Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

Ecuadorian cinema has been largely overlooked in film scholarship, usually being limited to brief descriptions in Latin American compendiums.  Ecuadorian cinema for the 21^st century would be the first major publication in English to fill this gap.  It provides a thorough account of film activities during the new millennium, while also referring to the country’s previous film history.  Specifically, this book discusses the so-called ‘mini-boom” in Ecuadorian cinema, and its relation to industry structures, film policy, and the context of Socialism for the 21^st century, hence the chosen terminology of “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21^st century”. What makes this project distinctive, aside from the originality of its content, is its transdisciplinary methodology.  As a means to frame the textual analysis of selected films, this book discusses theories on national cinemas, memory, politicalideology, and production practices, in an interdisciplinary approach that can be emulated in later projects.  For this purpose, the book is divided into five chapters, in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.  Each chapter relies on specific case studies to discuss local narratives and documentaries, whether state sponsored or privately funded, centring primarily on films that premiered in commercial theatres between 2006 and 2016.

Introduction.- Chapter 1: The case for an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21^st century.- Chapter 2: The commercially released narrative feature during the Ley de cine years.- Chapter 3: Ecuador’s vernacular cinema: underground, popular, and neoliberal?.- Chapter 4: Cinema and Ecuador’s Buen Vivir: negotiating coloniality in the community.- Chapter 5: Making sense of the past: documentary and memory in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21^st century.- Conclusion.

Dr María Fernanda Miño Puga is an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, Department of Film Studies, UK. She specialises in contemporary Ecuadorian cinema and indigenous film and media, with previous publications on documentary and collective memory. She holds a PhD from the University of Saint Andrews and this is her first monograph