Images and ideas about Indigenous men, women and children abound in EuroAmerican humanities and arts. In the Americas, indigeneity figures prominently in national narratives of identity, usually as ghostly symbols, sometimes idyllic and other times horrific and abject. When synchronized with scientific explanations, such symbolism has helped fix formerly more fluid community relations into the categories operationalized by the colonial and then state institutions to structure territorial dispossession and the ‘development’ of a ‘disappearing people.’ Geographical imaginations of indigeneity also profitably brand commodities such as artwork, travel and entertainment experience, real estate, franchises, and tobacco. In response to these caricatures and economic opportunities, diverse Peoples have appropriated and reworked state and scholarly categories to identify communities, political struggles, and cultural heritage.
Most recently, historically marginalized social groups have rallied relatively new multimedia and broadband technologies to articulate alternative (to massive, commercial, hegemonic, ‘whitestream’) visualizations of the(ir) world. This chapter suggests materials and strategies for teaching about the aims, content and production of Indigenous videos. How and by whom are video technologies accessed and used to mediate Indigenous geographies? How can Indigenous videos help decolonize geographic knowledge production? How about geographic curricula? With the concept of visual sovereignty this chapter emphasizes lessons that center the ways Indigenous media makers re/claim territory, place and agency in settler colonial spaces. Students are invited to explore how Indigenous videos help disrupt the colonialist hierarchies of knowledge production that have historically shaped both scholarly and popular knowledge about Indigenous geographies.
Each week, students will be responsible for preparing or presenting different assignments. The work is spread out over the course of the semester, so students will be responsible for their tasks on different dates and for different films. On Friday, students will complete different kinds of digital homework (tarea digital) in preparation for the final video essay project. These low-stakes assignments are designed to help you recognize film techniques and how they function, as well as to provide you with the cutting and editing practice needed for your video essay (due at the end of the semester).
This essay [...] focuses upon Latin America by briefly surveying the most relevant sources and following up on their discussion of pedagogically theoretical issues in current use. The second section of this essay spotlights a sampling of syllabi from leading scholars in the field, offering a variety of effective approaches and templates for teaching Latin American film and history in the university classroom, especially given the issues covered in the first section. The final section will list the handful of available filmographies and contact points for film distributors and databases relevant to Latin American film and history studies.
This brief guide organizes commonly-used terms and concepts in film studies into five major categories:
1. Narration
2. Mise en scène and acting styles
3. Editing
4. Soundtrack
5. Cinematography
The guide is designed to complement Cineglos, an online glossary illustrated with clips from Latin American and Iberian films.