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    Art-mimesis and political reality in contemporary Cuban film

    Baker, Emily (2018) Art-mimesis and political reality in contemporary Cuban film. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 24 (1), pp. 42-54. ISSN 1326-0219.

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    Abstract

    This article uses the concept of “art-mimesis” to examine the reflections of two films, Juan Carlos Tabío’s El elefante y la bicicleta and Fernando Pérez’ Suite Habana, on the capacity of film to impact upon social reality in the context of the economic and political crises of the 1990s and early 2000s in Cuba. With reference to debates regarding the function of mimesis in the Cuban critical text “The Viewer’s Dialectic” by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, I argue that El elefante y la bicicleta retreats into fantasy, cutting itself off in a self-referential loop, and thus reflects the film industry’s turmoil of the mid-1990s. Suite Habana, on the other hand, represents an adaptation to crisis in the form of cheaper production techniques, and a return of revolutionary ideals in the presentation of a scenario, whereby the division between art and labor could be eradicated.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, available online at the link above.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Cuba, film, realism, mimesis
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Research Centres and Institutes: Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, Centre for (CILAVS)
    Depositing User: Emily Baker
    Date Deposited: 23 Feb 2018 09:21
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:43
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/21355

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