Small Cinemas of the Andes New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms

This book examines the emergence of small cinemas of the Andes, covering digital peripheries in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. The volume critically assesses heterogeneous audiovisual practices and subaltern agents, elucidating existing tensions, contradictions and resistances with respect to established cinematic norms. The reason these small cinematic sectors are of interest is twofold: first, the film markets of the aforementioned countries are often eclipsed by the filmmaking giants of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina; second, within the Andean countries these small cinemas are overshadowed by film board-backed cinemas whose products are largely designed for international film festivals.

1. Introduction: Theorizing and Contextualizing Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes. Diana Coryat, Christian León and Noah Zweig.- Part I. Filming Smaller Nations.- 2. Filming the Andes: Contemporary Aesthetic Configurations of the Andean World (Peru). Karolina Romero.- 3. Technological Appropriation and Audiovisual Sovereignty in an Indigenous Key (Colombia). Pablo Mora Calderón.- 4. Indigenous Audiovisual Producers of Ecuador: An Integral Practice of “Cosmovivencia” (Ecuador). Eliana Champutiz.- 5. Indigenous Audiovisual Practices, Post-National Discourses and the Poetics of the Small (Ecuador). Christian León.- 6. Audiovisual Practices and Production of the Commons (Peru). Luz Estrello and Julio César Gonzales (Colectivo Maizal).- Part II. Images of the Small Community.- 7. Recovering One's Own Voice to Redefine What is Visible, Desirable and Possible: La Escuela Audiovisual Al Borde. Ana Lucia Ramírez Mateus  (Colombia).- 8. Ojo Semilla: Weaving Feminisms Through CommunityCinema (Ecuador). Diana Coryat, Carolina Dorado Lozano and Karla Valeri Morales Aguayo.- 9. From the Festival-As-Event to the Festival-As-Process: A Journey Through Community Film Festivals in Colombia (Colombia). Natalia López Cerquera.- 10. Eco-Territorial Cinema: An Intercultural, Translocal, and Expanded Community Process (Ecuador). Yadis Vanessa Vanegas Toala.- 11. Notes Towards a History of Amateur Filmmaking in Guayaquil (Ecuador). Libertad Gills.-  12. Ay de mi que ardiendo, ...¡puedo!. An Extensive Note on María Galindo’s Bastard Cinema (Bolivia). Viola Varotto.- Part III. Guerrilla, Regional and Peripheral Cinema.- 13. Rethinking Subaltern “Modernities:” El cine chonero popular, 1994-2015. (Ecuador).Noah Zweig.- 14. Regional Peruvian Cinema (Peru). Emilio Bustamante and Jaime Luna Victoria.- 15. Minor Cinemas, Major Issues: Horror Films and the Traces of the Internal Armed Conflict in Peru  (Peru) Diana Cuéllar Ledesma.- 16. Popular Digital Colombian Cinema: Expressions from and about Violence. (Colombia). Luisa F. González Valencia.- 17. Images of Difference in Bolivian Cinema (Bolivia). Sergio Zapata.

Diana Coryat is a media educator and practitioner affiliated with Mendocino College in California and Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Ecuador. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Christian Leon is a professor at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Ecuador and a visiting professor at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) (Ecuador). He holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Noah Zweig is a research professor affiliated with Arizona State University Online and  Universidad Internacional del Ecuador. He holds a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.