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This book considers how architectural landmarks, imagined buildings and urban landscapes take part in the production of meaning in contemporary Argentine cinema. From the iconic Buenos Aires Obelisk to the Hilton International Hotel, the shopping center to the café and the Le Corbusier-designed Curutchet House to the gated community, architecture in these films evokes the political. Tracing architecture's expression through six films produced since the 1990s-Pizza birra faso, Mundo grúa, Nueve reinas, La niña santa, La antena and El hombre de al lado-Amanda Holmes studies how architecture in cinema elicits political memory, underscores marginalization and class discrepancies, creates nostalgia for neighborhoods and re-evaluates existing communities. Generously illustrated and carefully researched, the book offers an in-depth reading of key contemporary Argentine films and a fresh architectural approach to film analysis.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Pizza birra faso: Buildings of Hierarchy and Exclusion.- 3. Machinations of Urban Development and The Construction Industry an Mundo grúa.- 4. Properties of Glass in Nueve reinas.- 5. The Hotel Termas in La niña santa: Unstable Frames and Open Boundaries.- 6. Paper Architecture and Totalitarian Propaganda in La antena.- 7. The Architectural Promenade and the Cinematic Window in El hombre de al lado.- 8. Conclusion.
About the author
Amanda Holmes is Associate Professor of Latin American literature and film at McGill University, Canada. She is author of City Fictions: Language, Body and Spanish American Urban Space (2007) and co-editor of Cultures of the City: Mediating Identities in Urban Latin/o America (2010).
Summary
This book considers how architectural landmarks, imagined buildings and urban landscapes take part in the production of meaning in contemporary Argentine cinema. From the iconic Buenos Aires Obelisk to the Hilton International Hotel, the shopping center to the café and the Le Corbusier-designed Curutchet House to the gated community, architecture in these films evokes the political. Tracing architecture’s expression through six films produced since the 1990s—Pizza birra faso, Mundo grúa, Nueve reinas, La niña santa, La antena and El hombre de al lado—Amanda Holmes studies how architecture in cinema elicits political memory, underscores marginalization and class discrepancies, creates nostalgia for neighborhoods and re-evaluates existing communities. Generously illustrated and carefully researched, the book offers an in-depth reading of key contemporary Argentine films and a fresh architectural approach to film analysis.
