THE LATIN AMERICAN CINECITY: A DISTOPIC LOOK AT URBAN SPACE
Cinecity. Latin American metropolis. Cinema.
The present study seeks to elucidate how representations of Latin American metropolises may form a continuous symbolic landscape and a single imaginary environment: the cinecity. This concept refers to the signification resulting from production of a cultural sense that is proper and common to the cities cinematographically thematised. The study results from articulation of theoretical principals proposed to address the relationship between metropolis and cinema (COSTA, 2002; 2005; 2008; PRYSTHON, 2006), and the idea of continuous cities proposed by Italo Calvino (1990). This articulation is applied here to analyse 5 cities: São Paulo, Caracas, Bogota, Mexico City and Panama City, in representations where the urban filmic space emerge as dystopic and marked by social problems such as unemployment, corruption and urban violence, thus forming a common city in crisis – the cinecity. The list of analysed movies includes: Linha de Passe (Walter Salles e Daniela Thomas, 2008), Hermano: uma fábula sobre o futebol (Marcel Rasquin, 2010), Las Tetas de Mi Madre (Carlos Zapata, 2015), Sequestro a Domicílio (Abner Benaim, 2009) and Dias de Graça (Everardo Valerio Gout, 2011).