Generic formations in contemporary Latin-American crime film: transnational perspectives and methods

• Grant number: 23/14805-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2024
• End date: September 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Maciel Guimarães Junior
• Grantee: Luiz Felipe Rocha Baute
• Supervisor: Iain Robert Smith
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: King's College London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/05701-3 - Generic formations in contemporary Latin-American crime film, BP.DR

Abstract

This project advances the expected contributions from a research internship at King's College London connected to the PhD research I am conducting in Brazil (FAPESP 21/05701-3). Such research aims to study the production, distribution, and reception of crime films in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, from the perspective of the world-systems analysis, which divides global production into core, semi-periphery, and periphery, from the year 2000 to the contemporary. The referred world-systems perspective, formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein, and applied to the arts by Franco Moretti, will be used to identify the relations between the Latin-American periphery and the Hollywood core. I argue that generic processes can be better understood as part of an ample phenomenon by considering them as cultural forms in constant transformation. Therefore, in this internship, I will analyse Argentinian, Brazilian, and Mexican film and media, particularly adaptations and coproductions, and examine their results alongside more general data collected regarding the local and regional generic systems. For that, I will also utilize theories and methods of transnational cinema studies, as developed by Fredric Jameson (1992), Lucia Nagib (2011), and Iain Robert Smith (2017). This internship provides the opportunity for a better understanding of film and media circulation today, complexified by new forms of distribution, as well as contributing to the internationalization of Latin American film and media studies.