University of Texas Press
Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua
Key Metrics
- Jonathan Buchsbaum
- University of Texas Press
- Paperback
- 9780292705241
- 9.22 X 6.18 X 0.9 inches
- 1.28 pounds
- Performing Arts > Film - History & Criticism
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Following the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, young bohemian artists rushed to the newly formed Nicaraguan national film institute INCINE to contribute to the recovery of national identity through the creation of a national film project. Over the next eleven years, the filmmakers of INCINE produced over seventy films--documentary, fiction, and hybrids--that collectively reveal a unique vision of the Revolution drawn not from official FSLN directives, but from the filmmakers' own cinematic interpretations of the Revolution as they were living it.
This book examines the INCINE film project and assesses its achievements in recovering a Nicaraguan national identity through the creation of a national cinema. Using a wealth of firsthand documentation--the films themselves, interviews with numerous INCINE personnel, and INCINE archival records--Jonathan Buchsbaum follows the evolution of INCINE's project and situates it within the larger historical project of militant, revolutionary filmmaking in Latin America. His research also raises crucial questions about the viability of national cinemas in the face of accelerating globalization and technological changes which reverberate far beyond Nicaragua's experiment in revolutionary filmmaking.
Author Bio
Jonathan Buchsbaum is a professor of Media Studies and is also a member of the Film Studies Certificate Program doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania (BA, Economics), Harvard University (MEd) and New York University (MA, PhD, Cinema Studies), Buchsbaum teaches "Principles of Sound and Image," "African Americans in Film and Television," "Styles of Cinema," and "Latin American Cinema."
His publishing concentrates on political filmmaking in the United States, Latin America , and France. His doctoral dissertation, "Cinema Engagé: Film in the Popular Front," was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1988. His most recent book is Cinema Sandinista: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1990 (University of Texas Press, 2003). His current research focuses on the government support system for cinema in France, and its relation to the liberalizing pressures of the European Union and the World Trade Organization.
Current book project: Exceptional Times: National Cinema and Global Culture.
Source: Queens College
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