopment, pretending that we can get away from this way of life results in a contradiction . We are these difficulties that we live day by day.
However, awareness of our problems is not limiting. On the contrary, the neighborhood cinema is full of resistance and struggles. Of neighbors who organize so that they are not taken out of their building, of migrants who constantly adapt to new spaces, of indigenous people who learn a language that is not their own in order to communicate in the face of the overwhelming linguistic discrimination that afflicts them, of young people who within the most violent neighborhoods they have been able to create community and large groups of people who do not stop taking to the streets to demand their rights. The neighborhood cinema also tells their stories and reminds us that we are not alone in denouncing non-conformity.
As for their form, I notice that the cinema that integrates these programs allows itself to explore less hurried rhythms than those of commercial cinema, which yearns, almost frantically, to hold our attention throughout the film. There are uncomfortable gestures that may last too long, yes, but in real life, doesn’t this happen more often than hyper-fast montages that don’t allow us to participate as spectators at all? I remember that statement by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz about Martin Scorsese’s cinema: “[El montaje acelerado] I find it very tense. nowadays that is the rule, and it has been imposed by advertising, where they are always in a hurry, but it is not pleasant, although today it seems that the word pleasant is prohibited in the values of cinema ”.
Latin American cinema, especially neighborhood cinema, will hardly be at the top of the awards and billboards; We will probably not see him on a poster at every bus stop, nor will we walk streets full of his posters plastered on the walls; but his films will teach us more about ourselves than any idyllic love story or fantasy and war heroes that industrial cinema can generate. It is necessary to turn to see ourselves, to recognize ourselves as heirs of the same history; above all, as creators of an authentic voice, full of colors, with faces far removed from a canonical beauty, but expressive and resilient. Let’s explore our identity in the neighborhood cinema. Overall, we are much more welcome there.
An encounter that seeks to break through
- The Neighborhood Film Festival celebrated its second edition this year.
- All the activities were virtual, through FilminLatino and national television channels.
- The Tercer Cine program was curated together with the Panalandia Poor Film Festival in Panama.
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