Medellín at the Movies: Film Narrative and the Crisis of National Lettered Culture in Colombia

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2008

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Film and Media Studies | Latin American Languages and Societies | Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature

Abstract

In his “Medellín at the Movies: Film Narrative and the Crisis of National Lettered Culture in Colombia,” Corey Shouse Tourino theorizes on the decline of the mythical quasi-Athenian enlightened meritocracy that this South American nation’s elites claimed to have forged. Shouse Tourino employs a neo-Marxist postmodern approach to dissect three recent Colombian films: Víctor Gaviria’s Rodrigo D.: No futuro (Rodrigo D: No Future) and La vendedora de rosas (The Rose Vendor), as well as Barbet Schroeder’s movie version of Fernando Vallejo’s novel, La virgen de los sicarios (The Virgin of the Assassins). All three films focus on the marginalized denizens of Medellín, “a city sick with its own humanity,” according to the critic. Shouse Tourino’s meticulous analysis conveys in passing a devastating appraisal of Colombian society during the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. --From Jorge Febles’ “Introduction: Conceptualizing Differences through Cultural Analysis”

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First published in 2006.
"Expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005"--Page 4 of cover.

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