Violence, Society and Culture. The impact of Cinema.

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Argentinean Cinema and Visual Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century

The enthusiastic revival of Argentine cinema in the 1960s was brief , but it gave birth to two major filmmakers : Leonardo Favio and Hugo Santiago (Oubina 2000 . Several years had to pass , however , before this legacy could be built upon . First , the 1976 military coup put an end to any chance of making films . Then , after democracy was restored in 1983 , most new films chose to flatter people 's good consciences

. This soothing opportunistic genre was epitomized by Luis Puenzo 's The Official Version (1984 , which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and tells how a woman begins to suspect that her adopted daughter is one of the children of people killed by the military . The story is not about the girl or her tortured and murdered parents or about her grandmother who searches for her , but about a woman filled with doubts about herself . Some films nevertheless confronted the grisly events of the military regime (Oubina 2000 . They included Alejandro Agresti 's Secret Wedding (1988 ) and Hugo Santiago 's The Pavements of Saturn (1985

In a period when a deep economic crisis has profoundly affected all sectors of the Argentine economy , filmmakers face a grave challenge in financing films and keeping the national film industry afloat (Falicov 2003 . Although the current financial crisis is not the first of its kind (Argentina has suffered a cycle of booms and busts over the last 70 years or so , it is particularly sad to see filmmakers struggle after the upsurge in dynamic , innovative and unusual films to come out of Argentina in recent years (Falicov 2003 . Films such as La ciynaga (2001 , Nueve reinas (2000 ) and Bolivia (2000 ) were enthusiastically received at home and abroad and won awards at film festivals

Film violence can be seen as an especially telling manifestation of the struggles of popular cinema to balance at any given time the forces changing society and those controlling it (Slocum 2000 . Among the norms of cinematic production and reception that clarify and mark changes in the popular cinematic representation of violence are narrative , genre and (often gendered ) viewing practices . We might begin to discuss these by considering a capsule view of narrative filmmaking practices during the classical period . It is a cinema of linear narratives , typically centered on individual , white , psychologically well-motivated male protagonists who move toward the resolution of public conflicts (Slocum 2000 . The resolution , furthermore , is a dual one involving both a social integration and heterosexual coupling , which together reaffirm prevailing ideological currents and are usually grounded in national cultural myths . Narratives are presented visually through well-focused compositions , continuity editing , realistic settings , naturalistic lighting , and frequent reliance on generic story forms and recognizable star performers . As outlined by film scholar David Bordwell , these tendencies function to establish the parameters of images of conformity and nonconformity alike . Breaks from these norms , including images or suggestions of violence , thus frequently...