Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century 3031409884, 9783031409882

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Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

Maria Fernanda Miño Puga

Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

María Fernanda Miño Puga

Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

María Fernanda Miño Puga Department of Film Studies University of St Andrews St Andrews, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-40988-2    ISBN 978-3-031-40989-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023, corrected publication 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

The original version of the book has been revised. A correction to this book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_8

Abstract

This book examines Ecuadorian cinema after the 2006 National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine, and its relationship to the encompassing political ideology of Socialism for the 21st century. It contends that the local cinema developed during this period, the so-called “mini-boom” of Ecuadorian cinema, carries the same ambiguities, ruptures, and even reversals as its governing ideology, constituting what I label “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. In particular, this book identifies underlying neoliberal tendencies that are maintained, and at times encouraged, by the afore-mentioned policy and its operational arm, the National Film Council or CNCine, despite the anti-hegemonic rhetoric that informed this political period. To support this claim, this book initially argues for Ecuadorian cinema as a national industry, linking a local understanding of its own industry to broader theories on national and transnational cinemas. With film activities dating back to the early 1900s, Ecuadorian cinema has constructed a particular definition of success that involves participation in film festivals, theatrical exhibition, and box office performance. Yet Ecuadorian cinema also seems preoccupied by themes of social justice, environmental concerns, migration, and coloniality, with cinema representing a continual space for negotiation and reorientation. As such, this book examines the production practices, aesthetic choices, and narrative themes of films that achieved theatrical exhibition between 2007 and 2015, resulting in three identifiable subfields: a first subfield encompassing the local exhibition sector, having historically exercised control over commercial distribution, influencing the value expectations constructed through it; a second indie vii

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subfield, including narrative and documentary features supported by CNCine and showcasing a preferred path towards commercial distribution; and a third vernacular subfield that operates outside state support, due to low production values, problematic content, or choosing to prioritise the needs and rights of the community. For each case, the ambiguities of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century are made evident, these having been further emphasised by the dismantling of cultural policies in recent years.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Methodology and Theoretical Framework   6 Chapter Breakdown and Findings   9 2 The  Case for an Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century 15 What Is Ecuadorian Cinema?  19 An Ecuadorian Cinematic Field under Socialism for the Twenty-first Century  37 3 Commercially  Released Narrative Features During the Ley de Cine Years 55 Marginality and Precariousness in Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (1999)  58 The Revolutionary Legacy of Third Cinema  64 Film Policy as a Response to Neoliberalism?  71 State Funding and Market Dynamics During Socialism for the 21st Century  74 Production Practices in CNCine-Backed Narrative Features  79 Case Study: Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2013)  84 Market-Oriented, Socially Conscious?  89 4 Making  Sense of the Past: Documentary and Memory in Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century 91 Institutional Memory During Socialism for the 21st century  94 ix

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The Space of Memory in National/Transnational Cinemas  98 Memory and Documentary in Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century 102 Case Study: Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011) 112 A Cinematic Memory in Constant Negotiation 120 5 Ecuador’s  Vernacular Cinema: Underground, Popular, and Neoliberal?123 Uncovering Ecuador bajo tierra: An Issue of Terminology 126 Vernacular Cinema, Vernacular Modernism, and Popular Cinema in Latin America 129 The Road to Commercial Exhibition for Non-­state-Funded Narratives 139 Case Study: Sexy Montañita (2013) 143 State Media and Vernacular Cinema “in its own terms” 150 6 C  inema and Ecuador’s Buen Vivir: Negotiating Coloniality in the Community153 An Elusive Definition of Ecuador’s Buen Vivir  155 Negotiating Coloniality of Knowledge and Power 160 Buen Vivir and Community Cinema: Making in Community 164 Colectivo El Churo: Community Media Tailored to Community Needs 169 Case Study: Javier con I, Íntag (2016) 172 Case Study: Vengo Volviendo (2015) 176 Community Cinema and Sustainability: A Necessary Compromise? 180 7 Conclusions and Recommendations185 Production Practices 187 Aesthetic Choices 189 Narrative Themes 191 Final Thoughts and Recommendations 192 Correction to: Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st CenturyC1 References195 Index213

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1

Llucshi caimanta/¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get out of here!, 1976) Salvador (right) and Angel in Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Sebastián Cordero 1999) Fig. 3.2 Portoviejo’s city centre in Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2012) Fig. 3.3 Paco Chávez sits inside a police car in Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2012) Fig. 4.1 President Jaime Roldós and wife Martha Bucaram in La muerte de Jaime Roldós (Sarmiento and Rivera 2013) Fig. 4.2 The Restrepo family house as featured in Con mi corazón en Yambo (María Fernanda Restrepo 2011) Fig. 4.3 Pedro Restrepo arranges a demonstration flag in Plaza de la Independencia (Quito). Film still from Con mi corazón en Yambo (Restrepo 2011) Fig. 5.1 DVD cover of Fernando Cedeño’s underground film El Ángel de los Sicarios (2013) Fig. 5.2 Film poster of Sexy Montañita (Alberto Pablo Rivera 2014) Fig. 5.3 On their way to Montañita beach. Film still from Sexy Montañita (Rivera 2014) Fig. 5.4 Family photo from TV sitcom Mis Adorables Entenados. Archivo GRANASA Fig. 6.1 State billboard promoting mining, as featured in Pocho Álvarez’s Javier con I, Íntag (2016) Fig. 6.2 Parody of President Rafael Correa’s Enlace Ciudadano. Film still from Javier con I, Íntag (Álvarez 2016) Fig. 6.3 Film still from Vengo Volviendo (Rodas and Páez 2015) Fig. 6.4 Ismael and Luz in Vengo Volviendo (Rodas and Páez 2015)

21 60 87 87 110 116 117 135 144 146 147 173 175 177 178 xi

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Ecuadorian films in commercial theatres per year (2007–2015) 75 Table 3.2 Number of spectators for commercially released narrative features (2007–2015) 79 Table 4.1 Ecuadorian documentaries premiered in commercial theatres (2007–2015)105 Table 5.1 Privately funded narratives premiered in commercial theatres (2007–2015)140

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Historically, Ecuador has been considered a third-tier film-producing nation. Compared to other countries in Latin America, such as Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, Ecuador is usually seen as a country with little or no film production. Scholars, such as John King (1994) and Paul Schroeder Rodríguez (2016), have used terms like “weak” and “idle” to characterise smaller cinemas in Latin America, Ecuador included, but during the mid-­2000s and 2010s something changed. The idea of a “mini-boom” in Ecuadorian cinema flooded media headlines, both locally and internationally, with a record-breaking 14 films premiering in commercial theatres in 2014 (Caselli 2012; Redacción Cultura Diario El Telégrafo 2013; De la Fuente 2015). Also during this time, President Rafael Correa took office in 2007, establishing the left-leaning ideology of Socialism for the 21st century, and remaining in power for three succesive terms.1 Similar to other governments in the region – primarily Venezuela and Bolivia, and, to a lesser extent, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina – a progressive shift had also occurred. In this context, the apparent success of Ecuadorian cinema can be interpreted as directly influenced by this political ideology and its 1  For the purposes of this book, Socialism for the 21st century is associated with the three terms of President Rafael Correa (2007–2009, 2009–2013, and 2013–2017). His successor Lenin Moreno, while a member of the same political party, quickly distanced himself from this ideology, putting into question the continuity of the movement.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_1

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emphasis on state-supported film production. Yet the realities of the local film industry are not so simple. This book asks how Ecuadorian cinema relates to Socialism for the 21st century, and how this ideology might inform the narratives, aesthetic choices, and production practices of the period. It is argued that the same ruptures, contradictions, and reversals found in Socialism for the 21st century can also be observed in the film output of the time, which engages in anti-hegemonic rhetoric while, simultaneously, aspiring to the same value expectations as the neoliberal practices it criticises. This argument is encapsulated in the proposed terminology of “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. Considering the lack of scholarship related to Ecuadorian cinema in general, much less about post-2000 Ecuadorian films, this book offers a needed contribution to the scant literature available on the subject, the majority of which is written in Spanish and distributed locally. Pioneer Wilma Granda, for instance, provided the first study on silent Ecuadorian cinema in 1995, complemented by the writings of Ulíses Estrella (1984), and, more recently, Gabriela Alemán (2009), Christian León (2005) and Paola De la Vega Velasteguí (2016). These works addressed local film histories and cultural management, as well as documentary and underground cinemas. Additionally, filmmakers like Sebastián Cordero, Juan Martín Cueva, Camilo Luzuriaga, and Pocho Álvarez have regularly written on the state of Ecuadorian cinema, while also engaging in policy efforts and even holding roles in film institutions and schools. This local expertise has gradually made its way into scholarly circles in recent years, with publications by Carolina Sitnisky (2018) and Rafael Ponce-Cordero (2019), to name just two. The most obvious predecessor to this book is Diana Coryat and Noah Zweig’s article on New Ecuadorian cinema: Small, glocal and plurinational (2017), which already suggests that this particular moment in Ecuadorian film history is worthy of analysis. Building from these previous works, the first aim of this book is to suggest that film activities in Ecuador are consistent enough to constitute a national film industry, even if scholarly overviews have tended to overlook them. Moreover, by situating Ecuadorian cinema within its immediate political context of Socialism for the 21st century for the first time, this book aligns with a Latin American cinematic tradition that is aware of its political surroundings, at times falling into a sympathetic or oppositional stance. As such, Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is here presented as a continuous space for negotiation.

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A second aim of this book is to prove that the circumstances of the period in question, from 2006 to 2016, are specific enough to require their own terminology. For the first time in history, local filmmakers were able to consolidate their efforts into tangible film legislation: the 2006 Film Promotion Law, or Ley de Cine, and its operational arm, the Ecuadorian National Film Council, or CNCine. This policy prescribed requirements to categorise a local film as Ecuadorian and opened the door for state monies to be allocated to local projects. Through CNCine, Ecuadorian cinema was able to participate in regional film bodies and benefit from international funding platforms. But the 2006 Ley de Cine and the resulting CNCine also had to navigate a country in transition. The socialist government of Rafael Correa took office in 2007, serving further successive terms in 2009 and 2013. A new constitution was written in 2008, from which complementary legislation was also implemented. Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century refers to this specific moment, covering a particular set of narratives, production practices, and aesthetic choices that defined the so-called “mini-boom” in Ecuadorian cinema. Eventually, CNCine was transformed into the Instituto de Cine y Creación Audiovisual (Institute of Film and Audio-visual Creation or ICCA), and the 2006 Ley de Cine was absorbed by the Ley de Cultura or Law of Cultures in 2015; these occurrences serve as bookends, delimiting the proposed categorisation.2 The “for the 21st century” terminology is not arbitrary. At first glance, it appears as the obvious choice to encapsulate a particular period in Ecuadorian history and its implications for the local industry. But it can also be seen as a general indexation in a time and place, especially for the unfamiliar reader, one not aware of the particularies of Latin America’s contemporary politics. This book is situated between these two tensions. Certainly, presenting a body of work on the relationships between a local cinema and its immediate political context already hints at some possible correlations and discrepancies. Yet, as this book seeks to prove, Ecuadorian 2  Changes in cultural policy continued after the creation of ICCA, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2022, ICCA had morphed into the Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation (IFCI), broadening even more their scope of action to incorporate visual arts, literature, theatre and performance, and digital arts, to name a few. In the words of the then director of IFCI, Lorena Robalino: “We come from the merger of two institutes. I received a Frankenstein that I am still modeling, correcting, and adapting to the realities of the IFCI, which now works with half the staff that the two institutes had and perhaps with the same or more work” (Varas 2022).

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cinema for the 21st century does not seem to categorically lean in one direction or the other, with the underlying neoliberal tendencies that preceded the period in question mostly maintained, and at times encouraged. As such, the “for the 21st century” terminology can be applied to both interpretations. This proposition is evident in similar studies on national cinemas in Latin America that echo the “21st century” terminology, such as Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow’s Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds (2020), and Vania Barraza and Carl Fischer’s Chilean Cinema in the 21st century world (2020). Parallels between the Ecuadorian scenario and the mentioned bibliography are not limited to title choice, nor can they be attributed to a political tendency shared with these countries. In fact, these neighbouring national cinemas operated in diametrically different political contexts. In Peru, for instance, right-leaning tendencies were maintained throughout the first two decades of the new millenium, despite political upheaval and uncertainties.3 In the case of Chile, presidential mandates swung from right to left in this same period, undemining the continuity of either political ideology.4 In these examples, the “21st century” axiom is not a direct extrapolation of their political frameworks, but does point to the historical realities of these countries for the mentioned period. For Ecuadorian cinema, that historical reality is heavily influenced by Socialism for the 21st century, a fact that further justifies the proposed terminology. The political context briefly described so far, although relevant, only partially helps build the case for an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. While film production between 2006 and 2016 was directly influenced by its legal framework, it was also a response to decades of film 3  Between 2000 and 2020, corruption scandals have affected every presidency in Peru. For instance, President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) was sentenced to 25 years in prison over crimes against humanity and corruption charges. His successor, Alejandro Toledo (2001–2006), was found guilty on corruption charges related to Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht, a trend also followed by Alan García (2006–2011), Ollanta Humala (2011–2016), and Pedro Pablo Kucynzski (2016–2018). More recently, Manuel Merino (2020) replaced Martín Vizcarra (2018–2020) after bribery allegations, but he soon resigned due to protests and overall national discontent. 4  Following President Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), the presidency in Chile has switched between leftist Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010 and 2014–2018) and right-leaning entrepreneur Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014 and 2018–2022). Both mandates have been marred by street protests, over issues ranging from education reform and women’s reproduction rights to more recent calls to revamp the current Chilean constitution, implemented during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1980.

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activities in Ecuador, which navigated a variety of political circumstances, and prone to subjective value judgements constructed over time. It is through this historical background that the idea of an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is corroborated, and finds resonance with the national cinemas of neighbouring countries. For example, the first motion pictures made their way into the country just as they did for the rest of Latin America, following traditional trade routes at the turn of the 20th century. During this time, Ecuadorian president Eloy Alfaro presided over the so-­ called Revolución Liberal or Liberal Revolution, eventually establishing a secular state. Cinema already played an important role in society, positioning itself as a medium to disseminate ideas of development and progress, by means of both narrative and technology. As such, it is no surprise to find, for instance, cinematic records of the first national railroad reaching the city of Quito in 1908, supported by Alfaro. These motion pictures would be presented at dedicated cinema venues, mostly owned by affluent entrepreneurs with connections to international distributors, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the local exhibition sector. During the 1960s and 1970s, Latin America saw the rise of communism and subsequent military dictatorships in response, and these also reached Ecuador. In terms of cinema, this political period was matched by Third Cinema, a film movement and theory that offered an alternative to the consolidated hegemonies of Hollywood and European new waves. This focused on the marginalised and dismissed as its subjects and used the conventions of social documentary to oppose and criticise colonial undertones still prevalent in Latin American society. It also capitalised on the financial and technological limitations for film production and used them as a catalyst for creative and collaborative processes. It is in this period that the first Ecuadorian film guild, Asocine, was created, which was pushing for legislation efforts as early as 1977. These efforts would come to fruition only 30 years later, and, by this time, the country as well as the region were again experiencing a new swing in the pendulum of Latin American politics. In the 1990s, a shift towards neoliberalism was conducted primarily by democratically elected governments, encouraging free-market dynamics and capitalist-oriented economic reform. Unlike neighbouring Colombia and Peru, Ecuador did not directly experience internal armed conflicts, but enacted comparable national plans to prevent it. The local exhibition sector was absorbed by international conglomerates that gave rise to the multiplex, or multi-screen complexes, usually attached to shopping centres. In contrast, technological advances such as the development

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of digital prosumer formats allowed for the proliferation of pirate distribution networks, and subsequent underground (or bajo tierra) films. It is in this context that Ecuador experienced a deep economic crisis towards the late 1990s, with the collapse of the banking system and evident political uncertainty. The resulting livelihood-driven migration, hyperinflation, and eventual replacement of the local currency with the American dollar certainly welcomed the rhetoric of Socialism for the 21st century and informed the proposed Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century.

Methodology and Theoretical Framework Undoubtedly, the described historical context exposes the level of complexity in which Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century operates. It is not limited to studies in production practices, film policies, the textual analysis of films, or even the legacies of regional movements such as Third Cinema. Rather, it asks for a comprehensive approach that incorporates all these aspects. As such, this book relies on a praxis-based methodology, in which the local film industry informs its theoretical framework. In this line, Chap. 2 introduces Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim’s “critical transnationalism” (2010), considering the transnational nature of Ecuadorian cinema, alongside the regional scope of Socialism for the 21st century. Since local films have traditionally engaged in international collaborations, defining a national specificity for Ecuadorian films can prove to be a difficult task, even when taking into account film legislation. Critical transnationalism reconciles different approaches to the national and transnational in film studies: from the transnational as border-crossing (Higson 2000; Hill 1992; Hayward 2004), to the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial (Naficy 2001; Marks 2000; Tierney 2018), as well as the regional or supranational (Lu 1997). These theories help argue for a local cinematic identity that begins to take form as it engages in these transnational exchanges. Expanding on these theories can shed light on the complexity of defining a national cinema, even prior to narrowing down into specific movements, in this case Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. By limiting the transnational to a border-crossing definition, for example, this book would risk excluding film expressions that rely heavily on transnational collaborations, a practice that has developed over time, since the early cinema days

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of cinema in Ecuador.5 On the other hand, establishing a clear national specificity for local works can be beneficial, for instance, when assessing the impact of film policies and national film structures, as is the case in this book. Regarding the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial, the neoliberal legacies of the late 1990s certainly promoted Ecuadorian diasporas in countries like Spain, Italy, and the United States, opening the door for hybrid expressions that echo remnants of coloniality in Latin America. However, focusing only on the margins of society can lead to overlooking the impact that these ‘lesser’ film expressions can have on the overall local industry. Finally, the supranational can be seen in regional articulations of Socialism for the 21st century, converging in a shared rejection of hegemonic global powers, but not going as far as establishing a standardised response in each country. For national cinemas, the regional and supranational is evident in comparable film histories that led to similarities in film discourses and aesthetics, as the previous historical account recalled. These three approaches are considered by Higbee and Lim to propose a critical transnationalism, which in turn constitutes one of three central theoretical strands for this book. Another instance in which the local empirical knowledge dictates a tentative theoretical framework has to do with a local understanding of cinema itself. As previously stated, by studying a national cinema and its relation to its immediate political context, this book moves beyond the film text to also incorporate production practices and relevant policies. Consequently, a second theoretical strand is supported by Stephen Heath’s On Screen, In Frame: Film and Ideology (1981), in which cinema is comprised by the films onscreen, the industry that produced them, and the meaning articulated through them or its “specific signifying practice” (1981, 7). More than merely fitting Heath’s conceptualisation into an Ecuadorian scenario, Heath’s definition is considered precisely because it transcends the film text, to take into account the totality of a national film production structure. The collective imaginary constructed through these articulations is what gives rise to the proposed Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, with canon formations that can quickly fall into subjective value judgements difficult to quantify. Therefore, adding to Heath’s 5  In addition to the more traditional theatrically released narrative feature, the term “film expressions” is used to also encapsulate film works that are usually not considered cinematic enough to be included in a national film canon, as this book will discuss in Chap. 2.

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conceptualisation of cinema, Chap. 2 also expands on Pierre Bourdieu’s Field of Cultural Production (1993) in order to visualise the “objectivity of the subjective” (4). Here, members of the local film milieu are described as “agents”, able to amass sufficient cultural and financial capital by means of navigating a local field of cultural production and building a personal trajectory that aligns to the value system of the field. Applied to a local scenario, the local industry can be deemed the Ecuadorian cinematic field, with local agents exercising influence over it as its capital allows them to. In this line, the proposed Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can be defined as the shape held by the Ecuadorian cinematic field during Socialism for the 21st century, with local agents constantly negotiating the direction to be taken by the industry. Certainly, not every agent holds the same weight within an Ecuadorian cinematic field. A proper study of Ecuadorian cinema should not ignore the impact of the commercial exhibition sector, arguably the most influential player in the industry. With a reduced state allocation, and additional uncertainties made evident in recent years, the underlying structures of the local industry are revealed to have remained dependent on these market forces, leading to questions around whether the 2006 Ley de Cine really made a difference. Hence, the subject matter for this book primarily includes the 56 feature films premiered in commercial theatres under the years of the Ley de Cine, since, historically, the theatrically released narrative feature has taken prevalence over other film expressions in the country.6 Each chapter focuses on a particular characteristic of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, including its industry and legal framework in Chap. 2, CNCine-supported narrative features in Chap. 3, memory articulations in documentaries in Chap. 4, Ecuador bajo tierra and vernacular film expressions in Chap. 5, and community cinema efforts outside of commercial interests in Chap. 6. Each chapter also presents its own set of relevant theories and preferred production practices, concluding with the textual analysis of a film as a case study.

6  This book situates Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century between 2006 and 2016. However, since CNCine was allocated funding only after 2007, film projects that benefited from this support are considered after this year. On the other end, a similar issue arises, with the Ecuadorian Ley de Cultura or Law of Cultures being approved in 2015 but becoming operational the following year. Similarly, CNCine was replaced by ICCA in 2017, but by then, the institution had already experienced budget cuts and administrative instability.

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Chapter Breakdown and Findings Chapter 2 expands on the broader theories described in this introduction, including the transnational, a local definition of cinema itself, and subjective value systems that give shape to an Ecuadorian cinematic field. It grounds these theoretical discussions in a more detailed historical account of Ecuadorian film history and how it is situated within a regional cinematic tradition. This background serves to contextualise the legal framework that would be implemented during Socialism for the 21st century, including the 2006 Ley de Cine and complementary policies that, whether directly or indirectly, influenced the local cinematic field. In terms of findings, Chap. 2 reveals that even in legal texts related to cinema during Socialism for the 21st century some contradictions can already be found. For example, while the goal of the state was to promote counter-­hegemonic and participatory modes of production, in practice, this goal was measured by the number of films released in commercial theatres in a given year (Senplades 2013), which explains the so-called “mini-boom” in Ecuadorian cinema. In this instance, legislation seems to align to existing market structures that developed from the rise of the multiplex in the late 1990s, encouraging a particular idea of success for local projects. Consequently, Chap. 3 explores narrative features that achieved commercial distribution and benefited from state support via CNCine, constituting a local indie subfield. These films showcase a preferred path or “habitus”, consisting of said state support and international validators such as co-productions and film festivals, before a return on investment is sought through box office performance. It traces the development of this path back to Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Rodents, 1999), a point of reference for the following decade. Cordero’s debut is crucial for the analysis of what would eventually become Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, since it was produced under precarious circumstances yet managed to reach commercial theatres and the international film festival circuit. As such, this chapter explores Cordero’s Ratas through theories on Cinema of Marginality, as suggested by local scholar Christian León (2005), and more recent studies on the precarious by Carolina Sitnisky and Constanza Burucúa (2018). Ratas, and by extension the subsequent Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, is also framed by manifestos on Third Cinema, explored in this chapter, as well as contemporary neoliberal practices for national cinemas in Latin America, as articulated by Claudia Sandberg and Carolina Rocha in Contemporary Latin American Cinema:

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Resisting Neoliberalism? (2018). The dual status of CNCine-backed narrative features owes to their simultaneous inhabiting of the margins of a world cinema structure and aspiring to critical acclaim and financial sustainability. Using the analysis of Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse, 2012), the narratives portrayed in these films can also be seen to speak of an intrinsic interest in social issues, validating the overall argument of this book. The contradictory nature of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is further examined in Chap. 4, which is dedicated to memory articulations in  local documentaries. As interpreted by the local film community, Ecuadorian documentaries seemed to have achieved an important level of maturity compared to their narrative counterpart. Here, maturity is empirically understood as achieving international critical acclaim and commercial exhibition while also adhering to the aesthetic expectations of the genre. This chapter argues that memory constructions found in local documentaries during Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century did not necessarily trickle down from the speeches, slogans, and mottos of President Rafael Correa. Rather, local documentaries are presented as a product of a shared societal makeup that also gave rise to Socialism for the 21st century, coinciding in a rejection of neoliberal practices of the late 1990s, but not necessarily an embracing of a joint path forward. This argument is analysed through theories on the concept of memory and its malleability, by Michael Rothberg (2009), Katherine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (2003), and De Cesari and Rigney (2014). These authors understand memory as an active process to recall the past in the present, with those engaged in this process coming into being as they articulate this memory. As such, the patterns and coincidences in  local documentaries speak of what is being remembered during Socialism for the 21st century, and in what terms. In terms of findings, Chap. 4 distinguishes between privately funded and state-supported documentaries. The former seems to cater to an already established audience, like sports or music fanbases that can secure a return on investment. In these cases, rather than a contestation, these documentaries affirm memory articulations built over time, through a dialogue between subject matter and audience. In the case of CNCine-­ supported documentaries, these tend to explore themes that move from first-person documentaries to border-crossing journeys of self-discovery, with a particular interest in the period known as Retorno a la democracia, following the military dictatorships of the late 1970s. The closing case

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study for this chapter, the critically acclaimed Con mi corazón en Yambo (With my heart in Yambo, 2011), consolidates several of these tendencies. It depicts the disappearance of two brothers, allegedly at the hands of the police, during the Retorno a la democracia period. This family tragedy, directed and narrated by their younger sibling María Fernanda Restrepo, constitutes a personal story turned into a tale with national connotations. Through this film, the patterns and coincidences of memory articulations in local documentaries are compared to those encouraged by Socialism for the 21st century, reiterating that cinema is a space of constant negotiation. Similar contradictions are also analysed in Chaps. 5 and 6. Both chapters focus on film expressions that operate outside the preferred path towards commercial distribution described in Chap. 3, thus constituting a diverse vernacular subfield in Ecuadorian cinema. Chapter 5, for instance, centres on lowbrow popular films that did not benefit from CNCine support yet managed to reach commercial theatres. Just as the example of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros paved the way for the indie subfield, Chap. 5 uses the case of Ecuador bajo tierra films, and local cultural forms such as television and theatres, to define a “vernacular” subfield in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. Here, Ecuador bajo tierra (or EBT films) refer to low-budget, amateur films that are distributed in local pirate networks and make use of prosumer digital technologies. Even when not benefiting from CNCine, these films are also influenced by an intrinsic idea of success for local films that involves technical expertise, critical acclaim, and distribution in commercial theatres – what scholar Rafael Ponce-Cordero labels as “neoliberalism from below” (2019, 109). Therefore, this chapter proposes the term “vernacular” to consolidate film expressions that, like EBT films, are popular and localised, distinct from bourgeois and high-art film canon, and intentionally oppose them. This brief definition is supported by broader theories on vernacular cinemas, including Mikel Koven on the Italian giallo films (2006), Miriam Hansen regarding Classical Hollywood cinema (2009), and Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw on Popular cinema in Latin America (2004). The closing case study for the chapter, Alberto Pablo Rivera’s Sexy Montañita (2014), is a prime example of an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema. This privately funded film leans on success formulas borrowed from local television comedy and theatre, while also showcasing influences from foreign entertainment products. The fact that Sexy Montañita and EBT films continue to be excluded from a preferred local cinema due to problematic content, low production value, or lack of technical sophistication raises questions around whether the

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anti-­hegemonic rhetoric of Socialism for the 21st century and the participatory aims found in the 2006 Ley de Cine really made a difference for local cinemas. Finally, these discrepancies are also analysed for projects that prioritise the interest of the community, as explored in Chap. 6. The community, and films that are produced in it, are considered as they resonate with one of the key guiding principles of Socialism for the 21st century, the concept of Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir (Good Living). Briefly defined as living in harmony amongst citizens and with nature, Buen Vivir became a commonplace term during the presidency of Rafael Correa, and was added to all major pieces of legislation, including the National Plan for Good Living and the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution. However, Buen Vivir has proven to be a difficult term to define, particularly if interpreted from positions that question the political ideology of Socialism for the 21st century. Therefore, Chap. 6 delves into these interpretations, and associates them to the local film industry. As such, the official definition of Buen Vivir correlates to efforts by CNCine, in which the success of Ecuadorian cinema is linked to a gradual progression towards film structures that resemble mass-scale film industry processes. A second interpretation of Buen Vivir comes from indigenous cosmologies and argues for a “genuine” Sumak Kawsay that does not aspire to new forms of developmentalism. This strand can be compared to oppositional film practices, like the ones found in Third Cinema, with filmmakers like Pocho Álvarez being a local counterpart. Finally, a third understanding of Buen Vivir can be found among left-leaning intellectuals that seek an “alternative to development” devoid of foreign influences. As Chap. 5 concluded for vernacular films, ignoring the foreign in a local cinema risks rejecting influences that have already been internalised into a local cinematic identity, just as they are in Latin American cultural forms more broadly. Hence, these three interpretations of Buen Vivir reveal the complexity of implementing the concept for local society, cinema included. Community cinema comes into play as these interpretations converge into a shared rejection of Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, as theorised by Anibal Quijano (2000) and others. Cinema, therefore, is presented as a space for negotiation, in which colonial legacies of the region based on race and capital can be questioned and contested. Since the community has historically been a space to “propose and test, to group and strengthen the principles of the collective and its rights” (Álvarez, Ecuador 2014, 346), Chap. 6 relies on cinema produced in these spaces to visualise the ambiguities of the

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encompassing Socialism for the 21st century. Here, it is argued that community cinema projects are also prone to varying degrees of compliance and contestation as they adapt to the needs of the community, at times also benefiting from state institutions like CNCine. For this reason, this chapter closes with two case studies that exemplify this range of contestation. Pocho Álvarez’s Javier con I, Intag (Javier with I, Intag, 2016), for instance, represents oppositional film practices from the community that challenge Rafael Correa and make use of social documentary conventions. The film Vengo volviendo (Here and there, 2015), directed by Isabel Rodas and Gabriel Páez, uses participatory video techniques to propose a collaborative narrative that comments on environmental, colonial, and migration issues, while also maintaining a sustainable business model able to secure CNCine funding. Evidently, associating a national cinema to a particular political ideology can lead to assumptions about a nationalistic use of cinema, especially if relying on film institutions to allocate state funding. However, the analysis provided in this book suggests otherwise. While the 2006 Ley de Cine and the resulting CNCine certainly changed the landscape of film production in Ecuador, providing some sense of stability for local filmmakers, it also operated at the crossroads between an overhauled state apparatus, decades of film activities in the country, and the ongoing dominance of film exhibitors. On screen, it translated into narrative features that simultaneously commented on social issues and sought international acclaim and financial stability. Other films prioritised the needs of the community while not necessarily rejecting state support or comparable external validators. For local documentaries, it meant an opportunity to make sense of the past, with memory constructions still being negotiated today. Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, therefore, can be interpreted as an expected product of its time, carrying the same ruptures, contradictions, and reversals as its encompassing political ideology.

CHAPTER 2

The Case for an Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

How Ecuadorian cinema relates to Socialism for the 21st century constitutes the central research question for this book. But more than just arguing for a specific choice in terminology, making a case for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century requires identifying characteristics that define it as a stand-alone period, a task impossible to accomplish without introducing the context of Ecuadorian cinema in general and Socialism for the 21st century in particular. Therefore, this chapter first questions what is deemed “Ecuadorian cinema”, both in terms of national specificity and as a cultural form, before comparing such findings to the legal framework of Socialism for the 21st century. Three initial characteristics are identified. First, Ecuadorian cinema is presented as a national cinema with transnational implications, a tendency that continues after the turn of the 21st century, following a legacy of border-crossing collaborations dating back to the early silent film era. Ecuadorian cinema is also classed as a film industry, even when not necessarily representing a mass-scale production or long-standing scholarly tradition. The fact that local filmmakers have managed to maintain a consistent film output despite limitations in infrastructure and state support justifies such an assertion. Finally, Ecuadorian cinema is seen as predominantly influenced by existing market structures, namely the local exhibition sector. Although the Ecuadorian Ley de Cine and the National Film Council were established in 2006, they operated alongside complementary legislation that included the 2009 Ecuadorian © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_2

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Constitution, the 2013–2017 National Plan for Good Living, and the 2013 Communications Law. The dominance of the exhibition sector is made evident in these legal texts, with an intrinsic preference for the theatrically released feature film as the epitome of success for the local industry. These three characteristics begin to give shape to an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century that responds to the neoliberal shift of the previous decade, while also embracing traditional expectations of value based on financial and cultural capital. The transnational implications of Ecuadorian cinema are explored first. Delimiting an “Ecuadorian cinema” can seem straightforward, but as the case of Jorge Sanjinés’ ¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get out of here! 1976) exemplifies at the beginning of this chapter, establishing a national specificity for films that engage in international collaborations can be challenging, hence the need for standing in dialogue with ongoing debates on the national and transnational in Film Studies. Consequently, this chapter relies on Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim’s “critical transnationalism”, a proposition that reconciles different approaches to the study of cinema and a particular nation. Based on the writings of Andrew Higson (2000) and John Hill (1992), the transnational is first interpreted as transcending clearly defined national borders. Considering the complexity of collaborations between nations, and the unequal power dynamics at hand, a second strand explores the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial (Naficy 2001; Marks 2000; Tierney 2018) while a third approach takes into account a shared regional and geopolitical heritage (Lu 1997). In this framework, Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can theoretically find a cinematic identity based on how it chooses to distinguish itself from other national cinemas, its marginal position amidst a world cinema structure, and its relation to similar regional counterparts in Latin America. In addition to questions on national specificity, delimiting an “Ecuadorian cinema” also requires agreeing on what is meant by cinema itself. This question is not limited to film formats, instead extending to the structures that, over time, have helped define a national film canon. Therefore, this chapter continues with a discussion of “cinema” for the national and transnational in Film Studies. Starting with Susan Hayward’s “Cinema of Institutions” (2004), a national cinema is first acknowledged as an institutional discourse that tends to prioritise high art over popular culture (6–7). To analyse such implications and draw closer to the tangible practices of the local industry, this proposition is complemented by Stephen Heath’s Film and Ideology (1981) and Pierre Bourdieu’s The

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Field of Cultural Production (1993). Heath’s understanding of cinema transcends film texts to also incorporate the industry that produced them and its acquired meaning. This last element also considers the positionality of the consuming subjects and the curatorial apparatus around them. Moreover, Bourdieu’s methodology is useful to move from the subjective to the objective in a field of cultural production. This is achieved by mapping the relations between cultural agents and their historical trajectories, which for the case of Ecuador would constitute an Ecuadorian cinematic field. Consequently, this chapter turns to the historical trajectories of local film activities. These trajectories range from early understandings of the cinematographer as the epitome of modernisation and progress, with films seen as conductors of liberal ideas, to filmmakers’ guilds aiming for state legislation to secure funding and stability. In both cases, the myth of stagnation and unproductivity in Ecuadorian film is debunked, and, considering the historical aggregate of local film outputs, a case is made for the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field to be deemed a proper film industry. This local industry is not reducible to only mass-scale expressions of film production; it also includes alternative and vernacular ways. It is because of the disparities of power and influence amongst the farthest extremes of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field that policy is called for, firmly in unison with claims of social justice and counter-hegemonic rhetoric found in Socialism for the 21st century. Hence, the proposed “Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st century” refers to the specific shape held by the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field during the 10-year period of the Ley de Cine, which almost coincides with the socialist administration of President Rafael Correa, one of the most visible figures in Latin America’s Socialism for the 21st century. A shared period, however, is not enough to justify a possible correlation, or to assume a propagandistic agenda behind state-funded film production. On the contrary, considering the rise of the multiplex in the late 1990s and some of the oligopolistic practices that the local exhibition sector still holds today, the counter-hegemonic ideals preached by Socialism for the 21st century seem to not have made much of a difference for the local industry. Thus, after a much-needed historical background, this chapter explores the local exhibition sector and its implications for the local industry. It also highlights the contradictions found in legislation related to film activities: the 2009 Constitution, the National Plan for Good Living (specifically the 2013–2017 version), and the 2013 Communications Law. The 2006 Ley

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de Cine, enacted a year before the first presidency of Rafael Correa, is situated in this new state apparatus, trying to negotiate, simultaneously, decades of film history and the demands of the local exhibition sector. This dichotomy is further emphasised at the conclusion of this chapter through two opinion pieces by film director and producer Camilo Luzuriaga (2014) and former CNCine director Jorge Luis Serrano (2014). Luzuriaga questions the effectiveness of the 2006 Ley de Cine as it was carried out by CNCine, while Serrano justifies the course of action taken by this institution. By comparing these two opinions, an implicit understanding of success is revealed, prioritising mass-scale production and the professionalisation of labour to achieve financial gains. The point of contention between the two, therefore, is not on the implicit goal set for the local industry but on the means to achieve it. Luzuriaga proposes a more laissez-faire approach, criticising what he calls a “CNCine-dependency”, while Serrano values state interventionism to promote production. Both opinions are hesitant to refer to Ecuador’s “mini-boom” as a mark of achievement. Rather, although some progress is acknowledged, it is in terms of the extent to which it complies with prior expectations of success rather than revolutionary ones. More recent developments in film legislation, including the restructuring of CNCine into Instituto de Cine y Creación Audiovisual (Institute of Film and Audio-visual Creation, 2016) and, once again, into the Instituto de Fomento a la Creatividad y la Innovación (Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation, 2020), attest to the fragility of state-­ supported film production, dependent upon political will and availability of funds to maintain a somewhat sustainable industry. Although these developments are not fully analysed in this book as they are not included in the period defined as Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, they confirm that the so-called “mini-boom” never quite crystallised into long-­ term, counter-hegemonic proposals. Instead, the status quo seemed to be maintained, emulating similar neoliberal dynamics to those that gave rise to the 2006 Ley de Cine in the first place. As such, Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century begins to be shaped by three identifiable tendencies, based on a particular set of production practices, business models, and taste expectations: first, a commercial exhibition sector that dominates the market and is characterised by amassed economic and political power; a second, state-supported indie subfield that prevails on cultural and symbolic capital; and third and othered cinema, usually overlooked and

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dismissed as non-professional, amateur, or domestic. These three types of cinema during Socialism for the 21st century are expanded in subsequent chapters of this book.

What Is Ecuadorian Cinema? As the introduction presented, if a case is to be made for an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, then the first step is to ask what is meant by Ecuadorian cinema in the first place. Using the example of Jorge Sanjinés’ ¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get out of here!, 1976), argued by some scholars to be one of the best films in Ecuadorian history, this section initially brings forward the difficulties in categorising a film as Ecuadorian, even when referring to film legislation. This case study opens the door to deem Ecuadorian cinema as being constructed through subjective interpretations or value judgements that call for specific methodologies. In other words, what is usually labelled as “Ecuadorian cinema” can be connected a malleable local understanding of cinema itself. According to film theorist Paul Willemen (2006), boundary setting in national cinemas represents a matter of cultural specificity, initially framed by institutional delimiters (33). In a practical sense, authoritative documents like Ecuador’s Ley de Cine can be useful to establish what comes under its jurisdiction. In this law, for a film to be categorised as Ecuadorian it must comply with at least two of the following conditions, still holding on to a certain level of ambiguity: (a) For the director to be an Ecuadorian citizen or legal foreign resident in Ecuador (b) For at least one of the scriptwriters to be of Ecuadorian nationality, or legal foreign resident in Ecuador. (c) For the theme and objectives to be related to the cultural or historical expressions of Ecuador (d) For films to be produced by artistic and technical crews composed mostly by Ecuadorian citizens or foreign nationals domiciled in Ecuador; and (e) For films to have been shot and processed in Ecuador (Ley de Fomento del Cine Nacional 2006, 2, my translation) Quickly, the prevalence of above-the-line personnel becomes evident, with the director and scriptwriter as roles that can legally define a film’s

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nationality. This observation echoes auteur theory, in which the director is given the sole authorship of a film, in the same way a writer would be for a novel (Astruc, The birth of a new avant-garde: La caméra-stylo 17–23). Some auteur tendencies in Ecuadorian cinema can arguably be found in later independent works and will be discussed in Chap. 3. At this stage, it appears as if crew nationality and place of production are prioritised over, for instance, the content of a film, here equated to “cultural or historical expressions of Ecuador”, a rather vague and shifting notion. For practical purposes and following Willemen’s advice, focusing on country of origin to delimit a field of study, particularly a national one, seems viable. But just as Willemen would later add (33–35), the existent legal framework is just a starting point to additional nuances in national specificity. The film Llucshi caimanta/¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get out of here!, 1976) can help illustrate these nuances. Directed by Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés alongside partner and collaborator Beatriz Palacios, ¡Fuera de Aquí! is considered by some to be the best Ecuadorian film ever made (Rist 2014). Ulises Estrella, who founded the Ecuadorian Cinemateca Nacional in 1981, is said to require every new employee to watch this film (Granda, YouTube  – Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón 2016). In 2015, the Ecuadorian National Film Council (CNCine) published a production journal of the film, kept by Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, who at the time served as assistant to the director and would later become a renowned film director and historian (Gumucio Dagrón 2017). The above-the-line crew of the film consisted of mostly foreign nationals: Sanjinés, Palacios, and Dagron from Bolivia, cinematographer Jorge Vignati from Peru, and sound recordist Jean Marcel Milan from France. Although the film was shot in Ecuador in collaboration with indigenous communities that composed most of the screen talent, these were not directly acknowledged. Local Germán Calvache, who worked as production manager, was not included in the credits (ibid.). Officially, ¡Fuera de aquí! is attributed to Grupo Ukamau, a guerrilla-­ film group based in Bolivia, founded by Sanjinés. The group had already made some oppositional projects in collaboration with indigenous community, such as El coraje del pueblo (The courage of the people, 1971) and El enemigo principal (The principal enemy, 1974). In Ecuador, the film was supported by Universidad Central in Quito, who provided technical equipment and hosted its first screening. Universidad Central appears as a sponsoring institution alongside Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela, where the film was processed and edited (Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana

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n.d.) Already, the transnational scale behind the production of ¡Fuera de Aquí! is evident, making it difficult to categorically draw lines of nationality. Additionally, if referring to the “cultural or historical expressions of Ecuador” mentioned in film legislation, these too can be debatable. Jesuit priest Luis Espinal, a member of the Ukamau group and later film critic and academic, is quoted in a newspaper article in Gumucio Dagron’s production journal: “El argumento, aunque esté ambientado en Ecuador es profundamente boliviano en todos sus detalles. El tema está inspirado en acontecimientos acaecidos en Bolivia, como las actividades del Instituto Lingüístico de Verano o la masacre de Tolata”. (The argument, although set in Ecuador is deeply Bolivian in all its details. The theme is inspired by events in Bolivia, such as the activities of the Summer Institute of Linguistics or the Tolata massacre) (Luis Espinal 1982  in Gumucio Dagrón 2015, 157, my translation) (Fig. 2.1). With this evidence, it would be reasonable to conclude that ¡Fuera de Aquí! should not be categorised as an Ecuadorian film, but this claim can also be contested in some sectors of the local film community. Denying the “Ecuadorianness” of this film based on a film policy that was passed almost 30  years after its premiere in 1976 could also be problematic. Rather, the above discussion should help reveal the many obstacles in defining a film as Ecuadorian, even with seemingly straightforward cases

Fig. 2.1  Llucshi caimanta/¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get out of here!, 1976)

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like ¡Fuera de Aquí! With such difficulties, is it appropriate to “limit” cinema to a national context, especially for a medium that has always been made possible through international networks? Is it more suitable to move beyond legislation to better convey the many dynamics in production practices for the period in question? These issues transcend the case of Ecuadorian cinema and represent a long-standing debate in Film Studies. In order to accommodate such questions and to situate Ecuadorian cinema in dialogue with these debates, this chapter continues to a theoretical discussion on the “national” and “transnational” in local cinemas. The ‘Ecuadorian’ in Ecuadorian Cinema: Transnationalism and Specificity The question that opened this section focused on a tentative definition of Ecuadorian cinema, which, as ¡Fuera de Aquí! exemplifies, represents a complex challenge. Being a matter of national specificity, the “Ecuadorian” element in “Ecuadorian cinema” can be equated to the ‘national’ in ‘national cinemas’, a terminology that has come under scrutiny in cultural and film studies in recent years, given the many aspects involved in associating a cultural product to a nation-state. Consequently, the ‘national’ is further explored in this section, in order to get closer to an ‘Ecuadorian cinema’ categorisation. In doing so, the transnational label is proposed, considering the advantages and disadvantages of its usage from a theoretical perspective. But rather than arbitrarily replacing the national with a transnational label, it is argued that the latter justifies the former, and its understanding serves to build up a more encompassing panorama that acknowledges state-bound film activities while addressing international ramifications. This reflection can provide a theoretical support for the concrete practices and tendencies of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century discussed later in this chapter. The inaugural issue of Transnational Cinemas journal (now Transnational Screens) offers a comprehensive overview of the ‘transnational’ in Film Studies, delineating the many advantages and drawbacks of using the term in relevant scholarship. Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim (2010) consolidate these approaches into three recognisable trends and propose the term “critical transnationalism” to reconcile possible shortcomings. These authors warn about loosely using the transnational label to only refer to collaborative film production practices, ignoring the “aesthetic, political or economic implications” of such endeavours (10). They

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argue that these generalisations had diluted the term to such an extent as to not holding any substantial meaning anymore, making it almost irrelevant (ibid.). Thus, surveying the approaches taken by film scholars regarding the transnational can help avoid the oversimplification of the term, and enrich the discussion towards an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. The first approach identified by Higbee and Lim is the one discussed by Andrew Higson in the seminal The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema (Higson 2000). The question that opens Higson’s debate asks, “When is a cinema ‘national’?” (63). In other words, what are the conditions or requirements that cinema must abide by to be considered “national”, or associated with a specific nation? To find an answer, Higson engages with Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an “imagined community”, an idea that for Higson implies a clearly delimited geopolitical space and assumes a fully formed national identity (62). This idea is translated into a national cinema by equating the collective and the nation, an audience that receives and interprets (or imagines) a fixed portrayal of the national projected on screen. For Higson, this extrapolation is problematic because of the unpredictability of the intended or imagined audience (63). It can also lead to an understanding of national cinema just as a cinema of the nation, or one that emphasises narratives about the nation (ibid.). In terms of production practices, Higson points to examples of films that hold a strong sense of ‘Britishness’ yet can only be described as transnational. In this line, the only space in which the national can carry some substance is in terms of state policy, but even then, it can sometimes be used only for “cosmetic effect” (69), hence Higson’s preference for the subtler “transnational” adjective, which he describes as border-­crossing (68). Higbee and Lim read Higson’s approach as one that sees the national as limiting, with a clear national/transnational divide (2010, 8). Although this approach gives prevalence to studies of transnational flows, particularly in production, distribution, and exhibition networks, it has the potential to ignore imbalances of power in these transnational exchanges. Indeed, this possibility can be seen in Higson’s address to John Hill’s argument in favour of a ‘proper’ British cinema (2000, 69–74). Hill differentiates between a national industry, mostly preoccupied with economic gains, and a national cinema, which should be interested in its contribution to “the cultural life of a nation” in a Hollywood-dominated international market (1992, 11). Rather than suggesting a homogeneous British cinema, Hill aims for one that is characterised by “question and inquiry”

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in a continuous “feedback loop” that promotes its “contestation and challenge” capabilities when imagining the fluid and hybrid nation (1992, 15–16). Higson asks whether this goal is a matter of national cinema, or closer to a “critical (and implicitly left-wing) cinema, a radical cinema” that is not necessarily bound to “national grounds”, but instead opens the door for specific canon formations (2000, 69). Regarding Hollywood, Higson points to Hill’s dismissal of the “democratisation potential” of Hollywood imports in British culture, a claim that, although not necessarily relevant among north–north relations,1 can be influential in interactions with the global south. Therefore, even when Higson’s assessment of Hill seems reasonable, the preoccupations articulated by Higbee and Lim are also valid. If Higson’s argument could seem disengaged from power imbalances and counter-hegemonic contestation, the next approach brings them to the forefront by focusing on the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial (Higbee and Lim 2010, 9). Following this trend, the analysis of Hamid Naficy (2003) comes to mind, who equates transnational cinema to films made by transnational authors or “exiles, émigrés, refugees, and expatriates” living in communities “outside of their places of birth and habitus” (203). Naficy’s proposed “independent transnational genre” emerges as a response to the unequal categorisation of these transnational filmmakers, who, according to the author, are labelled as either “auteurs” (for example, Murnau, Sirk, and Hitchcock) or “ethnic,” “national”, “third world,” or “third cinema” (such as Med Hondo, Khleifi, and Solanas). This otherness, and the aesthetic conventions that these authors exhibit, are also explored in Naficy’s An Accented Cinema (2001). Laura Marks (2000) adds to the conversation by suggesting the “intercultural” epithet to refer to interactions and movements between two or more cultures (6). What distinguishes Marks’ intercultural cinema from Naficy’s genre proposition is that, although in both cases filmmakers identify with more than one cultural background, the former also “live in the country in which they were born” (7). In both cases, the fluidity of national boundaries and 1  Lee Grieveson would argue that north–north relations were also impacted by the dominance of Hollywood imports since its early days, a situation that led to combined efforts from the state and industry alike. Grieveson writes: “The [British] Conservative government enacted a form of tariff legislation for the film industry in 1927, which sought to counteract the perceived economic and political effects of the global movement and success of Hollywood” (2018, 160).

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cultural diversity represents a shared characteristic that unite plethora of film expressions from around the world. Just as in Higson’s approach, the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial can also lead to some potential drawbacks. For Higbee and Lim, highlighting the mentioned transnational filmmakers can represent an overemphasis on the margins, given that these filmmakers are usually situated at the peripheries (2010, 9–10). In this way, its impact on mainstream or popular cinema can seem diminished. A useful comparison that connects Higson and Hill with the postcolonial legacy in British cinema is the account described by Okwui Enwezor when studying the Black Audio Film Collective (2007). Enwezor draws from previous coloniser/colonised interactions to historicise avant-garde movements that “centred their expressions across broader cultural, political and social formations” (112). The Black Audio Film Collective, therefore, erupted from a concrete moment in British history during the 1980s, in which “the Black British community contested their social invisibility and political powerlessness” (113). By elevating black subjectivity, usually through a process that involved an element of crisis, this collective aimed to add to the “multiple modernities” that comprise the proletarian “multitude” in British society (108). Hill’s “question and inquiry” ideal seems to be met in these interests. However, while not necessarily going as far as acknowledging Hollywood as a democratising agency as Higson suggested, these subjectivities should also be situated in relation to broader national and transnational contexts that acknowledge market dynamics in global and local film production. Two of the three approaches reviewed so far involve either delimiting the national to propose a transnational alternative or visualising the margins to construct a fluid and hybrid transnational multitude. The third approach instead groups together cinemas from “a shared cultural heritage and/or geopolitical boundary” (Higbee and Lim 2010, 9). As an example, Higbee and Lim mention the plural and transnational in Chinese cinemas as studied by Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu (1997). Hong Kong cinema, for instance, sits alongside cinemas from Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, with a variety of interpretations within each other’s territories, as well as abroad. Some remain at the margins; others emerge from the centre. Some seek entertainment; others prefer avant-­ garde. Some are conscious of their gender; others try to neutralise them. Yet all seem to somehow converge into a “symbolic unity to what would otherwise appear to be a quite heterogeneous entity: ‘modern China’” (5). Similar examples can also be found in other regions or geopolitical

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formations, both recent and past. But the question raised by Higbee and Lim lies on the transnational terminology, as it compared to “a supranational Chinese cinema, a regional cinema, or a pan-European cinema” (Higbee and Lim 2010, 9). In other words, is it necessary to use the transnational label when other terms have already been used to refer to such shared cinematic expressions? These three approaches, along with regional scholarship, were analysed by Dolores Tierney when proposing a new transnationalism in Latin America (Tierney, New transnationalisms in contemporary Latin American cinemas 2018). Quoting Ana Maria López (1998), Tierney implies that perhaps cinema has always been a ‘transnational phenomenon’ in the region (2018, 2), more evidently so in recent decades as the neoliberal political shift of the 1990s had forced filmmakers to rely on private and international sources of funding (2–4). Even when the state has re-­ established support for film activities, it is usually a partial aid that encourages external alternatives (4). Tierney uses these practices to substantiate a Latin American transnational cinema that should not be studied only in light of a colonial past, a “Hollywood-versus-the-world” dynamic, but instead should consider the boundary-exceeding implications of international capital and support (6–8).2 While the resistance stance on Latin American cinema is rooted in scholarship primarily interested in the legacy of the New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, effectively criticising the elevation of ‘pedigree’ works over local ones, Tierney points out that for both groups of films, transnational influence is a reality. As some Latin American filmmakers appear ‘deterritorialised’ when migrating to the global north (Cuarón, Iñárritu, Salles, Campanella), Tierney argues that they become “accented” and “interstitial” (9). It might seem that the above discussion offers more questions than answers, but following Higbee and Lim’s advice as to critically engage with the transnational, Ecuadorian cinema can begin to be articulated when moving from a “conceptual-abstract” to the “concrete-specific” of its production practices (2010, 10). Based on Higson’s perspective, Ecuadorian cinema can initially be established by local film legislation, becoming transnational when those boundaries are crossed or exceeded. Since Ecuadorian cinema is not limited to just film policy – and in line with the diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial approach – Ecuadorian cinema can also be formed through intercultural exchanges, usually in unequal terms. 2

 Preferred funding strategies for Ecuadorian cinema are expanded on in Chap. 3.

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These interactions can range from a colonial legacy to more private and transnational practices due to the economic recession and political instability of the late 1990s, something certainly present in 21st-century narratives, as will be discussed in the chapters to follow. Already a cinema at the periphery (Iordanova, Martin-Jones and Vidal 2010), or a cinema of small nations (Hjort and Petrie, Cinema of Small Nations 2007), Ecuadorian cinema is one that is usually overlooked in film scholarship but also one that overlooks itself when filtering out its own cinematic identity. Finally, the shared cultural heritages with other Latin American countries, particularly Third Cinema, New Latin American Cinema traditions, and lately New Transnationalism, stand in parallel with the recent rise of Socialism for the 21st century in the region and, in both cases strengthens a broader, supranational block, with shared political ideologies and interests. These tentative hypotheses are discussed throughout this book, but for now, based on the bibliography examined so far, the proposed label of “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century” already suggests an expected transnationalism as a means to emphasise the national. The ‘Cinema’ in Ecuadorian Cinema: Industry, Text, and the Machine Ecuadorian cinema in general and, more specifically, the proposed “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century” already hint at national, transnational, and ideological implications when defining “Ecuadorianness”. The next step to consider, once an Ecuadorian specificity has been discussed, is the rationale that categorises local film expressions as cinematic enough to be deemed Ecuadorian ‘cinema’. Therefore, the freedoms and restrictions acknowledged when curating a national cinema are analysed, moving beyond the film text to also include audiences, production practices, and the construction of meaning. Starting in the realms of film theory, this discussion is needed in order to inform further realities in the local sphere, both past and present. Attempting to define the ‘cinema’ in national and/or transnational cinemas has also been an aspect of inquiry in Film Studies. For example, when proposing the aforementioned ‘intercultural’ epithet, Laura Marks also takes a moment to acknowledge challenges in medium specificity. Marks chooses to include video as well as 35 mm formats, extending from experimental shorts to narrative features, to propose the ‘gathered audience’ as a delimiter (2000, 6). Since the time of Marks’ publication in

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2000, many changes in film and video consumption have occurred, but its underlying sentiment remains: “a perverse pleasure to include these marginal viewing situations squarely inside the institution of cinema” (ibid.). In other words, Marks hints that audio-visual works (film or video) that enjoy something of an audience, regardless of its unconventionality, should be included as cinema. In contrast, Susan Hayward (2004) moves beyond the film texts to add written discourses when defining a national film cinema corpus, what Hayward labels a “cinema of institutions”. Hayward points to the historical (histories and memories of the industry), critical (film criticism and film theory), and state-owned (policy, decrees, and documentation) to highlight their influence on a nation’s cinema history, particularly in France (6–7). Contrary to Marks’ inclusive aim, Hayward affirms that these institutional discourses “had suffered from too narrow of a focus and inconsistencies”, overemphasising “high art rather than popular culture” (ibid.). How then to reconcile an inclusive aim with a discursive tradition that exercises important influence on a national cinema history? Answers to these questions can vary greatly, as they refer to the specificities of each nation-state and their time-space constraints. In the case of Ecuadorian cinema for the twenty-first century, its ideological repercussions cannot be ignored, yet dwelling in just the rhetoric without the realities of film outputs and practices is also problematic. As a way to resolve these difficulties, a theoretical and methodological basis for a critical historicism is proposed, bringing into dialogue an analysis of Stephen Heath’s On Screen, In Frame: Film and Ideology (1981) and Pierre Bourdieu’s Field of Cultural Production (1993). Both studies are supported by the concrete input of local scholars, filmmakers, and other film authorities, following the praxis of Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell (2009) in relation to Production Studies. In doing so, this analysis avoids a descriptive approach based solely on institutional channels of communication, and instead paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of canon formation and the curatorship rationale behind such decisions. Heath’s On Screen, In Frame: Film and Ideology (1981) sees cinema as a reflected image, or the “reproduction of existing representations” (4). Its analysis, therefore, requires exploring the conception of this reflected image (where this image came from) as well as its function (what is it doing in the film). Just as Hayward implied, studying the image and its production of meaning is not limited to the film text. According to Heath, its analysis can comprise three distinct areas, thus encompassing the

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broader scope of cinema. The first element involves the ‘industry’ or the production system of making films (production, distribution, and consumption). The second component regards the output of this system or the films themselves, the narratives, and the diegetic spaces that they reflect. The final factor, what Heath labels the ‘machine’, stands between industry and text, a place where “film can be distinguished as specific signifying practice” (7). It is in this last instance that cinema, ideology, and its role in society can be further studied. Film as a specific signifying practice requires additional explanation. The phrase, borrowed from film theorist Christian Metz (Heath 1973, 5–28), understands film as articulations or enunciations of meaning, hence its signifying value. These articulations are produced through film practice, and the acknowledgment of this process goes beyond representation to also examine a subject’s position within this work (1981, 8). By subject, Heath refers to the spectator or the ‘individual as subject’, one that is “held in a shifting and placing of desire, energy, contradiction, in a perpetual retotalization of the imaginary” (53). Thus, a subject’s position is not limited to an inactive consumption of a cultural, in this case cinematic, product, but entails a whole apparatus of taste-making and acquisition of capital, echoing Hayward’s concerns. Finally, the specificity of the machine recognises the variety of effects film can have on the subject while considering the cinematic codes that operate at a semiotic level on and off the screen. The theoretical and abstract in Heath’s analysis can be further extrapolated to a more concrete reality through Bourdieu’s Field of Cultural Production (1993). Heath’s proposed industry, text and ‘machine’ elements of cinema can fall into an intangible category in which subjective value judgements are the norm. In order to trace the ephemeral “objectivity of the subjective” (4), Bourdieu appeals to Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralism (1973). Usually employed in cultural analysis, genetic structuralism attempts to break down cultural structures into their most minute units of meaning. This meaning is constructed as units relate to one another, but also considers the historicity or the evolution of meaning that each unit holds. Bourdieu recommends its usage to track down trajectory, or the succession of positions held by cultural agents within a given cultural field, to objectively establish their influence on the overall structure (1993, 17–18). These positions are not necessarily limited to state institutions or established organisations but still need to be contained within a single cultural field.

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Additional concepts by Bourdieu are considered in subsequent sections, particularly regarding the shape of Ecuadorian cinema at the turn of the century, based on the structures formed by cultural agents. At this point, it can be concluded that the ‘cinema’ in Ecuadorian cinema, as with other studies of national and transnational scope, can theoretically be a matter of subjective value judgements, taste-making, and a cinema of institutions. In addition to the film texts, and written discourses around these texts, the construction of meaning in these articulations is where film and ideology converge. Translated into a more concrete understanding, as this section attempts to move from the objective to the subjective, a deconstruction of cultural structures is proposed, starting with a historical review of previous film expressions in Ecuador. In doing so, a necessary historical background is provided to interpret current articulations and visualise the development of present tendencies in Ecuadorian cinema. Stages of a Developing Film-Producing Nation If the case study of Sanjinés ¡Fuera de aquí! allowed for a discussion about the long-standing debates around the “national”, “transnational”, and “cinema” in Film Studies, this section takes the resulting theoretical framework into the local specificity of Ecuadorian cinema. By providing a historical review, with a focus on the “industry” and “film text” elements of Heath’s reflected image, the implicit rationale behind highlighting or discarding certain works from the local canon is brought to the forefront. Ecuador holds a long-standing tradition of film activity that can be paralleled to regional and international equivalents. While not necessarily a profitable and sustainable industry, the fact that, at each stage, elements of development, production, and distribution are shown suggests an organisation that produced film outputs in spite of political, financial, and creative conditions. These instances are further explored to suggest a tentative definition of Ecuadorian cinema, considering more recent attempts to categorise specific periods and movements. It is through the legacies of these histories that a Contemporary Ecuadorian Cinema emerges, out of which a more recent political and ideological context can be explored through the proposed “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. Filmmaker and academic Camilo Luzuriaga includes a brief overview of Ecuadorian film history in the text La industria ecuatoriana del cine: ¿otra quimera? (The Ecuadorian film industry: another chimera? 2014). As an introduction to the uninformed reader, the article does not provide an

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extensive scholarly report but employs a useful metaphor to distinguish three “ways of existence” for Ecuadorian cinema: birth (1924–1977), infancy (1977–1999), and adolescence (1999–2013). By using the term ‘ways of existence’, Luzuriaga refuses to refer to Ecuadorian cinema as an industry, despite recognising that film production in the country at the time of writing represented a “verifiable reality” (2014, 22). Luzuriaga’s categorisation, while short, reinforces the dismissal of alternative practices that have failed to be detected by the radar of scholars, critics, and film authorities but that nevertheless show a tangible production process. Still, Luzuriaga’s account can be helpful in defining a historical progression that precedes the 2006 National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine. The birth stage is framed by Augusto San Miguel’s El Tesoro de Atahualpa (The Treasure of Atahualpa, 1924), Ecuador’s first narrative feature, and concludes with the creation of Asocine, the first filmmakers’ guild, in 1977. Luzuriaga emphasises the all-male, individual, and sporadic nature of this elongated first phase, without a clear process or ‘heirs’ to help build a consistent film practice. This stage already points to an expectation of narrative features and the professionalisation of the industry as a sign of success and maturity. Early film works such as actualities, tourist and educational films that preceded San Miguel’s feature are not mentioned. The transition to sound is also overlooked, as well as Latsploitation co-productions with Mexican state company Pel-Mex in the mid-­1970s (Alemán 2004, 97–113).3 Regarding the all-male condition of this period, names like Evelina Orellana (Redacción Cultura Diario El Universo 2008), Ecuador’s first film actress during the silent film era, and later Monica Vásquez (De la Vega Velasteguí, La feminización de la gestión cinematográfica 2016), a documentary filmmaker during the 1970s, are also omitted. The quoted omissions reflect the reality of what was considered Ecuadorian cinema at this stage, with marginal film expressions only recently being highlighted (De la Vega Velasteguí, León et al.). This is not to say that Luzuriaga himself had contributed to this dismissal, particularly given his extensive involvement in the local film industry, which offers an 3  The term “latsploitation” refers to Latin American exploitation cinema as theorised by Dolores Tierney and Victoria Ruétalo (2009). It is usually characterised by “badly made, ‘low’-culture genre films” with “exaggerated plots and liberal doses of mysticism, fantasy, sex and gore” (1). For this reason, latsploitation films tend to be omitted altogether from national film canons or referenced in dismissive terms. The vernacular and popular in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is further explored in Chap. 5.

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insider’s perspective on preferred production practices in the country, both mainstream and marginalised. Rather, it reiterates underlying assumptions on what is considered more influential and valuable throughout Ecuador’s film history, starting from the mentioned ‘birth’ phase in early Ecuadorian cinema. The dominance of foreign products can be traced back to this initial stage. Hollywood’s hegemony, particularly in Latin America, required a gradual process that combined international trade policy, infrastructural developments, and political alignments. Jorge Schnitman’s account in the seminal Film Industries in Latin America: Dependency and Development (1984) outlines the historical rise of US-based exhibitors and distributors, a task initially carried out by European-born pioneers like Lumière operators (A. M. López 2006). The switch from selling to renting film reels, with US companies opening distribution branches across the region and European producers failing to provide a consistent supply during the First World War, helped American films to flood the market and acquire economic control. The notion of “trade follows the motion pictures” suggested by the US Department of Commerce during the early 1920s is picked up by Lee Grieveson to situate cinema (and media) within a global shift from British to American supremacy (2018, 5). This turn, Grieveson adds, consolidated liberal and capitalist ideas of progress across the globe. Schnitman summarises it as follows: “In the area of film, free trade can be translated as freedom to introduce in the Latin American countries as many pictures as the local market will bear, and exchange and remit abroad the revenues accrued in local currencies” (1984, 4). More specific to the case of Ecuador, Wilma Granda’s publication El Cine Silente en Ecuador (1895–1935) represents a necessary starting point in terms of this silent period but also concerning research and archiving practices of early Ecuadorian cinema. According to Granda, early cinematic demonstrations such as magic lanterns and biographers rapidly moved from street displays to adapted theatres aimed at the middle and upper classes (1995, 14–26). The first Ecuadorian exhibition and production company Ambos Mundos managed Teatro Sucre in Quito, a venue that had recently been renovated by the Ministry of Public Instruction (30). By 1914, several theatres had opened in Quito and Guayaquil through the generous investment of men with acquired political and economic capital. Teatro Variedades in Quito, for instance, was designed and constructed by Italian engineer Giacomo Radiconcini, who at the time served as Consul of Italy in Ecuador. Construction mogul Jorge Cordovéz owned this

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venue, along with three other screens in these cities (32). Exhibition entrepreneurs like Cordovéz were quickly associated with the traditional ideas of civilisation and progress attached to the cinematographer, as was reported in a newspaper article: Cuando en lejanos tiempos, nadie se acuerde de nuestros infelices caciques, de nuestros poetas chirles, de nuestros semidioses de aldea, de nuestros generales sin cicatrices... todavía regocijado el pueblo quiteño, congregado diariamente a contemplar las maravillas de la civilización, en esas películas que lo contienen, verá vagar por el alegre recinto del Variedades, la simpática sombra de este hombre-acción hecho con recia madera… When in distant times no one remembers our unhappy caciques, our dull poets, our village demigods, our generals without scars... the people of Quito gleeful nonetheless, gathered daily to contemplate the wonders of civilisation in those movies that contain them, will see wandering by the joyful Variedades precinct, the nice shadow of this man-action made of strong wood… (Diario El Comercio 1914 in Granda 1995, my translation)

Two main inferences can be drawn from this text. First, it correlates with Grieveson’s work on the camera apparatus as the epitome of modernisation and progress, a way to proliferate liberal ideas through both its narratives and the technologies that showcase them (2018, 1–20). But, most importantly, it appears to do so as it rejects the local and “uncivilised”, the “village” life outside the urban centres yet to be ordered and educated through motion pictures. The proliferation of cinema-specific theatres during the Ecuadorian silent film era, a trend that Granda attributes primarily to the creation of a national merchant navy fleet and the launch of the Panama Canal (1995, 32), speaks of a continuation of foreign influence in the region, previously marked by colonialism. The previous colonial dominance had been replaced by economic and political soft control, in the form of one-sided free trade to maximise wealth.4 4  Grieveson writes: “One of the most significant functions of corporate cinema/media may indeed have been to expand the images and associated values of a corporate-produced commodity culture, first across the ‘core’ economies from which it emerged and quickly thereafter to ‘peripheral’ regions across the world system” (2018, 4). About the Panama Canal and its relation to cultural products, Grieveson refers to the Panama-Pacific exhibition in 1915: “The infrastructural and coercive power that made the canal and extractive imperial possible was turned into symbolic power at the exposition” (2018, 34). Thus, the link between economic, symbolic, and cultural capital, as it relates to cinema, is further emphasised.

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Like the birth phase, the succeeding ‘infancy’ stage described by Luzuriaga also uses the narrative feature as the milestone-setter for Ecuadorian film history, concluding with the simultaneous theatrical releases of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Rodents, Cordero) and Sueños en la mitad del mundo (Dreams from the middle of the world, Naranjo) in 1999. Luzuriaga himself is part of this period, which he also describes as male-­ dominated. Characterised by empirical, self-taught practices and inconsistency of funding, Luzuriaga praises the legacy of this group, with some of its filmmakers still producing features to this day. This period is particularly contradictory because, on one hand, the reception of a film like Ratas, both locally and internationally, speaks of a ‘turning point’ in Ecuadorian cinema while, on the other hand, the initial goal of state legislation, at least by 1999, was slowly fading away. Through a series of internal disagreements, film guild Asocine ceased to exist, failing to leave in place the long-coveted film law (Saad Herrería 2014). Pedro Saad, who served as president of Asocine between 1981 and 1982, describes the guild’s long history of successes and failures. His account offers detailed information that helps build the case for an Ecuadorian film industry, not only after film legislation in 2006, but also for past moments and generations. In his text Apuntes sobre una época: El contexto nacional en torno al nacimiento de Asocine (Notes on an era: The national context around the birth of Asocine 2014), Saad stresses the precariousness of the 1960s and 1970s, where the mere thought of acquiring a film camera with lip-syncing capabilities was considered utopian. There was no 35 mm equipment available in the country, and once a camera was acquired by pioneer Agustín Cueva, film material and processing costs prevented its usage. Yet Saad references the “semi-industrial” practices of filmmakers like Cueva and Gabriel Tramontana, with the latter managing to deliver constant newsreels to local theatres. The creation of Asocine in 1977, opportunities for advertisement production in local television, and an increased national GDP due to newly discovered oil reserves allowed filmmakers to revive their trade (ibid.). A key account provided by Saad involves Asocine’s battle for cinema to be recognised as an ‘industry’ by the local government. Oil reserves and exports translated into new lines of credit, particularly for the agricultural and industrial sectors. Lobbying efforts by the guild finally paid off, with film activities acquiring an industrial categorisation by the late 1970s. Consequently, filmmakers saw an opportunity for funding through the state, while also securing work by means of institutional documentaries.

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Industry and state relations further entangled as certain tax loopholes boosted the production of local short films to accompany foreign features, a measure that was later discontinued by a new administration in 1982. Asocine’s activism continued through the 1980s, strengthening ties with foreign institutions in Cuba and the Soviet Union. By the 1990s, however, with legislation proposals not finding a positive response in Congress and internal differences in the group, Asocine’s activities came to an end. Nonetheless, Saad’s report offers glimpses into industrial film production that historically has been highly dependent on state collaboration. Ecuador’s Film Promotion Law, or Ley de Cine, was eventually passed in 2006, but extending the infancy period to this year, while consistent with the ‘narrative arc’ of film legislation, could see efforts outside of this storyline overlooked. The rise of the multiplex, the consolidation of film exhibition into three main players (Supercines, Multicines, and Cinemark), and prosumer technologies that allowed for underground practices were already shaping the way in which films were commercialised, even conceived, outside state regulation. Considering the country’s deep financial and political crisis of the late 1990s, a shift towards private and corporate efforts seemed understandable, marking an obvious distance from the initial nationalist sentiments of Asocine. One could argue, however, that seeking a separation from the state was paradoxically a product of the era’s prevailing neoliberal ideology. Expanding throughout most of the South American territory, national film industries experienced the impact of deregulation, free market dynamics, and the reduction of incentives and financial support, as described by Page (2009), Rocha (2011), and Sandberg and Rocha (2018). With these considerations, placing the final ‘adolescence’ phase after 1999 could seem like an appropriate decision, but not without reservations. According to Luzuriaga, the adolescence phase of Ecuadorian cinema ranges from 1999 to 2013 (Luzuriaga’s text was published in 2014), and is characterised by professionalisation, particularly relative to the first generation of film-school trained directors (i.e. Sebastián Cordero, Carlos Naranjo, etc). Again, Ratas appears as the reference point for this period, in which legislation efforts finally came to fruition in 2006. This distinction not only overlooks Luzuriaga’s own work in La Tigra (1989) and Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda (1993), but also Cordero’s personal journey through siblings Juan Esteban and Viviana Cordero, who co-­ directed Sensaciones in 1991. Made-for-TV productions are also dismissed, including popular film adaptations of Ecuadorian literary classics like

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Cumandá (César Carmigniani, 1993) and La Magia Sangurima (Carl West, 1993), both produced by TV channel Ecuavisa. But probably the greatest challenge for this categorisation lies in the radical differences between the state of Ecuadorian Cinema in 1999 and its visible structural makeover by 2013. Michael Dillon (2014) offers an alternative terminology for the last quarter of the twentieth century. Starting with La Tigra in 1989, Dillon labels this stage as “New Ecuadorian Cinema”, a term that Coryat and Zweig (2017) later coined to define the 2006-to-present era. While the “new” epithet aligns with similar nomenclature used in South America (namely New Argentine Cinema, New Brazilian Cinema, and New Mexican Cinema), it is usually attributed to emerging arthouse filmmakers that benefited from state support during the 1990s and experienced substantial international recognition (i.e. Martín Rejtman, Lucrecia Martel, Walter Salles, and Alfonso Cuarón). Both Luzuriaga and later Sebastián Cordero could probably fall under this categorisation, but a more general proposal is that one used by Gabriela Alemán (2009), later adapted by Carolina Sitnisky (2018): Contemporary Ecuadorian Cinema. Expanding on this suggestion, a Contemporary Ecuadorian Cinema could extend from 1989 onwards, not only because of box office successes like La Tigra, but also to reflect the overall political scenario that would follow, affecting production practices in the country. A distinction for the 2006 Ley de Cine period as recommended by Coryat and Zweig could branch out from the Contemporary Ecuadorian Cinema umbrella yet requires an original label given its specificities. The proposed “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century” becomes all the more appropriate for such configurations. With these precedents and considering the evident progression towards a steady production process, supported by the legacy of past generations, a tentative statement could be made to summarise Ecuadorian cinema as a national film industry with transnational implications, historically leaning towards the theatrically released narrative feature when consolidating a local cinema canon. Situated at the margins of a politically charged global context, with unequal power dynamics still operational, its history stretches from the arrival of the cinematographer as the epitome of modernisation and progress to more recent state support through film policy. In the process, many peripheral articulations have been dismissed, including actualities, tourist, and educational films from the early years of cinema; lowbrow international co-productions of the mid-1970s; short films and made-for­TV works of the 1990s; and the experimental, underground, and the

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‘other’ cinema during the 2000s. Altogether, the so-called Ecuadorian cinema represents only a tiny fraction of the market share in local commercial theatres, the “elephant in the room” when discussing local film cultures. As turn-of-the-century dynamics are further studied, these historical implications will result suitable in interpreting and explaining the tentative “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”.

An Ecuadorian Cinematic Field under Socialism for the Twenty-first Century Building on a general definition of Ecuadorian cinema, this chapter now focuses on the ten-year period of the 2006 National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine. As previously discussed, limiting this analysis to just film legislation can appear reductive. Film scholar Randal Johnson suggests that any study on film policy in Latin America “must be set within the context of the US film industry’s historical domination of national markets” (1996, 131). Thus, the following section first explores the local film exhibition sector that benefits from Hollywood and similar foreign works and exercises a significant influence on the rest of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. Its inclusion may appear surprising or not “Ecuadorian” enough, but the transnational nature of Ecuadorian cinema since its early stages, as well as recent involvements in local film production justifies its consideration. Here, it is important to distinguish between the exhibition infrastructure and the foreign films exhibited through them. As Higson points out, “it is clear that American films play a strong role in the construction of a cultural identity in the UK” (2000, 59). In an Ecuadorian scenario, these foreign films do play a part in sustaining the local exhibition infrastructure that allows for their mass consumption, shaping a particular idea of taste, even when evidently not considered “Ecuadorian”. This section acknowledges the influence of such a body of work but includes the local exhibition infrastructure only as part of an encompassing Ecuadorian cinematic field. This industrial apparatus is described next. Neoliberal Legacies: The Rise of the Multiplex and the Commercial Exhibition Sector By the turn of the 21st century, film exhibition had consolidated into three main players: Supercines, Multicines, and Cinemark. The rise of

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VHS and Betamax formats, and later the VCD and DVD alternatives towards the 1990s, proved to be a hard obstacle to overcome for small and medium-sized exhibitors. The steady shift towards neoliberalism in the 1990s, a political and economic ideology that favoured free-market dynamics with limited state intervention, allowed for the development of multi-screen venues attached to shopping centres, reinforcing an expectation of consumerism in the targeted middle class. In contrast, cheaper options were available to the average film consumer through complex pirate networks centred around the informal markets of La Bahía in Guayaquil and Ipiales in Quito. These two established audiences, while not mutually exclusive, served to distinguish the dominant exhibition sector and what would later nurture the Ecuador Bajo Tierra (Ecuador Underground) movement (Alvear and León 2009). Like the ideals of civilisation and progress encouraged by the novelty of the cinematography of early exhibitors, the arrival of the multiplex seems to imply such connotations. The concept of the multiplex was introduced by Cinemark theatres in Guayaquil’s Mall del Sol, the largest shopping centre in Ecuador at the time (Consorcio Nobis 2015). Cinemas were already associated with the shopping experience, with plazas such as Garzocentro and Policentro opening theatres in the 1980s (Redacción Guayaquil Diario El Telégrafo 2014). Mall del Sol, however, offered a mass-scale approach, with 290 stores, a food court, and a nine-screen cinema complex, compared to Policentro’s two-screen venue called Policines (ibid.). Eventually, medium-­ size exhibitors like Policines disappeared, resulting in a drastic drop in the number of cinemas nationwide. According to Marco Aguas, president of distribution company Consorcio Fílmico, the number of commercial cinemas decreased from 298 in 1990 to only 38 by 2014 (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2015, 22). Aguas added that 252 cantones or districts across the country did not have a cinema (ibid.), and out of the 301 screens available, only five were independently owned. While efficiency in processes and resources is the aim for any mass-scale business model, this level of consolidation appears closer to an oligopoly of transnational magnitude. The 2004 study La industria cinematográfica y su consumo en los países de Iberoamérica (The cinema industry and its consumption in Ibero-American countries) argues that the expansive nature of international media conglomerates, in which the cinema industry operates, has resulted in impossible entry barriers for new (and local) competitors (Guzmán Cárdenas 2004, 24). The rivalry between these

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conglomerates is translated into extensive investment ventures that are unable to be matched by Latin American national economies (ibid.). In other words, the exhibition sector continues to hold the upper hand in negotiation power at the local level, an issue that the study tries to tackle by suggesting specific policy measures. In this regard, the Ecuadorian Ley de Cine proved to be a limited legal text that was later complemented by the efforts of the institution that it conceived, the National Film Council or CNCine. The issue of market consolidation is also affected by the broader scope of influence that local cinema exhibitors exercise. Besides controlling the cinema market share, these corporations usually operate in several sectors of the economy. Mall del Sol, for instance, is owned by Consorcio Nobis, a conglomerate that also has holdings in construction, real estate, agroindustry, and the hospitality sector (Consorcio Nobis 2015). Supercines, owned by Grupo El Rosado, amasses the largest exhibitor share. Having pioneered the supermarket business model in Ecuador during the 1950s, Grupo El Rosado expanded into shopping malls, restaurants, hardware shops, audio and video retailers, department stores, and, of course, cinemas (Grupo El Rosado n.d.). These examples parallel early exhibitors’ reliance on amassed economic capital to invest in infrastructural developments for exhibition. Like regional counterparts, and considering their transnational nature, local theatre chains are not solely dependent on ticket sales to remain in business, having diversified their portfolio and sphere of influence in a variety of ventures. In other words, if the multiplex is comparable to the cinema apparatus during the early cinema as the epitome of modernisation and progress, then a tentative question to ask is what, or who, is being displaced and rejected as commercial exhibitors maintain their dominant stance? If early screens were contrasted with the local and “uncivilised” life outside the city, in need of order and control, then a contemporary oppositional force could be found in the complex piracy networks that run at the margins of legality and open trade. The problem with this comparison is that it implies an equivalence of power between the two, which is not necessarily the case. An additional problem is an allusion to a prior state-of-being, meaning that the multiplex should have emerged as a ‘modern’ alternative to piracy. Rather inversely, piracy as a means of distribution developed as a response to the multiplex, specifically in relation to rising ticket prices and the availability of digital formats (Alemán 2009). Furthermore, if the cinema apparatus was effectively positioned as a foreign novelty to

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disseminate liberal values in its early days, then what it eventually rejected was not necessarily a previous expression of local cinema, because such manifestations were non-existent. The original concept of cinema in the Ecuadorian context was determined by external influences since its arrival, constantly being adapted by emerging ideas of modernisation and progress. And, contrary to the evident rejection of the pre-cinematic ‘local’ of the silent era, the exhibition sector nowadays builds on a commercial legacy that inevitably establishes, influences, and determines the contemporary ‘local’.5 The foundational characteristic of the commercial exhibition sector, from which all other local cinematic expressions seem to build, is not limited to physical infrastructure. It also includes, more importantly, the film conventions implicitly disseminated through the programming it chooses (or rather is obliged) to showcase. Going back to Ambos Mundos and Pathé France (Granda 1995, 32), local exhibitors have held sustainable alliances with foreign producers to secure a steady source of films with proven success. More recently, this supply is met through local representatives of international distributors who negotiate within the local exhibition sector, which in this case was Grupo El Rosado. Holding the rights to the output of Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros (Veintimilla 2015), this corporation is able to bargain with other exhibition venues, however, as with the rest of Hollywood’s “big six majors”, programming conditions (including premiere dates and showing times) are usually determined abroad (ibid.). Other distribution representatives include Consorcio Fílmico and the independent Venus Films. With these obligations, exhibitors have little choice in their programming, leaving limited space for local proposals. In this way, a distinguishable taste continues to be formed in moviegoing audiences, elevating Hollywood’s products as the expected ideal while subtly downgrading local proposals. A clear exception includes films actively supported or co-produced by local film exhibitors. As an example, Sebastián Cordero’s Sin muertos no hay carnaval (Such is life in the tropics, 2016) was partially supported by Grupo El Rosado, after the project received several incentives through the National Film Council (LatAm Cinema 2015). Not surprisingly, the film 5  The idea of a local cinematic identity is explored throughout this book, particularly in Chap. 5, where the foreign becomes appropriated to eventually establish a new local. Questions of decoloniality and ‘genuine’ cinema from peoples and nationalities are also addressed in Chap. 6.

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was screened and advertised quite aggressively in Supercines and adjacent shopping malls across the country. Additional co-production deals included companies in Mexico (Salamandra Producciones) and Germany (Aktis Film Production), as well as local brands such as Güitig (sparkling water) and Automotores y Anexos (car dealer) (Auto Magazine 2016). If Cordero had become a reference point for Ecuadorian filmmakers in recent years, then the described collaboration between exhibitors, international production companies, and the private commercial sector certainly suggests a path that others might follow in the future.6 To summarise, the above analysis argues that the local exhibition sector exercises such influence as to affect the entire structure of Ecuadorian cinema. Its validation system is rooted in consolidation, vertical integration, and maximisation of profits, hence its reliance on blockbuster imports to secure success. The transnationality of the exhibition sector can objectively be demonstrated through its long-held alliances with foreign distributors, a sustained practice that goes back to the early days of silent film in Ecuador. While control of screen time and programming constitute an expected source of contention between exhibitors and local filmmakers, a deeper, more subtle influence is found in constructions of taste in  local audiences. It is in this commercial context that the 2006 National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine comes into play, as the country was also exploring alternatives to the political and economic crisis of the previous decade. At the crossroads between state-dependency and corporate interests, local filmmakers would also have to carry the tensions and frictions that both validation systems demand. The 2006 Ley de Cine, National Plan for Good Living and Communications Law The idea of a ‘mini-boom’ in Ecuadorian cinema during the mid-2010s and the discussion of ¡Fuera de Aquí! as an international co-production, shot in Ecuador but with transnational support, are both directly or indirectly related to the 2006 National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine. After providing a historical account of film activities in the country, highlighting the trajectories of market dynamics and taste expectations in Ecuadorian cinema, the 2006 Ley de Cine can be situated in a more 6  The prescribed ‘path’ of preferred film habitus that leads local filmmakers to seek critical appraisal and commercial release in theatres in analysed in Chap. 3.

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detailed historical, economic, and political context. Consequently, this section briefly describes the mentioned film policy and the institution that it created, the National Film Council or CNCine, within an encompassing state apparatus that inevitably permeated into the local film scene. The contradictions between the aims and actual measurements of success in film practices appear rooted in conventional ideas of development and progress that suggest a distance from counter-hegemonic rhetoric. This ambiguity also echoes the contradictions present in Socialism for the 21st century on a regional level. As discussed in previous sections, the 2006 Ley de Cine was conceived after decades of guild efforts. With Asocine dismantled by 1999, filmmakers assembled once again into a group called Colectivo Pro-Ley de Cine or Pro-Film Policy Collective (Mora Manzano 2007). The final text consisted of a four-page document, opening with the expected benefits of supporting a local cinema: its cultural value and input to the economy (1). The text then describes the requirements needed to categorise a film as Ecuadorian, discussed in light of Sanjinés’ ¡Fuera de Aquí! at the beginning of this chapter. Article 4 calls for the creation of the Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía or National Film Council (hereafter CNCine), with the remaining text specifying rights, responsibilities, and general composition of the newly created institution. One important responsibility to highlight is the management of the Fondo de Fomento Cinematográfico or Film Promotion Fund, for which the text details specific sources of funding. Funding constituted an area of contention since its first instalment when CNCine became fully operational in 2007, once funding was allocated through the socialist government of Rafael Correa. The legal and political restructuring that would take place through this administration would dictate the legal context in which the Ley de Cine and CNCine operated, under the emerging political ideology of Socialism for the 21st century. Socialism for the 21st century in Latin America (sometimes referred to as “The Pink Tide”) can be summarised as a turn to the left in several countries of the region, following military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s, coups to restore democracy, and a later shift towards neoliberalism

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by the 1990s.7 According to Beasley-Murray, Cameron, and Hershberg (2010), Latin America’s Pink Tide was not necessarily a single political ideology but rather a variety of leftist expressions that responded to different levels of liberalism, considering the idiosyncrasies of each country. What distinguished these expressions from traditional socialism was their willingness to submit to democratic processes, since governments aligned with the movement were mostly elected in democratic elections (323). The movement also recognised the reality of the market, and even so-­ called ‘radical populists’, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and, to an extent, Evo Morales in Bolivia, did not seek extreme authoritarian statism, at least initially. The leftist bloc also included Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, among others, ranging from mild social democracies to idealist populists. In Ecuador, Socialism for the 21st century was led by President Rafael Correa, elected in 2007 and whose campaign platform called for the dissolution of the National Congress to rewrite the constitution. A new legislative body, the Asamblea Constituyente or Constituent Assembly, not only delivered on Correa’s campaign promise, but also paved the way for complementary legislation. One of the guiding principles of this new constitution, particular to the Ecuadorian case, was the concept of Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir, which translates into English as Good Living.8 Definitions of Sumak Kawsay might seem distant from conversations on national cinemas and film policies. However, because the subsequent overhaul of the state apparatus effectively aligned with this concept, its discussion points to interesting (and unexpected) effects on Ecuadorian cinema. An official interpretation of Sumak Kawsay initially draws from indigenous cosmovision and is later included in the government’s Plan Nacional para el Buen Vivir or National Plan for Good Living (Senplades, 2013). 7  The term “Pink Tide” is a play on words that refers to a “watered-down” version of red, a colour traditionally associated with communism. Pimenta and Arantes in Rethinking Integration in Latin America: The “Pink Tide” and the Post Neoliberal Regionalism (2014) identify the election of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela as the starting point of the movement in Latin America. 8  This book uses the translation “Good Living” as it is the preferred terminology in state documentation during Socialism for the 21st century. Other translations used in scholarly debates include “Good Life” and “Well-being”. Chapter 6 explores the term, and its implications for Ecuadorian cinema.

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Based on previous usages of the term, particularly regarding oil exploitation in indigenous communities, economist and legislator Alberto Acosta summarises Sumak Kawsay as seeking “a harmonious relationship between human beings and between the latter and nature” (in Radcliffe 2012). Sociologist Philipp Altmann instead highlights the subtle shift towards a more state-dependent form of progress. Altmann cites development secretary René Ramirez to suggest that Sumak Kawsay, as defined in the new Constitution of 2008, reinforces old paradigms of development (2013, 8), now achieved through state participation rather than private endeavours. Indeed, once Acosta became heavily involved with PAIS, the government’s political party, and was serving as the majority leader of the Constituent Assembly, Sumak Kawsay developed into a critique of capitalist ideals, a socialism-inspired “new paradigm of development in Latin America” (in Altmann 2013). Abstracted to Ecuadorian cinema, the implication is not necessarily related to how a national film industry should look, but rather how this ideal is constructed. An implicit understanding of a ‘developed’ national film industry, economically sustainable and capable of mass-scale production, is evident, considering the historical account previously reviewed. The debate, therefore, lies in the way this development is achieved: either through private corporations, as in the commercial exhibition sector, or primarily by means of state policy, through the 2006 Ley de Cine and the created CNCine. Practical implications, as well as alternative understandings of Sumak Kawsay outside the state’s definitions, are included in Chap. 4. For now, the government’s Sumak Kawsay is analysed through the legal framework that accompanied the 2008 Constitution. The National Plan for Good Living, for example, considered the film industry in one of its quantitative goals to be achieved by 2017 (Senplades 2013). The text, which constituted a second version of the preceding 2009–2013 plan, is divided into 12 objectives, with corresponding policies and goals, mostly in line with the newly defined concept of Sumak Kawsay and previous party manifestos. The film industry is quoted in Objective 5, which aimed “to build mechanisms to bring together and strengthen national identity, diverse identities, pluri-nationality and inter-cultural living” (181). Framing its argument around cultural rights and principles, it rejects the early purposes of “civilization” as a route to “indoctrination and colonial submission” (182). For this purpose, the production of cultural products becomes relevant as the following reads: “Here, cultural industries make it possible the construction of alternative symbolic contents that subvert the

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hegemony of dominant and dominating ideologies” (ibid.). Correspondingly, policies 5.4 and 5.6 state: “5.4 To promote cultural and creative industries and undertakings, as well as their contribution to transforming the productive structure” (192), and “5.6 To promote intercultural integration in counter-hegemonic regional integration” (194). The above policies encapsulate the dichotomy between political ideology and market dynamics. On the one hand, Policy 5.6 encourages horizontal integration with regional counterparts, particularly those with a shared socialist agenda (e.g., Unasur and ALBA countries). On the other, Policy 5.4 suggests an emphasis on “transforming the matriz productiva”, a term loosely translated to “productive structure”, more appropriately associated with “womb” or “matrix”, an environment from which something (production) develops. In this case, cultural and creative industries are urged to take part in this transformation by stressing their “input to the economy” (item b) and fostering “economies of scale” (item n), even when located within counter-hegemonic regional processes. Additionally, the goals designed for Objective 5 are removed from the previous anti-­ imperialist rhetoric to focus on tangible quantitative measures: “5.4 To increase the number of nationally produced audio-visual works to 18 (196)” and “5.5 To increase the number of independent cinematographic works produced/co-produced in Ecuador, shown in commercial movie theatres, to 15” (197). If the National Plan for Good Living represented the ultimate blueprint for state policy, then the mentioned goals constitute quantifiable performance indicators for the allotted time frame. Definitions of failure or success, as prescribed by these goals, establish a clear distance from previous definitions of Sumak Kawsay and even explanations of the concept found within the plan. While Sumak Kawsay is initially presented as an alternative to “conventional development models” that are largely reduced to “only economic growth” (21), the goals established for the film industry seem to convey the opposite, reducing success to film outputs and its dependence on commercial film screenings. The coveted “change in power relations” as the foundation for “solidarity, co-responsible and reciprocal societies that live in harmony with nature” (23) appears largely overlooked when drafting concise assessment tools at the national level. Moreover, when examining complementary policies that develop from this overarching plan, the idea of progress-driven policy is further emphasised. One of these policies is the 2013 Ley de Comunicación (Communications Law), later extensively modified in 2018 (Ecuador TV 2018). The original

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text, approved after several years of debate and opposition, included the concept of mass communication as a public service rather than a civil right, a modification considered by some to be a Ley Mordaza or Gag Law (Yaguache, Yaguana and Suing 2016). Although most of the text is directed towards mass media, some items ultimately affected the film industry. Article 97, for instance, required television broadcasters to allocate at least 60 percent of their daytime programming to local products (Asamblea Nacional 2013, 17). Article 98 made it mandatory for advertisements aired in the country to be produced by a national crew (ibid.).9 The resulting proliferation of production companies to fill these demands permitted film professionals to secure a steady income outside film, as well as developing mass-scale production processes that bear a close resemblance to those in the advertisement sector. Even though these measures correlate with the goals specified for Objective 5 in the National Plan for Good Living, especially regarding the democratisation of the broadcasting spectrum (Senplades 2013, 192), they still fall short of broader interpretations of Sumak Kawsay, indicating instead a reduced focus on economic development. By the end of Correa’s mandate in 2017, the legal framework described in this section was already moving in a different direction, or, more accurately, embracing its underlying commercial intent. Although the 2009 Constitution remained unchanged, the next version of the National Plan for Good Living (2017–2021) failed to even mention the local film industry (Senplades 2017), while the 2013 Communications Law was later reformed in 76 percent of its content (Ecuador TV 2018), including reductions to screen quotas and the removal of Article 98 (Redacción Plan V 2019). The 2006 Ley de Cine, not fully being a part of Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana (Citizen’s Revolution), was eventually absorbed by the 2017 Ley de Cultura or Culture Law, creating a new institution: Instituto de Cine y Creación Audiovisual or National Institute of Film and Audio-visual Creation (ICCA). In 2020, in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, ICCA was again absorbed into the Instituto de Fomento a la Creatividad e Innovación (Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation, IFCI). While it is too early to compare these policies, a clear moment in Ecuadorian cinema based on the implementation of the 2006 Ley de Cine and its accompanying legislation, had evidently come to an end. 9  In line with the spirit of the 2006 Ley de Cine, a film project is considered ‘Ecuadorian’ when at least 80 percent of its crew is of Ecuadorian nationality.

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Having explored the commercial setting in which the 2006 Ley de Cine came into being, the above discussion further contextualises the state of things around this film policy. From constitutional reform based on Sumak Kawsay or Good Living, to national planning documents with tangible goals and objectives, and complementary policies to execute such ideals, a thread of counter-hegemonic rhetoric can be identified, still holding on to commercially based measurements of success. This contradiction, however, is not particular to film, cultural policy, or the case of Ecuador. Several authors have pointed out inconsistencies, dismissals, and even reversals in Pink Tide governments compared to previous neoliberal practices, questioning whether a true structural change was ever accomplished (Kaltwasser 2011). Terminology such as “post-neoliberalism” (Ruckert, Macdonald and Proulx 2017), “commodity consensus” (Katz 2015), and “neo-­ extractivism” (Burchardt and Dietz 2014) has been recently debated in scholarly circles, as Latin America experiences yet another swing of the pendulum in political ideology.10 This book chooses to adopt the terminology promoted by the administration, Socialism for the 21st century, applied to the film sector as “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. In this way, the ‘for the 21st century’ axiom of the proposed categorisation can be interpreted as a mere positionality in time (a turn of the century), while also linked to a specific political ideology, in the same way as Socialism for the 21st century also conveys such ambiguities. Boom or no Boom? The Ecuadorian Film Industry During the Mid-2000s This chapter has studied the ‘Ecuadorian’, ‘Cinema’, and ‘for the 21st century’ components of the proposed categorisation, based on relevant theories, histories, industries, and policies. In doing so, following Higbee 10  Plehwe and Fischer describe this new turn as follows: In terms of ideological change, the new varieties of neoliberalism under construction in the present time combine key tenets of economic freedom with social and cultural conservatism, including more pronounced nationalism. Conservative catholic social norms like personality, solidarity in extended family and community circles and subsidiarity are of particular relevance in this regard. In terms of policy making, the populist mask is quickly taken off and offers plain visibility of the radicalized neoliberal content of the new right wing formations as we can see in the case of Brazil or Venezuela. The softer varieties claiming social market economy professing liberal values with regard to gender, sexuality, diversity etc. are meeting the objections of the more authoritarian varieties that combine neoliberalism and social and cultural conservatism (2019, 193).

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and Lim’s advice on critical transnationalism, the dominant as well as the peripheral in Ecuadorian cinema have been included, throughout its history and in more contemporary periods. With a local exhibition sector that exercises great influence over the local film scene, relying heavily on blockbuster imports and valuing maximisation of profits, film collectives have consistently pushed for legislation to seek funding and sustainability of practices. In this context, the 2006 Ley de Cine came into being, yet its implementation through CNCine fell into a legal and political framework that, at least on paper, evidences several contradictions. While focusing on policy is a helpful starting point for the period in question, its execution and tangible effects are initially explored in the remainder of this chapter. In Bourdieu’s words, the “objectivity of the subjective” is traced through the perceptions and opinions of two key figures in Ecuadorian cinema: filmmaker and academic Camilo Luzuriaga, and CNCine’s former director Jorge Luis Serrano. These inputs would inform the overall shape of “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. Previously, this chapter reviewed Luzuriaga’s piece titled La industria ecuatoriana del cine: ¿otra quimera? (The Ecuadorian film industry: another chimera? 2014) to expand on the different stages of Ecuadorian film history. Luzuriaga provided this context to criticise various aspects of the preferred film practices during the Ley de Cine years, concluding that these were yet to constitute a formal industry. With directors taking multiple roles to help move a project forward, production processes for Luzuriaga seemed to have remained at an artisan level rather than aiming for the economies of scale and crew specialisation of a fully-fledged film industry. Additionally, Luzuriaga believes that filmmakers had developed a dependency on state funding, channelled through CNCine. Because of this dependency, filmmakers did not have to rely on box office performance to recover expenses, instead choosing to cater to the expectations of CNCine and similar funding institutions. In this context, it is no surprise for CNCine-backed projects to only constitute a marginal 2 percent of the market share, given the dominance of Hollywood imports and the resulting taste expectations of middle-class filmgoers.11 These numbers are 11  Although Luzuriaga’s original text assigns the mentioned percentage to a general ‘Ecuadorian cinema’, a more accurate description could distinguish projects that have benefited from CNCine’s financial support, which usually achieve theatrical releases and participate in international film festival circuits. This ‘subfield’ of an Ecuadorian cinematic field is analysed in Chap. 3.

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worrisome, considering that the 13 Ecuadorian films that achieved theatrical releases in 2013, in the midst of the so-called Ecuadorian ‘mini-boom’, failed to meet the box office performance of just one film, La Tigra in 1989, produced without legal and state infrastructure (13 películas lograron lo que ‘La Tigra’ en 1990 2013). Luzuriaga attributes these shortcomings to a disinterest in financial gain. He contends that filmmakers opted for social recognition, targeting the international film festival circuit to promote their own work, as an alternative to commercial success. This ‘repudiation’ of profit, which Luzuriaga partially ascribes to communism, differs from American interests, in which profitability is the goal. The lack of the supply-and-demand tensions of a healthy capitalist industry, Luzuriaga continues, had prevented Ecuadorian cinema from experiencing a leap of quality and attaining maturity level needed to maintain a sustainable film industry. The result is an Ecuadorian cinema that is “from Quito, not national”, concentrated in “a few individuals” that are clearly “privileged by their social origin, education, economic condition, and political connections”. In his words, Ecuadorian cinema is also “Castilian, urban, Europeanized and Anglo-Americanized. It is not Kichwa, it is not Shuar, it is not Afro-­ Ecuadorian” (2014, 22). Luzuriaga’s piece exemplifies the entanglement between industry, text, and the machine discussed previously (Heath 1981). To argue against the type of cinema produced in Ecuador, Luzuriaga chooses to make his case by looking at film practices, with institutions like CNCine at the core of these new processes. Naturally, CNCine’s first director Jorge Luis Serrano offered a response, yet his position did not necessarily contradict every statement made by Luzuriaga, providing instead additional information to justify CNCine’s course of action. For example, Serrano (2014) does not challenge Luzuriaga’s premise that Ecuadorian cinema is not an industry. He does, however, justify the 2006 Ley de Cine as a needed framework that encourages “excellence” in film practices, regardless of whether or not filmmakers decide to seek financial gain. Moreover, while Serrano considers Luzuriaga’s emphasis on the market to be “limited” and even “mistaken”, the former acknowledges the observed horizontal nature of artisan film labour. Serrano argues that these conditions will change as producers begin to think in terms of the demands of the market, a process that is not necessarily dependent on national film institutions. In reference to the slim market share of local films, Serrano accredits it to the digitalisation of cinema theatres. Film exhibitors, mainly through

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cinema chains like Supercines, Cinemark, and Multicines, were forced to rely on Hollywood’s blockbusters to secure a constant income and cover transition expenses without having to raise ticket prices. Since exhibition in Ecuador is not regulated by CNCine or the overseeing Ministry of Culture, Serrano highlights that this issue remains out of the hands of state supervision yet points to the audio-visual sector as an industry that could help. Constituting about 0.5 percent of the country’s GDP, equivalent to roughly $500 million annually, Serrano considers that this sector should become the ‘muscle force’ of the cinema industry. The problem, he continues, lays in an inclination towards imports instead of investing in  local productions. Through legislation, particularly the Ley de Comunicación (Communications Law), Serrano believes that some progress can be made in this area. Finally, Serrano references the Quito-centric critique of Ecuadorian Cinema, a problem he concedes but leaves for another time. The level of detail that both texts present is evident. As both authors present their opinions, they provide the groundwork from which a picture of an Ecuadorian cinema can be constructed. These opinions bring the abstracted legal text of the 2006 Ley de Cine and accompanying legislation to a concrete structure of film production, necessarily influenced by external factors. This structure, mapped by Luzuriaga and corroborated by Serrano, does not prove the absence of a film industry as the texts imply, but that the industry in place is mostly geared towards the distribution of risk-free foreign blockbusters, leaving little to no space for local products. In other words, the contradictions found in the state legislation correlate to the reality of film production in Ecuador as well as criticisms of Socialism for the 21st century found in broader scholarly discussions. How, then, to visualise these dynamics and consolidate the legal and theoretical with the concrete and subjective? Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century: Commercial, Indie, Vernacular Pierre Bourdieu and his proposed Field of Cultural Production (1993) serves as a helpful methodology to give shape to an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. Bourdieu’s framework does not limit the study of a cultural industry to an organisational structure of trade but, like Heath’s thoughts on cinema, also draws from the relations and dispositions of those within a cultural field, as well as broader societal dynamics. Bourdieu’s

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concepts have been widely applied to cultural industries with comparative structures of production, like Randall Johnson’s study of the Brazilian film industry during the Cinema Novo movement (Brazilian Cinema 1995, Film Policy in Latin America 1996). Regarding Ecuadorian cinema, scholars such as León (2009), Alemán (2009) and Sitnisky (2018) have already linked some of Bourdieu’s theories to their findings, particularly regarding the precariousness of film practices and alternative modes of distribution. Therefore, this chapter concludes with a broad sketch of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, making use of Bourdieu’s methodology to move from theoretical and legal debates to the practical and specific preferences in the Ecuadorian cinematic field. To begin, Luzuriaga and Serrano constitute what Bourdieu calls ‘agents’, holding specific positions that give shape to a tangible web of relations among each other (Bourdieu 1993, 6–10). The key characteristic that distinguishes cultural agents from an average citizen are the formers’ position within a field of cultural production, whether large or small, influential or insignificant. Luzuriaga and Serrano’s trajectories are testament of their amassed cultural capital within the field.12 When mapping these cultural agents and their relations to each other into a specific time and space, the resulting structure can be defined as a cultural field, or, in this case, an Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. A cultural field not only includes those who, like Luzuriaga and Serrano, have acquired vast amounts of ‘symbolic’ and ‘cultural’ capital, and the required ‘code system’ to make sense of cultural relations and artifacts (7). The field is also populated by other minor agents, who gradually take positions as their capital and 12  Luzuriaga’s involvement in film activities can be traced back to Asocine, the first filmmaker’s guild that pushed for film legislation in 1977. His directorial debut La Tigra (The Tigress, 1989), and his following film Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda (Between Marx and a naked woman, 1991), positioned him as the epitome of Ecuadorian cinema during the 1990s. He later founded the Instituto Superior de Cine y Actuación (Higher Institute of Film and Performance, INCINE), where he remains a professor while continuing to serve as a producer in various local projects. Jorge Luis Serrano, for his part, is a relative newcomer to Ecuadorian cinema. Elected as the first director of the National Film Council (CNCine) in 2006, he quickly got involved in regional film bodies, such as the Conferencia de Autoridades Cinematográficas Iberoamericanas (Conference of Iberoamerican Film Authorities, CACI). After his tenure in CNCine, he briefly held the position of Vice-Minister of Culture and Heritage, and currently serves as the cultural attaché at the Ecuadorian Embassy in France, where he oversees the annual Semaine du Cinéma Equatorien en Paris (Week of Ecuadorian Cinema in Paris). He has also written about Ecuadorian Cinema for a variety of platforms, including academic publications.

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influence grows, since symbolic and cultural capital are not equally distributed throughout a cultural field, effectively reflecting the society in which it operates. Here, Luzuriaga and Serrano appear to understand how film activities come into existence and are articulated in Ecuador, while also maintaining a level of recognition that grants them an authorised legitimacy to successfully navigate and influence the field. Luzuriaga and Serrano are only two agents in a vast array of film directors, producers, distributors, critics, scholars, and authorities that operate within an Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. Tracing every agent, trajectory, position, and relation between them could be a difficult task to achieve, becoming more challenging if developed throughout the entire history of film activities in the country. Therefore, Bourdieu’s concept of ‘constellations’ (1993, 23) can provide a useful solution. Using this metaphor, individual ‘stars’, both large and small, can group together to form recognisable patterns that seem to be fixed in the observable universe. In a similar sense, individual film agents, with asymmetrical degrees of cultural and symbolic capital, draw near to each other to shape identifiable structures within a local cinematic field. What brings them together, according to Johnson’s interpretations on Bourdieu, is a shared “artistic competence” or “aesthetic disposition”, the knowledge, practices, and taste that allows for the understanding of a particular work of art as it is intended to be understood according to the value system of the field (22). In other words, agents tend to gather around other agents that partake in similar ways of producing, perceiving, and validating local films. After the 2006 Ley de Cine, and following Luzuriaga and Serrano’s account, the Ecuadorian cinematic field can be categorised into three different ‘constellations’, or systems of production with dissimilar interests, values, and definitions of success: a commercial exhibition sector that relies on foreign imports to maximise wealth; a second, indie sector that navigates between state dependency, commercial interests, and international validators; and a third, vernacular model that operates almost at the margins of mainstream avenues of trade. Because these systems appear almost at opposite ends of the spectrum, to the point of developing alternative substructures of validation, they constitute verifiable subfields within an Ecuadorian cinematic field. These subfields vary slightly from the trends identified by Coryat and Zweig (2017), although the production practices themselves are unchanged. While Coryat and Zweig clearly distinguish between urban mestizo fictional narratives and documentaries during this period, here a distinction is drawn based on the centrality of

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CNCine and the exhibition sector, using support from CNCine and theatrical exhibition as more obvious differentiators. Similarly, the plurality of production processes outside the multiplex (cine guerrilla, community-­ based filmmaking, and indigenous cinema) are given more nuance under a vernacular terminology, also considering the implications of Buen Vivir, and their multiple interpretations for community and indigenous filmmaking. The tensions between these subfields, evident through Luzuriaga and Serrano’s debate, but also as film policies are implemented and executed, represent what Bourdieu defines as “the state of the ‘legitimate problematic’ – the issues or questions over which confrontation takes place, which constitute the stake of struggle in the field, and which orient the search for solutions” (18). Therefore, since rearrangements rarely occur via consensus, the shape of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field appears dependent upon those who can exercise greater influence, and hence redirect its course. Not surprisingly, the structure described also echoes the encompassing economic and political setting of the period. Picking up on the themes developed throughout this chapter, these can be consolidated in the following concatenated conclusions. Initially, in order to make a case for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, this chapter acknowledges the challenges in delimiting a national cinema. Relying primarily on Higbee and Lim’s “critical transnationalism”, this chapter concludes that Ecuadorian cinema defines its national specificity through its transnational nature, combining film policy, historical canon formations, and a shared regional heritage that continues in recent political formations, including Socialism for the 21st century. Once an Ecuadorian national specificity is established, subjective value judgements, taste-making, and a cinema of institutions (Hayward 2004) are considered to argue for methodologies that look beyond the film texts, to also analyse its industry and the meaning constructed through these (Bourdieu 1993; Heath 1981). This theoretical framework informs the historical trajectories of the local film industry also reviewed in this chapter. Two supplementary attributes of Ecuadorian cinema are contended through these trajectories, in addition to its transnationality: that Ecuadorian cinema should be deemed a proper national film industry, considering its film output throughout the years, and that this local industry has traditionally been influenced by existing market structures, namely the local exhibition sector.

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This preamble set the tone for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century being approached as a particular period in Ecuadorian film history that requires its own terminology. With grassroots initiatives pushing for legislation to secure funding and stability, the National Film Promotion Law or Ley de Cine was passed in 2006. Yet this policy and the institution that it created (CNCine) had to adapt to the contradictions, ruptures, and even reversals found in Socialism for the 21st century, and accompanying legislation derived from this administration. For the film sector, these tensions translated into opposing views on the role of the state, yet they implicitly agreed on an ideal and ‘developed’ national film industry, with mass-scale production capabilities and adherent to international taste validators. Using Bourdieu’s terminology, and based on historical trajectories, legal documents, and preferred practices, the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field during Socialism for the 21st century can be divided into three identifiable subfields: adding to the dominant commercial exhibition sector explored so far, an indie and state-dependent subfield emerges, while a third and ‘othered’ segment remains at the margins. Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, therefore, can be described as the specific shape held by the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field during the ten-year period in which the 2006 Ley de Cine was implemented, effectively aligning to the historical, political, and economic environment in which it arose. The ‘mini-boom’ of Ecuadorian cinema becomes an evident outcome of these articulations, with the next chapter paying close attention to its indie subfield, specifically narrative features that achieved commercial exhibition during the Ley de Cine years, and that benefited from state support via CNCine.

CHAPTER 3

Commercially Released Narrative Features During the Ley de Cine Years

Chapter 2 presented Ecuadorian cinema as a national film industry, which had been constructed through transnational collaborations since its early silent film days and was heavily influenced by underlying market forces. However, Chap. 2 only built a partial case for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century as a stand-alone moment in Ecuadorian film history. This and subsequent chapters expand on the theoretical, historical, and legal frameworks provided in Chap. 2, and compare them to the tangible realities of the local film industry. More precisely, this chapter analyses the indie subfield of the Ecuadorian cinematic field during Socialism for the 21st century, focusing primarily on the theatrically released narrative feature, the implicit marker of success in Ecuadorian cinema. It is argued that, just as in the legal texts previously reviewed, the indie subfield does not necessarily operate in contestation with hegemonic powers; at times in functions in line with such structures, commenting on poverty and underdevelopment whilst, simultaneously, aspiring to international prestige and commercial success. This argument is further substantiated by three key precursors that attest to such tendencies. Opening the chapter, the film Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Rodents 1999) helps situate Ecuadorian cinema at margins of a world cinema structure, given its financial and artistic constraints. Locally, however, access to film production has traditionally been a privilege reserved for the cultured elite. This dichotomy resonates with Latin America’s Third Cinema and the revolutionary aims proposed by this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_3

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movement during the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s a drastic shift towards neoliberalism had put into question the legacy of such aims. These three precursors help make sense of a preferred way of making films or “habitus” that gradually developed after the 2006 Ley de Cine and is expanded upon in this chapter. The ambiguity of the Ecuadorian indie subfield lies in abiding by these value expectations and still choosing to comment on social issues through the film text. The closing case study for this chapter, Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse, 2013), exemplifies such tensions. The use of Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros and Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas as bookends for this chapter is not arbitrary. Ratas was one of the few films to achieve theatrical distribution in the 1990s, in the context of a deep economic crisis, the rise of the multiplex, and the absence of any specific film legislation. Fourteen years later, Andrade’s first film was produced during the mentioned “mini-­ boom” in Ecuadorian cinema, benefited from state monies via CNCine, and was selected as the country’s official entry for the Academy Awards in 2014. But this apparent success could not have been possible without Cordero’s legacy, which had become a point of reference for the following decades. Therefore, this chapter analyses Ratas in terms of its overall impact towards film legislation, finally resulting in the approval of the 2006 Ley de Cine. In terms of themes and aesthetics, it is argued that Ratas falls into what scholar Christian León labels the “Cinema of Marginality” (2005), exposing instances of exclusion while also blurring the lines between the margins and the centre. Limitations in the production conditions of Ratas are analysed through Contanza Burucúa and Carolina Sitnisky’s studies on precariousness (2018). The dichotomy between holding a revered status in Ecuadorian cinema, and simultaneously inhabiting the global margins places Cordero as a third agent, able to comment on social issues through the film text. A similar trajectory can be traced between regional movements and tendencies, particularly Third Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, and neoliberalism in the 1990s. The development of a Third Cinema movement in the context of the Cuban Revolution and resulting governments to counter the advances of communism gave rise to more militant and explicitly disruptive ways of making films. Hence, this chapter reviews manifestos, including Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s “Towards a Third Cinema” (1969), Glaúber Rocha’s “Aesthetics of Hunger” (1971), and Julio García Espinosa’s “Imperfect Cinema” (1969), to expand on an

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oppositional film practice that sought to provide an alternative to Hollywood and the European New Waves. As the region shifted towards neoliberalism in the 1990s, however, more market-driven practices had already developed throughout Latin America, promoting deregulation and the free market, and also putting into question the effectiveness and legacy of Third Cinema. These historical trajectories help make sense of what eventually would become Ecuadorian cinema for the twenty-first century. This chapter proceeds to explore the progressive governments that swept through Latin America in the mid-2000s and 2010s, the recent wave of right-leaning administrations, and their implications for the region. Considering Latin American cinema at large, scholars like Claudia Sandberg (2018) had begun to question whether neoliberalism was really resisted during these progressive governments, or if they constituted only a “hiatus” in a linear trajectory towards an ever-present neoliberalism. As this chapter delves into the particularities of narrative feature films, a similar argument can be contended for Ecuadorian cinema, given recent developments in film policy and institutions like CNCine disappearing or merging into other state bodies. These uncertainties echo similar findings for Peru in publications by Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow (2020). The fact that countries with dissimilar political tendencies and historical processes are able to coincide in comparable structures for film production speaks to the complexity of national film industries, and the value expectations that result from these. This complexity is further explored in comparison to how national cinemas have traditionally been theorised in previous studies, expanding on the conclusions drawn from Chap. 2. In practical terms, these discrepancies are further corroborated in the way theatrically released narrative features were produced during Socialism for the twenty-first century. This chapter identifies a preferred path or “habitus” in production practices, borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology (1993). It includes access to state support via CNCine and using this initial funding to secure international co-productions and collaborations, before acquiring cultural capital through film festivals and similar platforms. This amassed capital would serve as bargaining power for negotiations with local commercial exhibitors, in the hopes of achieving box office success and recouping expenses. Through this path, a gradual shift towards a more commercially oriented cinema begins to emerge, even when many films in the indie subfield choose to comment on social issues and inequality. The closing case study for this chapter, Javier Andrade’s

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Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse, 2013), constitutes an example of stories at the periphery that needed to amass enough cultural capital to get funded, produced, and commercially distributed, paralleling Andrade’s own personal trajectory. As such, the ambiguities mentioned for Ecuadorian cinema at large are also made evident in the particularities of the film text.

Marginality and Precariousness in Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (1999) Related scholarship usually identifies Ratas as the ultimate milestone in recent Ecuadorian cinema, from which a before and an after was established (Alomía 2020). Premiering in commercial theatres in 1999 during a deep political and economic crisis, it garnered close to 110,000 spectators in more than 15 weeks in theatres (Cordero, Ecuador y América Latina, ¿es su cine escaso y de mala calidad? 2000), a box office performance that many in the so-called Ecuadorian “mini-boom” could only dream of matching. This section analyses Ratas from the standpoint of two theoretical approaches. First, Ratas is situated within a regional aesthetic tendency that León identifies as “Cinema of Marginality” (2005). This distinction is complemented by more recent theorisations by Burrucúa and Stinisky (2018) on precariousness. Not constituting conditions that necessarily imply a negative connotation, these two approaches are presented as, instead, nurturing and encouraging creativity. These conditions are then contrasted with Cordero’s own privileged position within an Ecuadorian cinematic field, a dichotomy that inevitably would inform production practices during Ecuadorian cinema for the twenty-first century. Ecuadorian scholar Christian León situates Ratas alongside Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (Love’s a bitch 2000) and Victor Gaviria’s La Vendedora de Rosas (The Rose Seller 1998) under the label “Cinema of Marginality” (2005). Through an extensive scholarly review on marginality, León avoids associating the marginal to a distant other, usually inhabiting a clearly defined space outside urban centres and represented as unemployed, impoverished, or illiterate. Instead, León focuses on the discursive forms that expose this exclusion in a variety of ways: citizenship, civil rights, language, moral, religious, and communicative practices. Such exposure is evident on screen, for instance, by choosing “the

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orphan, the forgotten, the unemployed, the delinquent as its main characters” (15). It also translates into images in which the lines between “private and public, home and street, family and gang, citizen and delinquent, moral and immoral, sameness and otherness, inclusion and exclusion” are constantly being blurred (13). In the case of Ratas, Cordero opted for two petty thieves and cousins as its main characters: Angel from the coastal city of Guayaquil and Salvador from the capital Quito. Salvador’s life is turned upside down after a visit from older cousin Angel, who travels to Quito to run away from some failed business deals. Cordero introduces Salvador as a somewhat rebellious teenager from the south of Quito, trapped in the discipline of his military father and senile grandmother. As such, Salvador initially idolises Angel, an experienced and street-smart thief who seems able to get away with anything. They progress into further robberies, involving Salvador’s friends Mayra and Marlon, and his upper-class cousin Carolina and her boyfriend JC. With each mishap taking place over a period of just four days, Salvador is gradually sucked into a downward spiral that concludes with the death of his father, a corpse resting underneath his bed, a failed romantic relationship, and Angel driving away with the spoils to an unknown location outside the country. Throughout the film, Cordero avoids patronising these characters, instead giving them range and depth in order to encourage empathy in the viewer. Cordero also avoids prescribing how they are to properly engage in society, a decision that becomes evident as the characters intentionally trespass the clearly defined spaces that they are supposed to inhabit. In the film’s memoir book, published ten years after the release of the film, Cordero shares his own production documents, including notes on the overall style of the film, its images, and its sounds. In this text, Cordero distinguishes four spaces for the film: the south of Quito, the north of Quito (Carolina’s style), the north of Quito (JC style), and Guayaquil (2010, 19). Considering that the narrative arc is designed around Salvador, it is not surprising to see most of the film taking place in Quito. Salvador’s expected space, the south of Quito, is described as kitsch, full of signs, brands, and colours, visually rich yet exhibiting bad taste. An additional element that informs this space is the electoral campaign of 1998, which translates into an excess of yellows and reds, and its resulting urban pollution. In contrast, Angel’s Guayaquil is simply defined as “heat, yet not as overwhelmed as the south of Quito” (ibid.), a description that visualises

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Fig. 3.1  Salvador (right) and Angel in Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Sebastián Cordero 1999)

the regional divide that becomes almost undistinguishable as the film progresses (Fig. 3.1). The remaining two spaces from the north of Quito make a distinction between the nouveau riche, as in the case of Carolina, and the wealthy and traditional landowners exemplified by JC.  Both spaces are described as “luxurious”, but the former is opulent and full of “bad taste”, while the latter is not as obviously sumptuous, following conventional expectations of taste (ibid.). In the film, Angel and Salvador intrude into these two spaces twice, first during Carolina’s high school graduation party, and then towards the end of the film, as the duo tries to break into JC’s mansion. Ironically, while Angel and Salvador are kicked out of Carolina’s mansion after pickpocketing from guests and stealing a car on their way out, they are later invited to steal from JC’s house, to provide an alibi for his father’s missing gun. Evidently, as León argued for the “Cinema of Marginality”, the expected societal lines that separate one group from the other become increasingly blurred, in doing so proposing a film discourse that portrays exclusion in non-binary terms. This brief analysis suggests that Ratas represented a product of its own societal background. The marginality portrayed in the film can be interpreted as a reflection on class, social status, and local disparities, in which

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instances of exclusion are highlighted and subtly challenged. Additionally, considering the lack of state support and the political and economic instability in which Cordero managed to produce Ratas, the film itself can be seen as a reflection of the peripheral stance that Ecuadorian cinema has maintained in relation to other national film industries in Latin America and the world. In other words, if considering Stephen Heath’s concept of cinema explored in Chap. 2, with cinema extending to the film text, its industry, and its signifying practices, could it be that elements of exclusion portrayed in Ratas are also rooted in the reality of a marginal film industry? Indeed, Cordero himself describes the production of the film as being informed by its lack of resources and experience, conditions that are seen as beneficial for the film: “However, somehow, we’ve found that as filmmakers, we get more creative and resourceful the more obstacles we have” (15). The fact that this quote was included in the film’s press book, later recalled in its memoir book, and corroborated by Cordero’s own footnote alongside this excerpt, imply that these conditions were embraced and even used for promotional purposes (ibid.).1 In this line, the precarious as non-detrimental has recently been explored by Constanza Burucúa and Carolina Sitnisky’s The Precarious in the Cinema of the Americas (2018). The authors argue for a definition of the precarious that acknowledges its potential for creativity and productivity and reject conventional definitions that reduce the term to scarcity and insecurity. Regarding precariousness and political change, Burucúa and Sitnisky refer to Latin American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, characterised by a shared understanding of “material constraints as catalyst for audiovisual creativity and the desire to extend their praxis into tools for social and political change” (2018, 2). In Ratas, while a clear aim towards social and political change is not made explicit, the film produced such shockwaves in the local industry as to directly influence later film policy, given Cordero’s own involvement in these efforts, as well as the film’s evident success. Here, the binarity of “precarious and bad” is replaced with “low budget yet of good quality; a cinema that tries to hook the public without insulting their intelligence”, to quote Cordero’s own words (2010, 15). 1  The footnote reads: “Este texto de Intenciones fue preparado para el press book de la película, y fue utilizado en catálogos de festivales y promociones. Al releerlo ahora, 10 años más tarde, me di cuenta de que sigo pensando exactamente igual” (This Intentions text was prepared for the film’s press book, and was used in festival and promotion catalogs. Rereading it now, 10 years later, I realized that I still think exactly the same) (ibid.).

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Another element of the precarious that relates to the “Cinema of Marginality” has to do with the spaces in which this precariousness exists. According Burucúa and Sitnisky, the precarious permeates every aspect of cinema, including its production, reception, access to technology, institutions, themes, and aesthetics (2018, 1–2). If this is the case, then limitations on any of these aspects can be expected in any geographical space, not just the peripheries in a world cinema context. For this reason, Burucúa and Sitnisky purposefully avoid relying on traditional categorisations of cinema in the Americas, instead extending their study to “all the cinemas of the region, regardless of their relative historical and global weight” (6). Certainly, this interpretation of the precarious also connects with debates on national and translational cinemas explored in Chap. 2. In this line, and more specifically for Ecuadorian cinema, Cordero compares the south of Quito in Ratas to New York in Mean Streets (1973), Paris in La Haine (1995), Hong Kong in Chungking Express (1994), and Mexico City in Los Olvidados (The Young and the Dammed 1950). The director acknowledges that these spaces are not Quito yet refers to them as main influences for the film (Cordero 2010, 15). Here, the transnational implications of the precarious are corroborated by these foreign influences that, according to Cordero, are also present in Ecuadorian society at large. With this evidence, a precarious stance can be assumed for a film like Ratas, and, by extension, the totality of Ecuadorian cinema at the time. But given the film’s box office performance, film festival success and overall influence in Ecuadorian cinema, would it be accurate to label the film as marginal and precarious, instead of mainstream and revered?2 Here, a distinction between the film and the role of the director can be established. By the time the film was released, Cordero had briefly paired with siblings Viviana and Juan Sebastián in the production of Sensaciones 2  Ratas, Ratones, Rateros premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1999, with subsequent screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and San Sebastian International Film Festival that same year. The fact that a no-name film from Ecuador was screened in these prestigious film festivals was attributed to the advice of Ramiro Puerta, a long-time programmer at Toronto. According to Cordero, Puerta recommended to choose Venice for a world premiere after seeing a VHS copy of the film. As an anecdote, Cordero recalls Puerta being surprised by the film: “Él me dijo que no estaba al tanto de ninguna producción en el Ecuador: que él normalmente sabe de todo lo que se está haciendo, y que era rarísimo que no hubiera escuchado de la película todavía” (He told me that he was not aware of any production in Ecuador: that he usually knows everything that is being done, and that it was very strange that he had not heard of the film yet) (Ratas ratones rateros, una película de Sebastián Cordero [libro de memorias] 2010, 220).

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(Sensations 1991), a collaboration interrupted by Cordero’s film studies at the University of Southern California. Upon his return, Cordero worked as a lecturer at the prestigious Universidad San Francisco de Quito, one of the only institutions offering a film programme at the time (De la Vega Velasteguí, Espacios de Formación y Profesionalización en Cine 2016), with average tuition fees aimed primarily to the upper-middle class. After the success of Ratas, Cordero managed to produce five other films, also achieving comparable critical acclaim, with a career that continues to this day. How, then, to reconcile the cultural capital amassed by Cordero and the “Cinema of Marginality” present in his work, a product of the precarious production conditions of the country? Burucúa and Sitnisky refer to the work of Barbara Korte and Frédéric Regard to introduce the concept of “third agent” (2018, 7). Like León’s non-binary approach to analysing the “Cinema of Marginality”, Korte and Regard try to avoid drawing a clear distinction between “offender and offended” in their studies of the precarious. Instead, Korte and Regard situate the filmmaker as a “witness… the one who may redistribute positions and redefine the offender as criminal and the offended as victim” (ibid.). In the case of Ratas a similar conclusion can be drawn. Cordero as a director does not necessarily inhabit the diegetic spaces in which the film takes place, but his authorial voice is able to expose marginality by blurring traditional interpretations of good and bad, significant and marginal. Outside the film text, the film’s precarious production conditions also translate into a marginal stance, with financial and artistic constraints being embraced and turned into an asset for creativity. Yet Cordero’s gradual rise to a referential status can situate him not at the margins of a local industry, but rather the opposite. Having acquired enough cultural capital as to influence the totality of an Ecuadorian cinematic field enables Cordero to “redistribute” positions within the field, or “blur” the distinctions between marginal and mainstream in Ecuadorian cinema, a possibility that can more tangibly be seen in efforts towards a film policy. Expanding on Cordero’s positioning, local scholar Paola de la Vega Velasteguí draws a distinction between Ratas and another film premiered that same year, Carlos Naranjo’s Sueños en la mitad del mundo (Dreams from the middle of the world 1999). For De la Vega Velasteguí, Cordero and Naranjo represent two diametrically distant ways of thinking about and producing films: from Los Angeles, as in the case of Cordero, and from Cuba, like Naranjo. The fact that Ratas and Cordero as a director were elevated to referential status in comparison to Naranjo points to the

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underlying understanding of success that this chapter seeks to contend, already ingrained in the local film industry by the turn of the century. De la Vega Velasteguí summarises these two positions: La primera, con una clara inclinación a una producción industrial con prácticas y procesos que poco corresponden a nuestro contexto – Cordero explicará más adelante la necesidad de adaptar, reinventar herramientas y situarlas en lo local –, y la segunda que promueve la idea de “contar historias propias” sin apuntar a la industria del entretenimiento. The first, with a clear inclination towards an industrial production with practices and processes that barely respond to our context – Cordero will explain later the need to adapt, reinvent tools and place them locally – and the second that promotes the idea of “telling our own stories” without aiming for the entertainment industry. (Gestión cinematográfica en Ecuador: 1977–2006 2016, 24, my translation)

Understanding Cordero’s early work and his position within an Ecuadorian cinematic field is a first step towards analysing what would be produced in the following decade. While financial and material constraints are indisputable and translate to the screen into a “Cinema of Marginality”, Cordero as a filmmaker also enjoys a position of privilege within the local film industry, while using the film text to comment on and expose exclusion. This dual standing would later be pursued by later filmmakers, particularly those that benefited from CNCine support, yet as the field sought additional sources of funding, business models, and distribution strategies, it began to take a distance from the marginal and precarious, instead opting for a more aestheticised and commercial take on film. But before exploring this dichotomy specifically in relation to Ecuadorian cinema, this chapter turns to Third Cinema, a film theory and movement that constitutes a necessary precursor to understand the complicated relationship between cinema and its immediate historical context in Latin America.

The Revolutionary Legacy of Third Cinema It is not arbitrary to discuss Third Cinema when proposing an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. As a film theory and movement aware of its limitations, Third Cinema emerged as a tool for social justice in dialogue with similar left-leaning tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s. It relied on the poverty and underdevelopment of its societal context and did not shy

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away from expressing a clear political view, both in the film text and through several political manifestos. However, as the movement branched out to film expressions outside the social documentary and sought to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of each country, its disruptive edge began to be questioned, particularly as it gained notoriety in European film circuits.3 This section reviews some of Third Cinema’s most influential manifestos, theories, and practices, concluding that its revolutionary approach lies not necessarily in trying to develop a new film language, but in seeking a disinterested ideal that challenges all aspects of traditional modes of production. The extent to which this goal was materialised in Third Cinema can be debated and provides the groundwork for similar discussion around national cinemas and political ideology for the case of Ecuador. Julianne Burton’s influential book Cinema and Social Change in Latin America (1986) compiles interviews, writings, and translations of several Third Cinema filmmakers. Starting with Argentina’s Fernando Birri, Burton provides first-hand insights into the counter-hegemonic sentiments that would evolve into Third Cinema. Birri, for instance, is referred to as one of the predecessors of the movement. With an early understanding of class and the politics of the bourgeoisie, he was determined to oppose “the value system of his class” and embraced a new way of producing and distributing films without great financial resources. Birri was later forced out of Argentina after founding the Santa Fe Documentary School, which had become his experimental laboratory.4 He then settled in Brazil, Mexico, and finally Cuba, where he laid the groundwork for another institution that fuelled the movement and Latin American cinema at large, the International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños. Birri’s film Tire Dié (Toss me a Dime, 1960) inspired fellow Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas and researcher Octavio Getino to produce La 3  An example of these transnational collaborations is the Italian Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and its associations with the World Cinema project, as expanded upon by Andrea Gelardi (2018). A film that benefited from these networks was Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968) by Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. This film constitutes a landmark film for the Third Cinema movement in the late 1960s. 4  Birri recounts that his exile from Argentina was motivated by the establishment of a military regime in 1962. By then, the Escuela de cine documental de Santa Fe had already been labelled as a “centre for subversive activities”. Birri explains: “Let’s be frank: in fact, it was. What kind of subversion? Artistic subversion because we questioned everything; political and professional subversion because we were training people different from who controlled the rest of the Argentine film industry. Our subjects, our goals, our methodology – everything was different” (1986, 8).

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Hora de los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968), a pivotal film for Third Cinema. This documentary mixed montage and a critical voiceover to challenge social inequality in Argentina during the late 1960s, similar to the Soviet school of montage. Juxtaposing image and narration, the film emphasises the disparities between the rural working class and the agro-­ exporter middle class, with the latter still holding an intrinsic perception of American and European cultures as advanced, ideal, and refined. The film utilises intertitles to quote specific thinkers and philosophers, such as Cuban writer José Martí and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a legacy of the early epic narratives of the Golden Era of Latin American cinema. Intertitles also serve as chapter divisions, with the final episode reflecting on the death of Guevara as a metaphor for the “new man”: the idealised Latin American citizen who makes sacrifices for a cause that is greater than himself. As discussed in the previous section, Burucúa and Stinisky point to the perceived “common denominators of the region, namely poverty and underdevelopment” (2018, 2).5 For these filmmakers, this commonality represented a unique characteristic that certainly needed to be reflected in the cinema of the region, not limited to the final film text but also a result of the precarious production conditions that each country experienced. Linking precarity to Third Cinema and other Latin American movements, Burucúa and Stinisky highlight a shared belief that positions these constraints as a resource for creativity and a tool for social and political activism. As La Hora de los Hornos illustrates, Third Cinema embraced its historical context, and did not hesitate to actively promote specific political ideals in the hope of social change. This activism is evident in Solanas and Getino’s next publication entitled “Primera Declaración del Grupo Cine Liberación” (First Declaration of Grupo Cine Liberación, 1968), distributed during the first screenings 5  Themes of poverty and underdevelopment were not limited to Third Cinema manifestos or liberation discourses by Cuban revolutionaries. Eduardo Galeano’s Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971), for example, constitutes an example of Latin American resistance literature, later to inspire Pink Tide governments, most famously Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (1999–2013). In the context of the 2008 Summit of the Americas, Chávez had gifted the then US President Barack Obama with a copy of the book, which, according to a report by The Guardian, turned the book into an instant bestseller (Clark 2009). Galeano’s recounting of Latin American history explores themes of colonialism, dependency, and economic exploitation, certainly resonating with revolutionary sentiments of Socialism for the 21st century.

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of The Hour of the Furnaces, and later developed in Solanas’ “Hacia un tercer cine” (Towards a Third Cinema, 1969). Separating itself from the “first” or dominant cinema of Hollywood, and the intellectual “second” cinema of the European New Waves, the Third Cinema alternative proposed horizontal and inclusive filmmaking practices with the people, especially with those at the margins of society, to counterbalance neo-colonialism and social inequality. Solanas recognised the historical events that influenced the conception of the movement: ten years of the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War (1955–1975), and other liberation movements in countries of the so-called Third World, like the ones promoted by Cuba in countries like Angola and Mozambique. He also mentioned referents from the international filmmaking community: American newsreels and cinegiornales in Italy, as well similar student manifestations in England and Japan (338). Primarily, Third Cinema positioned itself as an expression of counterculture. Later revisions by Solanas and Getino, as well as interpretations from film scholars, would reveal that establishing a clean-cut separation between Second and Third Cinema became a source of contention. This statement is reinforced by Anthony R. Guneratne, who uses Michael Chanan’s argument to prove this point (1997). For Chanan, as the Third Cinema canon gradually allowed for a variety of local film expressions in order to ease national and regional differences, it also permitted works that appear closer to a Second Cinema tradition (in Guneratne 2003, 10), not limited to only the militant practices of early social documentaries. Paradoxically, documentary itself emerged from pioneers like John Grierson, whose experiments in pedagogical films for the British Colonial Film Unit set the ground for what would later be known as documentaries (Grieveson 2018, 158–194). In other words, film practices designed to enforce colonial compliance and loyalty were later adapted for militant purposes in Latin America, only to be watered down once again for more palatable expressions. Another source of contention is Third Cinema’s positionality in a world cinema context. Quoting Mike Wayne (2001), Third Cinema sought to distance itself from only being associated with films from “third-world countries”. As a solution, Guneratne uses the concept of “circles of denotation” as proposed by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (1994). With an undisputable impact in film and media studies, these “circles” help categorise

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Third Cinema according to its geographic location. Starting at the margins, they establish: . Third Cinema in the Third World, 1 2. Third World films in general, 3. Third Cinema made outside the Third World, and 4. Diasporic hybrid films imbued with Third Cinema properties (15). To elaborate, this categorisation suggests that not every film that is produced in the so-called “Third World” is necessarily “Third Cinema”. Consequently, there can be Third Cinema exponents outside the Third World, even when a clear national association, like in diasporic or exilic films, is not clearly defined. While not necessarily the ideal later proposed by Burucúa and Stinisky, who consciously designed their research to avoid any categorisation that entails the periphery, Shohat and Stam seem to share a similar motivation, not limiting Third Cinema to a particular geographic location. In this line, Solanas and Getino’s later revisions acknowledged the changing nature of their early manifestos, stressing “the value of a theory [as] always dependent on the terrain in which the praxis is carried out” (11). How Third Cinema, its historical and praxis specificity, and its debunked peripheric status come together in a national reality can be seen in Brazil’s Cinema Novo. Emerging from the largest country in Latin America, Cinema Novo was an obvious reaction to the political situation in Brazil, having to constantly adapt, both aesthetically and practically, to the instability of a growing film industry. Brazilian filmmaker Glaúber Rocha was one of the movement’s leading artists, inspiring fellow Latin American filmmakers with films such as Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil, 1963) and Antonio das Mortes (Antonio of Death, 1969). This later film sought to portray the problems of the Brazilian Northeast by focusing on the mysticism that defined most of the region’s social structures. Cinema Novo was gradually seeking to improve the communication between films and the public, and instead of opting for foreign formulas and themes, it chose tools that were already present in Brazilian culture. Rocha’s interest “in showing how the economically and politically oppressed have great creative strength in their music, clothing, and choreography” (Cinema Novo and the Dialectics of Popular Culture 1986) was clearly linked to the underlying worries of Latin Americans.

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Rocha’s example was also followed, as with many other Latin American filmmakers previously mentioned, by a written process through essays or manifestos. In his essay on the “Aesthetics of Violence” (1971, 397–400), Rocha highlights the Latin American “hunger”, both physical and philosophical. Starved of its own culture, due to subtler mechanisms of colonialism, it could only turn to violence and the aesthetics that come from it. Rocha distinguishes this new aesthetic from “primitivism”, instead anchoring it in ‘love’, both active and transformative. As such, it has no option but to develop at the margins of the cultural-economic boundaries, only connected to specific technical, industrial, and artistic contacts in international cinema. Rocha’s concept translated into traces of Brazil’s popular culture in his own work, influencing the creation of what he believed to be a genuine Brazilian and Latin American cinema. Bringing these ideas together, Third Cinema can be seen as not necessarily being bounded to a particular country or world region but operating in a local specificity that informs its aesthetic and ideology. Developed into a film theory through the many manifestos and essays that accompanied the movement, Third Cinema also provided a written process for this praxis, with the goals of activism and social change in mind. These two ideas are considered, by Teshome Gabriel in Third Cinema in the Third World (1992), to have argued for “a new film language with which to accomplish these tasks” (11). In other words, Gabriel asked for a similar revolution to the very foundations of cinema itself. Guneratne, however, sees this requirement as superfluous, particularly because such innovation can become a barrier for postcolonial audiences that were not necessarily interested in such novelties (ibid.). Hence, as Guneratne explains, many Third Cinema films fall closer to Cuban filmmaker Julio García Espinosa’s subtler definitions of an Imperfect cinema. García Espinosa particularly warned against the positive critical reception of Latin American films amongst traditional circuits of distribution, inevitably ‘tempting’ filmmakers to aspire to elitist, intellectual circles. For García Espinosa, cinema had primarily two tendencies that for him represented dead ends: an “interested” one that did not hide its capital benefits, and a “disinterested” inclination that negated any selfish ambition. As an alternative, García Espinosa proposed an “Imperfect” cinema that acknowledges industrial interests as it pushes towards a “disinterested” ideal. This cinema would not be preoccupied with technique and quality, but aimed for an answer to a simple question: “What [is the artist] doing

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in order to overcome the barrier of the “cultured” elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?” (1986, 481). Comparing Gabriel’s requirement for a new film language and García Espinosa’s challenge to an elitist conditioning, Guneratne offers a means to reconcile the two, considering Solanas and Getino’s later revisions: Thus, a more precise definition of Gabriel’s requirement would not insist on formal innovation per se, but rather on a filmmaking practice whose departures from the model offered by Hollywood underline its ideological rejection of the latter, for indeed Solanas and Getino argue that a cinema which imitates US industrial models “leads to the adoption of the ideological forms which gave rise to that language and no other” (2003, 11).

In other words, Solanas and Getino’s Third Cinema should not rely primarily on aesthetics and film techniques to develop a new film language, but instead should seek to contest all aspects of the filmmaking workflow, from conception to audience reception, since its output would inevitably lead to a new “language”. Conscious of the business models that controlled production and exhibition in Latin America, and the underlying financial issues that dictated their operations, Solanas called for the reorganisation of the whole system. This included industrial and commercial structures, film institutions, film festivals, film schools, journals, and critics that justify and complement such a system (Solanas and Getino 1969, 361). Since such a venture appeared unattainable due to the disparities in political power, agency, and access, the experiences of Solanas, and other Third Cinema authors like Jorge Sanjinés and Grupo Ukamau, spoke of a transnational perspective and collaborative effort towards this common goal. Although a similar objective was acknowledged, differences in opinions and production models started to emerge in each Latin American country, trying to balance political activism, widespread distribution, and the ability to make films. To summarise, Third Cinema can be described as a film movement and theory that found commonalities in the legacies of poverty and underdevelopment, dating from unequal colonial practices. Anchored in its immediate historical context, both local and internationally, Third Cinema draws from Italian neorealist tendencies, liberation efforts during the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, and other events of historical influence. With a clear aim towards social justice and change, Third Cinema makes use of film as a political tool, alongside a plethora of manifestos as

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varied as the many local expressions that are included in its canon. Initially developed in Latin America, Third Cinema is not bound to this geographical region, with counterparts outside the so-called Third World. Finally, the revolutionary goal of Third Cinema, as Guneratne suggests, is not necessarily one that develops into a new film language, but one that chooses to distance itself from hegemonic production practices and, in doing so, rejects their underlying ideologies. Certainly, the extent to which Guneratne’s goal came to fruition can be debated, yet it offers a needed starting point for assessing future left-­ leaning tendencies and their relationship to a local cinema, as in the case of Ecuador and Socialism for the 21st century. In other words, rather than focusing only on the film text and whether it presents an explicit call to action for social issues, Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can also be analysed through the production models preferred for the period, and how these abide by or reject traditional and mainstream film practices. Following the precedent of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, and given some of the contradictions found in the legal framework analysed in Chap. 2, Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can be expected to be aware of its marginal and precarious conditions yet, as subsequent sections would contend, also aspire to a definition of success primarily driven by market forces.

Film Policy as a Response to Neoliberalism? So far, this chapter has discussed Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros to illustrate the dual tendencies of Ecuadorian Cinema entering the new millennium, being simultaneously marginal and precarious, while privileged and referential. This discussion led to an analysis of Third Cinema and the regional preoccupations of poverty and underdevelopment during the 1960s. In between these two moments, the political and economic context in Latin America had shifted dramatically, with most countries engaging in the political ideology known as Neoliberalism by the 1990s. This shift had several implications for national film industries, including the institutions, policies, and industrial structures around them. Therefore, if Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is to be evaluated in terms of its challenge to or compliance with traditional modes of production imposed by the cultured elite, then certainly this analysis should consider the interests and motivations of neoliberalism as well. Regarding neoliberalism and Latin American cinema, Claudia Sandberg provides a detailed introductory summary of neoliberalism in the book

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Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Resisting Neoliberalism? (2018). Sandberg reviews industry policies and practices that led to the current state of affairs in Latin American cinema, with neoliberalism moving back to centre stage. Neoliberalism is here understood as a set of measures that promotes radical free market dynamics, at the expense of welfare systems and by means of austerity-driven policies, usually aligned to external financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (4). According to Sandberg, neoliberalism for Latin American cinema meant a dual position that sought to protect a local industry through screen quotas and tax exemptions, while also opening the market to global media conglomerates via deregulation (4–11). In short, Sandberg contends that “films have become consumable products, always linked to their capacity to make profits in local and global markets” (4). The above description may portray contemporary Latin American cinema as following a fixed trajectory to seek financial sustainability in global film markets, drawn from the 1990s to the present moment. However, Sandberg also highlights the rise of progressive governments that “resisted the neoliberal paradigm in Latin America” (3), beginning with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. For Sandberg, these governments composed what is called Post-neoliberalism (Kaltwasser 2011), Pink Tide (Plehwe and Fischer 2019), or Socialism for the 21st century in its more radical form, presented as a “parenthesis” in the mentioned neoliberal trajectory, with social reforms and nationalisation of natural resources to encourage social equality. Yet the apparent optimism that such alternatives provided had recently faded (Sandberg and Rocha 2018, 3), with a legacy questioned in later administrations.6 In the case of Ecuador, neoliberalism during the 1990s resulted in a deep economic and political crisis, with the collapse of the banking system and local currency (replaced by the American dollar in 1999), a record number of nine presidents in ten years, and massive immigration to the global north. While other countries saw a direct effect in film policy and state support,7 in Ecuador, the overall uncertainty in the country clearly affected their ability to produce films in the first place, not to mention have them make a profit. A film like Ratas, 6  Some of these criticisms are explored in Chap. 6, where the concept of Buen Vivir (or Good Living) is expanded upon and compared to oppositional and communal film practices outside CNCine support. 7  Namely, Brazil’s state support package (known as La Retomada) in 1993, the creation of Argentina’s film institute INCAA in 1994, and similar film policies in Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Venezuela between 1994 and 2005 (Sandberg and Rocha 2018, 6).

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Ratones, Rateros constitutes an exception rather than the norm for the period, and even then, as previously mentioned, the film needed external distribution to recoup expenses. An example worth analysing to confirm Sandberg’s faded optimism can be seen in Peruvian cinema after the turn of the century. Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow (2020) provide a needed introduction to Peruvian cinema, exploring the effects of neoliberalism, film decrees, and the subsequent diversification of the local cinematic landscape. Starting with a brief description of Peruvian society, Vich and Barrow argue that market-based dynamics are rooted in neoliberal practices that emerged after the armed conflict of the 1990s, certainly impacting local cinemas. Compared to next-door neighbour Ecuador, Peru did not partake in the Pink Tide movement of the mid-2000s and 2010s, yet its film industry structures also resemble those found in Ecuador, including its neoliberal tendencies. For instance, Vich and Barrow acknowledge the benefits of the 2019 film decree, yet are critical of how these measures are implemented, suggesting that an overarching legal framework is still needed if the local industry is to move out of a recurring tension between dynamism and instability. Indeed, these two terms are chosen by the authors to define the period (and the book), recognising the fragility of the industry, while also identifying bursts of critical appraisal and commercial success. For Ecuador, the political sentiment of the region, characterised by a resistance to neoliberalism, informed the approval of the 2006 Ley de Cine, offering state funding and a basic legal framework for film production. While not necessarily a policy that directly emerged from such left-­ leaning ideologies, its execution through the newly created CNCine was situated under the government understandings of Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir, as discussed in Chap. 2. As such, CNCine became a central entity for film financing during this period, dependent on budget allowances from the state. But CNCine was not the only funding partner for local projects, nor did it necessarily translate into more progressive ways of making films. As Sandberg points out, film financing nowadays has become a “piecemeal affair” for Latin American filmmakers, combining state and private, local and foreign investors (2018, 10). This trend was also followed in Ecuador, which suggests that, just as in Latin America at large, film funding constitutes a clear indicator for the re-emergence of the mentioned neoliberal practices. Sandberg already points out that “while Latin American cinema is praised as a post-national or emancipated cinema, its transnational character is in fact a product of neoliberal demands” (ibid.).

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With this statement in mind and considering an already expected dependency on financial support through CNCine, the following section analyses preferred production practices during Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century in order to assess more recent neoliberal tendencies.

State Funding and Market Dynamics During Socialism for the 21st Century It is undeniable that the 2006 Ley de Cine offered some sustainability when it came to film practices in the country. As previously contended, this policy came about after decades of lobbying efforts by local filmmakers, and also prompted by the success of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros. Once CNCine became operational in 2007, with state monies made available for film production, a preferred path or “habitus” was gradually established. Starting with CNCine support, local projects would seek international collaborations, continue with participation in film festivals once a film was made, and then negotiate theatrical distribution with local exhibitors. This section expands on this habitus, arguing that it favours theatrical releases, commercial viability, and international recognition, in doing so exacerbating the influence of the film exhibition sector over the totality of an Ecuadorian cinematic field. Therefore, matters of value and worth remain at the centre of film production in the country, inviting questions over whether a tangible alternative to the neoliberal tendencies of the previous decade was really proposed. This analysis can begin with the relationship between state support and theatrical distribution. Out of the 56 Ecuadorian films that premiered in commercial theatres between 2007 and 2015, 64.29 percent (or 36 of these) benefited from state support, allocated primarily through fondos concursables or grant funds offered by CNCine (Table 3.1). Requirements to access CNCine’s funding varied from year to year, with different categories, emphases, and amounts allocated in each edition. For instance, in its first instalment in 2007, CNCine granted $840,000 to 73 beneficiaries, or 43 projects. This amount was distributed in eight different categories, including screenwriting and development, feature and short film production, postproduction, exhibition and distribution, festivals and showings, and training and development (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2013). These categories would fluctuate each year, in accordance with CNCine’s interests and budget constraints. An illustrative example

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Table 3.1  Ecuadorian films in commercial theatres per year (2007–2015) 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Total films

2

3

5

3

4

5

13

16

2015 5

State support

1

1

3

2

3

5

9

10

2

Non-state support

1

2

2

1

1

0

4

6

3

can be seen in the Festivales y muestras category, which was divided into three subcategories the following year: Festivales consolidados (Consolidated festivals), Festivales itinerantes (Travelling festivals), and Muestras regionales (Regional showings). By 2014, with a $2,200,800 annual investment for its support scheme, CNCine had gone back to the initial Festivales y muestras classification, allocated to four beneficiary projects (ibid.). That same year, however, CNCine also provided further assistance to four initiatives outside fondos concursables, aiding three consolidated film festivals and one audience-building initiative.8 This example illustrates that CNCine’s rationale for allocating funds was highly dependent on its available budget, expectations of the judging committee, and particular interests of the institution at the time of assessment. Yet, securing support from CNCine was not the only step involved in getting a film made and commercially distributed. Filmmakers used this 8  Former CNCine director Isabel Mena makes a distinction between fondos concursables, assigned after a call for projects, and monies allocated directly to consolidated film festivals like EDOCs, Chulpicine, and El Lugar sin Límites (in Criollo 2016). The former involves a juror panel, made up of local and international experts that assess and provide feedback on submitted proposals.

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initial funding as a springboard for international collaborations, in the form of development labs, co-productions, and other financial agreements. The regional platform Ibermedia has become an important production partner in Latin America, particularly for smaller cinemas (Villazana 2009, T. Falicov 2013) and not excluding Ecuador. Participating countries are required to provide a minimum fee to enter and maintain membership, a task carried out by CNCine in 2008. Between 2008 and 2012, Ibermedia granted a total of $5,951,250 for local films, distributed between 39 projects, surpassing the country’s initial investment (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2013). Other market and exhibition opportunities led by CNCine include Cannes’ Marché du Film, Bogota Audiovisual Market, Ventana Sur, and DocTV (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2015). These collaborations suggest that CNCine not only supported film projects and other initiatives within the Ecuadorian cinematic field, such as film festivals and markets, but also operated as a mediator, accommodating for financing and industry structures already in place, both locally and internationally. CNCine, while not being the sole source of funding for film production, remained at the centre of film activity during the Ley de Cine years, encouraging these transnational practices. Additionally, the demand for television quotas established in the 2013 Ley de Comunicación provided a business model that allowed for the emergence of production companies. By the end of the ten-year validity of the Ley de Cine, these companies had managed to simultaneously work in the audio-visual and film sectors, with the former providing the mass scale, technical expertise, and profitability to support the latter. It is through these production companies that many international collaborations flourished, ensuring an adherence to the aesthetic conventions expected in these markets. Once a film was made, filmmakers would seek to participate in the international film festival circuit before aiming for a local premiere. The cultural capital collected through CNCine and international collaborations could find additional validation through these film festivals. Filmmakers could then negotiate with local commercial exhibitors on a case-by-case basis. As local distributor Marco Aguas explains, some of the conditions required for films include reaching at least 40 percent of screen capacity to remain in theatres during a previously arranged period, usually averaging around 4 weeks (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2015, 22). Being attuned to the overall local scene was crucial for filmmakers to avoid competing with other local films. But even then,

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because of agreements acquired with theatres, an Ecuadorian film could easily be replaced by a foreign product or be subject to any decisions of the theatre, including instances of censorship.9 As has been seen, achieving commercial exhibition was, and continues to be, an arduous task, but the path does not end here. Just as support from CNCine was not enough to make a film and secure theatrical release, once a film reached the cinema, it did not necessarily translate into a box office success, sometimes struggling to break even. Films that achieved a decent performance were elevated against others that did not, and, while this outcome could attest to audience preferences, given the described path towards distribution, it could also point to instances of taste-making and curatorship, with each stage of the process as an opportunity to validate an acquired cultural capital and emphasise a specific aesthetic. One point to highlight when discussing taste-making and curatorship for national cinemas is its inherent transnational component, as expanded upon in Chap. 2. In addition to support from CNCine, international collaborations, film festival validation, and to an extent theatrical distribution in  local cinemas, already gave preference to films that partook in these transnational collaborations, given the filmmakers’ transnational journeys and/or their border-crossing film practices. However, transnationalism by itself is not equivalent to a greater cultural capital. As Gabriela Alemán points out, some Mexican–Ecuadorian collaborations in the 1970s were soon dismissed by local cultural elites, who classed them as “Fake Ecuadorian Cinema”, regardless of their evident commercial success in theatres (An International Conspiracy 2004). A more recent example is the so-called Ecuador Bajo Tierra (Ecuador underground), an epithet that already implies a lesser standing (Alvear and León 2009). According to Alemán, the underground film Sicarios Manabitas (Hitmen from Manabi, 2004) was funded by an Ecuadorian dentist based in the United States, 9  In terms of censorship, two controversial examples from local documentaries can be discussed. After the release of Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011), the film initially did not benefit from tax exemptions from the local municipality in Guayaquil, as the film was considered Colombian (Diario El Comercio 2011). Director Maria Fernanda Restrepo considered this decision to be a ‘boycott’, an allegation that the municipality denied. This decision was later revised and overruled. A similar example took place in 2013, with exhibition conglomerate Supercines refusing to screen the film La muerte de Jaime Roldós (2013) due to “political motivations”, as explained by co-director Manolo Sarmiento (Redacción Cultura 2013). Co-director Lisandra Rivera estimates that this decision resulted in a reduction of 40 percent against the expected return on investment for the film.

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edited by a Mexican who travelled to Ecuador, imaged corrected in New York, and subsequently premiered in Queens and Chone, the location of the film (At the Margin of the Margins: Contemporary Ecuadorian Exploitation Cinema and the Local Pirate Market 2009, 267). These transnational extensions were not sufficient to secure an honorary position in the local film canon. This brief example suggests that, in addition to the transnational tendencies of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, matters of value play an important role in delimiting a national canon. Or, to put it differently, certain transnational practices seem to be preferred over others, which already assumes a plurality to choose from. In this regard, Mette Hjort (2009) offers a typology that, although centred on production practices, also serves to provide “a basis for principled discriminations as to value or worth” (15). Hjort writes: “Questions of value cannot be assumed to be settled in advance in connection with cinematic transnationalism, and distinctions as to worth must thus themselves be made central to the ongoing discussion” (ibid.). Here, Hjort emphasises that there is nothing “inherently virtuous” about transnationalism as it tends to be approached in some sectors of Film Studies (14–15). Rather, Hjort tries to connect modes of cinematic production and their specific concerns and outcomes when defining a categorisation for the transnational. By quoting Hjort’s typology for transnational cinemas, it is not the intention of this chapter to situate Ecuadorian cinema within one of these categories, but rather suggest that, while the transnational constitutes a tangible approach, it is ultimately valued if it effectively serves to accumulate capital, whether cultural, economic, or both. This transnational affirmation, corroborated over the years through canon formation and national cinema compendiums, has eventually led to a local cinema that mainly operates not in direct contestation with hegemonic powers, as a Third Cinema tradition would have hoped, but from within these structures. Following on from this premise, it can be expected for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century to reflect these structures in the film text. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter analyses specific case studies to evaluate this expectation. As Sandberg concludes for Latin American cinema at large, a visible tendency towards commercially viable projects can be verified, which can lead to questioning of the non-conformist and revolutionary aims of Socialism for the 21st century, and its impact for Ecuadorian cinema.

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Production Practices in CNCine-Backed Narrative Features Tracing the legacies of Latin American Third Cinema to the neoliberal tendencies of the 1990s and its most recent response in Socialism for the 21st century, it is understandable to find certain production practices being preferred over others, even if on paper these might seem contradictory. Moving from the abstract and theoretical to the concrete and specific, this section highlights a subtle move towards more market-driven tendencies in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, an unsurprising shift considering the ambiguities already highlighted in relation to the preferred path towards theatrical distribution. These ambiguities also reveal the difficulties inherent in assigning a specific categorisation to Ecuadorian cinema if taking into account traditional classifications in world cinemas as well as funding strategies, as previously observed by Sandberg. As this section argues, there is an evident aspiration towards financial gain and sustainability, even when themes of marginality and precariousness still permeate the film text. In relation to film funding, state initiatives are generally assumed to be more culturally driven and aesthetically inclined, while those privately funded are meant to seek a quick commercial return via entertainment strategies. This distinction is muddled in recent Ecuadorian cinema. Comparing the five films with the largest number of spectators between 2007 and 2015, films supported by CNCine attract significantly more viewers (see Table 3.2). As shown, the top-grossing, CNCine-backed A tus espaldas (2011) drew 100,355 spectators, compared to the self-funded Sexy Montañita (2014) with 14,000 (Larrea 2016) Having received support from CNCine in postproduction, A tus espaldas also benefited from Table 3.2  Number of spectators for commercially released narrative features (2007–2015) CNCine support Prometeo deportado A tus espaldas Pescador En el nombre de la hija Cuando me toque a mi

Privately funded 162,000 100,335 100,167 85,260 85,000

(Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía in Larrea 2016)

Sexy montañita Rómpete una pata Quito 2023 Cuento sin hadas Novios por esta noche

14,000 10,000 6458 3800 811

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an Ibermedia fund and a co-production deal with Venezuela-based The Filmmaker Studio (Programa Ibermedia n.d.). The film managed to recoup expenses even before its release in commercial theatres, where it was shown for ten weeks. How might we reconcile the financial success of a state-supported project like A tus espaldas when, as Randall Johnson points out, film policies have evolved to guarantee “…the production of culturally serious or aesthetically experimental filmmaking which might not survive if subject to exclusively commercial measurements” (1996, 129)? According to this statement, Johnson reads film legislation as an instrument with which to counteract power dynamics in film markets, not necessarily to accentuate them. In the case of A tus espaldas, state support constitutes only one of several sources of funding, and, while considerably more polished than Sexy Montañita, it by no means fits into an arthouse categorisation, the preferred recipient of aesthetically inclined film support.10 Instead, A tus espaldas gestures to what the legal text discussed in Chap. 2 already hinted, aiming for a financially sustainable film industry while operating in conjunction with established structures of value. The example of A tus espaldas can be explained by means of several theories of national cinema, which at first glance might appear contradictory. To begin, a dependency on state support is closely related to Thomas Elssaeser’s “cultural mode of production” (1989, 44), quoted by Stephen Crofts when defining a European-model art cinema (2006, 46). This model chooses to distance itself from the dominant Hollywood model and uses alternative and specialised means of distribution to target the arthouse market. Certainly, in line with previous discussions of the peripherical stance of the local industry, Ecuadorian cinema is far from emulating such a model, yet it finds a slight correlation in terms of state support and, in some cases, a similar aim for distribution in film festival circuits. It also explains some of the ambiguities that a state-subsidised cinema can bring. As Elsaesser observes: “it encourages aesthetic difference from the dominant (Hollywood) product but discourages biting the hand that feeds it” (ibid.). Applying Elsaesser’s affirmation, a film like A tus espaldas coincides with a European-model art cinema in its partial dependency on state funding and its evident distance from Hollywood, even when not necessarily falling into an arthouse categorisation. But, as Elsaesser’s quote implies,  The film Sexy Montañita (2014) is analysed in Chap. 5.

10

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this distance does not entail a blatant opposition, or even a slight separation from dominant business and industry models, which certainly should be considered if using Solanas and Getino’s definitions of Third Cinema. Moreover, if employing Crofts’ traditional characterisation of Third Cinema as carrying an underlying “critique of bourgeois individualism” (47), it also does not seem to apply. Instead, as Crofts highlights: “More recently, Third Cinema abuts and overlaps with art film’s textual norms and, its militant underground audience lost, seeks out art cinema’s international distribution-exhibition channels” (ibid.). While Crofts’ observation refers to late 1990s leanings of the movement, it explains the direction of Latin American cinema approaching the new century. For state-supported Ecuadorian cinema, excluding a few exceptions that usually stand outside commercial release, textual norms were, and continue to be, ruled by expectations of state and international funding bodies, as well as exhibition parameters to secure commercial viability, even after the Ley de Cine years. These contradictions imply that assigning a traditional Second or Third Cinema categorisation to Ecuadorian cinema risks ignoring the very praxis from which a theory should be proposed, regardless of how conflicting these could be. As Michael Chanan also points out (1997), the ever-changing political and cultural landscape in Latin American cinema calls for adapted research methods that embrace these changes, instead of trying to fit previous understandings of national cinemas. For the case of Ecuador, while state support directed through CNCine can resemble Elsaesser’s cultural mode of production and the European-model art cinema defined by Crofts, with films like Maria Cristina Barragán’s Alba (2016) neatly fitting this classification, examples like A tus espaldas attest to an inclination towards capital gain and financial sustainability, a tendency that the local industry would explicitly embrace in upcoming years. Three events can explain this new direction. First, the success of Sebastián Cordero’s Sin muertos no hay carnaval (Such is life in the tropics, 2016), which relied on state support but managed to involve the private sector, transnational collaboration, and a heavily advertised commercial release. Like Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, Cordero’s latest film set a new path for Ecuadorian cinema, embracing a hybrid, more commercial approach to funding, following the trajectory already set by A tus espaldas. Second, the rise of EnchufeTV, an Ecuadorian YouTube channel that grew into a worldwide phenomenon (Luzuriaga, Antropofagia cinematográfica en el ciberespacio: el caso ecuatoriano de Enchufetv 2012). The channel, which

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offers tri-weekly parody sketches, brought a new take to the highly fragmented editing style that characterised most of the content uploaded to this platform. EnchufeTV found an aesthetic that incorporated high production values, local humour, and overly colourful mise-en-scène, which soon became its trademark. By 2019, the production company behind EnchufeTV, called Touché Film, had already released its first narrative feature, Dedicada a mi ex (Dedicated to my ex), which dethroned 1989’s La Tigra as the most viewed film in Ecuadorian history with 252,860 viewers in six weeks (Medina 2019). Bearing these two examples in mind, it is not surprising that audio-­ visual works entered into the purview of ICCA, the institution that replaced CNCine in 2017, marking the third event to evidence this shift. Already, the audio-visual sector and the local film industry had become almost indistinguishable, particularly in relation to mass-scale and financially profitable production practices. This idea correlates with a perception already mentioned in Chap. 2, with former CNCine director Jorge Luis Serrano seeing the audio-visual sector as the “muscle force” of the local industry (2014), and director Camilo Luzuriaga’s criticising an apparent “repudiation of profit” in festival-oriented local films (La industria ecuatoriana del cine: ¿otra quimera? 2014). Certainly, this tendency towards capital gain follows similar patterns described by Claudia Sandberg in Latin America in general, as more capitalist-leaning governments replaced the progressive Pink Tide of the early and mid-2000s. How then to evaluate the contestation of social inequality and neo-colonialism in the region, and by extension Ecuadorian cinema, as hoped for by early Third Cinema referents and twenty-first century socialists alike? Adding to the discussion, and despite a tangible tendency towards capital gain and financial sustainability, themes relating to social justice issues were still prevalent amongst CNCine-backed narrative features. In addition to Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de Ciertas Cosas (The Porcelain Horse, 2013), Sebastián Cordero’s Pescador (Fisherman, 2011), and Sin muertos no hay carnaval (Such is life in the tropics, 2016) also showcase morally compromised characters that either seek or prevent justice, with an underlying assumption of systemic corruption. Similarly, Viviana Cordero’s No robarás (a menos que sea necesario) (Do not steal unless necessary, 2013) depicts a teenage girl forced to do whatever it takes to provide for her siblings, whereas the financial crash of 1999 plays an important role in both Juan Carlos Donoso’s Saudade (2013) and Diego Araujo’s Feriado (Holiday, 2014). Issues related to class, race, and human rights are

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also featured. For instance, Victor Arregui’s El Facilitador (The Facilitator, 2013) comments on water access for indigenous communities in the Andes, while Tito Jara’s A tus espaldas (Behind you, 2011) and Calisto and Cisneros’ A estas alturas de la vida (Highs and lows, 2013) use the urban space of Quito to distinguish between the haves and the have-nots, or more precisely “higher-ups and low-lives”.11 It is this ambiguity and apparent contradiction that makes it difficult to objectively assess any instance of contestation and social activism in theatrically released narrative features supported by CNCine, even when their encompassed political ideology seems to embrace such goals. Going back to Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology in The Field of Cultural Production (1993), the direction that the Ecuadorian cinematic field followed, particularly regarding the indie subfield described in this section, reveals an initial goal of achieving state representation and funding through film policy, moving towards trying to secure international recognition and, more recently, commercial viability. Over time, this direction became more prominent in the local narrative feature, as director Jorge Ulloa explains regarding the success of Dedicada a mi ex: Ecuador tiene una historia cinematográfica bien interesante, también tiene expositores increíbles como Sebastián Cordero, Tania Hermida, Camilo Luzuriaga que han dado películas preciosas, pero que tienen otro objetivo, más que comerciales, tienen objetivos de festivales, que no es el objetivo de Dedicada a mi ex... este es un humor, creo yo inteligente, pero que está hecho para la gente, no busca premios, busca risas. Ecuador has a very interesting cinematographic history, it also has incredible referents such as Sebastián Cordero, Tania Hermida, Camilo Luzuriaga who have given us beautiful films. But they have another objective, more than commercial, they have festival objectives, which is not the goal of Dedicada a mi ex... this is a humour, I believe intelligent, but it is made for people; it does not seek prizes, it seeks laughter. (Medina 2019, my translation) 11  “The girl” can be seen as another trend in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. In addition to Viviana Cordero’s No Robarás, Tania Hermida’s En el nombre de la hija (2011) and, more recently, Ana Cristina Barragán’s Alba (2016) also chose girls as their protagonists, particularly following coming-of-age narratives that challenge gender roles. Hermida, Barragán, and director Gabriela Calvache are reviewed in Lilia Lemos Játiva’s master’s thesis entitled “La niña en el cine Ecuador 2008 a 2015” (The girl in cinema of Ecuador 2008 to 2015, 2015). For a broader perspective on children in Latin American cinema, see Rachel Randall’s Children on the Threshold in Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Nature, Gender, and Agency (2017).

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In either case, whether film festival or commercial success, cultural and economic capital is amassed to navigate the implied rules of the game in the Ecuadorian cinema during Socialism for the 21st century. The shift towards a more commercially oriented cinema parallels the underlying tensions of the governing political ideology, trying to abide by aesthetic expectations while at the same time catering to market dynamics. Nevertheless, as the narrative themes present in these films, Ecuadorian cinema could not ignore the marginal and precarious position that still holds in a regional and global context and the legacy of neoliberalism from past decades, even when a film policy intended to dissipate these conditions seem to encourage them. It is because of this context that narrative patterns of social inequality and local and national identities continue to be showcased in these films, inevitably drawing from the particularities of Ecuadorian society, as the following case study illustrates.

Case Study: Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2013) By 2013, seven years after enacting the 2006 Ley de Cine, funding from CNCine had proved to be successful in promoting film production, with the number of features produced and commercially released increasing every year. Although local features still averaged six years in production, these works were beginning to see the fruits of this film policy, establishing a recognisable preferred habitus for local filmmakers. That same year, Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse) was released in theatres, and eventually served as the country’s bid for an Academy Award in 2014. This section situates Javier Andrade within the particularities of a local film industry by initially tracing his own journey within it. This trajectory will then help to contextualise the narrative themes and aesthetic choices of the film, and how elements of value and capital, marginality and precariousness translate into its conclusion. Andrade was first exposed to the realities of a local film industry as a cast member in Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, a role taken while attending Universidad San Francisco de Quito, with Cordero as a lecturer. After graduation, Andrade completed a film degree at New York University, similar to Cordero’s own degree at University of Southern California. This validation helped Andrade bring to life a film like Mejor no hablar, his inaugural feature, with a script partially developed during his years at NYU. Andrade would eventually reside in Quito, with subsequent films produced through the local production company PUNK S.A. Shot

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in the coastal city of Portoviejo, Mejor no hablar constitutes one of the few exceptions to an apparent Quito-centric cinema, with Andrade’s own journey also centred around Quito. This apparent favoritism became a topic on contention in, for instance, the III Encuentro Nacional de Cine or Third National Film Summit in 2015. Held in Guayaquil and organised by CNCine, several filmmakers from this coastal city vocally expressed their disapproval over funding allocation that appeared to favoured filmmakers based in the capital Quito. Others, instead, attributed this preference to aesthetic and production values. Looking at the numbers, only 6 out of the 24 narratives that benefited from state funding between 2007 and 2015 were set outside of Quito, and, even then, films like Sin otoño sin primavera (2012) or Cordero’s own Pescador (2011) show other local geographies but from a Quito-­ centric gaze. This characteristic of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, also pointed out by film director and scholar Camilo Luzuriaga (Luzuriaga, La industria ecuatoriana del cine: ¿otra quimera? 2014, 22), suggests that while at the margins of a global and regional context, looking inward, Ecuadorian cinema is highly centralised. How, then, to reconcile what Luzuriaga perceives as a Quito-centric cinema subsidised by CNCine and the mentioned themes of social justice prevalent in narrative features? Certainly, a case study like Andrade’s Mejor no hablar can provide further nuances. The film takes place in Andrade’s hometown Portoviejo, with main character Paco Chávez as the son of an influential and privileged local politician. Paco initially rejects the political path set out for him after the sudden death of patriarch and father Don Carlos, who dies in an unfortunate quarrel with younger brother Luis over the family’s treasured porcelain horse. With his mother and sister moving to Miami, Paco runs away with lifelong lover Lucía, still conveniently married to international trade mogul Rodrigo. Together, they descend into a lifestyle of drug addiction, while Luis finds in Rodrigo a strategic investor and romantic partner, able to catapult a promising career in music. The birthday of their late father brings further remorse, pushing Luis to try to recover the family’s porcelain horse, now pawned to drug dealer Lagarto. The film closes with a series of events motivated by retaliation between Lagarto and the Chávez family, concluding with Paco, now Francisco Chávez, turned into an up-and-coming politician, restoring the expected legacy of the family. Contrasting Paco to Cordero’s Angel and Salvador in Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, this character is not initially presented at the margins of society.

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Yet this status is soon deflated after the death of Don Carlos. Paco and his brother Luis are left at the mercy of drug dealer Lagarto, unequivocally reversing the script for both parties. Compared to other secondary characters in the film, particularly those in submission to the wealthy families (maids, servants, employees), Lagarto does not seem to pay the expected ‘homage’. Instead, his conduct appears harsh, even disrespectful, considering his ‘place’ in society. Moreover, towards the end of the film, it is Lagarto’s refusal to give back the porcelain horse that forces Luis to break into Lagarto’s house and violently steal the item. The indirect power exercised by Lagarto throughout the film could arguably be the only real counterbalance to Don Carlos’ influence. With the porcelain horse brought back to its ‘rightful place’, the fear of family shame is diluted and replaced with a newfound sense of pride and honour. In contrast, Lagarto is apprehended and killed by the police, charged with murder and drug trafficking, despite his efforts to find justice for his family. The hopelessness that these narratives portray can be interpreted as an allegory for broader perceptions of the political class, state institutions, and overall social injustice. Even though patriarch Carlos Chávez dies relatively early in the story, his wealth is able to sustain (at least temporarily) the lavish lifestyles of his mourning family. Don Carlos owns an impressive house in Portoviejo, which can seem far from the urban centres of Quito and Guayaquil (Portoviejo and Chone are roughly 1 hour away from each other, and between 3 and 5 hours from the mentioned cities). Yet Don Carlos, and by extension his family, holds a social capital that combines money, political power, and strategic connections with peers of equal or higher standing. This capital is usually inherited, maintained through established power structures, and authenticated by First-World validators, typically from Europe and North America. In this way, the Chávez family can afford not to live in Quito or Guayaquil, given that their influence is not fully dependent on these urban centres. As an example, when Paco introduces his father, he begins by pointing out his privileged education – a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rome – before getting married and becoming a prolific politician back home. This trend continues with wife Elena and daughter Viviana choosing to move to Miami after Don Carlos’ death, and a brief mention of Lucía and Rodrigo’s first-­ world struggles when studying in Cambridge (Figs. 3.2 and 3.3). Certainly, capital is presented as a necessary precondition for approaching centres of power, whether physical or allegorical. In contrast, the state of being precarious and marginal implies a distance from these centres. In

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Fig. 3.2  Portoviejo’s city centre in Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2012)

Fig. 3.3  Paco Chávez sits inside a police car in Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (2012)

Mejor no hablar, the parallels of capital and closeness, precariousness and distance, are made evident in the spaces in which characters are introduced and interact. In addition to Paco’s narration to introduce his brother Luis, a technique repeated for other members of his inner circle, Andrade also highlights the distance between them and drug dealer Lagarto. Right after introducing Luis as “a mess”, with a “vice that I [Paco] fully share”, Luis drives his scooter to acquire more drugs from Lagarto. Instead of using a jump cut, Andrade takes the time to showcase the journey, featuring Portoviejo’s Manabí Avenue and the city centre, full of informal vendors

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spreading over the sidewalk and part of the street. They stop at a traditional coastal house, made of caña guadua and other materials. It is in this space that Lagarto exercises power over Luis, refusing to agree to his offers. This first altercation would later develop into pawning the family’s beloved porcelain horse, only to come full circle once justice has been served against Lagarto at the conclusion of the film.12 In the following scene, Paco and Luis are gathered in a local party. A handheld camera follows Paco through their house and garden. His point of view reveals the hall outside the bathroom, made of wooden patterns crossed vertically to appear as a subdivision. This choice evokes the traditional caña guadua, but in this case appears highly stylised. Grass sits neatly around porcelain pillars in designated covered areas of the garden, while miniature palm trees are placed side by side, with decorative plants around them, lit by colourful night lights. Later, prior to Don Carlos’ death, this character is presented through a sequence shot, slowly following his steps through the several living spaces in the house, starting with a dedicated mini-bar and an accompanying record cabinet that spreads over the entire wall. Even the echo of Don Carlos’ voice implies larger spaces, with white walls, porcelain floors, and wooden items throughout the living rooms. An attention to colour and decoration is evident, although it appears barely lit by decorative corner lamps, with curtains covering the large glass doors facing the outside garden. Unsurprisingly, the sequence ends with a medium shot of the aforementioned porcelain horse. Likewise, Don Carlos’ wife Elena is presented in her bathroom and adjacent walk-in closet. The chosen camera angle favours the mirrors and their reflection, almost losing the character in the frame. The reflection emphasises several glass shelves and pantry spaces holding a variety of beauty products, towels, clothes, and shoes. The character is overwhelmed by their surroundings, almost getting lost in it. As the story continues, Don Carlos’ mansion slowly gets dismantled from the abundance and 12  In this particular scene, power is also exercised through the use of misogynistic and homophobic slurs. For instance, Luis refers to Lagarto’s customers as mariconcitos or “little faggots”, to which they respond: Lagarto, llegó tu mujer (“Lagarto! your bitch is here”). The scene concludes with Lagarto’s wife serving the men and offering an empanada to Luis. Lagarto’s wife is barely in the frame, only presenting her arm and food tray. She addresses Luis politely (Sírvase joven / “Have one, please”), while Lagarto takes the opportunity to establish a position of power (Cómete una empanada, cara de verga / “Have an empanada, motherfucker”). The dialogue described above corresponds to the official subtitles used in the film, hence they do not constitute a literal translation.

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excess it initially presented. With Paco’s increasing addiction problem, the house later appears removed from light and colours. The outside of the house becomes a place where cement is tainted by mould and weathered paint, with remnants of dead vegetation. Naturally, the bathroom and walk-in closet are the spaces where Paco comes back to at end of the film, now turned into Francisco Chávez, a reflection of their restored wealth and honour. Lagarto, instead, is shot dead at his house by the police. For this particular murder scene, director Andrade chooses a medium close-up shot of Paco, not engaging in the violence but waiting inside a police patrol. He then walks into Lagarto’s house, encountering first-hand the horrors of police brutality, in this case rationalised by Lagarto’s drug trafficking business. As a cop recalls at the end of the scene: “Hizo lo correcto, joven. A esta gente hay que detenerla” (You did the right thing, young man. These people must be stopped). To summarise, the above analysis uses the allegorical information provided by Andrade to decode a particular viewpoint on a national reality. By maintaining the status quo in the narrative of the film, notwithstanding character decisions, Andrade points to a society in which, irrespective of efforts to attain or relinquish power, its underlying structures remain. Andrade is not necessarily taking an explicit side on the matter, rejecting the wealthy and powerful and embracing the poor and weak. Instead, using the porcelain horse as an allegory for power, Andrade hints to both sides aiming for the same goal. In other words, and related to “Cinema of Marginality”, the lines that separate good and bad are blurred, a statement accentuated by Andrade’s aesthetic decisions in spaces of negotiation. Compared to Andrade’s own journey, it also needed external cultural validators to successfully navigate an Ecuadorian cinematic field, abiding to certain aesthetic and thematic expectations.

Market-Oriented, Socially Conscious? This chapter has explored the indie subfield of Ecuadorian cinema for the twenty-first century, centring on the narrative features that achieved commercial distribution during the Ley de Cine years. As Chap. 2 already hinted, this subfield stands among a convoluted framework that includes film policy, market and aesthetic expectations, and a historical legacy of oppositional practice. The resulting film output of the period, in line with similar trends in Latin America, continues to abide by predominantly neoliberal practices, evident in the way films are funded, produced, and distributed. Specifically for Ecuadorian cinema, this statement is corroborated

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by a preferred habitus, or path, towards theatrical distribution that involves support from CNCine and international funding and collaboration, as a prerequisite for local commercial exhibition. Recent developments in film policy, in addition to films that outspokenly seek commercial gains, attest to this tendency, putting into question the counter-hegemonic rhetoric found in Socialism for the 21st century, and the historical legacies of movements like Third Cinema. The film texts, however, do showcase an interest in poverty and underdevelopment, with coincidences in themes of social justice, environmental issues, race, and class concerns, to name a few. Moreover, a clear trajectory can be drawn between Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, the referential film for the period, and Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas, premiered at the peak of CNCine support. Despite being produced under diametrically different conditions, both films coincide in portrayals of the margins, where distinctions between good or bad, moral or corrupt, excluded or embraced, are constantly being challenged, while not necessarily going as far as to call for social change and upfront activism. Therefore, with a few exceptions, the CNCine-backed narrative feature film in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century appears to comment on the societal concerns derived from neoliberalism in the late 1990s, yet not necessarily going as far as engaging in political activism or openly supporting the local administration.13 Considering the market-oriented nature of the indie subfield, with an evident aim towards theatrical distribution, it can be concluded that the narrative feature supported by CNCine during the Ley de Cine years also echoes the same ambiguities and contradictions as its encompassing political ideology, being simultaneously socially conscious and driven by the industry. The next chapter assesses such findings for local documentaries that were produced during this period and that achieved commercial exhibition, drawing a clear distinction between the memory articulations presented by CNCine-backed projects and those privately funded. 13  Here, two exceptions can be mentioned, from opposite sides of the political spectrum. First, director Tania Hermida has openly supported the Correa administration, even participating in the 2007 Asamblea Constituyente (Constituent Assembly) under Correa’s political party Alianza PAIS. In contrast, director Carlos Andrés Vera chose to purposely avoid any financial support from CNCine during the Correa administration, whom he earnestly disagreed with and actively opposed. After Correa’s tenure, Vera premiered the documentary Propagandia (2018), an exposé on Correa’s alleged propaganda strategies, suppression of free press, and electoral fraud.

CHAPTER 4

Making Sense of the Past: Documentary and Memory in Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

Where the previous chapter analysed narrative features supported by CNCine, this chapter turns to memory formations in documentary form. As a genre which is considered by the local milieu as having acquired an important level of “maturity”, and also given its participation in film festivals and popular support in theatres, its inclusion in an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is justified. Also, bearing in mind the social documentary roots of Third Cinema and its implications for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, as discussed in Chap. 3, local documentaries that were produced during the Ley de Cine years might be expected to align more directly with these left-leaning ideologies, especially if supported by the state. However, this chapter distances itself from such a view. It argues that the memory constructions that are present in Ecuadorian documentaries, while at times coinciding with the state’s discourse, are more precisely a product of a shared societal makeup that rejects neoliberalism on paper but does not seem to agree upon a conclusive way forward, attesting to the same ambiguities, contradictions, and ruptures present in Socialism for the 21st century. What is left is a nation, and the memory articulations that developed in this particular time and space, ready to confront, negotiate, and make sense of the past, in order to constitute itself in the process. This chapter opens with an extensive analysis of the use of memory in the speeches, slogans, and mottos of President Rafael Correa, not only as an example of the contested (Hodgkin and Radstone 2003) and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_4

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multidirectional (Rothberg 2009) characteristics of memory formations, but also to situate the reader within national memory constructions encouraged by the state. If Chap. 2 defined an Ecuadorian Cinematic Field based on the relationships and cultural capital of its agents, then a similar dynamic can be expected for the study of memory. The tensions that appear in memory constructions, as a result of negotiation and contestation of the past in the present, can help delineate clusters of preferred recollections throughout the film texts of the period. And, just as the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field between 2006 and 2016 was framed by commercial and political structures that transcend national territories, memory constructions in film should also be considered in terms of these underlying influences. Thus, the theoretical framework for this chapter is also based on De Cesari and Rigney’s definition of transnational memory (2014). It looks at the different territories and scales that compose the transnational when examining cultural remembrance, instead of constraining it to a defined nation-state. Here, film is presented as a memory text (Hodgkin and Radstone 2003, 14), a means by which particular recollections can be triggered, ignited, or suppressed. If memory enacts the past in the present, films can also facilitate these recollections emerging in the here and now. Coincidences in these recollections, especially if echoed in a group of films that already show comparable production practices and transnational scope, can certainly point to a collective interest in society at large. Therefore, in order to identify memory patterns in Ecuadorian cinema, a preliminary step would require classifying some films as memory texts, those that consciously or unconsciously activate mnemonic processes at a specific time and space. This selection can also imply instances of canon formation and value. If certain production practices are encouraged and preferred, then the recollections that these films set in motion can theoretically also be favoured over others. Thus, it can be expected for the body of films that benefited from state support through CNCine to obtain additional funding through external institutions, reach the international film festival market, and achieve commercial exhibition. This expectation resonates with the preferred path towards theatrical distribution described in Chap. 3. Indeed, with this acquired cultural capital, the memories that are reproduced in these films can potentially appear dominant in comparison to other recollections that do not necessarily abide to these standards. This chapter explores this hypothesis by delving into the production

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practices and funding strategies of films that construct and ignite memory articulations. With these influences in mind, this chapter shifts its focus to the local documentary, a genre assumed by both filmmakers and critics to have achieved an important level of maturity in recent decades (De Celis Pastor 2014, León 2014).1 Distinguishing between privately and state-funded documentaries, and the production practices that followed, different interests and concerns begin to emerge. For example, the most evident divergence constitutes a preoccupation for audience-based memory construction for privately funded documentaries, many of which centred on sports or music. Instead, local documentaries that benefited from CNCine support tend to showcase filmmaker-driven personal accounts. This tendency is explored through Pablo Piedras’ subjective turn in documentary practices (2014), with this second group showcasing the filmmakers’ subjectivity taking prevalence over those from other social actors. Applied to an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, three clusters of the mentioned subjectivity can be identified, as memory inclinations in state-funded documentaries attest to: explorations related to the Retorno a la democracia period (1979 onwards), narratives of self-discovery and border-crossing, and depictions of the local and foreign ‘other’. These clusters are non-exclusionary, with a given project able to provide a combination of the three, like Maria Fernanda Restrepo’s Con mi corazón en Yambo (With my heart in Yambo, 2011), the case study for this chapter. Critically acclaimed, and with an important box office performance, this film not only constitutes an example of success, but also allows us to compare memory formations contested and negotiated prior to the Ecuadorian Ley de Cine and the political context of Socialism for the 21st century.

1  The term “maturity” appears as a rather empirical descriptor for local documentaries but keeps being used to refer to this genre, particularly in filmmaking summits and conferences, like the 2013 Coloquio Internacional de Cine Documental (International Colloquium of Documentary Film). In line with the arguments provided in this book, a personal interpretation of maturity can suggest an adherence to local definitions of success, namely participation in film festivals, theatrical release, and box office success. Papers from the event can be found in the compilation El documental en la era de la complejidad (C. León 2014).

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Institutional Memory During Socialism for the 21st century So far in this book, Ecuador’s Socialism for the 21st century has been analysed through its legal framework in Chap. 2 and as a response to neoliberalism in Chap. 3. This section builds on these ideas by focusing on the memory articulations constructed in the political discourse of President Rafael Correa. Here, the use of national historical memory, as well as interpretations of a recent past during the 1990s, are explored through Correa’s speeches, slogans, and mottos, which seem interchangeable with the president’s political party and ideology. How a national past is negotiated and remembered in these discourses is also accompanied by tangible actions. Therefore, what this past means in the present, how it is contested, articulated, and mediatised, can certainly inform the particularities of a national/transnational cinema, especially in documentary form. Maria Laura Amorebieta y Vera (2017) analyses Rafael Correa’s discursive tendencies in official speeches between 2009 and 2012, focusing on those delivered to commemorate the Bicentennial independence. According to Amorebieta y Vera, these speeches convey a historical perception of the nation that affirms the state as “a guarantor and organizer of Ecuadorian society” (875). In this vein, Correa alludes to three moments in Ecuadorian history. First, he refers to independence from Spanish rule in 1822, attributed to the peoples and the criollo elites alike, the latter described as heroes de la independencia or founding fathers (879). Second, Correa emphasises the figure of Eloy Alfaro, president during the early 1900s and architect of the local Revolución Liberal.2 Correa positions himself as taking over the path set by Alfaro, aiming to abolish neoliberal tendencies and any other structure of inequality (885). This goal is expanded in a third moment, a historic Latin Americanism and Patria grande terminology, in which Ecuador joins past and present feats against foreign hegemony, seeking “the Bolivarian ideal of national and regional self-determination” (889). For Amorebieta y Vera, these memory 2  Tatiana Hidrovo distinguishes between Eloy Alfaro’s liberalism and the one proposed by criollo elites in cities like Guayaquil. Based on the commercial practices of Manabí’s toquilleros, standing on a marginal position in global and regional commercial exchanges, Hidrovo defines Alfaro’s political ideology as a ‘radical modernity’, contrasted with the agro-exporter networks of the urban middle class. Hidrovo also highlights the contradictions in Alfaro’s revolution: aiming for national structural overhaul yet guided by private enterprises (2003, 114).

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interpretations strengthen a political project and idea of a nation, anchored in both liberal and socialist ideologies, with a hint of Correa’s own catholic faith. Correa’s speeches can be read as mere rhetoric, failing to trickle down to society at large, including the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. Yet the same ambiguities, ruptures, and reversals found in national planning documents and complementary film policy, extensively discussed in Chap. 2, seemed to stream from the political project and idea of a nation emphasised in these speeches. When narrowed down to memory and its interpretation, the institutional remembrance pushed by Correa’s Revolución ciudadana appears to aim for liberal ideals of progress on the one hand, while also targeting a socialist, state-centred administration on the other. This dichotomy carries from present understandings of a colonial and postcolonial past, in both instances shaped by transnational interactions with varying degrees of corresponding power and dialogue, as the speeches make evident. In terms of a more recent Ecuadorian past, these approximations are studied by communication consultant Alicia Mantilla Mora (2013), who deconstructs Correa’s communicational strategy in the Revolución communicacional. For Mantilla Mora, Correa’s effectiveness partly relies on the memory of an unstable political past during the late 1990s. Compared to Correa’s consecutive electoral wins, seven at the time of Mantilla Mora’s analysis (58), the previous decade was characterised by several coup d’états and an acute economic crisis that saw the collapse of the local banking system and national currency. Mantilla Mora also calls attention to Correa’s emotivity and repetition of phrases to accentuate a point (55). Delving into some of these phrases, Correa refers to the mentioned period of instability as La larga y triste noche neoliberal (“The long and sad neoliberal night”). Similarly, Esa tragedia llamada migración (“That tragedy called migration”) speaks of a negative perception of the massive exodus that followed this period of instability. Finally, the expressions Prohibido olvidar (“Let us not forget”) and Ni perdón ni olvido (“No forgiveness, nor forgetfulness”) were used among others, to contextualise, instances of human rights violations and similar mechanisms of repression, like the ones attributed to the Febres Cordero presidency. Could these phrases represent only a trait of a charismatic leader or local caudillo, rather than constituting an explicit attempt to make sense of history with a specific idea of a nation in mind? For one, as Mantilla Mora explains: “La Revolución Ciudadana es a Rafael Correa como Rafael

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Correa es a la Revolución Ciudadana” (The Citizen Revolution is to Rafael Correa as Rafael Correa is to the Citizen Revolution) (50). Paraphrasing, Correa’s personalism is deeply tied to the political party’s ideals, a trend common in Latin American leaders. For Mantilla Mora, the person of Rafael Correa, Alianza País, and Revolución Ciudadana could be used interchangeably. Therefore, it is not farfetched to equate the content of his speeches and the memory articulations carried in them with the political ideology that the movement sought to communicate. Second, these memory articulations seem to subsequently translate into tangible and verifiable political actions. As an example, the Ciudad Alfaro complex was built in Montecristi, the birthplace of former president Eloy Alfaro, in order to host the Constitutional Assembly that would eventually write a new constitution. The complex included an assembly building, an annexed museum, and a mausoleum to commemorate the former leader. Additionally, Correa hosted a weekly television programme called Enlace ciudadano (Citizen’s link), that included a segment called Prohibido olvidar or “Let’s Not Forget”.3 Each week, the segment would highlight key moments in political history, as a means to contest the memory in question but also to offset the ‘hegemony’ of private media (Cerbino, et al. 2014). The creation of the Truth Commission is another example. According to Solís Chiriboga (2019), this commission served a foundational role to Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana, denouncing crimes against humanity in the administration of neoliberal-leaning León Febres-Cordero and its political party Partido Social Cristiano (260). In addition to identifying specific interpretations of a distant and recent past, and correlating them to resulting political actions, the examples illustrate that environment of contestation in which these interpretations took place. Cerbino et al. (2014) contend that before Correa’s administration previous governments had enjoyed a relationship of complicity and privilege with private media: “Such asymmetry of access to mediated space, and to content production destined for mass circulation, reflected the profound inequalities in Ecuadorian society. Moreover, the privileged place held by private media was consolidated legally” (67). This asseveration aligns with Correa’s own slogan of prensa corrupta or “corrupt press” to 3  Correa’s Enlace Ciudadano is the same television programme that criticised anti-mining sentiments in the Junín Community, as expanded upon in Chap. 6 regarding Pocho Álvarez’s social documentary Javier con I, Intag (2016). Additionally, Enlace Ciudadano was broadcasted primarily in state-owned media, briefly described in the conclusion of Chap. 6.

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refer to private media organisations that opposed him. But the authors make clear that, although a history of private media benefiting from state administration can be verified (68), the focus of their study rests on the “political significance” of the Correa vis-à-vis private media confrontation, constituting a dispute for public opinion (65). In other words, as Mantilla Mora concludes, Correa’s communicational strategy fed off this confrontation (2013, 59). The fact that a clear contested stance is taken by Correa implies that several other forces existed, whether oppositional or supportive, weak or powerful. Indeed, as with any articulation of the past, institutional memory is only one of the many forces that collide into a continual reconfiguration of the past. While some memory constructions were evidently pushed by the administration, like the mythification of Eloy Alfaro, others, such as the Truth Commission, are a result of decades of individual negotiations, independent of the political capital that it could bring to Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana. What matters for the production of cultural remembrance, particularly in the films analysed in this chapter, is to focus on the non-negotiables, the underlying truths that the memory text, its political context, and society at large seem to agree upon. For instance, the motto Esa tragedia llamada migración (“that tragedy called migration”) alludes to the international, labour-driven migration that took place between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, which is a verifiable reality. Some studies estimate the departure of around two million Ecuadorians (Bertoli and Marchetta 2014), the majority from the Andean provinces of Azuay and Cañar, with Spain, Italy, and the United States as preferred destinations.4 Almost a decade later, the interpretation of this objective truth, or the memory that was evoked in relation to this collective experience, can fluctuate between serving a political purpose that demonised the neoliberal practices of that time, and constituting an opportunity to eradicate poverty through free market dynamics. Considering La larga y triste noche neoliberal (“the long and sad neoliberal night”), it streams from an incontestable shift towards neoliberal practices in the region, a response to the military dictatorships that gave birth to the neoliberal administrations of the late 1980s and 1990s.5 Correa ascribes

4  The film Vengo Volviendo (2015), analysed in Chap. 6, alludes to the effects of this migration for the province of Azuay. 5  Neoliberal implications for Latin American cinema are discussed in Chap. 3.

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the economic and political collapse at the end of the century, and its resulting massive migration, to this ideological turn. How can connections be drawn, if permissible, between Correa’s memory articulations, these non-negotiable truths, and those portrayed in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century? To begin with, as the legal framework in Chap. 2 exemplified, Correa’s rhetoric should not be expected to be representative of what is being remembered within an Ecuadorian cinematic field. Rather, by highlighting these discourses, comparisons can be drawn between an official national memory being constructed by the state and that which local filmmakers choose to recall. Another aspect to consider is the legitimacy that a presidency can give to a charismatic leader like Correa. Similarly, as this book has explored, matters of value and worth are prevalent in the construction of a national cinema canon and, by extension, in the memories that it showcases. Therefore, to respond to these inquiries, this chapter continues with a brief analysis of memory to contextualise the memory articulations found in Ecuadorian documentaries.

The Space of Memory in National/ Transnational Cinemas State memory being constructed through speeches, slogans, and mottos during Correa’s presidency are only part of the many articulations at play when recalling the past. This section provides a broader theoretical understanding of memory and its implications for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. Using concepts by Michael Rothberg, Katherine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, and De Cesari and Rigney, memory is understood as a malleable concept in which the past is recalled in the present. It is also multidirectional, not necessarily following a linear trajectory towards objectivity, but engaging in contested discourses that inevitably shape those involved in its contestation and the memories themselves. Finally, memory is presented as transnational, prone to similar negotiations to those brought about by border-crossing and unequal power structures. Therefore, any approach to memory in Ecuadorian cinema should not be limited to the film texts and the mnemonic processes triggered by them, but also consider the totality of an Ecuadorian cinematic field and the ideological context of Socialism for the 21st century. According to Michael Rothberg, citing Richard Terdiman (1993), memory can be summarised as “the past made present” (2009, 3),

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memory being an act of remembrance that happens in the present and suggests a tangible action. Defining memory as “what the past means in the present” (1) suggests that both past and present are malleable. Additionally, Katherine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone understand memory as the space in which the past has been constantly contested, an “occasion for cultural struggle” (5). These statements challenge a common research practice that sees memory as a means to reach objectivity, or an understanding of the past that is commonplace, implicitly agreed upon. In this view, the act of looking back, although happening in the present, ultimately should move forward, in a compound effect towards impartiality. While traditionally the past has tended to be explained in its original context, using, for example, testimonies as a guarantor for truth, more recent approximations like those of Hodgkin and Radstone have centred on the processes that lead to these memories, shifting away from a mere true-­versus-­false dichotomy (4). For Ecuadorian cinema, implications might include, for example, a local canon that is open for revisions or films being reinterpreted according to political and societal shifts. By limiting Ecuadorian cinema to films that comply with certain expectations of value, acquired by means of CNCine support, international collaborations, and theatrical releases, a filtered recollection of an Ecuadorian cinema history is being constructed. A second layer takes place in the films themselves, and the acts of remembrance that occur through them, regardless of their distance from what is being recalled. In both cases, the here and now proves crucial to bringing about and making sense of the past. These statements can be further substantiated by Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory” (2009), stepping away from a linear or unidirectional progression of memory, instead engaging in a contended discourse in which those involved are also transformed through these mnemonic processes. Rothberg writes: Pursuing memory’s multidirectionality encourages us to think of the public sphere as a malleable discursive space in which groups do not simply articulate established positions but actually come into being through their dialogical interactions with others; both the subjects and spaces of the public are open to continual reconstruction. (5)

Rothberg’s quote provides ground for additional analysis. It suggests that memory and its multidirectionality can take place in the public sphere, an open platform for discourse and debate. The ‘where’ of memory is not

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limited to an individual’s imagination, but one that is also publicly processed. A second implication of this gives answer to the ‘who’ of memory: the participants or subjects involved in mnemonic processes. By mentioning groups, Rothberg emphasises the collective over the individual, while also hinting at discrepancies that might develop a need for further discourse. Finally, Rothberg stresses memory’s multidirectionality by examining the ‘what’ of memory: articulations of the past that result in constant identity formations in the present, as they challenge, affirm, or neglect both the spaces and the subjects implicated in its contestation. In this way, Rothberg’s multidirectional memory is one that travels between past and present, among groups that contend about past recollections within a malleable public sphere, being subject to continual reconfigurations. For Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, applying this concept can consider the cinema screen as the ultimate public sphere, with debates about the past occurring between the film text and its authors. However, if the discursive space of memory is limited to just the cinema screen, then that could imply that it is not necessarily public, since exhibition in Ecuadorian cinema is largely consolidated in privately owned conglomerates, as extensively discussed in Chap. 2. If, instead, the filmic space of memory is expanded to the totality of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, its malleability, and, ultimately, the multidirectional character of its memory, can also be dependent upon the same unequal power structures that give shape to the field, including its national and transnational dynamics. Brief examples to illustrate these dynamics can be found in two political documentaries related to the figure of Rafael Correa during his tenure as president. Rodolfo Muñoz’s Muchedumbre 30S (2011) provides an official account of the events that took place on 30 September 2010 (hereby 30S). According to the state’s version, what started as a police revolt quickly escalated into an orchestrated coup d’état, with the president being temporarily kidnapped in a state’s hospital. A year later, this official version was broadcast on the state’s television channel EcuadorTV. In contrast, the documentary Rafael Correa: Retrato de un padre de la patria (2012) portrayed the president in not-so-flattering terms. This documentary suggested dealings with Colombian guerrilla’s FARC and attacks against freedom of press, in addition to presenting opposing views on the events of 30S. According to director Santiago Villa, the documentary had

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repeatedly been taken down from social media sites, its main distribution platform. Regarding its transnational implications, Villa has stated that the documentary was scheduled to premiere on AmericaTV, a Miami-based television channel, only to be censored soon after its announcement due to political pressures (La República EC 2012). Although this book has focused primarily on theatrically released works, these two audio-visual examples also attest to the malleability of memory and its transnational scope. Indeed, Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney (2014) pick up on Rothberg and others to substantiate the idea of Transnational Memory. They suggest that just as research has moved beyond the clearly defined nation-­ state, where culture and identity are neatly contained, the same can happen with the study of memory. Memory constructions can travel across and beyond legally bound territories, through shared processes that inevitably give shape to those involved. Borders are not simply erased but, as De Cesari and Rigney explain, they play a “dialectical role” in cultural remembrance, setting up differentiators that either reinforce or contest the compound memory of a group or nation (4). Consequently, transnational memory: …makes it possible to move to the centre of analysis the material presence of borders in the “flows” of globalized memories; these may be non-­ hierarchical and deeply democratic in appearance, but may well themselves be the sites of hegemonic and governmental processes in ways that both reproduce and alter those of older national memory forms. (4)

Placing the flows of memory at the centre, with unequal and contested border-crossing interactions at play, this looks strikingly similar to the flows of cultural production that helped characterise a national/transnational cinema in Chap. 2. In fact, it is not farfetched to hypothesise that memory articulations can constitute a natural consequence of such structures, since these are formed, distributed, and validated through a similar framework. Thus, we can potentially expect the space of memory in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century to be defined by those who already exercise a greater influence in the local industry, by means of cultural and economic capital, and following established expectations of value. The following sections help assess these statements.

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Memory and Documentary in Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century If memory is expected to be a malleable, multidirectional, and relevant to identity formations, then it can lead to a mistaken interpretation that sees memory as merely subjective. As illustrated by the example of state memory that opened this chapter, objective truths also inform mnemonic processes taking place in the present. Thus, this section presents some of the arguments that inform the carefully tailored balance between subjectivity and verifiable truths, as a means to introduce the concept of documentary and its implicit perception of truth. When considering memory in a general sense, recovering and interpreting the past in cultural form is usually dependent upon subjects, spaces, and articulation, and the particularities of their constitutive process. Hodgkin and Radstone warn about focusing solely on the imaginary narratives that emerge in remembrance, especially if they “bind and limit the past into a purely subjective mode” (2003, 9). Narratives in the context of memory studies refer not only to fictional cinematic accounts but also to any story of the past being evoked in the present, through a variety of media. Memorial sites, for instance, offer a space for individual reminiscence, while also being rooted in an objective basis that informs the collective memory of the event or person being remembered. Ultimately, Hodgkin and Radstone argue, by negating the objective altogether, distinctions between the individual and the collective could be undone, hence arguably becoming even more problematic than the historical objectivity that these sought to correct (ibid.). Expanding on these ideas, any element of cinema, either outside or within the film text, can evoke stories from the past whether consciously encouraged by their filmmakers or not. If this is the case, then the production structures discussed in previous chapters can surely be part of these remembrances, including their ambiguities and unequal structures of power. How, then, to balance the subjectivity of value and cultural capital that has defined Ecuadorian cinema, and the objective information from which its memory is built? Certainly, attempting to present every undisputable fact about a historical event or figure is impossible. Nonetheless, a helpful measure can be found in emphasising the articulation and mediatisation of memory. De Cesari and Rigney understand cultural memory as articulated discourses. These discourses are “made up of heterogenous elements, borrowing, and appropriations from other languages and

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memorial traditions that are assembled together into narratives” (15). For the study of film, elements that compose a mnemonic narrative can include those within the film text, deconstructed through textual analysis, as well as those outside the text, influencing its interpretation. It is in this articulation that the objective and the subjective collide, to offer a narrative of the past that is suitable for reinterpretation in the spatial-temporal conditions of the present. Applying these concepts to documentaries, other implications are brought to the table. Bill Nichols’ Introduction to Documentary (2017) quotes John Grierson to define documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality” (6), an effective summary of Nichols’ previous reflections in the seminal Representing Reality (1991). As the title implies, documentary is described as an “actual construction of social reality” (10), thus distinct and unable to fully reconstruct the reality that it is representing. And, as a construction/articulation of the past, documentaries convey an expectation of verisimilitude, or truthfulness, in greater measure than its fictional counterpart. In this sense, a narrative feature based on true events is expected to present mnemonic narratives that appear less truthful than a documentary centred around the same events that abides to the conventions of the genre. In this case, going back to De Cesari and Rigney’s understanding of memory as articulated discourses, the elements that compose them are also adding to a particular recollection of the past. Moving from within the film text to the production practices that construct them, it can also be concluded that memory can be mediatised. Cerbino et al. (2014) reference Eliseo Verón’s El cuerpo de las imágenes (The body of the images, 2001) to describe Ecuador as a mediatised society, or one in which “…all practices and social relations are transversed by mediated communication” characterised by “complex communicational processes across distinct, significant registers” (Cerbino, et al. 2014, 66). Extrapolating this idea to Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, an institution like CNCine can be seen as a facilitator, intervening on behalf of film projects, some of which contain memory articulations that otherwise could not have reached broader audiences by means of commercial exhibition. Exploring the objectivity of production practices around film texts and the aesthetic and narrative interests in these films can suggest that CNCine, and the state apparatus that contained it, is only one of several ‘mediators of memory’ that help articulate these instances of cultural remembrance. Therefore, deconstructing these articulations can shed light into the contested discourses ignited through them.

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Privately vs State-Funded Documentaries: Affirming and Contesting Memory Considering that the space of memory is not limited to the film text or the medium through which it is distributed, but involves the totality of the Ecuadorian cinematic field, a starting point to move from theoretical discussion to the praxis of local documentary can be found in analysing the funding mechanisms that allowed for these documentaries to exist. Building from the objectivity of funding sources, development practices, and distribution choices, this section uses this information to argue that these production structures tend to encourage certain memory interpretations. Distinguishing between privately and state-funded documentaries, memory during Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century appears to diverge into highly definable clusters that nevertheless stream from comparable transnational and political constitutive processes. Out of the 56 Ecuadorian films that achieved commercial exhibition between 2007 and 2015, 41 are labelled as fiction and 15 as documentaries. Eleven of these documentaries benefited from state support, through CNCine or the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, and the remaining four were funded by private endeavours (see Table 4.1). These four projects, not necessarily abiding to the newly formed habitus centred around CNCine, also contain transnational practices that coincide with those found in state-supported texts. As such, Isabel Dávalos’ AVC: Del sueño al caos (AVC: from dream to chaos, 2007) sits outside the Ley de Cine years, with a production process that started in 2000 (Diario El Universo 2007), which can explain its private funding. Va por ti Ecuador (It is for you, Ecuador, Gómez 2008) and Estrella 14 (Paladines 2013) follow the journeys of football teams LDU and Barcelona S.C., winning the Libertadores cup and Ecuadorian tournament cup respectively; the financing for these films was established through their corresponding institutions. Lastly, La casa del ritmo (The house of rhythm, Andrade 2014) capitalised on the popularity of Venezuelan funk band Los Amigos Invisibles, the subject matter of this documentary, by launching a successful crowdfunding campaign through the specialised platform Kickstarter. Juan Miguel Marin, an Ecuadorian-born producer based in New  York, commissioned fellow countryman Javier Andrade to direct a documentary on a Venezuelan band that had migrated to the United States, a film made possible through the support of 600 backers from around the world (Marin 2011).

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Table 4.1  Ecuadorian documentaries premiered in commercial theatres (2007–2015) Name of film

Director

Year

Support?

Institution

AVC: Del sueño al caos Va por ti Ecuador Cuba: el valor de unautopía Abuelos Mi corazón en Yambo La bisabuela tiene Alzheimer Estrella 14 La muerte de JaimeRoldós

Isabel Dávalos Erich Gómez Sárrade Yanara Guayasamín Carla Valencia Maria Fernanda Restrepo Iván Mora Manzano Santiago Paladines Lisandra Rivera Manolo Sarmiento Javier Andrade Paúl Venegas Amaia Merino Aitor Merino Pavel Quevedo Juan Rhon José Guayasamín Darío Aguirre

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2013

NO NO YES YES YES YES NO YES

N/A N/A CNCine CNCine CNCine CNCine N/A CNCine

2014 2014 2014

NO YES YES

N/A MCYP CNCine

2014 2014 2015 2015

YES YES YES YES

CNCine CNCine CNCine CNCine

La casa del ritmo Spencer Asier Eta Biok La Tola box Quién es X Moscoso? Carlitos El Grill de César

(Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía in Camila Larrea, 2016)

Without providing an extensive textual analysis on these films, certain memory articulations can be expected based on the production practices detailed above. For example, Va por ti Ecuador and Estrella 14 premiered only months after their respective events occurred, with the latter scheduling principal photography as the tournament was still taking place. These stories showcase live sporting performances, which can seem counterintuitive to describing them as memory texts. However, these can aspire to an archival purpose, constructing memory as it happens, later to be articulated and mediatised through the institutions that sponsor them. In this way, the capital already consolidated in these sports teams is translated to the big screen, with narratives that not only elevate these events to triumphal proportions but associate them to a shared national identity. The link to a local identity is somewhat diffused in La casa del ritmo, particularly because the subject matter and the production process behind the film seem dislocated from a local context. Indeed, the film premiered in local theatres two years after its initial release in the United States, which can suggest an intended foreign audience, composed primarily of fans of the band across Latin America, its diaspora in North America, and also in

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the rest of the world. If an approximation to a local identity is to be assumed, it would certainly be closer to a Venezuelan, not an Ecuadorian one. Yet its production company and director are based in Ecuador, giving rise to the same arguments and discussions on national specificity explored in Chap. 2. Building on the assumption of an implied Ecuadorianness, in a similar vein to Sanjinés’ ¡Fuera de Aquí!, this analysis can instead move into possible coincidences in memory constructions as they relate to sources of funding. Apart from AVC: Del sueño al caos, these privately funded documentaries show a shared interest in an already established audience. Whether through football or music, these works are built to accommodate their fanbase, nurturing a relationship that preceded the film. Performance highlights are combined with all-access interviews, to offer an experience that reinforces formed affinities, while also rewarding fan fidelity with new, insider information. In other words, these documentaries are conceived with an audience in mind that not only functions as a safety net for a return on investment but is one from which the construction of a shared memory naturally flows. Here, using Rothberg’s terminology, multidirectional memory occurs during the dialogical interactions between subject and fanbase mediated through these documentaries. Rather than a contestation, it stands closer to an affirmation, upholding previous experiences in light of new ones. Discourses with other groups, meaning those outside the fanbase, can constitute either a recruiting mechanism or an antagonistic divider, especially in terms of football animosity. Conclusions drawn from only three documentaries might be deemed not representative enough, but when contrasted with those from the state-­ funded grouping, these conclusions begin to take on relevance. In this case, a film like AVC: Del sueño al caos can prove crucial. To contextualise, the initials AVC stand for ¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo! (Alfaro Lives, Dammit!), a left-wing subversive group that rose to national notoriety between the 1980s and the early 1990s. Ideologically inclined towards the likes of Colombia’s M-19 and Nicaragua’s Sandinista movements, the group agreed to a public ceasefire in 1991. Director Isabel Dávalos collected testimonies from AVC members, alongside archival footage, newspaper clippings, and her own family history and memory, to construct a personal articulation on the group. The subjective mode, aesthetic choices, and narrative devices of this documentary would later be repeated and expanded in those supported by CNCine.

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Potentially, a film like AVC: Del sueño al caos most likely would have benefited from state support had it been produced during the Ley de Cine years. In addition to aesthetic and narrative coincidences, Dávalos had already served as a producer in Sebastián Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (1999) and Crónicas (2004), gaining some capital within the industry.6 But the most obvious hint comes from the 2016 documentary Alfaro Vive Carajo. Directed by former AVC member Mauricio Samaniego, also featured in Dávalos’ film, this project benefited from CNCine backing on two occasions: postproduction in 2014, and promotion and release in 2015 (CNCine in Larrea 2016). Both documentaries portray similar events and interviewees, yet Samaniego’s treatment avoids the voiceover and personal storytelling that characterises Dávalos’ work, instead opting for a ‘choral’ composition (Flores 2015). The contestation between these two films seems to rest not on the accuracy of events, or ideological inclination, but on whose voice is valid enough to offer a memory interpretation. It is this key feature, the subjective self in Ecuadorian documentary, that is expanded next. Retorno a la democracia, Self-Discovery, and the Gazed ‘Other’ Citing Aufderheide, Jaszi, and Chandra (2009), Pablo Piedras (2014) explores two instances in which documentary filmmakers interact with the other and hence hold an ethical responsibility: towards the protagonists and the spectators (46). Trust allows subjects to share a testimony or memory recollection with the filmmaker, in the hope that it would be treated fairly and truthfully. For the audience, the documentary brings an expectation of verisimilitude, an assumption that what is presented on the screen is a reality, happening in the real world, with real people (Nichols 2017). But when the story centres on the self, from a position of privileged discourse, these ethical considerations appear eased.

6  It is important to highlight that this “capital” was also framed by existing patriarchal articulations in which a male director/author was usually supported by women as producers, script girls, secretaries, and similar “below the line” labour, mostly uncredited. According to Paola de la Vega Velasteguí, these roles were pre-established for the filmmaker’s romantic partners, at the expense of their own creative expression (2016, 138). In addition to Isabel Dávalos and Sebastián Cordero, de la Vega Velasteguí also mentions Ulises Estrella and Mónica Vásquez, Gabriela Calvache and Mateo Herrera, and Lisandra Rivera and Manolo Sarmiento (ibid.).

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En otras palabras, pareciese que la tesis de fondo en estos análisis es que los derechos de autoexpresión de origen, generalmente, en situaciones traumáticas de pérdida de familiares, habilitan la puesta en práctica de una ética que comprende los derechos del realizador y de su entorno, pero no siempre los de los demás actores sociales. In other words, it seems that the underlying thesis in these analyses is that the rights of self-expression originating, generally, in traumatic situations of loss of relatives, enable the implementation of an ethic that includes the rights of the filmmaker and his environment, but not always those of other social actors. (Piedras 2014, 48, my translation)

Here, Piedras refers to certain contemporary Argentinian documentaries that used subjectivity as the thread that carried their stories forward. Put in a different way, the filmmakers’ right of self-expression takes precedence over those of other social actors, as a specific situation, in this case past trauma, enables them to do so. In the case of the AVC movement and its depiction in Ecuadorian cinema, the right of self-expression is negotiated between Dávalos and Samaniego from two different enabling positions: a personal recollection that observes the group from the outside and interprets it through a family history, and a collective account that finds its strength in group membership and insider’s access. Comparing these two examples might appear straightforward since they discuss the same subject matter and lean towards similar political ideologies. But does the mentioned subjectivity also extend to the totality of the Ecuadorian Cinema Field, representing a characteristic of local documentaries during the Ley de Cine years? If so, how does it translate to the national space of memory under Socialism for the 21st century? In this line, 6 out of the 11 state-sponsored documentaries that premiered during this period in commercial theatres showcase first-person narratives, told from the mediated gaze of the filmmaker: Abuelos (2010), Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011), La bisabuela tiene Alzheimer (2012), Asier ETA Biok (2014), ¿Quién es X Moscoso? (2014), and El Grill de Cesar (2015). The remaining five also include subjective accounts usually centred around one or two main subjects, with filmmakers inserting themselves into the film on certain occasions: Cuba, el valor de una utopía (2009), La muerte de Jaime Roldós (2013), Spencer (2014), La Tola Box (2014), and Carlitos (2015). With this information, a clear contrast is drawn between the

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audience-­oriented, privately backed documentary and the self-expressive tendencies found in state-supported projects. The correlation between subjectivity and CNCine support can imply that this institution encouraged such tendencies. Compared to industry articulations in countries like Venezuela, for instance, in which state institutions heavily influenced the content of films supported and produced (Farrell 2016), in the case of Ecuador it appears closer to an echo of the expectations already present in the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. In other words, subjectivity is not a practice pushed by the state, but one that CNCine encouraged as it aligned to the value parameters of the field. Subjectivity, therefore, becomes a way of doing, a film practice or aesthetic decision to convey memory narratives. Analysing these narratives can help us answer if these indeed translate to a national space of memory. For example, one theme that takes precedence among these works is an interest in the post-dictatorship period called Retorno a la democracia (Return to democracy). La muerte de Jaime Roldós (2013) and Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011) explore this period from two different perspectives. In Roldós, co-director Manolo Sarmiento initially uses his voice to historicise the tragic death of the former president Jaime Roldós, who had become the first democratically elected president following military dictatorships in 1979. As the film continues, the subjective task is later anchored on Roldós’ youngest son Santiago, who carries the film to the present era, without finding conclusive answers. A similar faith is found in Yambo, with director Maria Fernanda Restrepo linking together a present search for her disappeared brothers and the family’s failed efforts throughout Ecuador’s recent democratic history. Both works offer original and historically accurate research that uses subjectivity to land the national to the individual, and vice versa (Fig. 4.1). A second, related narrative for the period involves tales of self-discovery with transnational connotations. Carla Valencia’s Abuelos (2011), for instance, intertwines the lives of her grandfathers as recalled by close relatives and friends. The film relies on landscape portrayals and contrasts the arid Chilean desert and the lavish Ecuadorian rainforest as visual tools to represent the legacy of both figures. The political turmoil in Latin America during the 1970s serves as a backdrop to the filmmaker’s self-discovery, easing the need for a historical or politically accurate account. Abuelos, therefore, uses subjectivity to bring about an individual quest that also resonates with national and transnational formations.

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Fig. 4.1  President Jaime Roldós and wife Martha Bucaram in La muerte de Jaime Roldós (Sarmiento and Rivera 2013)

But not all self-discovery tales investigate a specific period in the past or appear explicitly political. Other expressions include more granular, personal stories in the present that seek to construct or interpret the self. Examples include ¿Quién es X Moscoso? (2014), El Grill de César (2015), and La Bisabuela tiene Alzheimer (2012). In these works, filmmakers allude to the road trip, or similar border-crossing mechanisms, to make sense of the world and the self. In ¿Quién es X Moscoso?, for instance, director John Rhon embarks in a transnational journey with friend X Moscoso, highlighting the role of everyday friendship in identity building. In El Grill de César, director Darío Aguirre moves back to Ecuador after settling in Germany, to restore a failing family business and an ambiguous relationship with his father. Finally, in La Bisabuela tiene Alzheimer, director Iván Mora Manzano travels to his hometown to bring together his infant daughter and amnesiac grandmother, the former building memories while the latter is losing them. These documentaries exemplify subjectivity through border-crossing, constructing, and collecting memories in the present while also building a personal identity through them.

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In addition to Retorno a la democracia and border-crossing, self-­ discovery narratives, a third stance includes the subjective gaze of the other. Here, films like Carlitos (2015) and La Tola Box (2014) can be included. Using a non-intrusive fly-on-the-wall approach, Carlitos follows the daily life of its homonymous subject, a young adult with special needs living with his mother and brother. The camera becomes almost a bridge between the subject’s inner life and the outer world, with Guápulo, a neighbourhood in the northern side of Quito’s city centre, being treated as another subject. Similarly, La Tola Box takes place in La Tola, situated on the southside of Quito. Following a long tradition of boxing, the documentary focuses on two subjects: a kid who aspires to be a professional boxer and an Olympic hopeful. In this case, the camera relies on over-the-­ shoulder, frantic movements, immersing the audience into the ring. These two examples position their subjects as the gazed other, their portrayal dependent on the immediate physical context or socio-geographical placement in relation to the mainstream centre. Portraying the other in relation to their socio-geographical condition is not limited to a national framework. Cuba, el valor de una utopía (2009) and Asier ETA Biok (2014) stand at the edge of an Ecuadorian national specificity, with production practices and narratives that seem closer to a Cuban or Spanish/Basque identity, respectively. Regarding production practices, what anchors Cuba, el valor de una utopía to an Ecuadorian canon, is twofold. Objectively, this documentary benefited from CNCine support through the distribution and exhibition category in 2007 (CNCine in Larrea 2016). On a more subjective level, director Yanara Guayasamín is the daughter of renowned Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamín, who nurtured a friendship with Fidel Castro, having painted him on four occasions (Russo 2009, Constante 2016). These two strands initially inform the director’s own perspective on the Cuban Revolution, later to be explored and challenged throughout the production process and narrative construction of the documentary. Attempting to attach an Ecuadorian national specificity to Asier ETA Biok can be a stretch. Already, the title can raise eyebrows as it presents a play of words in the Iberian Euskera language, choosing the ‘eta’ or ‘and’ conjunction in capital letters, a hint towards the Basque pro-independence group ETA. The film depicts the relationship between co-director Aitor Merino and his friend Asier, who would later become an active member of ETA. Aitor sits in front of an editing suite, piecing together their friendship in both metaphorical and real terms. How can a documentary that

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touches on such sensitive themes regarding foreign territories be deemed Ecuadorian? The answer lies in its production process. Co-director Amaia Merino had lived in Ecuador since the 1990s, participating in multiple film projects (Revista Berriozar 2014). Initial funding was secured in Ecuador, with private support as well as a CNCine award for Postproduction in 2012 (CNCine in Larrea 2016). With its Ecuadorianness still questionable, Amaia’s journey can be described as that of a foreign ‘other’ that has assimilated into an Ecuadorian ‘self’, compared to the subject Asier, a ‘self’ known to the directors, now turned into the ‘other’ through his involvements with the ETA group. To summarise, memory in CNCine-sponsored documentaries can be divided into three, non-exclusionary tendencies: Retorno a la democracia themes, narratives of self-discovery and border-crossing, and portrayals of the local and foreign ‘other’. In contrast with the privately funded, commercially released documentaries of the period, state-supported documentaries tended to rely on subjectivity, while also adhering to general aesthetic expectations of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. The same tensions established for Ecuadorian cinema during the Ley de Cine years are made evident in for documentaries, walking a thin line between commercial exhibition interests and instances of value ingrained in the local filmmaking community. Considering the described narratives, production practices, and aesthetic choices, these films can be treated as valuable memory texts, igniting specific mnemonic processes, whether consciously or unconsciously. How then do these relate to the national space of memory? A case study on Con mi corazón en Yambo presents further answers.

Case Study: Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011) Earlier, Con mi corazón en Yambo was positioned amongst films that explore the period of Retorno a la democracia in Ecuador. But this film can easily be categorised alongside narratives of self-discovery and the gazed upon ‘other’. Considering its box office performance and relationship to events of nationwide influence, Yambo becomes a relevant case study for the multiple fronts of cultural remembrance related to its immediate political context, from the individual and personal, to the collective and national. This section delves into these fronts, first describing the ways of doing that lead to its development and production, then moving into a textual analysis that highlights its memory articulations. While at a glance it could appear that Yambo was directly impacted by the political structure

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of Socialism for the 21st century, this section argues that this idea is only partially true. Instances of value and transnational collaborations present in the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field are also explored, in addition to the individual negotiations of truth and memory that preceded President Rafael Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana. Con mi corazón en Yambo follows the testimony of director Maria Fernanda Restrepo, sister of Santiago (14) and Andrés (17), informally known as Los Hermanos Restrepo (The Restrepo Brothers). In 1988, these brothers disappeared under mysterious circumstances, after allegedly being detained and tortured by a special police unit called SIC 10. Although the disappearances took place during the presidency of León Febres-Cordero (1984–1988), family efforts to find them continued for over 25 years. Recent search attempts allowed the director to revisit and capture the family’s personal journey and its transition to a complex, national tale of resistance and justice. In addition to offering a subjective tale of self-discovery, the director also incorporates original evidence, collected through the years, to historically substantiate the family’s version of the event. It is important to highlight that Yambo was awarded support from CNCine on three different occasions, the first of these following a first call for submissions in 2007 (CNCine in Larrea 2016). While CNCine was created the year before through the 2006 Film Development Law or Ley de Cine, it was only in 2007 that funds were allocated for the institution to offer financial assistance. By this time, the Restrepo family were already well-known figures in Ecuadorian society, particularly since their search efforts had been publicly portrayed in the media. Yet the popular phrase Más perdidos que los Restrepo (“As lost as the Restrepo brothers”), uttered when confused or lost in a particular situation, speaks of the uncertainty that this event had come to represent for the average Ecuadorian citizen. The director’s decision to parallel her subjective take with a chronological recap of the disappearances suggests an interest in recovering and rearticulating a memory of both personal and national proportions. Alongside the family’s position in local collective memory and financial support from CNCine, two other conditions converged to facilitate the documentary’s production. In 2007, a presidential decree by recently elected president Rafael Correa created the Comisión de la Verdad (Truth Commission) to address the demands of victims that, like the Restrepo family, had suffered human rights violations during post-dictatorship administrations, particularly that of Febres-Cordero (Comisión de la

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verdad 2010). Reyes, Grondona, and Rodríguez (2015) claim that the Truth Commissions have been a preferred mechanism to aim for “transitional justice”7 in Latin America, reviewing instances of human rights violations in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Brazil (122). In Ecuador, the commission was formed by four members, including Pedro Restrepo, the father of the disappeared brothers. With commission activities starting in 2008, director Maria Fernanda Restrepo was able to add these findings to the extensive personal footage already collected, including interrogation scenes with police authorities and a new underwater search in Lake Yambo, which is located in the Ecuadorian Andres and from which the film takes its title. Restrepo’s access and closeness to the events placed her in a privileged position to add to an already mediatised memory construction. But this position was not limited to the overarching societal field of power around the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. By 2007, a space had already been carved for documentary memory explorations through the Encuentros del Otro Cine film festival (Encounters of another cinema or EDOCs). Created in 2002 by Corporación Cinememoria, the festival had managed to maintain a consistent programme for 18  years, initially without a film policy or other state subsidies.8 Manolo Sarmiento, director of the festival for 15 years and a documentarian himself, contends that EDOCs fostered a space for the local film community to congregate, directly influencing legislation efforts that led to the 2006 Ley de Cine (Encuentro | Caminos del documental latinoamericano 2020). Maria Fernanda Restrepo had partaken in the festival, providing occasional subtitling as well as being an avid spectator (Simon 2011). But the festival’s greatest incentive for Restrepo involved her participation in the 2006 development workshop Haciendo otro cine (Making another cinema). Funded by IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund, a joint venture between Cinememoria and the European Documentary Network (EDN), this workshop provided pitching training with the help of television producers from Catalonia and The Netherlands (Corporación Cinememoria 2013). Not surprisingly, Con mi corazón en 7  Jenny Lopera defines transitional justice as: “the tasks that a State must carry out when it reaches the post-conflict period and carries with it the legacy of serious human rights violations, or what it itself has pointed out: the passage from authoritarianism towards peace, through stages of political transition that require the restoration of democracy” (2012, 91). 8  In 2015, for instance, the festival was catalogued as one of the Festivales emblemáticos (emblematic festivals) by CNCine, an award with corresponding financial assistance (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2015).

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Yambo would premiere in this same festival, receiving the audience prize in 2011 (Redacción Cultura 2011), before its release in commercial theatres that same year.9 As has been seen, several factors contributed to the production of Con mi corazón en Yambo that cannot be reduced to only state support from CNCine. The development stages for Yambo confirm our previous hypothesis that placed CNCine within a broader validation system of transnational collaborations, film festival participation, and theatrical exhibition, effectively constituting a reflection of the Ecuadorian cinematic field at the beginning of the Ley de Cine years. And, just as this field is subject to economic and political influences, memory formations shaped by this structure are not limited to its immediate production practices. The cultural remembrance provided by a film like Yambo also builds on decades of personal and collective contestations of the past, epitomised in the creation of the Truth Commission. How then are these structures translated in the memory text of the film? And how does it relate to its immediate political surrounding under Socialism for the 21st century? Epiphanic Transnationalism and Memory Landscapes From the beginning, the film positions itself as first-person narrative. It opens with text on a black background, defining the director’s starting point of view as that of a ten-year-old girl who never saw her brothers again. She describes herself as an Ecuadorian, born in Quito to Colombian parents who had migrated to the country in search of a better life. What appears to be a minor detail in the director’s biography takes on greater significance when placed within the political context of the period. At the time, President León Febres-Cordero had risen to power extolling the right-leaning ideals of freedom and order. Local subversive groups such as AVC had developed strong ties with similar groups in Colombia, which, according to the director, meant that “in Ecuador, being Colombian was a synonym for guerrilla fighter”. The directorial decision to highlight a Colombian heritage is not arbitrary. Maria Fernanda Restrepo manages to engage her roots while establishing a distance from subversive initiatives, particularly as her family is initially shown to have been keen supporters of the Febres-Cordero presidency. 9  Carla Valencia’s Abuelos (2010) also participated in this program (Corporación Cinememoria 2013).

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Restrepo, therefore, can be described as a transnational author, this being evident in her life story as well as in the text itself. Consequently, the subjective memories that are articulated in the film can be expected to involve transnational connotations, adding to the already transnational production practices previously discussed. Indeed, through the eyes of the director, Pedro Restrepo becomes the main focal figure who helps to make sense of, or interpret, the vague memories held by the director and, indirectly, the audience. He represents “the only memory [she] has left”. But he starts as a Colombian “other” in a relatively hostile political context. As collective perception shifts to a more understanding and even empathetic consensus on the disappearances, director Maria Fernanda Restrepo also moves away from the “ballet bubble” created by her father, into a contested space of memory as an adult filmmaker. Restrepo’s dual nationality becomes an asset rather than a liability for the verisimilitude intended in the film (Fig. 4.2). The in-text contended space of memory consists primarily of three locations: the Restrepo’s home that represents a place of personal mourning; the public sphere where an open fight for justice occurs; and a disputed political past, retrieved through archival footage. In these spaces there is an evident battle for control and power, manifest in the way these

Fig. 4.2  The Restrepo family house as featured in Con mi corazón en Yambo (María Fernanda Restrepo 2011)

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spaces change over time to accommodate these contentions. The Restrepos’ home, for instance, is described by the director as a space filled with the loud cries of her late mother Luz Elena. The soundscape gradually changes to constant phone calls, as search efforts take over the house. The place then is invaded by undercover sub-lieutenant Doris Morán, whose closeness to the family, according to the documentary, is intended to distract from tangible investigation efforts. This intrusion is epitomised by an olive tree planted in the house, a gift from Morán. Pedro Restrepo explains that keeping the tree instead of cutting it down constitutes a decision “not to forget that this tree is the age of lies, and of deceit”. This analysis echoes some of Hodgkin and Radstone’s analysis on memory: “The day-by-day narrative of events, or the physical landscape, may appear the same, but the meanings assigned to events and landscapes have changed… the new regimes are anxious about how that change is signalled and acknowledged in public” (2003, 170) (Fig. 4.3). Regarding the public sphere, the Plaza de la Independencia (Independence Plaza) can be included, located in front of the Carondelet Presidential Palace. A preferred place for public demonstrations in favour of or against the administration, this location is depicted as Pedro

Fig. 4.3  Pedro Restrepo arranges a demonstration flag in Plaza de la Independencia (Quito). Film still from Con mi corazón en Yambo (Restrepo 2011)

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Restrepo’s office, his workplace. Throughout the film, the plaza appears at times empty, with a solitary Pedro Restrepo waving flags and holding banners in remembrance of the disappeared brothers, or full of people, as massive demonstrations take over the square. These demonstrations range from being repressed by police enforcement or representing an opportunity for celebration and hope. Additional spaces of public discourse are portrayed in ambiguity, such as the Truth Commission assembly at Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar in Quito. The commission’s motto, “It is the moment of truth”, is contrasted with the inconclusive testimony of a former police agent who gave unconvincing answers to an inquisitive Restrepo. While the contestation in these public spaces continues, for the text of the film, the director has the upper hand in mediatising what is captured and interpreted by the camera. Another clear example of this privilege is the film’s use of archival footage. Here, the director shows a greater sense of freedom to convey her perception of the political scenario of the time. Her authorial voice moves from bluntly calling former president León Febres Cordero a “dictator”, to highlighting the argumentations of former president Sixto Durán Ballén in a satirical montage. Durán Ballén’s enjoyment of classical music is paralleled with images of police repression, stressing the forgetfulness of local authorities. For Restrepo, these figures represent the antagonistic ‘other’, emphasised by the discursive use of archival footage. But this antagonistic ‘other’ is not limited to the past. As the narrative progresses towards a more confrontational approach, the director, almost as a rite of passage, takes over the cause started by her parents. While her parents’ early mobilisations are presented mostly through slowly tracked black-­ and-­ white photos, with interview and tape-recording voiceovers, the director’s confrontations with former authorities showcase face-to-face, poignant questioning, aimed to break the circle of silence around the forced disappearances. As the voiceover recalls, “the camera was our only protection”. In addition to the spaces of memory, specific props or symbols also ignite instances of remembering. For the director, her memory scarcely remains in two “mediums of memory”: one family photo, and ten  s of family video-recordings, the only depictions left of the disappeared brothers. Publicly, however, the silhouettes of the brothers’ faces, now reduced to black-and-white, stencil graffiti art sprayed on street walls and mobilisation banners, have become a protest symbol that fails to convey the complexity of the family’s distress. Director Maria Fernanda Restrepo picks up

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on this idea by presenting a sequence of polaroid pictures in colour, then focusing on two black-and-white portraits that would later serve as a template for the mentioned iconography. The image of the brothers, although present in Ecuadorian collective memory, have grown to represent a high-­ contrast reminiscence of a not-so-distant past, where light and shadows are clearly defined. With this film, Maria Fernanda Restrepo seems to be more interested in recovering the grayscale undertones. The textual analysis described seems to correlate with Mette Hjort’s typology of transnationalism, specifically Hjort’s definition of epiphanic transnationalism (2009). This categorisation is described as “the cinematic articulation of those elements of deep national belonging that overlap with aspects of other national identities to produce something resembling deep transnational belonging” (16). In this regard, Hjort uses the term ‘epiphanic’ to mean in need of disclosure, through processes that are also constitutive in nature. As with subjectivity, and its self-discovery aim, epiphanic transnationalism also seeks self-understanding, aiming “to bring shared culture that may not actually be fully or focally recognized as such into public awareness…” (ibid.). If the described spaces and symbols can be situated in the context of its immediate production practices and overarching field of power, we can begin to draw certain conclusions. Transnationality is evident, for instance, in the international collaborations that helped shaped the film since its developing stages, providing a validation platform that contributed to its subsequent production. In the text, epiphanic transnationality is captured by the author’s dual citizenship, at first carried by her father and later assumed by the director, constituting an asset for truthfulness as the story unfolds. This transnationality is brought into the contested spaces of memory occupied in the film: the Restrepos’ home, the public sphere, and a disputed political past. The contentions that take place in these locations, as the Restrepo family search for answers, are inevitably changed and reinterpreted. Most importantly, however, these changes also constitute a direct consequence of the political decisions around the family’s efforts: from controversial police agents assigned to the family, to police repression in public demonstrations, as well as the creation of the Truth Commission in later administrations. Memory in this film overflows the screen to become a dialogue, at times not so civil, of national proportions.

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A Cinematic Memory in Constant Negotiation The case of Yambo exemplifies the state of memory and documentary in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, particularly for films backed by CNCine. However, an argument can be made to situate this documentary in a particular lane of its own, a natural consequence of a memory that has been constructed for over 25 years in the public eye, not necessarily representing the totality of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. As this chapter has argued, documentaries in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century built from a shared collective imaginary that did not need further contextualisation for the average local viewer. Through the lens of subjectivity, border-­ crossing, and its transnational connotations, the personal identity that filmmakers seem to pursue through these films also reflects similar questions of self-discovery that Ecuador as a nation was interested in answering. Although a shared rejection of neoliberal tendencies is evident in the swing of the pendulum that followed the late 1990s, giving rise to Socialism for the 21st century, presenting this ideology as the sole reason to explain an interest in Retorno a la democracia memory articulations can be problematic. The theoretical framework that opened this chapter already hinted at the malleability of memory, and how it is constantly negotiated in a multidirectional dialogue amongst subjects (Rothberg 2009). For Ecuadorian cinema, this multidirectionality involves, for instance, a tendency towards more state support, evident in legislation efforts that date back to the 1970s, as explored in Chap. 2. Rejecting neoliberalism, translated to the interest of the field, represented a challenge to commercially oriented understandings of success, particularly from the consolidated local exhibition sector. But even then, within the field, how this rejection would come about also constituted a source of contention.10 Consequently, the sudden interest in Retorno a la democracia narratives and other cultural remembrances portrayed in the film texts are not necessarily a direct outcome of Socialism for the 21st century but emerge from a shared societal makeup that simultaneously gave shape to an Ecuadorian Cinematic Field through the 2006 Ley de Cine and opened the door for Correa’s Revolución ciudadana. Looking back at this particular moment 10  Recalling Chap. 2, this contention can be clearly seen in director Camilo Luzuriaga’s text La industria ecuatoriana del cine: ¿otra quimera? (The Ecuadorian film industry, another chimera?, 2014), and the corresponding rebuttal by former CNCine director Jorge Luis Serrano (Réplica a Camilo 2014).

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in Ecuadorian history reveals, more than the intricacies of the events described in the documentaries, a collective imaginary that is ready to confront, negotiate and make sense of these memories, in order to constitute itself in the process. Like narrative feature films discussed in Chap. 3, local documentaries are able to engage in these contestations while also abiding to aesthetic expectations and following a preferred path that leads to theatrical distribution, particularly in the case of CNCine-backed documentaries. Considering the narratives described in this chapter, memory articulations in documentary form also reiterate themes of migration and transnational border-crossing journeys that speak to the hybridity in Latin American cultural forms. To summarise, the ambiguities found in Socialism for the 21st century, still holding on to traditional ideas of progress while maintaining a counter-­ hegemonic rhetoric, permeated the legal framework that oversaw the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. The shape of the field, with specific interpretations of value and canon formation, affected the production practices, aesthetic choices, and narrative preferences of its film output, including those concerned with memory. Ranging from the audience-oriented commercially backed documentary to subjectivity, border-crossing, and gazes of the other, memory in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century seems to have journeyed the same paths of self-discovery and identity formation as the nation at large, with similarly mixed, ambiguous, and inconclusive results.11 The next chapters begin to move away from these preferred production practices, to explore lowbrow film expressions that fail to adhere to the aesthetic expectations of the indie subfield, yet also carry an intrinsic desire to reach theatrical exhibition and find success within the local industry.

11  In June 2020, the manifesto A 10 años de la Comisión de la Verdad (“10 years after the Truth Commission”) was presented by Clara Merino, president of the National Committee of Victims. The text listed seven items in need of compliance by government institutions. The final line reads: A pesar que fueron 10 años sin verdad, sin justicia y sin reparación, las víctimas y sus familiares seguiremos buscando y no descansaremos hasta lograr verdad, justicia, reparación integral y garantía de no repetición. Despite 10 years without truth, without justice and without reparation, the victims and their families will continue to search and will not rest until we achieve truth, justice, comprehensive reparation and a guarantee of non-repetition. (Comité de Nacional Víctimas del Ecuador 2020)

CHAPTER 5

Ecuador’s Vernacular Cinema: Underground, Popular, and Neoliberal?

So far, the proposed Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century has been supported through the theoretical, historical, and legal framework included in Chap. 2, and its implications for narratives and documentary features in Chaps. 3 and 4. In both discussions, Ecuadorian cinema under Socialism for the 21st century still appears to be tied to underlying neoliberal tendencies, evident in legal texts related to Ecuadorian cinema, as well as the preferred production practices that developed in this period. This chapter questions whether these tendencies also impacted films that did not benefit from CNCine support and tended to be dismissed in national film canons. These “other” film expressions can range from bajo tierra or underground films distributed via alternative pirate networks, to community films that prioritise the needs and rights of the community. Given the extension of this subfield, this chapter chooses to focus on privately funded narrative features that reached commercial theatres during the Ley de Cine years, proposing an Ecuadorian vernacular terminology to encapsulate these films. Here, it is argued that a shared aspiration for theatrical distribution and “dreaming big”, what Ponce-Cordero labels “neoliberalism from below” (2019), is also evident, highlighting a clear influence from foreign commercial works, as well as local television and theatre traditions, in their pursuit of mass appeal. With this information, this chapter examines the role of the state in promoting and regulating this vernacular cinema, concluding that vernacular films can also respond to the hegemonic practices of the exhibition sector. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_5

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One vernacular movement that has attracted a vast corpus of dedicated scholarship is the so-called Ecuador bajo tierra, or Ecuador underground (Alvear and León 2009; Alemán 2009; Ramos Monteiro 2016; Sitnisky 2018). Initial fieldwork research conducted by Christian León and Miguel Alvear revealed a plethora of film expressions that up until that point had remained “hidden” from tastemaker circles and the cultured elite. This chapter opens with a study of the many ways in which the bajo tierra movement has been characterised, to suggest that these terminologies carry connotations that might not fully align with the tangible practices of the movement. This review informs the proposed “vernacular” categorisation, based on research by Michel Koven on the Italian giallo films (2006), Miriam Hansen’s on Classical Hollywood cinema (2009), and Popular cinema in Latin America, based on Dennison and Shaw (2004). From Italian giallo films, Koven defines the vernacular as a localised film practice that enjoys a mass appeal and is made distinctive from the bourgeois and high-art film canons. This mass appeal is also identified by Dennison and Shaw when analysing popular cinema in Brazil, with an added nuance regarding the intrinsic transnational identity in Latin American popular cultural forms. In this line, Hansen also uses the vernacular terminology to describe local film expressions, such as Soviet cinema, that paradoxically had also been informed by hegemonic film paradigms from Classical Hollywood, and so an intentional stance of opposition has been carried in the vernacular. Applied to an Ecuadorian scenario, EBT films can then be included in this definition, alongside comparable film expressions that also stand outside preferred practices in the local industry. With this definition, this chapter invokes the “vernacular” in Ecuadorian cinema as a highly localised film form that appeals to the masses that is distinct from CNCine-supported indie films, to the point of intentionally opposing it. Using the example of EBT films, this chapter also argues for an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema that carries neoliberal connotations, what Ponce-Cordero labels “neoliberalism from below” in EBT films. Ponce-Cordero questions how EBT films continued to be excluded under an allegedly progressive government like Rafael Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana (Citizen’s revolution), and partially attributes this exclusion to a national political reality that could not be undone in a relatively short period. But it also points to an inherent desire by EBT filmmakers to polish their craft and reach commercial theatres, or “neoliberalism from below” (2019, 109). This statement is further expanded upon with concepts by Noël Burch (1990) and Miriam Hansen (2009), regarding

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Institutional Modes of Representations, or IMR, and vernacular modernism respectively, in order to argue for a vernacular cinema that builds its own identity based on these hybrid articulations, negotiating the foreign and local, and the production practices that characterise them. Grounding these theoretical discussions to an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema, this chapter continues by analysing narrative features that managed to achieve theatrical distribution without the support of CNCine. Acknowledging that drawing a clear-cut distinction between the indie and vernacular subfields can be challenging, this chapter proposes source of funding as an initial filter. The analysis presented argues that privately funded films tend to rely on success formulas borrowed from television and theatre traditions. They also appeal to funders and exhibitors by recruiting recognisable casts, a strategy that can also play well with audiences. In terms of narratives, they continue addressing themes of migration, in addition to traditional family values and questions around sexual identities. The majority of these also lean towards the comedy genre, with films like Sexy Montañita, the top-grossing film of the list and closing case study of the chapter. Approached using an anthropological tracing method suggested by Koven, Dennison, and Shaw to study the vernacular, Sexy Montañita reveals a clear influence from foreign commercial films, as well as high-­ rating local television comedy. Its mockumentary style already alludes to a form of parody that capitalises on success formulas from upmarket counterparts, failing to fully mimic these expressions given its low budget and production value. Sexy Montañita’s problematic humour can also be found in popular television comedy, with certain TV shows subject to regulation during the presidency of Rafael Correa. In this line, it appears as if the state stands closer to a regulator than a promoter of vernacular film expressions. Nevertheless, vernacular films will continue to operate outside preferred practices, not necessarily seeking to cater to CNCine, but gradually moving towards an underlying idea of success for the Ecuadorian cinematic field, only choosing a different path to do so.

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Uncovering Ecuador bajo tierra: An Issue of Terminology In the mockumentary Mas allá del mall (2010), actor Andrés Crespo plays Miguel Alvear, a local director trying to make ends meet after his latest film, Blak Mama (2009), had flopped dramatically in local theatres. Alvear is at a loss, unable to break even or make a profit. Yet Alvear discovers this ‘other’ cinema, one that is neither polished nor aesthetically pleasant, but very much alive and popular in the informal markets of La Bahía in Guayaquil and Ipiales in Quito. These films would later be known as Ecuador bajo tierra and constitute a prime example of the ‘other’ in Ecuadorian cinema. This section explores the ways in which scholars have theorised about this movement, each proposal carrying its own set of advantages and disadvantages. This discussion provides a needed prelude to propose a “vernacular” categorisation that does not exclude the now-­ expected bajo tierra epithet. In the publication Ecuador bajo tierra: videografías en circulación paralela (2009), a ground-breaking research effort by Miguel Alvear and Christian León, EBT is described as a phenomenon that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s as new video technologies (initially VCD and then DVD) allowed non-professionals to create amateur films with limited production values. These films were, and continue to be, commercialised through alternative means of distribution that rely on piracy, comparable to Peru’s cine regional or Nigeria’s Nollywood cinema.1 To illustrate, one of the most popular EBT films is Fernando Cedeño’s Sicarios Manabitas (Hitmen from Manabí, 2006). Sicarios follows the story of Agamenón Menéndez, a landowner based in the outskirts of Chone, in the coastal province of Manabí. Agamenón hires three hitmen from outside the community to avenge the death of his son, murdered after an altercation over trespassing property. Already, such a premise might suggest an epic tale of violence, yet what draws attention to the film is its low 1  The Peruvian cine regional or regional cinema got its name as it referred to low-budget audio-visual works produced outside the capital Lima. According to Bustamante and Luna Victoria (2014), these are usually associated with indigenous peoples: “Por el otro, culturas tradicionalmente orales y no escritas, como la andina y la amazónica, parecen haber encontrado en el lenguaje audiovisual un vehículo expresivo ideal” (On the other hand, traditionally oral and unwritten cultures, such as the Andean and Amazonian cultures, seem to have found an ideal expressive vehicle in audio-visual language). For Ecuadorian community cinemas, see Chap. 6. For Nollywood, see Haynes (2016).

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production values, prosumer cinematography, and apparent amateur aesthetic. León, however, argues against an ‘amateur’ adjective to define this movement, since professional and non-professional practices in Ecuador are usually hard to distinguish (2009, 13). Instead, he proposes a local counterpart to the American underground movement, since the former is produced in a context of “cultural and technological dependence, the fragility of the national film field, the informal market and popular culture” (14). Certainly, this contextual distinction is crucial to understand the particularities of EBT films. American underground film is a term that Michael O’Pray (2006) attributes to Manny Farber, referring to an American film movement that emerged in the 1960s and was characterised by three components: using film as a medium for self-expression, carrying an element of dissent, and being made under low-budget conditions (in O’Pray 2006, 63). These characteristics take on further relevance if situated within its historical immediacy, namely the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, and racial-based civil unrest. Yet O’Pray also identifies a dual status for the American underground movement, being “repressed and forced to operate beneath the dominant culture” while also enjoying “a fashionable status among the intellectual and the artistic elite of New York” (ibid.). Comparing these three characteristics to the EBT movement, some distinctions are evident. Elements of self-expression and dissent are not necessarily obvious in EBT films. What ties these two movements together is their expected “underneath” positioning, in comparison to the “dominant” or preferred cinema. Yet this bajo tierra label also seemed problematic to some directors associated with the movement (Alvear and León 2009, 15). Fernando Cedeño, for instance, prefers the cine guerrilla epithet, and the prevalence of violence, guns, and massacres in his films has earned him the nickname of the Ecuadorian Quentin Tarantino (BBC Mundo 2013). Even León mentions some of the arguments against the bajo tierra categorisation, considering its surprising penetration levels in circles outside traditional distribution avenues (2009, 11). If these types of films are vastly consumed by Ecuadorians, León contends, then this underground ‘other’ could better be read as a visible ‘mainstream’, even if outside the radar of scholars and taste-setters from the urban elites. Also in 2009, scholar Gabriela Alemán published the article At the Margin of the Margins: Contemporary Ecuadorian Exploitation Cinema and the Local Pirate Market (2009), in which the EBT phenomenon is

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distinguished from the Ecuadorian cinema that is shown in theatres, targeted to the urban middle class and cultured elites. Alemán attributes the development of the bajo tierra movement to the arrival of the multiplex in Latin America, as filmgoing practices moved from neighbourhood theatres to multi-screen complexes, usually attached to shopping centres, and with a programming designed to cater to middle-class audiences. EBT films circumvented these distribution routes to directly interact with viewers. While Alemán does not go as far as proposing a fixed label, since doing so would “perpetuate the Latin American ‘necessity’ to imitate the cultural categories of the metropolis and the logic of coloniality” (2009, 272), she does draw similarities between EBT films and Latsploitation cinema, particularly regarding lack of institutional support, low production values, and untrained actors. More recently, Carolina Stinisky (2018) approaches these films from the perspective of precariousness, and hints to a ‘lesser’ cinema, or ‘less than’ the small cinema theories of Hjort and Petrie (2007). As discussed in Chap. 3, Ecuadorian cinema already carries a marginal status within a world cinema context. EBT films stand outside (or more precisely beneath) what is deemed “Ecuadorian” or “cinematic” enough to constitute a national film canon, allegedly falling short of expectations around production values, international critical acclaim, and theatrical distribution. Contrary to the example of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, in which the precarious was seen as an asset for promotional purposes and a catalyst for creativity, in the case of EBT films, it is this precariousness that forces them to build up alternative business structures and processes, since terminology used by CNCine already situates them at the margins of an Ecuadorian cinematic field. This subtle exclusion can be seen, for example, in CNCine categories for fund allocation, where labels have included cine comunitario (community cinema), cine regional (regional cinema), cine de bajo presupuesto (low-budget cinema), cine indígena (indigenous cinema), and, lately, cine de los pueblos y nacionalidades (cinema of peoples and nationalities). Regarding the bajo tierra categorisation, Ramos Monteiro (2016) suggests that it can represent an attempt to control and regulate these practices, and instead opts for the autodidacta or self-taught epithet, not necessarily limiting its scope to just EBT filmmakers. Certainly, EBT films point to the futility of having to categorise such expressions, especially if adhering to certain conditions becomes a requirement for state funding. Here, it appears as if the ‘other’ in Ecuadorian cinema, EBT films included, equates to cinema from peoples and

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nationalities outside urban centres. It also assumes a lower budget allocation and a distance from auteur approaches, instead favouring communal practices. Since the bajo tierra label has already been extensively used in related scholarship, particularly for those associated to Chonewood, this chapter does not seek to replace the term, but rather include EBT films in a proposed Ecuadorian vernacular cinema.2 As subsequent sections conclude, the vernacular is suggested as it recuperates film expressions that are usually perceived as “lowbrow” or unworthy of critical consideration but manage to develop an appeal to mass audiences. While community cinema practices will be discussed in detail in Chap. 6, this chapter focuses on vernacular film expressions that do not adhere to preferred production practices yet share a comparable aspiration of success and profitability to EBT films. In doing so, the ambiguities and contradictions of an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century are also expanded to the totality of an Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, and not just limited to film forms that depend on CNCine or similar institutions.

Vernacular Cinema, Vernacular Modernism, and Popular Cinema in Latin America The above discussion on the bajo tierra epithet reflects the difficulty of theorising and categorising alternative modes of film production. As seen, the meaning and usage of each term already carries connotations that may or may not truthfully characterise actual filmmaking practices. Suggesting additional terminology can seem counterintuitive, however, considering the analysis of EBT films, and, by extension, comparable local practices that also stand outside a preferred path towards theatrical distribution; this chapter opts to study these under a vernacular terminology. Therefore, this section explores the vernacular in Italian giallo films (Koven 2006), Vernacular modernism in Classical Hollywood cinema (Hansen 2009), and Popular cinema in Latin America (Dennison and Shaw 2004) in order to argue for an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema. Commonalities between these concepts help frame a theoretical understanding for EBT films that aligns with their particular characteristics, namely their localised practice,

2  Ponce-Cordero considers the coastal city of Chone to be the epicentre of the Ecuador bajo tierra movement, hence the terminology ‘Chonewood’ to characterise EBT filmmakers from this city (also in Alvear and León 2009; Coryat and Zweig 2017).

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how they are made distinct from highbrow films, and the way in which, consciously or not, EBT films are able to oppose hegemonic film discourses. Mikel J. Koven (2006) proposes the term “vernacular cinema” to study Italian giallo films. Sometimes referred to as Spaghetti thrillers, giallo films usually involve horror and murder mystery narratives, initially adapted from Italian crime fiction novels from the mid-1960s. Koven revises the ways giallo films have been studied and described by both scholars and critics, concluding that these had tended to be dismissed, and only taken seriously when giallo filmmakers had moved on to more bourgeois aesthetics (2006, 20). Koven opts for studying these films on “its own terms, its own level”, recognising that these were intended for marginalised audiences and theatres, outside bourgeois cinema culture, and with the sole purpose of “immediate enjoyment” (2006, 19). The vernacular terminology is proposed based on concepts from vernacular architecture. Drawing from scholar Richard MacKinnon (1995), Koven identifies three characteristics of the “vernacular”, that certainly resonate with Ecuadorian vernacular cinema: a localised practice, a “filtration” process that distinguished them from “high-art”, and an intentional opposition to an established “high style” (29). Interestingly, Koven chooses not to use the “popular” epithet, a decision comparable to Miriam Hansen’s when theorising “vernacular modernism” (2009). To contextualise, Hansen attributes modernism to the period roughly between the 1920s and the 1950s, in which making films became a mass-production endeavour, developing the so-called Classical Hollywood cinema. Hansen argues that this period represents a “first global vernacular” since it successfully mediated competing discourses on modernity and modernism on a transnational scale, with the American way of making films becoming hegemonic (2009, 252). The “vernacular” terminology is preferred as it implies “the quotidian, of everyday usage, with connotations of discourse, idiom, and dialect, with circulation, promiscuity, and translatability”, compared to an “ideological overdetermined” popular label (2009, 243). While not necessarily appealing to ideology, Koven also avoids the “popular” when studying giallo films, considering the label highly problematic, since it has come to be used as synonym for words like “commercial”, “mainstream”, “mass”, or “entertainment”, blurring the evident differences between each of these terms (2006, 34). Using Koven and Hansen’s rationale, vernacular cinema can be summarised as a localised practice, distinguished and intentionally opposed to

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the bourgeois, able to appeal to the senses on a mass-scale level. But before dismissing the popular altogether, it is important to review theorisations of Popular cinema in Latin America, since the way these practices have been studied in the region presents some connections with the vernacular in Koven and Hansen’s research. Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw (2004) introduce the concept of Popular cinema in Brazil, building from Latin American theories on popular culture and hybridity. The authors first mention Rowe and Schelling (1991, 2–3) to describe what has been understood as popular culture for the Latin American region: first, the popular can refer to cultural expressions that are mostly rural, authentic, and industry-threatened; secondly, it can relate to a capitalist-oriented mass culture; and thirdly, it can comprise the subaltern, idealistic, and oppositional in nature. Expanding on these approaches, and following Schelling’s later analysis (2004), the popular can be perceived as either “produced by the people and for the people” (73), “consumed on a mass scale” (181), and/or “a form of resistance or oppositional culture prefiguring a new social order no longer characterized by alienation and human exploitation” (190). These interpretations correlate with some of the reasons for Koven not using the popular terminology. For example, Koven quotes Italian scholar Vittorio Spinazzola to distinguish between popular and mass cinemas, stating that the former is strictly consumed by lower classes, whereas the latter serves an interclass purpose (in Koven 2009, 34). Dennison and Shaw, however, define popular culture as not entirely distinct from mass culture, only mentioning a slight difference in terms of audience and popularity (Dennison and Shaw 2004, 2). Nevertheless, commonalities between Dennison and Shaw’s understanding of Popular cinema in Latin America and the definition of the vernacular summarised above lie on its mass appeal and opposition to the hegemonic or bourgeois. It is not surprising to see the popular in Latin America coinciding with the vernacular through cultural expressions that can be simultaneously mass-oriented and opposed to “high art”. As Dennison and Shaw argue, film in Latin America has been living between two cinematic worlds, and, as such, is intrinsically hybrid, with local cultural forms inevitably linked to the process of mestizaje or race-mixing (2004, 4). Cultural identities in Latin America have acquired those foreign contributions, just as cinema itself has been, and continues to be, a foreign-based construction since its arrival. But these authors go a little bit further. After analysing García Canclini’s work on hybrid cultures (1995), they conclude that the foreign

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in Latin America is eventually appropriated, becoming interwoven into the very fabric of national cultural identities (Dennison and Shaw 2004, 4–5). A similar dichotomy is presented by Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau (1992) regarding European popular cinemas. In trying to define the popular, Dyer and Vincendeau recognise the problem of “positing a culture ‘of the people’ that is either not in fact separable from mass (industrially, centrally produced) culture or is not in reality part of the life of the mass of people” (Dyer and Vincendeau 1992, 3 in Koven 2009, 35). Extrapolated to Latin America, popular cinema, and arguably any cultural form, cannot necessarily be separated from these foreign and industrial contributions without negating itself in the process. The oppositional stance comes about as cultural expressions negotiate the extent to which these contributions are incorporated or rejected, in doing so forming its own vernacular cinematic identity, a statement also true for EBT films, as Cristián León explains: Las videografías populares proponen lecturas de apropiación que toman el código del cine hegemónico para retrabajarlo, relocalizarlo y exarcerbarlo en un cuestionamiento que surge de la imitación de un modelo imposible. Efectivamente, entre los files EBT, encontramos westerns, melodramas, comedias, películas zombies que, quizá sin proponérselo, parodian, desde la cultural local, las narrativas de Hollywood. Popular videographies advance readings of appropriation that take the codes of hegemonic cinema to rework, relocate, and exacerbate them in a questioning process emanated from the imitation of an impossible model. Indeed, among EBT films we find westerns, melodramas, comedies, and zombie movies that, perhaps without intention, parody Hollywood narratives from a local perspective. (Alvear and León 2009, 22, my translation).

Expanding on this quote, León recognises that the process of questioning comes from an intrinsic desire to imitate, not quite achievable considering the industrial conditions of Ecuadorian cinema discussed in previous chapters, much less for EBT films. The result of this questioning is an unintentional parody that, for a local audience accustomed to Hollywood imports, can also be matched by an ironic gaze. According to Pam Cook on exploitation films, the parody comes into play as films try to capitalise on or exploit the success of more upmarket productions, while also engaging in a “blatant commercialism” and “immediate disposability” that prevents them being given serious critical attention (Cook 1985, 367  in

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Koven 2009, 21). Gabriela Alemán, however, does not consider EBT films to be produced with a quick profit in mind, but attributes their low production values to a lack of sophistication and technological expertise (2009, 272). Alemán does not go as far as deeming EBT films exploitation, instead recognising their complexity and undeniable reflection of “the cultural landscape of Ecuador in the twenty-first century” (273). These theoretical strands help argue for an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema, EBT films included, that is characterised by being a localised film practice able to appeal to mass audiences. It is also separated from the bourgeois, hegemonic, and high art, and, instead, intentionally opposes it. However, as the discussion on Popular cinema in Latin America revealed, the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema must necessarily consider the hybrid articulations of its cultural forms. Vernacular film expressions, therefore, find themselves questioning the hegemonic codes intrinsically woven in their own cinematic identity, evident in the localised genre articulations and unintentional Hollywood parodies found in EBT films. Thus, having delineated a brief definition of the vernacular, and considering the overall aims of this book, a next step would require situating these films in relation to Socialism for the 21st century. To do so, this chapter considers Dennison and Shaw’s methodology based on anthropological tracing, that is, how popular films make use of other cultural practices that either preceded them or stand outside them (2004, 2). This approach is also suggested by Dyer and Vincendeau regarding the “folk” and considered by Koven when arguing for giallo films as vernacular cinema (2006, 34). As subsequent sections would contend, it is no surprise to find traces of an ingrained neoliberalism in these film practices. The ‘Vernacular’ in bajo tierra Films and Neoliberalism “from below” Up to this point, this chapter has prioritised EBT films as a prime example of vernacular cinema, being localised and appealing to the masses, while simultaneously being distinctive and opposed to bourgeois and high-art films. However, as the previous section hinted, completely avoiding these industrial and foreign contributions can risk dislocating these film expressions from an already internalised cinematic identity. Therefore, this section highlights the underlying aspirations for success and progress among EBT filmmakers, what Rafael Ponce-Cordero calls “neoliberalism from below” (Ponce-Cordero 2019). This assertion is further justified by

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institutional modes of representation in Film Studies that have come to be equated to a “right way” of making films. Socialism for the 21st century comes into play as vernacular film expressions, EBT included, fail to adhere to these expectations and therefore continue to be overlooked and displaced. In this line, Ponce-Cordero’s critique of the revolutionary rhetoric of the Correa administration is precisely related to this dichotomy, summarised in the question: how can a progressive government still maintain this evident manifestation of exclusion, marginalisation, and overall dismissal of perfectly valid expressions of film and media? Ponce-Cordero partially attributes this contradiction to an inability to undo tendencies that have been rooted for decades, if not centuries, in a national political reality (2019, 106). On the topic of CNCine, he accuses cultural authorities of maintaining a status quo that “perfectly mirrors that ‘virtually untouched’ class structure” (108). As this book has argued and considering the recent dismantling of cultural policies in Latin America (De la Vega Velasteguí, Ecuador. Políticas culturales y COVID-19. El desvelamiento de una crisis 2020), Socialism for the 21st century itself carries contradictions that have trickled down to film policy and practices, maintaining hegemonic structures, not necessarily solidifying long-term solutions. Additionally, a class structure is also prevalent in the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, with certain forms of making and thinking about film being validated over others, previously analysed in Chap. 3. But arguably the most interesting revelation provided by Ponce-­ Cordero lies in an almost self-enforced neoliberalism in EBT filmmakers: “Neoliberalism comes ‘from above,’ imposed by corporations, governments, the IMF, and so forth, yet also operates ‘from below,’ once it takes root in popular subjectivities and becomes part of the collection of tools people use to participate in and adapt to – but also resist – the system” (2019, 109). In other words, it appears as if EBT filmmakers themselves have chosen to accept a local understanding of neoliberalism, which Ponce-Cordero justifies in terms of an underlying aspiration of success that involves theatrical distribution and “dreaming big”. In this line, Nixon Chalacamá’s film Un minuto de vida (A minute to live, 2017) is mentioned, as it showcases pioneer aerial drone footage, equating success to technological advancement. Another film by Fernando Cedeño, El ángel de los sicarios (The hitmen’s angel, 2012), features what Ponce-­ Cordero considers a look “almost indistinguishable” from the average

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Fig. 5.1  DVD cover of Fernando Cedeño’s underground film El Ángel de los Sicarios (2013)

mainstream, CNCine-backed local production (2019, 102).3 In both instances, neoliberalism from below seems to entail an adherence to local value expectations to secure a commercial release (Fig. 5.1). Compared to the EBT film that opened this chapter, Sicarios Manabitas, some apparent “progress” can already be identified. Shot near the coastal town of Chone, Sicarios is certainly not centred around the city. The closest city of Portoviejo is included only once, and not given much attention. These characteristics can potentially establish the film as authentic and rural, based solely on its geographical location. The authenticity of Sicarios might also be established through its reliance on outdoor locations and scenarios that are not specifically designed for the film, but rather used in 3  Interestingly, El Angel de los Sicarios never made it to commercial theatrical exhibition. According to director Fernando Cedeño (in Larrea 2016, 25), they did not have enough money to transfer the film into a DCP format and invest in publicity. The film did premiere in arthouse theatres like Ochoymedio in Quito, Guayaquil, and Manta, where it was shown for a week in each locale. Regarding its relation to exhibitors, Cedeño is clear that such additional expenditure is needed if they were to attempt to secure theatrical distribution (Ibid).

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the local ‘way of life’. Here, the vernacular can be equated to the folk, reiterating some of Dyer and Vincendeau’s preferred terminology (in Koven 2006, 34), which does not necessarily entail a direct opposition to modernity, or an isolation from the outside world. Instead, as Néstor García Canclini concludes regarding Latin American traditional cultures, these have turned into a “heterogeneous symbolic world in which the local constantly interacts with the national and transnational” (1995, 265). In this line, Sicarios includes influences from the American Western, the Mexican narcocorrido, and mixed martial arts, in spite of it obvious low-production values. The incorporation of these foreign cultural forms alongside an evident mass-scale appeal that establishes Sicarios as one of the most watched films in Ecuadorian history (Alvear and León 2009, 4) signals its adherence to the vernacular described in the previous section. With this in mind, the fact that EBT filmmakers seek to embrace more upmarket ways of doing, despite its popularity and sustainable business model, attests to an intrinsic definition of success that informs the totality of an Ecuadorian cinematic field. Certainly, this discussion recalls León’s hesitation to use the term ‘amateur’ when cataloguing EBT films, since attempting to draw a distinction between EBT films and the preferred indie subfield can at times lead to muddled results. But it also adds a layer of interpretation that assumes neoliberalism from below to bleed into the film text, in this case being equated to technological advancement and higher production values. This assumption echoes broader theoretical questions regarding cinema and its relation to ideology and hegemony. Noël Burch, for instance, uses the term “Institutional Modes of Representation”, or IMR, to refer to a dominant film language that emerged in the mid-1910s and became the normative way of making films, relying on narrative, continuity, and fragmentation of the diegetic space (1990). A Primitive Mode of Representation preceded IMR and was characterised by a lack of narrative and editing, instead opting for the frontality of action that resembled previous theatrical experiences (1990, 186–201). Burch would compare these modes to Japanese cinema, arguing that Japan was able to develop its own mode of film representation by avoiding the ‘colonial yoke’ and fostering a self-sufficient industry (1979, 27). For Miriam Hansen, however, developing your own mode of film representation does not necessarily entail avoiding IMR or the dominant Classical Hollywood altogether. Using the example of early Russian cinema, Hansen argues that the ideas of modernity and modernism found in

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Classical Hollywood were the ones that paradoxically sparked a debate that eventually led to Soviet montage aesthetics: “Hyperbolically speaking, one might say that Russian cinema became Soviet cinema by going through a process of Americanization” (2009, 244). Certainly, Hansen does acknowledge other artistic influences for soviet montage, like Constructivism. Yet, by highlighting the impact of American films on movements as ideologically opposed to capitalism as Soviet cinema, Hansen justifies its vernacular appeal. Referring to American movies in the classical period as the “first global vernacular”, Hansen concludes: …if we understand the classical in American cinema as a metaphor of a global sensory vernacular rather than a universal narrative idiom, then it might be possible to imagine the two Americanisms operating in the development of Soviet cinema – the modernist fascination with the ‘low,’ sensational, attractionist genres and the classical ideal of formal and narrative efficiency – as two vectors of the same phenomenon, both contributing to the hegemony of Hollywood film (2009, 256).

Having explored these theoretical ramifications, in practical terms, how do Burch’s IMR and vernacular modernism relate to EBT films and neoliberalism from below? First, drawing from the pejorative undertones of the primitive terminology, a fundamental expectation of compliance seems to be assumed in early moving images, in relation to film language and production values. Put another way, mastering proficiency in filmmaking entailed the observance of a particular set of aesthetic choices, which could be as simple as including an establishing shot to situate a scene, or not ‘crossing the line’ to maintain spatial relations. While following these paradigms might not necessarily be neoliberal per se, since they have become so ingrained in cinema to the point of constituting its own language, there is an ideological component at hand. Lee Grieveson (2018) points out that the film apparatus and the narratives constructed through it have historically been used to proliferate ideas of liberal capitalism in a new world order, under the premise of progress and generation of wealth. In this sense, the “primitive” bajo tierra films have internalised a desire to reach theatrical distribution, a progression from a previous state of illegality and marginalisation, attainable through an empirical self-knowledge of film production. Secondly, Hansen’s quote also refers to the “low” and “sensational” as equally contributing to Hollywood’s hegemony. More precisely, Hansen

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points to “genres like comedy, horror, and pornography that involve the viewer’s body and sensory-affective responses in ways that may not exactly conform to classical ideals” (2009, 247). Extrapolated to an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema and adding to Ponce-Cordero’s proposed “neoliberalism from below”, EBT films find themselves gradually moving to a preferred habitus to secure commercial distribution, but also embracing those “low” characteristics that are yet to abide by “classical ideals” and that constitute them as a separate subfield in the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field. Therefore, the blatant dismissal of EBT films during Socialism for the 21st century can be interpreted as not just a result of an untouched class structure, or unradical initiatives by film institutions like CNCine, but something rooted in a transnational, vernacular, and hegemonic experience of cinema as well. If this is the case, then the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can be expected to also present similar ambiguities to the indie subfield explored in Chap. 3, which in turn is informed by the legal and industrial framework discussed in Chap. 2. This argument can seem surprising, considering the marginal status of the vernacular and its alternative modes of production and distribution. To conclude, Ecuador bajo tierra is only one of the many vernacular expressions found in the country. While Ponce-Cordero’s research focuses on Sicarios and many of the so-­ called Chonewood films in Manabí, it also mentions EBT films from urban areas, from indigenous communities, produced by women, and not limited to the hyper-masculine Western (2019, 100–105). Since the scope of this book has centred primarily on theatrically released films, the analysis of EBT films presented so far constitutes a key predecessor to understanding vernacular films that managed to reach commercial theatres despite not following a preferred path or habitus to do so. Hence, the anthropological tracing method suggested by Dennison and Shaw and justified through Dyer and Vincendeau, and Koven, can further be applied to vernacular films that are rooted in  local television, more specifically television comedy.

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The Road to Commercial Exhibition for Non-­state-Funded Narratives Centring on local television when analysing the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema might seem to be a subjective choice. However, most vernacular films that have managed to reach theatres seem to have capitalised on other forms of entertainment, and the commercial expectations that these bring, as a means of securing theatrical distribution. Therefore, this section reviews narrative films that have not benefited from CNCine support, nor acquired significant cultural capital through international platforms, to suggest an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema that feeds from local television. To do so, this section considers 16 local films released between 2007 and 2015, roughly corresponding to the Ley de Cine years. With one exception that showcases an obvious high-art aesthetic, the majority of these films fluctuate between a television-like style and low production values comparable to EBT films. These are produced under limited budgets and rely on recognisable casts from television and theatre traditions. In terms of narratives, these tend to incorporate the now-expected themes of migration, traditional family values, or taboo topics related to sexual identities. These characteristics help argue for a “middle-of-the-road” vernacular cinema that seeks to approach the expectations of a local exhibition sector, while not fully discarding those lowbrow qualities that constitute their own vernacular identity. According to data from CNCine compiled by Camila Larrea (2016), narrative features that have premiered in theatres without state support present a considerably lower number of spectators (Table 5.1). Additionally, as the table shows, most of these films do not even have enough data to properly study their audience reception, which can suggest a poor box office performance. Such conclusions can be problematic, given the potential alternative means of distribution available, many of which can be difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, films that show spectatorship data already suggest these tendencies. Victor Arregui’s Rómpete una pata (Break a leg, 2013), while privately funded, is the one exception on the list that most closely abides to a high-­ art aesthetic. Conceived for minimal production requirements that explain its low budget, it centres around four theatre actors as they rehearse for the stage, each burdened with their own existential dilemmas. Filmmaking expertise can be expected from seasoned director Viviana Cordero with Retazos de vida (Scraps of Life, 2008), the third film of her repertoire and

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Table 5.1  Privately funded narratives premiered in commercial theatres (2007–2015) (Although the film Quito 2023 (2014) did not benefit from CNCine support before it was released in commercial theatres, it was included in Ecuador’s official selection for the 2013 Marché du film festival, held in Cannes (Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía del Ecuador 2015). Nevertheless, the film does include some of the tendencies described for the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema. It is a science fiction tale set in a futuristic Quito, where a group of rebels orchestrate a coup against a military dictator that has seized the city. The story only features two enclosed spaces where the plot moves mostly through dialogue, making evident an attempt to reduce costs. According to producer Lorena Caicedo, the film was primarily self-funded, with the cast and crew also becoming financial partners on the film (Diario El Universo 2014)) Film

Director

Year

Spectators

Retazos de vida Desde abajo Los Canallas

Viviana Cordero Carlos Piñeros Cristina Franco Jorge Fegan Nataly Valencia Diego Coral Galo Hidalgo Rodrigo Pacheco Edgar Rojas Carlos Piñeros Rogelio Gordón Nitsy Grau Alberto Pablo Rivera Victor Arregui César Moscoso Sergio Briones Luis Rojas Amaya Israel Ricaurte Iván Valero Guillermo Angamarca

2008 2009 2009

No data No data No data

2010 2011 2013 2015 2015 2015 2014 2013 2014 2013 2014

No data No data No data No data No data No data 14,000 10,000 6458 3800 811

2014 2014

343 120

María como juego de niños Celmira Ya no soy pura Travesía Adolescentes Medardo Sexy montañita Rómpete una pata Quito 2023 Cuento sin hadas Novios por esta noche Un par de estúpidos La Herencia

first film included in the above list. Retazos follows two previous features by Cordero that also reached theatres: Sensaciones (1991) and Un titán en el ring (2002). But rather than a high-art aspiration, Retazos also leans on formulas expected for television, particularly the Latin American telenovela. The film is set around a modelling agency in Guayaquil and

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follows the life of four women related to the business. The storyline includes themes around eating disorders, drug addiction, migration, and generational differences, with a cast that features the celebrated Cristian Bach and heartthrob William Levy, alongside local telenovela actors like María Teresa Guerrero and Giovanna Andrade. The mass appeal expected from a recognisable cast and successful television formulas can serve as negotiation bargaining chip for private funders and local exhibitors. This strategy was also followed by Sergio Briones’ Cuento sin hadas (Tale without fairies, 2013) and Nitsy Grau’s Medardo (2015). Cuento sin hadas, for example, touches on the subject of human trafficking and, according to the director, is expected to be the first instalment of a trilogy (Redacción El Universo 2013). Briones contacted some of the cast through personal connections with local theatre actors and international casts associated to the television network Telemundo (ibid.). Although self-funded, Cuento sin hadas also involved collaboration with a production company in the United States, where Briones resides. A similar international partnership facilitated the production of Medardo, initially a theatre play shown in New York, based on Guayaquil poet Medardo Angel Silva (1898–1919). Julio Ortega, who produced the play and features as the main character of the film, attributes its funding to Dutch entrepreneur Jos Van Weert. According to director Nitsy Grau, who had extensive experience in local television comedy, Medardo was expected to seek support from CNCine (Redacción La Revista 2014). Besides Rómpete una pata, the mentioned films already point to an evident influence from television, ranging from local comedy to Latin American melodramas. Aesthetically speaking, these films showcase a style that resembles made-for-TV films and attest to the transnational articulations of a local industry discussed in Chap. 2. Certainly, these films stand at the higher end of budget expenditure for non-state-supported films, and, as costs are reduced, films move closer to more vernacular forms that recall EBT films. Excluding Los Canallas (Bastards, 2009), an undergraduate capstone project from the local Incine, most of the remaining privately funded projects are predominantly self-funded, or dependent on alternative business models like Fernando Cedeño’s Sicarios.4 Nevertheless, 4  The mockumentary film Mas allá del mal (Beyond the mall, 2010) explains that many of Chonewood films relied on financial support from non-professional cast members that “buy their way” into the film. Jokingly, one of the directors stated that some actors must be “killed off” in the narrative to make room for additional supporters. A more detailed account of Sicarios funding strategy and overall transnational articulations is included in Chap. 3.

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these films also coincide in themes of migration and traditional family values. María como juego de niños (Maria like a child’s game, 2010), for instance, explores the subject of unwanted pregnancies, using “comedy with dramatic tones” (Diario La Hora 2010). It features famous street actor Carlos Michelena, known for free comedy monologues at Quito’s El Ejido Park, although director Galo Hidalgo did not consider his participation to be meant to draw more audiences (Redacción Espectáculos Diario El Comercio 2010). Hidalgo also highlights the educational purposes of the film and intended for it to reach international film festivals, as well as the Ecuadorian community in Spain. In Novios por esta noche (Boyfriend for tonight, 2014), Cuban director Luis Rojas instead capitalised on well-­ known names from the early stages of production. A casting call already mentioned local television personality Jorge Heredia, singer Douglas Bastidas, and international stars like Paraguayan model Lilian Ruiz and salsa singer Gabino Pampini (Academia de Famosos 2014). Hype for the film even speculated about an appearance by international model Larissa Riquelme, eventually replaced by Ruiz (El Diario 2013). Again, turning to local television formulas, the film explores societal norms of sexual orientation, class, and family values. Comedy also takes centre stage in Un par de estúpidos (A pair of idiots, 2014), for example, relying on situational sketches throughout the film, featuring famous characters like Peluquín the clown and Barak the hypnotiser (Diario El Universo 2014). Interestingly, none of the so-called Chonewood films have made it to commercial theatres. The closest counterpart is director Guillermo Angamarca, originally from Cuenca but based in the rural city of Quevedo. The film La Herencia (The Will, 2014) came about 12  years after Angamarca’s first film, Un Siglo en el Paraíso (A Century in Paradise, 2002), with several other films distributed through pirate DVDs. Like Fernando Cedeño, Angamarca’s body of work usually incorporates elements of its immediate locale, in this case Quevedo, which make these films quite popular in the province. However, according to Angamarca, none of these films achieved a return on investment. Angamarca himself works as a lecturer at the local Universidad Técnica Estatal de Quevedo and produces a Sunday news report show on local Channel 35. Angamarca also contends that local distributors have responsibilities with international

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conglomerates that prevent them from making room for local works, pointing out that they tend to “look over the shoulder” and treat them as charity cases or “alms” to help low-budget producers (Angamarca 2013). Evidently, a brief review of privately funded films begins to uncover the underlying aspirations of Ecuadorian vernacular cinema, reiterating the proposed “neoliberalism from below” in EBT films. What for the local indie subfield constitutes an acquired cultural capital via CNCine support and international validators, the vernacular subfield makes up for in resembling success formulas from local television and depending on recognisable cast members to secure a mass appeal. Considering these conclusions, this chapter closes with an analysis of Sexy Montañita, the top-grossing film of the list, rooted in a long tradition of television comedy from the city of Guayaquil. The film also reflects foreign influences and carries representations on class and race that could be deemed problematic in outside circles. Through this film, this chapter sets the stage to again examine the relationship between an excluded Ecuadorian vernacular cinema and Socialism for the 21st century.

Case Study: Sexy Montañita (2013) Prior to recent institutional changes, the audio-visual and film sectors seem to have maintained separate standings in Ecuadorian society. Yet the two relate to one another in many ways. Traditionally, local filmmakers have relied on the advertisement business to maintain a consistent source of income, a practice encouraged in the 2013 Ley de Comunicación, as discussed in Chap. 2. By requiring advertising that is broadcast in Ecuador to be solely produced in Ecuador, this media decree allowed for the proliferation of production companies in Quito and Guayaquil, resulting in a similar “mini-boom” in television production. Considering the limitations of the television market, with the number of stations far outweighing their capacity to be profitable, screen quotas for local productions resulted in maintaining formulaic troupes with low complexity. It is in this context that a film like Sexy Montañita takes place, not only building from a local television tradition, but also finding inspiration in foreign works. This section uses the case of Sexy Montañita to illustrate some of the characteristics previously discussed for the proposed vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema (Fig. 5.2). The title Sexy Montañita already alludes to the holiday destination Montañita, located in the coastal province of Santa Elena. The film opens

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Fig. 5.2  Film poster of Sexy Montañita (Alberto Pablo Rivera 2014)

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with Mike, a failing aspiring actor being recruited to participate in an impromptu reality show. The camera follows Mike when visiting his friend Alan, who has recently been left by his wife. They decide to travel to Montañita to lift their spirits, in the process posing as YouTube influencers to steal a car from television actor Fernando Villaroel. Evading police controls, the duo reach their destination. As they struggle to find accommodation, they meet Valeria, an Argentinian tourist who is staying at the same hotel. They later engage in wild partying that involves consumption of illegal drugs. The film takes a turn for the worse the morning after, with Valeria found dead in her hotel room. Travelling back to Guayaquil, the purpose of the so-called reality show is revealed, with Mike and Alan left as victims of an experimental scam. Being extremely self-referential, Sexy Montañita debates its own nature and purpose. Initially, the film adheres to reality TV conventions, with protagonist Mike breaking the fourth wall to address both the audience and the cameraman, and featuring talking shots of main characters in testimonial fashion. But the main character himself would later describe the film as “educational” and “tourist” when initially approached by a bystander, who instead thought it to be a TV show like America’s Wild On (1997–2003). Outside the text, director Alberto Pablo Rivera has mentioned influences from The Hangover (2009) to The Blair Witch Project (1999), comparing Montañita to Las Vegas, and adapting the mockumentary style and horror conventions to a local context (Redacción La Revista 2014). These debates are also palpable in the film’s cinematography. When Mike is initially recruited, the camera takes an almost voyeuristic angle, trying to emulate what appears to be a smartphone. The handheld camera is not afraid to use overly shaky movements that, given the expected low production values of the film, indicate that its makers are not necessarily interested in picture perfect framing or mise-en-scène. The touristic approach comes about when the duo arrives to Montañita. On several occasions, the film features the town in the form of fast-paced montages, with both residents and tourists acknowledging the camera. The Wild On reference is evident during party sequences, with a similar handheld camera shining a spotlight through the darkness of nightlife. Partygoers, particularly women, would approach the camera and expose themselves, for no apparent reason. Finally, the horror twist at the end of the film is shot using a static camera, still remaining true to the mockumentary style, yet adding a monochrome desaturation to provide the eeriness that the conclusion requires (Fig. 5.3).

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Fig. 5.3  On their way to Montañita beach. Film still from Sexy Montañita (Rivera 2014)

While foreign influences are evident in Sexy Montañita’s own diegesis, as well as in its cinematography, the narrative of the film is heavily informed by traditional archetypes from television comedy. This anthropological tracing dates back to the first television transmission in 1960, with television traditionally being produced in the cities of Guayaquil and Quito. In addition to early news reports, television production has relied on local theatre actors, particularly those with a comedic background. One particular show, the sitcom Mis Adorables Entenados, produced by TV station Ecuavisa in the 1980s, can certainly be considered an influential predecessor for subsequent comedy from Guayaquil, indirectly informing a film like Sexy Montañita. The sitcom starred four brothers and a devoted mother, each brother loosely representing a particular stereotype in Ecuadorian society. Felipe, the youngest of the entenados, not only featured a Caucasian phenotype but, according to David Macías Barres, also adopted “the discourse and the praxis of the dominant group” (2019, 64). In other words, Felipe acted as a wealthy, white man from Guayaquil,

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and made fun of his older brothers using the derogatory “cholo”.5 Emerging from that tradition, the character of Mike in Sexy Montañita is also a white man from Guayaquil, without a job but with the wealth of his father at his disposal, able to trick his way to Montañita and bully his friends with no repercussions (Fig. 5.4). The journey from Felipe to Mike can seem farfetched, but considering the anthropological tracing of local television comedy, this argument holds some ground. After Mis adorables entenados, stereotypical representations in local television continued in the 1990s and 2000s. While Quito-based comedy was also popular, including sitcoms like Dejémonos de vainas (1991–1999), the comedic tradition that best preceded Sexy Montañita is

Fig. 5.4 Family photo Archivo GRANASA

from

TV

sitcom

Mis

Adorables

Entenados.

 Defining the term “cholo” poses substantial challenges. Particularly in the Andean region during colonial times, the label cholo or chola was attributed to the offspring of mixed-race citizens, specifically between indigenous and Black peoples within a strict caste system. More recently, Macías Barres alludes to the verb “cholear” in Peruvian and Ecuadorian Spanish, meaning “to treat someone contemptuously” (2019, 4). The use of “cholo” for self-­ representation purposes is also analysed by Macías Barres, also referring to “native peoples in the coastal strip of the provinces of Manabí, Santa Elena, and Guayas in Ecuador (1–2). 5

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the one produced in Guayaquil.6 Alberto Pablo Rivera himself had played upper-class men in previous television roles, being the heir of a family dynasty in Max y los whatevers (Max and the whatevers, 2013–2014), and the archetypical wealthy villain in Me enamoré de una pelucona (I fell in love with a posh woman 2010). In both productions, the divide between the haves and have-nots is distinguishable, and follows a long tradition of class representation that encourages such a divide. Other examples include Tres familias (Three families 2014–2020), comparing the family affairs of the upper, middle, and lower classes; La taxista (The taxi driver 2010–2011), about an indigenous taxi driver (played by a fair-skinned actress) who falls in love with the heir of a big corporation; and La Trinity (2016–2020), alluding to Isla Trinitaria, a low-income sector in the outskirts of Guayaquil. Commonalities, however, are not limited to character archetypes, but also include misogynistic, racial, and homophobic undertones. The improvisational dialogue of Sexy Montañita is clearly problematic, particularly if taken outside the societal context of Ecuador. Television comedy had resorted to similar sexual innuendos and inappropriate portrayals of race and orientation for decades. According to Alexandra Ayala-Marín and Pamela Cruz Páez, the sitcoms Mi recinto (My precinct 2001–2014) and La pareja feliz (The happy couple 2009–2014) were taken off the air after not complying with new regulations related to these issues (2016, 267–276). These two sitcoms constitute spin-offs from parody show Vivos (previously Ni en vivo, ni en directo); due to the popularity of certain of its characters, they were given their own stand-alone shows. Compadre Garañon in Mi recinto portrays a highly sexualised Montuvio character, unable to control himself around women. La Mofle in La pareja feliz is an unhappy married woman, despised by her husband, and prone to anger issues. Interestingly, Compadre Garañon is played by actor Fernando Villaroel, featured in Sexy Montañita and producer of several of Rivera’s previous television roles. It is important to highlight that this particular representation of women in relation to male-dominated structures of capital and power is not limited to Sexy Montañita or local television comedy, but a reflection of 6  A counterpart example from Quito-based television comedy can be found in the film Zuquillo Express (West 2010). Based on the TV show Las Zuquillo (2005–2009), it represents a tendency towards transformation in local television, with successful formulas being repackaged in different genres and formats (Cruz, Valarezo Quevedo and Castañeda 2016). As such, a parody like Vivos gave birth to stand-alone sitcoms La mofle and Mi recinto, but also the soap La novela del Cholito (2007–2008), based loosely on television reporter José Delgado.

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society that can be identified across the board. Recalling the example of Sicarios Manabitas, women are also relegated to traditional household roles and expected beauty standards. Here, a woman’s validation is directly linked to her beauty, and, more specifically, her beauty in the eyes of powerful men who can offer security. In Sicarios, the male gaze is particularly evident, for instance, when Agamenón’s wife is introduced, with the camera moving from bottom to top, simulating the hitman’s point of view. Women are constantly told to “prepare meals” and “serve men” and seem to find a relief from labour (in this case inside the household) if they are able to acquire financial security from men by means of their beauty. What makes this assumption more revealing is that these films seem to suggest that women are content, and even encourage these expected roles. In other words, these portrayals naturalise traditional gender roles for women, specifically regarding expectations of beauty and, depending on social status, housework. Women seem to comply to these expectations as a means to acquire security, but even within the ‘safe’ boundaries of male-­ dominated households, they still appear to be confined to delimited spaces (such as the kitchen) indoors. The mentioned influences, and their adaptation to local practices and contexts, coincide with theories on the vernacular previously discussed. Being primarily a comedy intended for local entertainment, Sexy Montañita draws from a localised humour that does not require extensive explanations or build up, with the idea of Montañita as a prime spring break destination already ingrained in a local collective imaginary. The film also corresponds to similar appropriations in EBT films, both admitting to a commercial entertainment purpose. Just as EBT films would inadvertently parody foreign conventions, Sexy Montañita does so by attempting to mimic these influences, relying on a mockumentary style that in itself carries connotations of parody. Its oppositional or subaltern component takes place when failing to fully achieve this goal, due to limitations in production and aesthetic values. These limitations are precisely what makes them nationally popular, resonating with mass audiences that are accustomed to these representations in  local television comedy. Finally, Sexy Montañita seems be distinguished from high-art forms in two ways. First, director Alberto Pablo Rivera chose to write his own script instead of waiting for the right one to come along (Redacción La Revista 2014), which can imply an intention of self-expression or self-censorship from state institutions like CNCine. And secondly, the problematic humour found in Sexy Montañita can unintentionally position the film on a lower standing compared to other theatrically released features from the indie subfield. Despite

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these concerns, Sexy Montañita was able to capitalise on their mass appeal with the inclusion of cameos from several television actors, a trend also found in other privately funded films, in doing so also pointing to cultural forms that preceded the film.

State Media and Vernacular Cinema “in its own terms” Certainly, the example of Sexy Montañita consolidates many of the tendencies of an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema during the Ley de Cine years. It helps argue for the vernacular as a terminology that clusters films that present a localised practice and appeal to the masses, are set apart from local bourgeois films, and intentionally oppose high art, in terms of both aesthetics and the production practices that conceive them. This vernacular is not isolated from foreign influences but considering the process of mestizaje or race-mixing in Latin America, local cultural forms have weaved an intrinsic foreignness into their own cinematic identities. Practically, the vernacular must resort to other sources of capital acumen, apart from CNCine support and validation from the international film circuit. Instead, this vernacular subfield relies on success formulas from television, usually featuring a recognisable cast to secure a mass appeal and the possibility of theatrical distribution. Consequently, and expanding on Ponce-Cordero’s question for EBT films during the presidency of Rafael Correa, is it fair to expect the revolutionary ideals of Socialism for the 21st century to reverse instances of exclusion for a local vernacular cinema, if these hold on to an underlying “neoliberalism from below”? To answer this question, and taking into account the analysis included in Chaps. 2 and 3, it is important to reiterate the process that resulted in the 2006 Ley de Cine and the creation of CNCine. Rather than being an imposition from the state, this film policy came about after decades of efforts from the local filmmaking community, with CNCine quickly surpassing the responsibilities delineated in the initial text. Particularly for the example of EBT films, these films already operated outside theatrical distribution before the 2006 Ley de Cine, and this status quo was mostly maintained by both parties throughout the duration of the film law. As CNCine adapted to the requirements of Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana, the allocation of state monies diversified into categories such as low-­ budget, peoples and nationalities, and community cinemas. But more

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than aiming for the requirements of these categories, as this chapter has analysed, the vernacular subfield worked under a different validation structure altogether. Even when moving towards higher production values or technological expertise, the mass appeal of the vernacular necessarily places it at odds with more traditional modes of cinema, and the value expectations been built over time in a world cinema context. If prior forms of entertainment like television and theatre constitute a more direct predecessor for the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema, then looking at how these were impacted by the legal framework of Socialism for the 21st century can be helpful. Evidently, mass media constituted a more immediate concern of President Rafael Correa, compared to cinemas. According to the Latin American Observatory of Media Regulation and Convergence, the state seized several media companies belonging to bankers William and Roberto Isaías in 2008, a result of an ongoing litigation case (Observacom 2017). By 2016, the state-run Empresa de Medios Públicos de Comunicación (Public Media Company, EMPCO) had conglomerated more than 20 public media services, ranging from television, radio, and press. It is through these that the weekly Enlace ciudadano (Citizen’s link) was broadcast, what Correa arguably presented as a counterbalance for private media, repeatedly characterised as “corrupt”. But more precisely for the forms of television entertainment related to an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema, two seemly contradicting frameworks can be briefly mentioned. First, among many other articles related to journalism, the allocation of radio and television frequencies, and the advertisement sector, the 2013 Ley de Comunicación required at least 60 percent of television programming between 6:00 and 18:00 to be filled with local content (Asamblea Nacional 2013). This requirement was expected to boost local television production, but in practice, many local stations resorted to re-runs of local comedies or dumbed-down talking shows. High-rating TV shows, like Reinoso’s La Pareja Feliz and Villaroel’s Mi recinto, could not fit into this schedule due to their mature content, but even when programmed in different time slots, these were heavily censored by SUPERCOM (Superintendence of Information and Communication), the state media regulator. How then to interpret the state’s influence in local media, in relation to an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema? The legal framework described above suggests a role of an arbitrator rather than a promoter, with certain exceptions found in CNCine’s dedicated categories for vernacular films described

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above.7 Reiterating Koven’s suggestion to study the vernacular on “its own terms, its own level” (Koven 2006, 19), and in line with Gabriela Alemán’s conclusion for EBT films, “it is inadvisable to either valorize or demonize ‘exploitation’ movies; like the culture that produced them, they are complex and filled with contradiction” (Alemán, At the Margin of the Margins: Contemporary Ecuadorian Exploitation Cinema and the Local Pirate Market 2009, 272). In that spirit, vernacular films can certainly be impacted by their immediate political reality. However, as the anthropological tracing method used in this chapter has revealed, these films are also a result of previous forms of entertainment, and continue to aspire, like their indie counterparts, to commercial distribution in local theatres. In other words, despite the ambiguous and at times contradictory state rhetoric, the vernacular in Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century serves to maintain the hegemonic system that paradoxically also nurtures its own cinematic identity. The following chapter explores these ambiguous articulations for community cinema, where more upfront oppositional stances are expected.

7  One promising initiative was the Sistema Nacional de Difusión or National Distribution Plan (SND), promoted by CNCine. It sought to establish a network of exhibition partners that included local governments, higher education institutions, and consulates and embassies abroad. CNCine served as a distribution agent that contacted filmmakers and made Ecuadorian films available for these institutions, in doing so seeking to diversify the exhibition sector (Redacción Cultura El Telégrafo 2015). However, SND was never intended to counter exhibition conglomerates, and remained a short-lived initiative.

CHAPTER 6

Cinema and Ecuador’s Buen Vivir: Negotiating Coloniality in the Community

As previous chapters have concluded, the neoliberal tendencies of Ecuadorian cinema discussed in Chap. 2 continue to permeate the local industry despite the revolutionary rhetoric found in Socialism for the 21st century, including its memory articulations. After exploring commercially released narrative features, documentaries, and films that operate at the margins of the local industry yet maintain similar aspirations of success, this chapter turns to works that explicitly seek to oppose coloniality and instead prioritise the needs and rights of the community. Considering its historical oppositional stance and associations with progressive movements, this chapter argues that community cinema presents varying degrees of compliance and contestation as it sees fit for the benefit of its communities. Two theoretical debates help substantiate this argument, having directly or indirectly informed state policy during Ecuador’s Socialism for the 21st century, and being intrinsically linked to the community: the concept of Buen Vivir or Good Living, briefly mentioned in Chap. 2; and regional theories on Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, openly embraced by Latin America’s left-leaning governments. These debates help articulate a definition of community cinema as understood by local community filmmakers, before comparing it to actual film practices. The case studies for this chapter, Javier con I, Íntag (Javier with I, Íntag, 2016) and Vengo Volviendo (Here and there, 2015), exemplify two options for community cinema in Ecuador: actively opposing instances of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_6

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hegemony, at the expense of state support but prioritising the needs of the community; or benefiting from state support, emulating preferred production processes while subtly commenting on social issues. This chapter opens with a necessary debate around the concept of Buen Vivir or Good Living. In Chap. 2, Buen Vivir was presented as an alternative to neoliberalism that informed policy reform during Socialism for the 21st century. Based on Andean cosmologies, Buen Vivir was defined briefly as living in harmony with fellow citizens and with nature (Artaraz, Calestani and Trueba 2021). In practice, however, the official interpretation was much more nuanced. For the local film industry, it translated into highly technical processes, with clearly defined goals that help explain its emphasis on commercial exhibition. Therefore, in addition to the state’s definition, this chapter expands on alternative interpretations of Buen Vivir that challenge and openly criticise the government, including readings from indigenous thinkers and left-leaning intellectuals. This analysis helps contextualise film expressions that stand outside CNCine and propose additional means to contest and negotiate neoliberalism. It also highlights the complexity of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, presenting comparable ambiguities that make it difficult to agree on a shared path forward for the local industry. Yet these apparently opposing understandings of Buen Vivir do converge in a shared rejection of Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, a second theoretical debate explored in this chapter. Understood as the underlying legacies of colonialism that still permeate Latin American society, particularly regarding race and capital, Coloniality of Knowledge and Power can also be challenged in the film text, a proposition based on Patricia Vilches’ idea of negotiated spaces (2019), explored in this chapter. With this preamble, this chapter continues to focus on film expressions that emerge from the community, presented here as a negotiated space from which efforts towards vindication had historically taken place. Although initially assumed to be associated only with peoples and nationalities, and not seeking a profit, community cinema is instead presented as actively engaged with the needs and context of its particular community, with the director as its representative. The two case studies considered in this chapter, Javier con I, Intag (2016) and Vengo Volviendo (2015), prioritise “making in community” as a means to “nurture community”, the two preconditions proposed by filmmaker Pocho Álvarez to define a community cinema categorisation for Ecuadorian cinema (Álvarez, Ecuador 2014).

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Consequently, this chapter closes with a textual analysis of the mentioned case studies, highlighting cinema as a space for negotiation. In Javier con I, testimonies from the community are contrasted with President Rafael Correa’s televised weekly address Enlace ciudadano, establishing a clear oppositional stance against the mining activities sponsored by the government. For Vengo Volviendo, contestation and compliance becomes evident in narrative themes that centre on livelihood-driven migration, environmental concerns, and colonial undertones. Also, this film presents a business model that encourages participatory video practices from the community, while also benefiting from CNCine. In both cases, aesthetic decisions are tailored to the needs of the community, even when framed under an established production company, as in the case of Vengo Volviendo. Through these analyses, a case is made for the community to position itself as a space where the counter-hegemonic and decolonial rhetoric proposed by Ecuador’s Socialism for the 21st century, and more specifically Buen Vivir, is made evident, even when seemingly compromising maters of financing and sustainability.

An Elusive Definition of Ecuador’s Buen Vivir Among Latin America’s progressive governments during the first decade of the 21st century, particularly in the Andean region, concepts such as Vivir Bien (Sumak Qamaña) in Bolivia or Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay) in Ecuador became quite commonplace in policymaking. The idea of a ‘good life’ inspired by ancestral knowledge was quickly incorporated into state documentation and new constitutions. Naturally, these shifts were expected to inform society at large, including the film industry. But just as Chap. 2 exemplified regarding film legislation, and to an extent Chap. 3 helped corroborate through the regional tensions between Third Cinema and neoliberalism, defining a joint alternative to market-driven practices constitutes a contentious subject. Therefore, this section analyses three different understandings of Buen Vivir in Ecuador during Socialism for the 21st century. It expands on the state’s official interpretation briefly mentioned in Chap. 2 and presents additional readings that criticise the use of the term for political purposes. These theoretical approaches provide a broader context to analyse film expressions that assume a distance from the preferred path towards commercial exhibition, yet also highlight their own set of ambiguities and debates.

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Based on the writings of then development secretary René Ramírez, scholar Philip Altmann (2013) suggested that the state’s definition of Buen Vivir reinforced traditional ideas of development, as mentioned in Chap. 2. Additionally, Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld, and Rosseau reached a similar conclusion through another politician, Fander Falconí, stating that official discourses of Buen Vivir “describe a neoinstitutional development paradigm in which citizens enjoy expanding and modernised public goods and services” (2018, 403). These two affirmations align with what Victor Bretón identifies as the first of three strands of Ecuador’s Buen Vivir. Heavily reinforced by the administration, this first strand informed the Constitution and government planning documents that derived from it. As Altmann and Lyall et al. also conclude, Buen Vivir was equated to a particular ideal of development and progress, achieved primarily through state institutions and involving highly technical processes that expand over several years (Bretón Solo de Zaldívar 2017, 191). In this definition, the extraction of natural resources is seen as a necessary step to help fund social programmes and eradicate poverty, a position that received much criticism due to its environmental impact (Acosta 2011, Gudynas 2009), and prompting alternative terminology such as neo-extractivismo progresivo or progressive neo-extractivism (Svampa 2011). Considering the particularities of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, this official interpretation of Buen Vivir resonates with production practices that developed after the 2006 Ley de Cine and centred around CNCine, as discussed in previous chapters. For instance, the success of the local industry was primarily measured by a set number of films to be produced and released in commercial theatres in a given year. This goal was stated in the National Plan for Good Living 2013–2017 (Senplades 2013), a key government document that established guidelines for every aspect of policy and administration, including cinema. The contradiction lays in aiming for counter-hegemonic and participatory cultural forms and industries while, simultaneously, also evaluating these goals through the very means by which hegemony is maintained, mainly the monopolistic practices of the film exhibition sector. As such, this goal is just as paradoxical as trying to protect the environment through extractivism. Moreover, as Bretón argues, if this approximation of Buen Vivir is primarily based on Aristotelian philosophical thinking (2017, 192), then alluding to an indigenous cosmology might more appropriately serve a political purpose rather than a revolutionary one. Similarly, if the goal for Ecuadorian cinema is to secure a livelihood and financial stability for local filmmakers, achieved

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through mass-scale practices and a highly technical structure for film production, then instances of participatory, diverse, and counter-hegemonic film practices, as highlighted in legal texts, can take a subordinate stance. Adding to the state’s interpretation of Buen Vivir, a second strand identified by Bretón is the one held by indigenous intellectuals like Atahualpa Oviedo (2012) and Carlos Viteri Gualinga (2002). Primarily conceptualised under the local Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (hereby CONAIE), this second strand argues for a “genuine” Sumak Kawsay as found in indigenous cosmology (2017, 195). As such, it rejects the state’s ideals of neo-developmentalism and linear progress, instead deeming it only an ornament for broader socialist interests.1 But Bretón also points out that this interpretation was conveniently brought to the forefront as CONAIE and Alianza PAIS (Correa’s political party) parted ways around 2012, and has arguably been absent from previous national debates, including those propelled by indigenous peoples and nationalities in the 1980s and 1990s (ibid.). This apparent convenience also resonates with Lyall et al.’s ethnographic research on the everyday use of Buen Vivir in the Ecuadorian Andes and Amazonia. It concludes that state discourses do not always translate into deep transformation for its subjects but can instead become “strategic resources for marginalised actors to manoeuvre within limited spaces of political engagement” (2018, 413). Assuming a political convenience to any criticism of the state’s Buen Vivir that comes from indigenous organisations can certainly be problematic. However, as Lyall et al. suggest, there is an element of manoeuvring required when standing at the margins, particularly when dealing with limited political power. Related to Ecuadorian cinema, this second interpretation of Buen Vivir echoes with many of the concerns of the Third Cinema movement discussed in Chap. 3. Neo-developmentalism and 1  Cornel Ban (2013) provides a historical account of what is meant by neo-­developmentalism. First coined in 2003 by Brazilian economist and policy-maker Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, it quickly gained traction amongst like-minded thinkers and politicians in Latin America, consolidated in a manifesto called “The ten theses of neo-developmentalism”. Ban summarises: “According to its advocates, neo-developmentalism entails a new form of state activism. Its core is a national capitalist development program meant to guide the transition of developing countries away from the Washington Consensus” (300). Similarly, the term “Washington Consensus” was first used by John Williamson. It refers to a set of policies agreed upon by Washington-based organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, suggested for Latin American countries in the 1950s, in line with traditional ideas of development. Williamson also provides a historical account of the term (2009).

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linear progress can be compared to achieving a sustainable local industry, with films progressively showing higher production values and international critical appraisal. A non-linear approach to a national film industry stands closer to García Espinosa’s Imperfect Cinema, which questions the conditions imposed by the cultured elite and instead seeks a disinterested ideal (1969). The closest thing to a representative of a true Third Cinema in Ecuador, according to filmmaker and festival director Manolo Sarmiento, can arguably be found in filmmaker Pocho Álvarez (De la Vega Velasteguí 2016, 11). Yet even Álvarez, who has managed to maintain an oppositional film practice since the 1970s, had to come to terms with institutions like CNCine, as this chapter explores in subsequent sections. If considering filmmakers from indigenous organisations, a new generation of filmmakers like Eriberto Gualinga from the Sarayacu community can more appropriately suit this definition of Buen Vivir, although an internalised aspiration for progress in film practices can also be argued for.2 Finally, Bretón concludes with a third interpretation proposed by left-­ leaning, non-indigenous intellectuals like Arturo Escobar (1999) and Alberto Acosta (2013). Contrary to the alternative idea of development in the state’s Buen Vivir, or the non-developmental and ‘genuine’ Sumak Kawsay of indigenous organisations, this third strand sees Buen Vivir as an “alternative to development”, rooted in the ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples. Rather than rejecting development altogether, this third strand prioritises unpolluted development practices, devoid of “western hegemonic discourses” (Bretón Solo de Zaldívar 2017, 196). Bretón, however, wonders whether this utopic conception comes dangerously close to attempting to construct an “ideal native”, a prototypical subject imposed by the dominant group to best represents such yearnings.3 2  This understanding of progress does not necessarily equate to filmmakers like Gualinga conceding to foreign, and capital-oriented expectations of progress. Rather, as with any cultural form in Latin America, an unavoidable foreignness is appropriated and internalised in a local cinematic identity in construction. As Gualinga explains in the Canadian television series Native People (2014), community media can be a tool for consultation, memory, and preservation of traditional values and practices, not limited to social protest. More practically, Gualinga describes success in these terms: “Ese es el objetivo: tener un departamento muy completo, adecuadamente equipado, ya establecernos como la primera productora Kichwa Amazónica del Ecuador” (That is the objective: to have a very complete department, properly equipped, and to establish ourselves as the first Kichwa Amazonian production company in Ecuador). 3  Here, Bretón suggests the works of Alcida Ramos (1992) and Astrid Ulloa (2004) exploring the ‘hyperreal Indian’ and ‘ecological native’ respectively.

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Karolina Romero highlights these approximations in Ecuadorian documentaries about indigenous peoples between 2000 and 2008, where the idea of the “good savage” assumes a natural relationship with Mother Earth, with any external contaminant portrayed as evil (2010, 204). These approximations correlate to Charlotte Gleghorn’s conclusions regarding indigenous filmmaking in Latin America: Contesting these stereotypes and the film methodologies that sustain them is often one of the key motivations for making films for Indigenous directors, in addition to offering a vital political instrument to articulate pointed critiques of grievances committed against communities, to enact resistance and foster cultural transfer across generations. (2017, 168)

As noted throughout this book, Ecuadorian cinema is inevitably shaped by the foreign. Attempting to completely avoid any “western hegemonic discourses” would erase the very notion of a local cinematic identity, a conclusion also true for Latin America as a whole. According to Ana María López, “cinema was one of the principal tools through which the desire for and imitation of the foreign became paradoxically identified as a national characteristic shared by many Latin American nations” (2000, 151). Therefore, attempting to reject the foreign altogether would also translate into negating those foreign characteristics that have become national, by means not limited to reappropriation, parody, and the popular. Additionally, a local cinema that is only preoccupied with nature and ancestral knowledge could also betray cinema’s own contradictory ethos, being simultaneously “a product of capitalism and an art form that can resist and reimagine it through specific content and formal structures” (Vich and Barrow 2020, 4). This discussion has revealed that if Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century is to be envisioned through the lens of Buen Vivir, even if imagined outside the state’s official interpretation, it can also be prone to a variety of readings. If an alternative to the preferred habitus in Ecuadorian cinema is to be proposed, in light of Escobar and Acosta’s concept of Buen Vivir, it would need to negotiate the foundational foreign origins of Latin American cinema, as well as its underlying financial needs. Secondly, responding to Oviedo and Viteri Gualinga’s appeals for a “genuine” Sumak Kawsay, a ‘genuine’ Ecuadorian cinema can arguably be found in filmmakers like Pocho Álvarez or Eriberto Gualinga. However, even these apparent oppositional instances require some level of negotiation with

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state discourses and institutions. Finally, while this book has been vocal about the many inconsistencies between CNCine, its legal framework, and the reality of film production in the country, having somewhat stable film institutions can certainly constitute a starting point for further sustainability and operational success.

Negotiating Coloniality of Knowledge and Power One characteristic of note, identified by Bretón as a common denominator in the many understandings of Buen Vivir described above, is what Anibal Quijano labels Coloniality of Knowledge and Power (2000). At least on paper, the government, indigenous organisations, and left-leaning intellectuals seem to concur in condemning unequal power structures. Nevertheless, as scholar Sarah Radcliffe highlights for the state’s Buen Vivir in particular, colonial-modern configurations that exclude on the basis of power and difference are also being reproduced (2018, 417), which defeats the purpose of the state’s alleged revolutionary ideals. Since the goal of this chapter is to analyse film expressions that operate outside underlying definitions of success for the local industry, particularly regarding theatrical distribution, this section offers some necessary theoretical understandings of Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, prior to comparing them to local film practices. It is argued that cinema, as with any other cultural form in Latin America, constitutes what Patricia Vilches describes as a negotiated space (2019), in which colonial undertones can theoretically be assessed and contested. The term Coloniality of Knowledge and Power is usually attributed to scholar Anibal Quijano (2000), but it continues to be revised and theorised by a broader network of Latin American intellectuals called Grupo Modernidad / Colonialidad / Descolonialidad (Modernity / Coloniality / Decoloniality Group). In essence, Coloniality of Knowledge and Power is articulated around the axes of capital and race. According to Quijano, a new capitalist world order emerged during colonial times, paving the way for exploitative practices like slavery and serfdom (216). These practices positioned race as the differentiating factor between conqueror and conquered, dominant and dominated, and continued after independence. Quijano considers that, while racial divisions constitute the most visible instance of coloniality, its “most significant historical implication is the emergence of a Euro-centred capitalist colonial/modern world power that is still with us” (218).

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Quijano’s quote can be further expanded upon. For one, Quijano positions Europe as the powerful centre from which unequal standings were established, predominantly Spain and Portugal for the case of Latin America. During colonial times, the divide between the colonies and the so-called modern world was not only geographical but, as Quijano implies, it involved an element of economic power. Latin America became a source of raw materials made available through extractivism, namely invasive mining activities and exploitative monoculture practices. With the rise of the independent movement, the newly formed republics maintained these divisions, with gradual attempts towards self-determination, later to be conceptualised through contemporary theories on decoloniality. The fact that Quijano considers these standings to be “still with us” suggests that such attempts are yet to be resolved, hinting at instances of current contestation. Following on from Quijano’s assertions, and trying to translate these concepts to Ecuadorian cinema, it can tentatively be considered a space of negotiation and reorientation, as proposed by Patricia Vilches in Dis/ locating Space in Latin America (2019). In an introductory text for a compendium on the urban, rural, cultural, and the body politic, Vilches uses Pablo Neruda’s poem Alturas del Machu Picchu (1950) to highlight the idea of negotiated spaces in Latin America. Vilches argues that the spatial turn that occurs in these spaces has been a constant battle since the colonial conquest and continues in modern-day neoliberalism (7), suggesting that these colonial legacies remain. Evidently, Vilches’ mention of a “spatial turn” already echoes the “decolonial turn” or reversal of a colonial legacy, as extensively studied by Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Robert Cavooris (2017). Moreover, since this turn assumes a movement away from modern-day neoliberalism, this political ideology is seen as a potential successor to the previous extractive practices of colonialism. Quijano and Vilches’ theories apply productively to Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, in the sense that both Socialism for the 21st century and the local film output during this period appear to coincide in a shared rejection of neoliberalism without necessarily agreeing on a unifying solution for the local film industry. These discrepancies are reinforced by the interpretations of Buen Vivir previously discussed, but, as Vilches would argue regarding negotiated spaces, this contestation is central to Latin America’s identity formation, at both a local and a national level, as well as a regional and a supranational one. In the case of Ecuadorian cinema, a similar reasoning applies, with local filmmakers partaking in varying levels

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of compliance and resistance to its encompassing political and economic context, in doing so inevitably developing a concrete local cinematic identity. It is important to highlight, as the discussion of Buen Vivir already suggested, that the spatial turn that takes place in Ecuadorian cinema can also choose to maintain some characteristics of neoliberalism, as some of the most recent policy developments attest to. Bolivian feminist sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has written extensively on the subject of “internal colonialism”, a term that consolidates different conceptualisations of colonialism in Latin America. Scholar Romina Accossatto (2017) identifies several sources that informed the term coined by Cusicanqui, ranging from Franz Fanon’s decolonial critique to Pablo Gonzalez Casanova’s economic dependency theory for Latin American countries, as well as Maurice Halbwachs’ theories of collective memory (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010  in Accossatto 2017). In addition to these theoretical strands, Cusicanqui also enriches her idea of internal colonialism with oral histories and personal vindication efforts such as the Aymara movement in the 1970s and 1980s in Bolivia. Here, Cusicanqui’s internal colonialism can be summarised as a by-product of structures of dominance, despite anti-­ hegemonic efforts: …en la contemporaneidad boliviana opera, en forma subyacente, un modo de dominación sustentado en un horizonte colonial de larga duración, al cual se han articulado, pero sin superarlo ni modificarlo completamente, los ciclos más recientes del liberalismo y el populismo. Estos horizontes recientes han conseguido tan sólo refuncionalizar las estructuras coloniales de larga duración, convirtiéndolas en modalidades de colonialismo interno que continúan siendo cruciales a la hora de explicar la estratificación de la sociedad boliviana y los mecanismos específicos de constitución identitaria en el ámbito politico. …In Bolivian contemporaneity, an underlying mode of domination based on a long-term colonial horizon operates, to which the most recent cycles of liberalism and populism have been articulated, but without completely overcoming or modifying it. These recent horizons have only managed to re-functionalise long-lasting colonial structures, turning them into modalities of internal colonialism that continue to be crucial when it comes to explaining the stratification of Bolivian society and the specific mechanisms of identity constitution in the political sphere. (Rivera Cusicanqui, Violencias (re) encubiertas en Bolivia 2010, 36–38, my translation)

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Certainly, if comparing Vilches’ proposed spaces of negotiation with Cusicanqui’s internal colonialism, then the complexity of Latin American societies and their local cultural forms – more specifically those that are not indigenous to the region, such as cinema  – begins to make sense. Considering the previous discussions on the role of western hegemonic practices and the unavoidable commercial ethos of cinema, a complete decolonial turn seems unfeasible. As Chap. 4 exemplifies, even vernacular film practices that operate outside traditional avenues of production and that seem to actively oppose them carry an underlying aspiration towards progress and development inspired by Hollywood. How then to negotiate such articulations without erasing the very fabric of a local film identity that still adheres to these conventions? A tentative approach would be closer to Walter Mignolo’s decolonial option, which interrogates and provides the option of either abiding by or rejecting any particular trace of the colonial. In this approach, hegemonic legacies are recognised and questioned, developing in a sense a level of self-awareness for the way in which cultural forms have traditionally come into being, in this case production practices in a local film industry. Mignolo writes: The de-colonial option opens up as de-linking and negativity from the perspective of the spaces that have been silenced, repressed, demonized, devaluated by the triumphant chant of self-promoting modern epistemology, politics and economy and its internal dissensions (honest liberals, theologians of liberation, post-moderns, post-structuralists, Marxists for different brands). (Mignolo and Escobar 2013, 2)

In line with Mignolo’s argument, Coloniality of Knowledge and Power in Ecuadorian cinema can begin to be explored through the spaces that have been “silenced, repressed, demonized, devaluated”, in order to provide a way of de-linking its colonial legacy. A priori, as previous chapters have concluded, what has been “devaluated” or dismissed in terms of local cinema can be equated to film expressions that fail to follow a particular path towards commercial success and critical acclaim. One of these expressions constitutes community cinema, expected to showcase more upfront, oppositional, and disinterested practices, produced primarily by means of the community. Community is portrayed as another space of negotiation, in which implications of foreignness, capital gain, and access to knowledge are constantly being revised, challenged, and rearticulated. It is in these spaces that the colonial undertones that failed to be abolished in Latin

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America’s “first independence”, or neoliberal inclinations of current times, are expected to be revised, offering a tangible option to the individualistic and auteur cinematic aspirations.

Buen Vivir and Community Cinema: Making in Community Considering that Coloniality of Knowledge and Power is based on the axes of capital and race, spaces expected to experience silence, repression, demonisation, or devaluation should certainly correlate to these social divides. Indeed, as director and scholar Camilo Luzuriaga had stated, Ecuadorian cinema is primarily concentrated in a few, privileged individuals, not necessarily Kichwa, Shuar, or Afro-Ecuadorian (2014, 22). Therefore, taking into account the spatial dimension of Vilches’ negotiated spaces, this section explores the community, and the cinema produced through it, as a space for contestation par excellence. Just as Chap. 3 situated preferred production practices within the context of CNCine and the underlying market forces that still dictate instances of value and worth, this and subsequent sections analyse community cinema and its relation to this same context. Based primarily on Gumucio Dagron’s compilation on Latin American community cinema (2014), particularly Pocho Álvarez’s own conceptualisations, a particular definition of community for Ecuadorian cinema begins to emerge, with state institutions like CNCine evidencing comparable debates and ambiguities. The publication El cine comunitario en América Latina y el Caribe (Gumucio Dagron 2014) constitutes an essential resource for community cinema in the region.4 Its third edition, printed in Ecuador through CNCine, includes two opening letters by the then Minister of Culture and Heritage, Francisco Borja, and the director of CNCine, Juan Martín Cueva. Already, these texts could be interpreted as contradicting each other. On one hand, Borja quotes Pocho Álvarez, whose studies are included in the book, to expose the lack of cooperation between state officials and indigenous communities (i). On the other, Cueva points to the publication itself as a testament to fruitful collaborations between the 4  Cine comunitario has proven to be a difficult term to translate, with every permutation available between ‘community’ or ‘commune’; and ‘film’, ‘filmmaking’, ‘media’, or ‘cinema’. To avoid any interpretation that limits the scope of cine comunitario to just production practices, ‘community cinema’ is the chosen translation.

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two (ii). Although Cueva acknowledges that CNCine is only “harvesting this ripe fruit planted by others” (referring to Gumucio, research director Alquimia Peña, and Pocho Álvarez himself), he then mentions the community cinema summit in which the book was launched as an example of collaborations that could lead to long-term benefits for the parties involved. In other words, Cueva attributes this neglect to poor decision-­ making and understanding of the complexity of “other forms of storytelling” that are not aimed for “commercial consumption” (ibid.). To contextualise, Borja had held the ministry’s office for two months at the time of this publication, while Cueva had directed CNCine since 2013, carrying plenty of experience as a seasoned filmmaker prior to assuming this position. The event that hosted the book launch, Primer Encuentro Internacional de Cine Comunitario (First International Community Cinema Summit), was indeed the first of its kind in Ecuador, gathering representatives from 14 different cities (Redacción Cultura 2014). The goal of the event, in addition to the exchange of ideas and best practices, was also to propose relevant legislation, particularly regarding community media, and to engage with community networks in Latin America. Therefore, while Borja and Cueva’s assertions appear contradictory, they are partially correct, given an evident lack of cooperation, but also an observable inclination towards dialogue. Interestingly, these two texts already signal subtle assumptions about community cinema. First, Borja appears to equate community cinema with indigenous communities, a statement that is questioned in a feature piece by local newspaper El Telégrafo (Redacción Cultura 2014). And secondly, Cueva assumes that these forms of storytelling are not oriented towards profit. Furthermore, in the introductory piece that followed these two opening letters, Alquimia Peña explains that the community groups featured in the book “produce their own work without the intervention of filmmakers”, most of which makes use of the audio-visual as a means to “exercise their communication rights” (Gumucio Dagron 2014, 15). Already, an underlying definition of community cinema is subtly revealed, one that is associated with local peoples and nationalities, not necessarily seeking a profit, and is reliant on audio-visual technologies rather than traditional film stock. In the chapter dedicated to Ecuador, Pocho Álvarez expands on this definition for the local scenario. Álvarez initially describes community as a nuclear articulating entity that feeds into social organisations and invokes the collective imaginary of Andean peoples (2014, 345). As such,

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community is always in construction, providing a space for experimentation, testing, and strengthening of the principles and rights of the collective (346). For Álvarez, these rights are in constant need of reinvidicación or vindication. Community cinema takes its role by offering a means of denunciation and resistance, seeking the superior principles of “defense of mother earth (pakchamana), culture (kikin kawsay) and life (kawsay)” (ibid.). In other words, the common good of the Andean peoples is contrasted with the “historic fence of silence” that traditionally had quieted their voice. Hence, community cinema becomes a tool for visibility. Unsurprisingly, linking community cinema to entrepreneurial endeavours is seen as another means of co-optation or appropriation by Álvarez, who argues that “sponsoring the growth” of community cinema, through either corporations or institutions, can translate into a deeper dependency, a “political management foreign to the historical essence of the community” (ibid.). While Álvarez appears to criticise commercially based private initiatives, he later would do the same for CNCine’s own management. In an interview with local scholar Paola De la Vega Velasteguí, Álvarez explains: Ahora es el Consejo Nacional de Cine el que organiza a los cineastas, el que les dice lo que tienen que hacer, es el que pone la agenda. Hay una diáspora de la organización, y la organización no es una propuesta que conjuga raíces comunes, es una suma individual de gentes que buscan cada uno, concretar su imaginario de cineasta, uno con más fama, otro con alfombra roja, otro con viajes a festivales, pero no hay una propuesta de construir el nosotros. Now it is the National Film Council that organises filmmakers, that tells them what to do and sets the agenda. There is a diaspora of the organisation, and the organisation is not a proposal that combines common roots, it is an individual sum of people who each seek to materialise their imaginary as a filmmaker, one with more fame, another with a red carpet, another with trips to festivals, but there is no proposal to build the “us”. (Álvarez in De la Vega Velasteguí 2016, 37, my translation)

Evidently, Álvarez criticises certain individual interests of local filmmakers, in contrast with an ideal “us”. Here, Álvarez is already suggesting a tentative way by which this “us” should be constructed, that is through “a proposal that combines common roots”, in contrast with one that imposes a particular agenda from the top. Certainly, at the core of this statement lies the terms in which community film practices engage with state institutions like CNCine, particularly with a government that claims to embrace

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Buen Vivir or living in harmony with one another and with nature. Álvarez seems to suggest that state–community interactions, just as with private institutions, can lead to an unwanted sense of dependency and oppression. More precisely, however, Álvarez’s criticism of CNCine aligns with some of Sarah Radcliffe’s conclusions for broader intersectional inequalities and Buen Vivir, that is a decoloniality achieved by “de-linking policy from entrenched colonial-modern understandings of diversity, which impede the realisation of equality” (2018, 430). This statement can open two potential discussion points that need to be addressed, in relation to a local film industry: the place of the filmmaker in community cinema, and the role of national film authorities like CNCine to nurture such communal practices. Regarding authorship, Álvarez quotes Alejandro Santillán, representative of the indigenous community of Sarayacu, to advance a representative stance for the filmmaker: “El cine comunitario, no anula al autor, lo que hace es que el autor, en otras palabras, no se sienta un individuo, sino que se sienta el representante de la comunidad” / “Community cinema does not annul the author, what it does is that the author, in other words, does not feel like an individual, but rather the representative of the community” (in Álvarez 2014, 347). In this sense, community cinema sees the filmmaker as an active member of the community, responsible for properly representing the interests of the community to the outside world. That being said, community cinema does not negate the vision and particularities of the filmmaker. Equally, it does not embrace an auteur approach like Astruc’s caméra-stylo of the French New Wave.5 The representative stance of community cinema is particularly important when analysing Álvarez’s own work and interactions with the community. The role of the filmmaker as representative, however, necessitates considering its own societal positioning. For example, Álvarez includes the work of Catholic priest Carlos Crespi and Swedish explorer Rolf Blomberg when providing a brief retrospective on community cinema in Ecuador. While the work of these pioneers can more precisely be labelled as ‘cinema about peoples and nationalities’ rather than ‘community cinema’, they do adhere to a particular time and place in Ecuadorian history in which such 5  In this approach, the director is considered the primary creative source for a film, compared to more collective understandings of film production in early cinema traditions. As such, the film director is equated to a literary author, hence the terminology caméra-stylo or camera-pen.

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practices were the norm. For instance, Crespi’s Los invencibles Shuaras del Alto Amazonas (The invincible Shuaras of the Upper Amazon, 1926) constitutes the first ethnographic film to be shot in the Ecuadorian Amazon, showcasing the catholic Salesian mission in Shuar communities near the Peruvian border. Its sole purpose was to help fund infrastructural work in this region (Pagnotta 2017), while at the same time promoting a particular image of the local Shuar: “…not a cannibal as foreigners think, but a primitive individual who does not hinder his civilization” (216). As for Blomberg, most of his body of work consisted of documentaries for Swedish television, spanning from the 1930s to the 1970s (Archivo Blomberg n.d.). The intended audience in both instances was a foreign one, in which Ecuadorian peoples and nationalities tended to be portrayed as the primitive and remote other, despite Crespi and Blomberg’s long-­ standing involvement in the local community. Regarding the role of institutions, Álvarez appears supportive of CNCine’s initiatives in Gumucio Dagron’s compilation and not so in De la Vega Velasteguí’s interview two years later. In the former, CNCine is mentioned as the only tangible support that has enabled initiatives like Colectivo Río de la Raya to maintain a consistent operation, with CNCine offering financial support on four consecutive occasions6 (Álvarez, Ecuador 2014, 358). In the latter, as previously quoted, Álvarez’s criticism relies on individual interests surpassing communal ones and allegedly setting the agenda for CNCine. This criticism would be sustained in relation to ICCA, the institution to replace CNCine in 2017, and is also included in a more recent opinion piece by Álvarez, in which he denounces a convenient “closeness” to the newly appointed conservative government. Here, Álvarez rejects an emphasis on employment and foreign capital to secure the growth of a local industry, instead calling for a joint strategy amongst filmmakers (2021). Álvarez’s argument echoes many of the concerns and 6  Even Pocho Álvarez recognises the paradoxical position in which initiatives like Colectivo Río de la Raya find themselves in regarding state support via CNCine. Álvarez observes that CNCine constitutes the backbone of financial support for this collective and concludes that “…pese a haber criticado el modelo de entrega de esos recursos que, a su juicio, ‘no instauran procesos’, se sostiene y financia precisamente a través de ellos. En esa medida, la dependencia de esa política pública y sus iniciativas es muy alta” (...despite having criticized the delivery model of these resources, which, in her opinion, “do not establish processes”, [the collective] is sustained and financed precisely through them. To that extent, the dependence on this public policy and its initiatives is very high) (Ecuador 2014, 357). Here, Álvarez quotes Maritza Chimarro, a filmmaker associated with the collective.

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disagreements previously discussed between filmmaker Camilo Luzuriaga and former CNCine director Jorge Luis Serrano, which, given the tone used by Álvarez, continue to be unresolved. With these insights, Ecuadorian community cinema establishes a distance from the preferred practices or habitus analysed in Chap. 3. Community cinema in the context of Ecuador is primarily associated with peoples and nationalities, although many of these expressions are not necessarily linked to specific groups. Ecuadorian community cinema is also assumed to not seek a profit, with external sponsors like private corporations or national film institutions perceived as encouraging a similar dependency. Instead, community cinema is expected to defend community rights, without the intervention of non-member filmmakers, but rather promoting representatives from the community that can also carry an authorial voice. Moreover, community cinema is also not just about peoples and nationalities, but more concerned with “making in community”, the only requirement highlighted by Álvarez to define this categorisation (2014). Finally, the role of state institutions like CNCine is yet to be defined, primarily due to ongoing disagreements within the local film industry milieu. Certainly, attending to the needs of community cinema can go beyond just making funds available for film production. This proposition is explained by Diana Coryat (2019) in an ethnographic study of a community-based media initiated called El Churo. This study suggests that an Ecuadorian film and audio-visual institution should encourage building and making from the community if intending to maintain long-­ term sustainability. As the following section contends, it is in this support that Coloniality of Knowledge and Power can tentatively be contested and revised.

Colectivo El Churo: Community Media Tailored to Community Needs Buen Vivir, Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, and the negotiated space of community cinema attest to the many understandings, ideals, and expectations of success within the local film industry. Even in its most progressive, left-leaning branches, where a shared rejection of neoliberalism is implied, a joint path forward for the film industry still carries uncertainties. This section begins to pivot towards the tangible praxis of community cinema in Ecuador, in which local initiatives seek to defend

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the rights of the community, while also trying to gain financial sustainability over time. In doing so, the theoretical interpretations explored so far are contrasted with the reality of community practices, concluding that the latter present a much more pragmatic approach towards filmmaking. Thus, the ambiguities and contradictions argued for an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century can also be found in these alternative film expressions: being concerned about financial sustainability and the immediate needs of the community, and engaging with state institutions like CNCine to help fulfil these needs. Building from the decolonial theories previously reviewed, in which the racial ‘other’ continues to be marginalised, demonised, and silenced, and applying them to a community cinema, a comparable marginal status can be expected. While such affirmation is maintained throughout this book, despite the counter-hegemonic rhetoric of its immediate political framework, initiatives like Colectivo El Churo seem to exhibit a degree of success, or, as scholar Diana Coryat states, these are “not just surviving but thriving” (2019). Indeed, Coryat refers to El Churo as one of two successful initiatives in Latin American community media yet ensuring that state support is not a contributing factor for such success. Even when benefiting from CNCine support on several occasions, Coryat considers that El Churo’s stance on human and individual rights was still in need of defending “even though they were supposedly guaranteed by a so-called progressive government” (ibid.). This introduction already suggests a divergence between the interests of the collective and the perceived lack of support from the state. To contextualise, El Churo’s range of action is not limited to community cinema, although it takes part in wider community cinema networks in Latin America. El Churo, whose name already alludes to communication,7 engages in a plethora of media, including “community radio, journalism, community filmmaking, cyberfeminism and capacity-building of communities that are defending their territories” (2019, 67). This statement resonates with Álvarez’s interpretation of community cinema, inevitably linked to the historical need of reinvindicación or vindication. Following on 7  The organisation’s website explains: “El CHURO es el caracol, que se utilizaba como un instrumento de comunicación por los campesinos indígenas de las tierras andinas de Latinoamérica. El CHURO servía para convocar a la minga y a actividades colectivas de la comunidad” (El CHURO is a shell; a symbol of communication between the indigenous communities in the Andean regions in Latin America. El CHURO functioned as a means to call a reunion within a community) (Colectivo El Churo n.d.).

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Gumucio Dagron’s understanding of social sustainability (2005) and Clemencia Rodriguez’s discussion of relevance (2016), Coryat suggests that “organisations whose practices are responsive to their context and to the needs of the communities with whom they work, have a much greater chance to sustain their work over the long haul” (2019, 67). In other words, El Churo’s success depends on being attuned to the context and needs of the community it serves. In addition, Rodríguez contends that the way in which community chooses to communicate stands in direct correlation with these needs. For these decisions to take place, Coryat argues for a socially based and needs-­ oriented sustainability approach that transcends financial responsibilities but does not ignore them altogether. Just as CNCine, and the latter ICCA, had to adapt to ever-changing budget allowances, legal specificities, or the merging of state institutions, at the more granular level, a similar dynamic also holds. Put another way, repeating Álvarez’s implied “proposal that combines common roots” (in De la Vega Velasteguí 2016, 37), a tentative role for film institutions could entail bringing together existing initiatives, or, as Juan Martin Cueva writes, “harvesting the ripe fruit planted by others” (Gumucio Dagron 2014, ii). As such, it would require proper maintenance, assuring that the “soil” of the Ecuadorian cinematic field is nourished enough to allow for a diversity of initiatives. Summarising, a shared rejection of Coloniality of Knowledge and Power can give rise to a scenario that allows for “common roots” to emerge, centred around community. The collective instead of the individual, with the filmmaker as representative, becomes the aim that ties these interests together, ensuring its longevity to the degree to which they continue to attend the needs of the community. Film and media practices are also shaped by these needs, adapting to their intended audiences, social causes, and financial availability. Following on from Coryat’s propositions regarding Colectivo El Churo, such findings can be extended to comparable film projects that had also to negotiate neoliberal practices in the community. Hence, this chapter now turns to two case studies that showcase two approaches to such ideals: Pocho Álvarez’s anti-mining film Javier con I, Íntag (2015) and the CNCine-backed participatory project Vengo Volviendo (Rodas and Páez, 2016). In both cases, the film text is analysed through the communities that these intend to represent, exhibiting major differences in terms of production practices, funding strategies, and overall circulation channels. If communities constitute an effective space for negotiation from where a true decolonial option is provided, the

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cinema that emerges from these communities can certainly showcase a variety of decolonial alternatives, as they are film-producing communities in the local Ecuadorian cinematic field.

Case Study: Javier con I, Íntag (2016) Javier con I follows the story of Javier Ramírez, president of the Junín community near Cotacachi, province of Imbabura, who was unlawfully detained without having committed a crime. Álvarez uses this detention to provide a historical account of mining activities in Junín, particularly the Íntag sector, circumventing the right of self-determination of the community. Interviews with community members are contrasted with President Rafael Correa’s weekly address Enlace Ciudadano, where Ramírez and others are portrayed as subversive, not allowing well-­meaning analysts to produce an environmental impact study. Through accounts from community members, Álvarez builds a narrative that places Correa’s intentions alongside a long history of international corporations appropriating the land, with lasting environmental damage. The film closes with eyewitness testimonies of Ramírez’s detention, arguing for a lack of due process, and providing key evidence which is dismissed at trial. Ramírez is finally freed and reunited with his family. Javier con I echoes many of the social documentary conventions from Third Cinema, particularly Solanas and Getino’s The Hours of the Furnaces (1968). Álvarez also opens with intertitles on a black background, the title of the film being itself a play of words between Javier and Íntag, the controversial mining location. Rather than using a “voice-of-God” narration, Álvarez includes audio from interviews, emphasising key words on the screen. Intertitles are interrupted by an impactful close-up shot of Ramírez, partially in shadows, as he explains the reasons (or the lack thereof) for his detention. This opening scene is followed by a busy courthouse scenario and related protests outside the building, featuring, among others, well-­ known environmental and human rights activist Elsie Monge, former assemblyman and intellectual Alberto Acosta, and singer-songwriter Jaime Guevara. The sequence that follows summarises Álvarez’s argument and explains much of the visual rhetoric included in the film. In similar fashion to Guevara’s cameo in Con mi Corazón en Yambo (2011), a film discussed in the next chapter, his participation entails entertaining protestors, who in this sequence are engaging in traditional indigenous dances and

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celebrations outside the courthouse building. The group is approached by a courthouse employee, backed by police enforcement, explaining that proceedings are unable to continue due to the “noise” outside. If a third warning is to be required (this having been the second), they will have to be detained. Certainly, Álvarez’s point is clear. For him, President Rafael Correa himself, and by extension the state, see social protests as mere “noise” that needs to be silenced if the state’s goal of Buen Vivir is to be achieved, in this case by means of extractivism. In this line, Álvarez relies on signage, in many shapes and sizes, to give voice to the voiceless. Ranging from protest signs, vandalised road signs, and signposts on trees, houses, and other locations in the commune, Álvarez challenges the state’s paradoxical slogan of La Minería para el Buen Vivir (Mining for Good Living), included at beginning of the film (Fig. 6.1). Another technique used by Álvarez is the addition of colour filters. Sections that align to the social cause defended by the film are kept with a natural colourisation, whereas sections that feature the state’s unlawful actions are tinted sepia. More drastically, excerpts from Rafael Correa’s weekly Enlace Ciudadano are presented with a white background, only allowing for the outline of the president to be distinguished, roughly sketched. This almost cartoonish depiction is complemented by an

Fig. 6.1  State billboard promoting mining, as featured in Pocho Álvarez’s Javier con I, Íntag (2016)

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accelerated time lapse that also affects the tone of voice, turning it into a high-pitched, fast-paced caricature, clearly poking fun at the president. One last aesthetic decision to be analysed relates to the film’s intended audience and copyright. In addition to Álvarez’s own interviews, footage from protestors and B-roll from previous films, Álvarez also adds clips downloaded from social media along with some of the community’s own domestic recordings. If issues of copyright and authorship were already put into question by adding Correa’s excerpts, they take additional considerations when debating these later inclusions. Regarding copyright, the informality of the film, intended for internet platforms and distribution amongst social groups, does not seem to call for proper copyright clearance, and neither does its overall aesthetic look. In this vein, the film ranges from sharply focused and highly stylised shots of nature around the commune, to pixelated internet downloads that showcase logos from Facebook pages. Given the purpose of the film, copyright issues are not necessarily relevant, considering the bigger cause at stake. Moreover, if considering Gabriela Alemán’s argument on piracy as a means to overcome Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, particularly regarding access to film education for EBT filmmakers (2009), a potential copyright infringement in Javier con I can indirectly constitute a similar way of challenging coloniality, in this case represented by international corporate interests and the state’s compliance. Going back to the question of authorship, Álvarez is not necessarily a resident of the commune, a fact that might call into question his role as a representative. The production itself seems to distance itself from participatory video techniques that give the camera to the subject, allowing them to choose how to record and present themselves. The film instead gives a glimpse into its production when, for instance, it includes both the interviewer and the assistant in the frame, avidly taking notes while a member of the community offers a testimony. While these points are valid, they do not result in Álvarez being considered an outsider, a third agent or intermediary that uses his filmmaking capabilities to record the other from a distance. Rather, given a long history of projects related to social causes, Álvarez is seen as taking part in a broader oppositional community that, although left-leaning, like the administration it criticises, chooses to stay closer and give voice to the community. In conclusion, Javier con I constitutes a prime example of oppositional production practices that not only operate outside state institutions, but

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also chooses to confront them. It is this confrontation, and President Correa’s open criticism of the cause presented by the Junín community, that pushes a film like Javier con I to inhabit the margins of an Ecuadorian cinematic field, which nevertheless should be considered when defining an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century. Prioritising relevance, and given the time sensitivity of Ramírez’s detention, Álvarez sacrifices production values and questions of copyright to produce a film adapted to the community’s needs. Aesthetically, it evokes the intertitles of Third Cinema’s The Hour of the Furnaces to emphasise key terms and ideas. Álvarez also makes use of signage, whether in protest banners or on road signs, to metaphorically picture the silencing of dissident voices by state officials. Colourisation is applied to distinguish the commune’s own interests against corporate mining in its territory, an affect which is most evident in President Correa’s almost cartoonish characterisation. Finally, while Javier con I does not intend to abide by participatory video conventions, it falls into a community cinema categorisation, as it tries to represent the aims of the community, with production practices tailored to these aims, in both form and content. In essence, Javier con I attests to “making in community” as well as “community making”, with vindication efforts being its main emphasis (Fig. 6.2).

Fig. 6.2  Parody of President Rafael Correa’s Enlace Ciudadano. Film still from Javier con I, Íntag (Álvarez 2016)

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Case Study: Vengo Volviendo (2015) Vengo Volviendo is a narrative feature that intertwines three local legends of the province of Azuay, which is situated in the southern region of the Ecuadorian Andes. These tales converge in a central, unifying story that features Ismael, whose parents migrated to New York when he was a child and who is now left to care for, and be cared for by, the family’s grandmother. Confronted with the inevitability of having to leave home, like everyone else around, he encounters Luz, a childhood friend who had just returned from the United States. She convinces him to stay and make a living by delivering the grandmother’s ancestral medicines. The delivery journey would introduce these three local legends, concluding with Ismael choosing to leave the country, only to return after a failed smuggling operation to enter the United States illegally. Ismael would eventually use the money saved for a future smuggling attempt to open a storefront for the grandmother’s healing practice. Before discussing aesthetic decisions and participatory processes, it is helpful to delve into these three local legends to give context to the main character’s own predicaments, which are similar to many local concerns. In the first legend, a teenager steals and ‘vandalises’ the town’s Virgen Morena statuette, which has a fair complexion having just arrived from Spain. The second legend recalls the colonial origins of The Patron of Water, which save the community from drought and exploitative serfdom authorities. The final tale involves adulterated liquor being illegally distributed, causing customers to become blind. The smugglers eventually encounter a terrifying ghost, who takes the life of one of them, while the other goes mad. As the synopses reveal, there is an evident complexity in each tale, which draws on elements drawn from the local traditions, respectively the impact of livelihood-driven migration, a religiosity that combines foreign-implanted Christianity with the local Pachamama, and the exploitative terrateniente figure of colonial times. These tales appear to be implanted in Ismael’s own identity, and, by extension, in the average Azuay citizen, constituting a cultural baggage that informs their life decisions. While narratively speaking, Vengo Volviendo seems to align with the concerns of the community, its production values, aesthetic considerations, overall funding strategy, and distribution resemble many of the habitus preferred in the non-communal, allegedly individualistic, and prestige-oriented branch of Ecuadorian cinema. In other words, is Vengo

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Volviendo simply using the banner of ‘community cinema’ to secure CNCine support and consequently develop a successful business model? It recalls Diana Coryat’s argument for Colectivo El Churo, associating the context and needs of a particular community to production practices that best cater for those needs, as one of the conditions to secure organisational sustainability over time. Applied to a film like Vengo Volviendo, a community would need to be identified first, before assessing its context and immediate needs, and consequently the validity of the practices chosen (Fig. 6.3). A tentative community can be identified in the participants of the workshop from which the film was conceived. As the film itself explains, Vengo Volviendo came about after film production workshops were held in Azuay, having been convened with the sole purpose of producing a narrative feature film in Azuay. Vengo Volviendo is Filmarte’s second project under this model, the first one being Santa Elena en Bus (2012), held in the coastal province of Santa Elena. Filmarte’s workshops, named Encuentros con el cine (Encounters with cinema), summoned 21 local participants, not necessarily interested in pursuing a career in filmmaking, or at least for whom it was not an option at the time. The workshops included classes on film theory, scriptwriting, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, and art direction, makeup and costume design, and film production (Filmarte

Fig. 6.3  Film still from Vengo Volviendo (Rodas and Páez 2015)

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2019). Participants wrote their own scripts, based on local traditions and legends, and took on acting roles. Additional postproduction processes were delegated to the production companies La que cruza and Machica films (ibid.) (Fig. 6.4). Vengo Volviendo ensures that its participatory process is featured in the film. The first minutes of the film, for instance, make use of opening titles to explain the production process behind the film, while the location is established through landscape views of rural Azuay. At the end of the film, a behind-the-scenes compilation is presented, which bleeds into the closing credits. This compilation shows the actors featured in the film actively involved behind the cameras, and not limited to just one crew role. Participants also share their takeaways from the experience, some confessing that the workshops have changed their lives forever, and that they would never forget them. Most importantly, one participant hints to a tentative purpose of the film: “Maybe 20 or 30 want to leave, but if among those who see the film, one of them stays, it’s a great achievement”. Paradoxically, this statement was included just after another participant had mentioned a desire to leave, in clear correlation with the protagonist’s own predicaments. With an identifiable community and a deepened understandings of the local context, the production practices of Vengo Volviendo can be further

Fig. 6.4  Ismael and Luz in Vengo Volviendo (Rodas and Páez 2015)

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assessed through the concepts of community cinema and social sustainability analysed in this chapter. Already, some distinctions can be drawn between Vengo Volviendo and the oppositional film practice proposed by Pocho Álvarez. Arguably, Filmarte can be seen as using the ‘community cinema’ label to access additional funding and assure a sustained business model. Yet, this affirmation overlooks the “community making” and “making in community” aspects of the film, successfully engaging with the community, in this case the participants of the workshop, to the point of providing lasting benefits. While this community does not necessarily fall into a ‘peoples and nationalities’ categorisation and was assembled temporarily for the purpose of the film, it responds to the concerns of the broader Azuay population, and the diasporas that are still linked to the province. In short, Vengo Volviendo constitutes a community project that has successfully attained a level of financially sustainability by engaging with institutions like CNCine and commercial exhibitors, yet uses this gained cultural capital to give platform to stories from the community. The film presents an unconventional narrative structure that combines three local legends, each emphasising a particular aspect of Azuay identity: livelihood-­ driven migration, colonial legacies, and environmental concerns. These narratives are weaved together through the journey of its main character Ismael, who also finds himself debating whether to leave or to remain and invest in the local community. Considering the production process behind the film, narrative decisions seemed to fall on local workshop participants, who engaged in active roles both behind and in front of the cameras. In terms of funding strategies and distribution, these workshops were convened by production company Filmarte, securing support from CNCine and exhibiting a sustainable business model that emphasises participatory video practices. With regard to Vengo Volviendo’s theatrical release in local cinemas, and exhibition in international film festivals, would it also be the case that film practices in Ecuador need to resemble mass-scale production processes, through an established production company such as Filmarte, to be taken seriously within an Ecuadorian cinematic field? Is Vengo Volviendo a necessary compromise that solves the precariousness and livelihood questions of Álvarez’s guerrilla filmmaking, while also offering a mild commentary on migration, environmental issues, and Coloniality of Power and Knowledge?

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Community Cinema and Sustainability: A Necessary Compromise? The answer to such questions, in line with what this chapter has argued for, should be considered in terms of the needs and context of the community. Álvarez’s social documentary style, for instance, is evidently designed with an activist goal in mind, using Javier Ramírez’s detention to bring light to an environmental dispute that has continued for decades. In the case of Javier con I, relying on the state’s monies would be counterintuitive, even detrimental to the oppositional stance chosen by Álvarez, one in direct correspondence to the needs of the Junín community. Also, given the immediacy and relevance of this documentary, attempting to secure CNCine and/or transnational funds would result in extended production times, affecting the time sensitivity of the cause. Thus, shortcuts in production values and copyright concerns take precedence, with film festival appearances, such as at the local EDOCs, providing added cultural validation.8 For the case of Vengo Volviendo, the answer also lies in the community. Certainly, Filmarte as a production company, and also the business model that it follows, were established long before the conception of the film. However, as with previous project Santa Elena en bus, Filmarte’s original goal was to produce a participatory feature film for every province in Ecuador, honing the production process in each attempt. Through directors Isabel Rodas and Gabriel Páez, Filmarte had successfully navigated the value expectations of the Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, in doing so amassing enough resources to provide filmmaking workshops to local participants. These participants, constituting the community from which each film is conceived, see the benefits of such collaboration precisely because of the added value that the workshops offer, making film education and large-scale production equipment available to them. It is this opportunity that invites the community to freely express themselves, and to interrogate and inquire into their own identity, taking different narrative and aesthetic forms in each locale. As we have observed, Javier con I and Vengo Volviendo take diametrically different approaches when it comes to engaging with the community, 8  Javier con I was part of the 14th edition of the local documentary film festival Encuentros del Otro Cine (Encounters with the other cinema, EDOCs), under the section Cómo nos ven, cómo nos vemos (How they see us, how we see ourselves).

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as is made evident in the film texts. Javier con I relies heavily on testimonies from community members and chooses a particular colour correction to highlight its distance from the state’s official narrative. An emphasis on signage is also obvious, juxtaposing social protests with pro-mining road signs from the government. In Vengo Volviendo, however, community participation is not limited to being the film’s subject matter but it does not go as far as establishing a clear opposition or critique to a perceived unjust system. Instead, Vengo Volviendo becomes a means by which participants explore their own Azuay identity in fictional terms, leaning towards representations of migration, the colonial legacies of its local traditions, and environmental concerns. In both examples, the needs and context of the community ends up shaping the final text of the film, which compares with Diana Coryat’s understanding of community and the media produced through it. By attending to these collective needs, directors Álvarez, Rodas, and Paez were able to propose film practices that move beyond an immediate financial interest or critical appraisal, instead finding its sustainability through a mutual dialogue with the communities they seek to serve and represent. If Javier con I and Vengo Volviendo exemplify two strategies for community cinema in Ecuador, then how do these films provide a decolonial option for a local industry, effectively contesting or reversing Coloniality of Knowledge and Power? To begin with, neither of the examples explored in this chapter fully fit the interpretations of community cinema previously discussed. Vengo Volviendo is not directly associated with a particular people group or indigenous nation; it was produced through the intervention of seasoned filmmakers and benefited from external funding via CNCine. Javier con I, while connected to an identifiable community and not being dependent on CNCine support, also follows Pocho Álvarez’s own filmmaking career and style. Yet both films are preoccupied with defending the rights of the community and nurturing community through the filmmaking process, each film giving prevalence to one aspect of community cinema over the other.9 9  In a more recent example, Sarayacu filmmaker Eriberto Gualinga premiered the short film The Return at the 2021 Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. Sponsored by The Guardian, and under the production of Marc Silver and Nina Gualinga, this Kiwcha-­ language film makes uses of some of the conventions of slow cinema to portray the community’s decision-making amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Return exemplifies the negotiations that take place within the film text, simultaneously adhering to aesthetic expectations and being true to a local imaginary.

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Hence, as proposed in this chapter, the community becomes a negotiated space in which cinema can help vindicate what has been silenced, repressed, demonised, and devalued in a local film industry. Initially, this position can seem to stand in contrast with the preferred production practices of the indie subfield discussed in Chap. 3. The differentiating axes of race and capital that characterise Coloniality of Knowledge and Power begin to be challenged by film practices that give voice to the marginalised, even when conceding to some of the expectations of the more capital-oriented branch of Ecuadorian cinema. Technicalities in the role of the filmmaker, or film institutions like CNCine, become a means to an end, not an aspect to be used as the only defining factor for a film to be placed under a community cinema categorisation. In this vein, Vengo Volviendo questions Coloniality of Knowledge and Power by making available otherwise inaccessible film education and resources, an issue raised, for instance, regarding EBT films and pirate DVDs used for this purpose (Alemán, At the Margin of the Margins: Contemporary Ecuadorian Exploitation Cinema and the Local Pirate Market 2009). In Javier con I, the experiential knowledge of the community is brought to the forefront, historicising the community’s interaction with international corporations to give context to a current dispute. This disagreement constitutes the primary example of unequal power structures being contested in Javier con I; not so in Vengo Volviendo, which chooses a subtler critique in metaphorical terms. As such, while hegemony is clearly attributed to international corporations and the state in Javier con I, more specifically the figure of Rafael Correa, in Vengo Volviendo the hegemonic control is located in exploitative landholders and people smugglers, referencing the livelihood-­ driven migration of the late 1990s. To conclude, the case studies discussed revealed that even in film practices that choose to be outside the preferred production practices these also present ambiguities and contradictions that attest for its negotiated nature. The many articulations of Buen Vivir that opened this chapter already pointed to a shared predisposition against Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, that was met by a varied number of alternative solutions. But even then, as the previous chapters exemplify, an underlying “internal colonialism”, comparable to the “neoliberalism from below” described by Ponce-Cordero to refer to EBT films, can also be identified in film expressions that emerge from the community. As such, when proposing an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, adding to the legal framework and preferred production practices analysed in Chaps. 2 and 3, this

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chapter has considered film expressions that stand outside the state’s apparatus but that nevertheless are impacted by intrinsic understandings of success and value for a local film industry. Focusing primarily on the community, and the negotiation that takes place through its cinema, the principal input for this analysis has come from the praxis in community. The ideas of “making from the community” while “nurturing community”, two conditions that help define a community cinema categorisation in Ecuador, are contrasted with questions about the role of external institutions like CNCine and other private funders, as well as the author as representative of the community. It is precisely through this negotiation that a local identity can be formed, a decolonial option can be provided, and issues of social and financial sustainability for community endeavours can be addressed in light of the needs and interests of the community.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusions and Recommendations

This book has demonstrated that the period corresponding to the Ley de Cine years, namely after the 2006 National Film Policy came into effect, presented a particular set of production practices, aesthetic choices, and narrative themes to constitute the proposed “Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century”. The political, commercial, and societal articulations analysed in this book have helped argue for a local film industry that presents comparable ambiguities to its encompassing political ideology of Socialism for the 21st century, while also negotiating neoliberal legacies of previous decades. This argument has been substantiated by analysing four spaces in which such negotiations have occurred: first, theatrically released narrative features that have benefited from state support; second, memory articulations constructed through documentary form; third, vernacular film expressions that operate outside, and in opposition to, bourgeois and high-art films; and, finally, community cinema practices that tended to prioritise the needs of the community. For each case, there is a degree of contention and compliance in relation to its political and legal framework, but also an underlying idea of success for the local industry that seeks to resemble mass-scale film production structures. To contextualise the mentioned spaces of negotiation that constitute Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, Chap. 2 provided a needed theoretical, historical, and legal background for the period. It was important for this book to argue for an Ecuadorian cinema in general, before

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_7

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advocating an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century in particular, given the scarce literature and scholarship on the subject. Here, Ecuadorian cinema was placed in dialogue with broader theories on national and transnational cinemas, considering the collaborative processes that transcend national borders in  local productions. Also, the national specificity of Ecuadorian cinema was discussed, not being limited to film policy requirements, but also incorporating subjective value judgements that define what is compiled into and filtered out from a national film canon. This assertion was attributed to decades of film activities in the country, adapting to a variety of political scenarios since the arrival of the cinematographer in the late 1800s. The 2006 Ley de Cine is a product of such articulations, coming through after 13 previous attempts at establishing a local film policy, dating back to the 1970s. As the government of President Rafael Correa took office in 2007, the 2006 Ley de Cine and the accompanying Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía or CNCine had to navigate a country in transition, including the legal framework that developed in this administration. As Chap. 2 concluded, this legal framework already presented contradictions that directly affected the local film industry, since CNCine operated within a state structure, specifically under the Ministry of Culture. As such, documents like the 2013–2017 National Plan for Good Living prescribed objectives and goals for the local industry, to be measured through the number of local feature films premiered in theatres in a given year, to give one example. Taking into account the hegemony of the local exhibition sector in Ecuadorian cinema, also expanded upon in detail in Chap. 2, equating the success of the local industry to commercial exhibition already points to underlying neoliberal tendencies in Ecuadorian cinema, despite being framed by a left-leaning political ideology like Socialism for the 21st century. Accompanying legal texts, such as the 2013 Ley de Comunicación or Media Law and Law of Cultures, also present ambiguities, with similar implications for the local industry. As the mandate of Rafael Correa came to an end, and more market-oriented administrations took office, the fragility of the film industry was made evident with CNCine turning into ICCA, the Institute for Film and Audiovisual Creation, and later the Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation (IFCI). This institutional uncertainty invites further questions over whether these structures really served as long-term solutions to the particularities of Ecuadorian cinema.

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Production Practices Certainly, arguing for an Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century required moving beyond the legal text, the theoretical, and the historical background, to reflect the tangible production practices, aesthetic choices, and narrative tendencies of the period. Regarding production practices, Chap. 3 centred on the commercially released narrative feature, and concluded that these mostly followed, or attempted to follow, a preferred path or “habitus”. This path consisted of support from CNCine and collaboration with external validators, such as film festivals and international funding platforms, resulting in the coveted release in commercial theatres. In each step, instances of cultural and financial capital are amassed in order to gain enough value to successfully navigate an Ecuadorian cinematic field. This preferred path correlates with broader regional practices, as contended by Claudia Sandberg for Latin American contemporary cinemas (2018), with local filmmakers becoming more proficient in using mixed funding strategies that combine state and private support. As such, this Ecuadorian indie subfield maintains the precarious and marginal conditions embraced by Third Cinema, but also displays market-oriented tendencies promoted during neoliberalism in the 1990s, while aspiring to the international film festival circuit. The closing case study for the chapter, Javier Andrade’s Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse, 2013), exemplifies these tendencies, with Andrade participating in local projects and training in international films schools, as a means to develop a basic prowess to produce his first film. After the Ley de Cine years, particularly with CNCine merging into ICCA, more commercially inclined practices were revealed, with several local films explicitly seeking box office performance. While the full impact of the 2006 Ley de Cine would require decades to be properly assessed, this book aligns with Sandberg’s assertion that sees the progressive movements in Latin America as a “parenthesis” in an otherwise straight trajectory to prioritise market demands. In the case of documentaries, there is a tangible difference between privately funded films and those supported by the state. Overall, local documentaries are seen to have achieved an important level of maturity within the local film milieu, an assertion empirically based on participation in film festival circuits, box office performance, and high production values. Chapter 4 found that privately funded documentaries that have reached commercial theatres are produced with an expected audience in mind, with the prevalence of sports or music documentaries catering to their

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respective fanbases. For state-supported documentaries, they tend to follow the preferred path or habitus described for the state-supported narrative feature film, also engaging in transnational collaborations and relying on funding from a variety of sources. The case study for the chapter, Maria Fernanda Restrepo’s Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011), benefited from CNCine support, but, as the director points out, the film was also influenced by exhibition spaces such as the Encuentros del otro cine or EDOCS, a local film festival dedicated to showcasing local and international documentaries. EDOCs has also received CNCine monies on several occasions since it has maintained an annual film programme since 2002 and is considered a consolidated film festival. Chapter 5 argues that the mentioned neoliberal trajectory is also evident in film expressions that inhabit the local margins, such as Ecuador bajo tierra productions, and those that comprise an Ecuadorian vernacular cinema. These films are deemed vernacular since they present localised and popular film practices that are distinct from those of high-art and bourgeois films, and intentionally oppose them. EBT films, for instance, depend on pirate networks in urban markets of Quito and Guayaquil to distribute their films. But EBT filmmakers also aspired to improve and develop their craft, what Rafael Ponce-Cordero labels “neoliberalism from below” (2019). This tendency is also present in non-state-supported films that showcase low production values and popular appeal but managed to premiere in local theatres. Analysing the production practices of these films revealed that they mostly rely on success formulas borrowed from local television and recruit recognisable casts and crews to secure theatrical distribution. The closing case study for Chap. 5, Alberto Pablo Rivera’s Sexy Montañita (2013), illustrates a direct influence from foreign entertainment works, but most prominently local television comedy from the city of Guayaquil, Rivera himself being a television personality before embarking on directing his first feature film. The problematic content that a film like Sexy Montañita showcases, as well as its low production values, situates it outside a preferred national film canon, reiterating some of the exclusionary tendencies of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, despite the participatory rhetoric of Socialism for the 21st century. For community cinema and local documentaries, production practices were found to be also ambiguous. Chapter 6 discussed community cinema in the context of Buen Vivir or Good Living, the key guiding principle that informed public policy during Socialism for the 21st century. Although understandings of Buen Vivir vary depending on the position from which

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it is interpreted, they do converge in a shared rejection of Coloniality of Knowledge and Power. Applied to a local and regional cinema, Chap. 6 proposed Ecuadorian cinema as a space of negotiation and reorientation, based on Patricia Vilches’ theories on Latin American cultural forms (2019). Locally, cinema from the community was analysed as it has historically constituted a space for vindication and defence of the rights of the community. Chapter 6 revealed that this negotiation did not necessarily represent a total disengagement from state support or embracing more capital-oriented business models. For these film expressions, the needs and priorities of the community dictate the approach and strategy for a film being made, with the two case studies for the chapter illustrating these tendencies. Javier con I, Íntag (2016) by Pocho Álvarez represented an oppositional documentary to be distributed through activist networks and internet platforms. Paez and Rodas’ Vengo Volviendo (2015), instead, presented participatory processes from the community, but also benefited from CNCine support and participated in international film festivals. Filmarte, Vengo Volviendo’s production company, constitutes an example of an established business model that is also able to nurture community processes.

Aesthetic Choices Having summarised the preferred production practices for Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century, it is no surprise to find that underlying neoliberal tendencies persisted, and were at times encouraged, during Socialism for the 21st century. How these tendencies have permeated to aesthetic choices can be explained in four distinctive tendencies, analysed in each chapter. Narrative features that followed a defined path towards theatrical distribution leaned towards value expectations required from CNCine, the international film circuit, and local exhibitors. As such, these films aimed for high production values and technical expertise, while also recognising the marginal and precarious conditions of the local film industry. Rather than a detriment, these conditions were seen as a catalyst for creativity, even embraced in press releases and similar promotional materials, as in the case of Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, a key precursor the Ecuadorian indie subfield examined in Chap. 3. These aesthetic choices make it difficult to place Ecuadorian cinema within traditional theories on national cinemas, such as Third Cinema or European New Waves. As this book has contended, the local praxis has informed the theoretical articulations of

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local cinema, with the proposed Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century as a product of such reflections. For local documentaries, particularly those supported by CNCine, these showcased a subjective mode, with the director constructing a narrative through a personal journey of self-discovery and identity formation, even when these films included narratives of national transcendence, like in Con mi corazón en Yambo. As such, it is common to find first-person voiceovers in these documentaries, with the directors themselves at times becoming the main subject of their own films. Local documentaries that revisit the past also make use of personal family recordings to emphasise this subjectivity and utilise the local landscape as an instrument for mnemonic processes to be ignited. These aesthetic choices are added to the interview, a resource that conveys a sense of truthfulness and vulnerability and advances the plot through additional information being provided to the audience. More specifically for the vernacular subfield in Chaps. 5 and 6, considering the hybridity in Latin American cultural forms, these vernacular expressions also incorporate foreign influences that have become ingrained in the local cinematic identity. EBT films, for instance, reimagine and rework foreign conventions borrowed from the Western, zombie movies, kung fu films, and comparable entertainment works, to present a local counterpart that can descend into parody, given its low production values and limited technical sophistication. For privately funded films that managed to secure a theatrical release, this hybridity is also present, emulating foreign products while drawing from local television. The example of Sexy Montañita, for instance, revealed a clear inspiration from television comedy in Guayaquil, which in turn presented influences from local street theatre. Here, the anthropological tracing method suggested by Dennison and Shaw (2004) to analyse Latin American popular forms proved to be useful, a method also advocated by Dyer and Vincendeau, as well as Koven (2006). For community cinema, aesthetics suited the needs of the community, with films relying on social documentary conventions, like Javier con I, Íntag, and those that prioritised participatory video from the community, as in Vengo Volviendo. Since the community dictates its content and form, community films like Javier con I prioritise environmental concerns for the community of Junin. In this case, director Pocho Álvarez made use of intertitles to emphasise quotes from relevant sources and applied colour filters to distinguish between the voice of the community and their

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opposers. Álvarez also incorporated television excerpts and low-quality footage that, given the intention of the film, constitute an indirect way of challenging aesthetic conventions. In Vengo Volviendo, participatory video techniques used to produce the film are certainly evident in its aesthetic choices. Its production process included workshops on film theory, scriptwriting, and editing, to name just a few, making a film education available for participants. Since Vengo Volviendo is the second film produced by Filmarte under this model, the availability of equipment enables participants to experiment and express their local identity while also adhering to the aesthetic expectations of a theatrically released film.

Narrative Themes As has been seen, these aesthetic choices appear clearly aligned to the production practices from which they were conceived, a statement reinforced throughout this book. Similarly, narrative themes in Ecuadorian cinema for the twenty-first century also present comparable patterns. Although value expectations in CNCine-backed features would assume highbrow interests, films that managed to secure a theatrical release also engaged with themes of social issues and inequality, drawing from Cinema of Marginality (C. León 2005) of the previous decade. As explained in Chap. 3, Cinema of Marginality tries to blur the binary articulations of exclusionary systems present in society, and instead focuses on the orphan, dismissed, and forgotten as its prime subjects. Paradoxically, vernacular film expressions like EBT films, and the aforementioned television-based comedy film, exacerbate these differences, drawing clear distinctions between the haves and have-nots, and not shying away from problematic language regarding race, gender, and class representations. Local documentaries converged in a shared interest in Retorno a la democracia narratives, or the political moment that followed military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. They also correlated with border-­ crossing narratives, particularly those derived from the late 1990s economic recession and resulting migration. Regarding community cinema, concerns over social issues were also prevalent, but more attuned to the immediate context of their specific community. As such, narrative patterns included environmental causes, livelihood-driven migration, and decolonial legacies. These narrative interests, alongside production practices and aesthetic preferences of the period, make evident a dual influence of Ecuadorian cinema for the 21st century: on one hand, building from

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movements like Third Cinema and the revolutionary ideals that it pushed forward, while, on the other, acknowledging market-oriented dynamics that emerged during neoliberalism in the 1990s, and can arguably be found in current political trends in Latin America.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations If the ambiguities in Socialism for the 21st century are evident in a local film industry during the Ley de Cine years, then what should we do with this information? What takeaways can this book provide for local filmmakers, film authorities, and scholars interested in continuing research on contemporary Ecuadorian cinema? Indeed, this book can provide a necessary account for seasoned and aspiring filmmakers alike, presenting the ways in which film production has developed in the country over the years, and how such matters are expected to pan out in the future. Film authorities can use this information to foresee the impact that film policies can have on the local industry and attend to their specific needs. Likewise, film scholars can build from this book, to explore complementary fields of study. One by-product of this book is a particular methodology that merges studies in production practices, film policy, transnational exchanges, the textual analysis of films, and relevant film theories. Indeed, as hinted in the introduction of this book, local industry knowledge has informed the structure and methodology of this work, constituting a praxis-based approach that prioritises the tangible ways of doing and thinking about film, in comparison with solely theoretical, legal, or textual explanations. Recommendations for additional studies have already been given throughout this book, the most obvious being the recent turn towards neoliberalism in Latin America and its implications for regional cinemas. Scholars like Paola de la Vega Velasteguí have recently provided a broader examination of cultural policy for these latest developments in Ecuador (2021), which can be further explored for cinema in particular. Institutions that surround and validate film activities in Ecuador, such as film schools and film festivals, have traditionally been under-researched, also providing fertile ground for subsequent studies, following some brief analysis by Aida Vallejo in relation to documentary film institutes (2018). Finally, a third suggestion includes concerns about intersectionality, particularly gender and race. Some of these concerns have been raised throughout the book,

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regarding women’s labour in film production, representation of women in media, and race inequalities in funding allocations, which can certainly be expanded in a dedicated study. To conclude, these findings have helped substantiate that Ecuadorian cinema during the Ley de Cine years coincides with the ambiguities and contradictions of Socialism for the 21st century, being a response to neoliberalism but not going as far as providing lasting structural transformations for the local industry. In addition to this argument, this book has also positioned Ecuadorian cinema as a proper national film industry, filling the gaps in scholarship that has tended to overlook local films. This assertion has been justified through the historical review of Ecuadorian cinema provided in Chap. 2, the production practices delineated in Chap. 3 (even when not necessarily representing a fully-fledged industrial processes), and the demonstrated consistency of film outputs in the country, particularly during the so-called “mini-boom” in Ecuadorian cinema that prompted this book. Regardless of the fragility of the industry evidenced in recent years, as the 2006 Ley de Cine was replaced by a Law of Cultures in 2015, and CNCine was merged into other state institutions, these articulations testify to a vibrant film activity that continues to negotiate its own cinematic identity.

Correction to: Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century

Correction to: M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9 The book was inadvertently published with an incorrect citation of María Fernanda Miño Puga. The correct citation should read Miño Puga, M. F. (2023) in all the occurrences.

The updated version of this book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­40989-­9 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9_8

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Index1

A Abuelos (Grandfathers), 108, 109, 115n9 Acosta, Alberto, 44, 156, 158, 159, 172 Aesthetics of Hunger, 56 Afro-Ecuadorian, 49, 164 Aguirre, Dario, 110 Aktis Film Production, 41 Alba, 81, 83n11 ALBA, 45 Alfaro, Eloy, 5, 94, 94n2, 96, 97 Ciudad Alfaro, 96 Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC) Alfaro Vive Carajo (Alfaro Lives, Dammit!), 106, 107 AVC: Del Sueño al Caos (AVC: from dream to chaos), 104, 106, 107 Alianza PAIS, 90n13, 96, 157 Álvarez, Pocho, 2, 12, 13, 96n3, 154, 158, 159, 164–175, 168n6, 179–181, 189–191

Alvear, Miguel, 38, 77, 124, 126, 127, 129n2, 132, 136 Amateur cinema, 11, 19, 126, 136 Ambos Mundos, 32, 40 AmericaTV, 101 Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch), 58 Anderson, Benedict, 23 Andes, 83, 157, 176 Andrade, Giovanna, 141 Andrade, Javier, 56–58, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90, 104, 187 Angamarca, Guillermo, 142, 143 Ángel de los sicarios, El (The hitmen’s angel), 134, 135, 135n3 Angel Silva, Medardo, 141 Antonio das Mortes, 68 Araujo, Diego, 82 Arregui, Victor, 83, 139 Asamblea Constituyente (Constituent Assembly), 43, 44, 90n13

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. F. Miño Puga, Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40989-9

213

214 

INDEX

Asier ETA Biok (Asier and I), 108, 111, 112 Asocine, 5, 31, 34, 35, 42, 51n12 Aymara, 162 Azuay, 97, 97n4, 176–179, 181 B Bach, Christian, 141 Barragán, María Cristina, 81 Bastidas, Douglas, 142 Birri, Fernando, 65, 65n4 Bisabuela tiene Alzheimer, La (The great-grandmother has Alzheimer), 108, 110 The Blair Witch Project, 145 Blak Mama, 126 Blomberg, Rolf, 167, 168 Bogota Audiovisual Market, 76 Borja, Francisco, 164, 165 Bourdieu, Pierre, 8, 16, 17, 28–30, 48, 50–54, 57, 83 Brazil, 1, 43, 47n10, 65, 68, 69, 72n7, 114, 124, 131 Briones, Sergios, 141 Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay (Good Living), 12, 43–47, 43n8, 49, 72n6, 73, 153–155, 157–159, 158n2, 164, 173, 188 definition, 12, 43–45 Plan Nacional para el Buen Vivir (National Plan for Good Living), 12, 16, 17, 41–47, 156, 186 C Canallas, Los (Bastards), 141 Cañar, 97 Carlitos, 108, 111 Carmigniani, César, 36 Carondelet, Palacio, 117

Casa del ritmo, La, A film about Los Amigos Invisibles, 104, 105 Castro, Fidel, 111 Catalonia, 114 Cedeño, Fernando, 126, 127, 134, 135, 135n3, 141, 142 Chalacamá, Nixon, 134 Chávez, Hugo, 43, 43n7, 66n5, 72 Chungking Express, 62 Churo, Colectivo el, 169–172, 170n7, 177 Cine Liberación, Grupo, 66 Cinema Novo, 51, 68 Cinema of Institutions, 16, 28, 30, 53 Cinema of Marginality, 9, 56, 58, 60, 62–64, 89, 191 Cinema of small nations, 27 Cinemark, 35, 38, 50 Cinemateca Nacional (National Cinemateque), 20 Cinememoria, Corporación, 114, 115n9 Colombia, 5, 72n7, 106, 115 Colonial Film Unit, 67 Colonialism, 33, 66n5, 69, 154, 161, 162 internal colonialism, 162, 163, 182 Coloniality, 7, 128, 153–183 Coloniality of Knowledge and Power, 12, 153, 154, 160–164, 169, 171, 174, 181, 182, 189 See also Quijano, Anibal Comisión de la verdad (Truth Commission), see Restrepo, Pedro Commodity consensus, 47 Community cinema, 8, 12, 13, 126n1, 128, 129, 150, 152–154, 163–170, 175, 177, 179–183, 185, 188, 190, 191 cine comunitario, 128, 164, 164n4 Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), 157

 INDEX 

Con mi corazón en Yambo (With my heart in Yambo), see Restrepo, María Fernanda Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía (CNCine) (National Film Council), 3, 8–13, 8n6, 15, 18, 20, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48–50, 48n11, 51n12, 53, 54, 56, 57, 64, 72n6, 73–77, 75n8, 79–85, 90–93, 90n13, 99, 103–107, 109, 111–113, 114n8, 115, 120, 120n10, 121, 123–125, 128, 129, 134, 135, 138–141, 143, 149–151, 152n7, 154–156, 158, 160, 164–171, 168n6, 177, 179–183, 186–191, 193 Consorcio Fílmico, 38, 40 Constructivism, 137 Cordero, Sebastián, 2, 9, 34–36, 40, 41, 56, 58–64, 62n2, 71, 81–85, 90, 107, 107n6 Cordero, Viviana, 35, 82, 83n11, 139, 140 Cordovéz, Jorge, 32, 33 Correa, Rafael, 1, 1n1, 3, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 42, 43, 46, 90n13, 91, 94–98, 96n3, 100, 113, 120, 124, 125, 134, 150, 151, 155, 157, 172–175, 182, 186 Rafael Correa: Retrato de un padre de la patria (Rafael Correa: portrait of the father of a nation), 100 Cotacachi, 172 Coup d’état, 95, 100 COVID-19, 3n2, 46, 134, 181n9 Crespi, Carlos, 167, 168 Crespo, Andrés, 126 Crónicas (Chronicles), 107 Cuba Cuba, el valor de una utopía (Cuba, the value of a utopia), 108, 111 Cuban Revolution, 56, 67, 70, 111

215

Cuenca, 142 Cuento sin hadas (Tales without fairies), 141 Cueva, Agustín, 34 Cueva, Juan Martín, 2, 164, 165, 171 Cumandá, 36 D Dávalos, Isabel, 104, 106–108, 107n6 Decolonial turn, see Mignolo, Walter Dedicada a mi ex (Dedicated to my ex), 82, 83 Dejémonos de vainas, 147 Deus e o Diablo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil), 68 Development, 5, 9, 12, 18, 30, 32, 38, 39, 42, 44–46, 56, 57, 74, 76, 90, 104, 112, 114, 115, 128, 137, 156, 157n1, 158, 162, 163, 192 Distribution, film, 9, 11, 29, 30, 32, 40, 51, 56, 64, 69, 70, 73, 74, 77, 80, 89, 90, 92, 104, 123, 125–129, 134, 135n3, 137–139, 150, 152, 152n7, 160, 174, 176, 179, 188, 189 DocTV, 76 Documentary social documentary, 5, 13, 65, 91, 96n3, 172, 180, 190 subjective turn (see Lebow, Alisa; Piedras, Pablo) Donoso, Juan Carlos, 82 Durán Ballén, Sixto, 118 E Economic dependency theory, 162 Ecuador Constitution, 3, 12, 16, 17, 43, 44, 46, 96, 155, 156 EcuadorTV, 100

216 

INDEX

Ecuador bajo tierra (EBT) (Ecuador Underground), 8, 11, 38, 77, 124, 126–130, 132–139, 141, 143, 149, 150, 152, 174, 182, 188, 190, 191 Ecuadorian cinema early, 32 fake, 77 history of, 2, 3, 7, 9, 19, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55, 82, 83, 94, 95, 99, 136, 167 for the 21st century, 2–11, 8n6, 13, 15–55, 64, 71, 74, 78, 79, 83n11, 85, 90–121, 123, 129, 138, 156, 159, 161, 170, 175, 182, 185–191 Ecuadorian Cinematic Field, 8, 9, 17, 37–55, 48n11, 58, 63, 64, 74, 76, 83, 89, 92, 95, 98, 100, 104, 109, 112–115, 120, 121, 125, 128, 129, 134, 136, 138, 154, 171, 172, 175, 179, 180, 187 indie subfield, 54–56, 83, 89, 121, 136, 138, 143, 187, 189 Ecuavisa, 36, 146 El Rosado, Grupo, 38–40 Empresa de Medios Públicos de Comunicación, Public Media Company, (EMPCO), 151 EnchufeTV, 81, 82 Encuentro Nacional de Cine (National Film Summit), 85 Encuentros del otro cine, Festival (EDOCs), 75n8, 114, 180, 180n8, 188 En el nombre de la hija (In the name of the daughter), 83n11 Enlace Ciudadano (Citizen’s link), 96, 96n3, 151, 155, 172, 173, 175 Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda (Between Marx and a naked woman), 35, 51n12

Escuela de cine documental de Santa Fe (Santa Fe Documentary School), 65, 65n4 Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television EICTV/San Antonio de los Baños, 65 A estas alturas de la vida (Highs and Lows), 83 Estrella, Ulises, 2, 20, 107n6 Estrella 14 (Star 14), 104, 105 ETA, group, 111, 112 Eurocentrism, 67 European Documentary Network (EDN), 114 European-model art cinema, 80, 81 European New Waves, 5, 57, 67, 189 Exhibition, film, 5, 9, 17, 35, 37–41, 50, 53, 56, 74, 128, 156, 179 Extractivism, 156, 161, 173 neo-extractivism, 47, 156 F Facilitador, El (The Facilitator), 83 Falconí, Fander, 156 Febres-Cordero, León, 96, 113, 115 Feriado (Holiday), 82 Field of Cultural Production, 8, 17, 28, 29, 50, 51, 83 Filmarte, 177, 179, 180, 189, 191 Film festivals, 9, 48n11, 49, 57, 62, 62n2, 70, 74–77, 75n8, 80, 84, 91, 92, 93n1, 114, 115, 140, 142, 179, 180, 180n8, 187–189, 192 Fly-on-the-wall, 111 Fondos concursables/Fondo de Fomento Cinematográfico (Film Promotion Fund), 42, 74, 75, 75n8 Fuera de Aquí/ Llucsi Kaimanta (Get out of here!), 16, 19–22, 30, 41, 42, 106

 INDEX 

G García Canclini, Néstor, 131, 136 García Espinosa, Julio, 56, 69, 70, 158 Garzocentro, 38 Gaviria, Victor, 58 Getino, Octavio, 56, 65–68, 70, 81, 172 González Iñárritu, Alejandro, 58 Good Living, see Buen Vivir Granda, Wilma, 2, 20, 32, 33, 40 Grau, Nitsy, 141 Grierson, John, 67, 103 Grill de César, El (Cesar’s Grill), 108, 110 Gualinga, Eriberto, 158, 158n2, 159, 181n9 Guayaquil, 32, 38, 59, 77n9, 85, 86, 94n2, 126, 135n3, 140, 141, 143, 145–148, 188, 190 Guayasamín, Oswaldo, 111 Guayasamín, Yanara, 111 Guerrero, María Teresa, 141 Guerrilla cinema, 20, 53, 179 Guevara, Jaime, 172 Gumucio Dagron, Alfonso, 20, 21, 164, 165, 168, 171 H The Hangover, 145 Hayward, Susan, 6, 16, 28, 29, 53 Heredia, Jorge, 142 Herencia, La (The Will), 142 Hermida, Tania, 83, 83n11, 90n13 Hidalgo, Galo, 142 Hjort, Mette, 27, 78, 119, 128 Hollywood, 5, 23–25, 24n1, 32, 37, 40, 48, 50, 57, 67, 70, 80, 132, 133, 137, 163 Classical Hollywood cinema, 11, 124, 129, 130

217

Hora de los hornos, La (The Hour of the Furnaces), 66, 67, 175 Hybrid cultures, 131 I Ibermedia, 76, 80 IDFA, 114 Imperfect Cinema, 56, 69, 158 Incine, 51n12, 141 Indigenous cinema, 49, 53, 128, 158n2, 164 cosmologies (see Sumak Kawsay) Sarayacu, 158, 167, 181n9 Shuar, 49, 164, 168 Institutional Modes of Representation (IMR), 125, 136, 137 Instituto de Cine y Creación Audiovisual (ICCA) (Institute of Film and Audiovisual Creation), 3, 3n2, 8n6, 18, 46, 82, 168, 171, 186, 187 Instituto de Fomento a la Creatividad y la Innovación (IFCI) (Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation), 3n2, 18, 46, 186 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 72, 157n1 Invencibles Shuaras del Alto Amazonas, Los (The Invincible Shuars of the Amazon), 168 Isaías, Roberto, 151 Isaías, William, 151 Italy, 7, 32, 67, 97 giallo films, 11, 124, 129, 130, 133 J Japan, 67, 136 Japanese cinema, 136 Jara, Tito, 83

218 

INDEX

Javier con I, Íntag (Javier with I, Íntag), 13, 96n3, 153–155, 171–175, 180–182, 180n8, 189, 190 Junín, 172, 175, 180, 190 K Kichwa, see Indigenous, cinema; Sumak Kawsay Kickstarter (crowdfunding), 104 L Latsploitation, 31, 31n3, 128 Lebow, Alisa, 93 León, Christian, 2, 9, 31, 38, 51, 56, 58, 60, 63, 77, 93, 93n1, 124, 126, 127, 129n2, 132, 136, 191 Levy, William, 141 Ley de Cine (Film Promotion Law), 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17–19, 31, 35–37, 39, 41–50, 46n9, 52, 54–91, 93, 104, 107, 108, 112–115, 120, 123, 139, 150, 156, 186, 187, 192, 193 Ley de Comunicación (Communications Law), 17, 41–47, 50, 76, 143, 151, 186 Ley mordaza (Gag Law), 46 Ley de Cultura (Culture Law), 3, 8n6, 46 Lowbrow cinema, 11, 36, 121, 129, 139 Low budget, 11, 61, 125, 126n1, 127, 139, 143, 150 Luzuriaga, Camilo, 2, 18, 30, 31, 34–36, 48–53, 48n11, 51n12, 81–83, 85, 120n10, 164, 169 M Magia Sangurima, La (Sagurima’s Magic), 36 Mall del Sol, see El Rosado, Grupo

Marché du Film, 76, 140 María, como juego de niños (Maria like a child’s game), 142 Marin, Juan Miguel, 104 Más allá del mall (Beyond the mall), 126, 141n4 Matriz productiva, see Buen Vivir Max y los whatevers (Max and the whatevers), see Rivera, Alberto Pablo Mean Streets, 62 Medardo, see Angel Silva, Medardo Me enamoré de una pelucona (I fell in love with a posh woman), see Rivera, Alberto Pablo Mejor no hablar de ciertas cosas (The Porcelain Horse), 10, 56, 58, 82, 84–90, 187 Memory collective memory, 102, 113, 119, 162 multidirectional memory, 99, 100, 106 transnational memory, 92, 101 Merino, Aitor, 111 Merino, Amaia, 112 Mestizaje (race mixing), 131, 150 Mexico, 1, 41, 62, 65 Mexico-Ecuadorian Films, 31 (see also Pel-Mex) Michelena, Carlos, 142 Mignolo, Walter, 161, 163 Migration, 6, 13, 95, 97, 97n4, 98, 121, 125, 139, 141, 142, 155, 176, 179, 181, 182, 191 Militant cinema, 56, 67, 81 Mini-boom, 18, 143 Ecuadorian cinema, 1, 3, 9, 41, 49, 54, 56, 58, 193 Ministerio de Cultura y Patrimonio (Ministry of Culture Heritage), 50 Mi recinto (My precinct), see Villaroel, Fernando Mis Adorables Entenados (My lovely stepsons), 146, 147

 INDEX 

M-19, 106 Mockumentary, 125, 126, 141n4, 145, 149 Modernisation, 17, 33, 36, 39, 40 Monge, Elsie, 172 Montage, 66, 118, 145 Soviet montage, 66, 137 Montecristi, see Alfaro, Eloy, Ciudad Alfaro Mora Manzano, Iván, 110 Morán, Doris, 117 Mother Earth/Pachamama, 159, 166, 176 Muchedumbre 30S (Mob 30S), 100 Multicines, see Exhibition, film Multiplex, see Exhibition, film Muñoz, Rodolfo, 100 N Naranjo, Carlos, 34, 35, 63 Neoliberalism from below, 11, 123, 124, 133–138, 143, 150, 182, 188 post-neoliberalism, 47, 72 New Ecuadorian Cinema, 2, 36 New Latin American Cinema, 26, 27 New York University, 84 Nigeria, 126 Nollywood, 126 Nobis, Consorcio, 38, 39 No robarás (a menos que sea necesario) Do not steal unless necessary, 82, 83n11 Novios por esta noche (Boyfriend for tonight), 142 O Ochoymedio, 135n3 Olvidados, Los (The Young and the Dammed), 62

219

Orellana, Evelina, 31 Ortega, Julio, 141 P Páez, Gabriel, 13, 171, 177, 178, 180, 181, 189 Palacios, Beatríz, 20 Panama Canal, 33, 33n4 Par de estúpidos, un (A pair of idiots), 142 Pareja feliz, La (The happy couple), 148, 151 Pathé France, 40 Pel-Mex, 31 Peña, Alquimia, 165 Peru cine regional, 126, 126n1, 128 Peruvian cinema in the 21st century, 73 Pescador (Fisherman), 82, 85 Piedras, Pablo, 93, 107, 108 Pink Tide, 42, 43, 43n7, 47, 66n5, 72, 73, 82 See also Socialism for the 21st century Plaza de la Independencia, 117 See also Carondelet, Palacio Policentro/Policines, 38 Popular cinema, 25, 124, 131, 132 in Latin America, 124, 129–138 Portoviejo/Manabi, 85–87, 94n2, 126, 135, 138, 147n5 Post-neoliberalism, 47, 72 Precarity/precariousness, 34, 51, 56, 58–64, 66, 79, 84, 87, 128, 179 Primitive Mode of Representation (PMR), 136 Primitivism, 69 Pro-Ley de Cine, Colectivo, 42 See also Ley de Cine (Film Promotion Law) PUNK S.A, 84

220 

INDEX

Q Quevedo, 142 ¿Quién es X Moscoso? (Who is X Moscoso?), 108, 110 Quijano, Anibal, 12, 160, 161 Quito, 5, 20, 32, 33, 38, 49, 59, 60, 62, 83–86, 111, 115, 117, 118, 126, 135n3, 140, 142, 143, 146, 188 R Ramírez, Javier, 172, 175, 180 Ramírez, René, 44, 156 Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Rodents), 9, 11, 34, 55, 56, 58–64, 62n2, 71, 72, 74, 81, 84, 85, 90, 107, 128, 189 Restrepo, Luz Elena, 117 Restrepo, María Fernanda, 11, 77n9, 93, 108, 109, 112–119, 172, 188, 190 Restrepo, Pedro, 113, 114, 116–118, 121n11 Retazos de vida (Scraps of Life), 139 Retorno a la democracia (Return to democracy), 10, 11, 93, 107–112, 120, 191 Revolución Ciudadana (Citizen’s Revolution), 46, 95–97, 113, 120, 124, 150 See also Correa, Rafael Revolución Liberal (Liberal Revolution), 5, 94 See also Alfaro, Eloy Rhon, John, 110 Rio de la Raya, Colectivo, 168, 168n6 Riquelme, Larissa, 142 Rivera, Alberto Pablo, 11, 79, 80, 80n10, 110, 125, 143–150, 188, 190

Rocha, Glaúber, 56, 68, 69 Rodas, Isabel, 13, 171, 177, 178, 180, 181, 189 Rojas, Luis, 142 Roldós, Jaime, 109, 110 Muerte de Jaime Roldós, La (The death of Jaime Roldós), 77n9, 108–110 Rómpete una pata (Break a leg), 139, 141 Ruiz, Lilian, 142 S Saad, Pedro, 34, 35 Samaniego, Mauricio, 107, 108 Sandinista, movement, 106 Sanjinés, Jorge, 16, 19, 20, 30, 42, 70, 106 Santa Elena en bus (Santa Elena in bus), 177, 180 Santillán, Alejandro, 167 Sarayacu, community, 158, 167, 181n9 Sarmiento, Manolo, 77n9, 107n6, 109, 110, 114, 158 Saudade, 82 Sensaciones (Sensations), 35, 62–63, 140 Serrano, Jorge Luis, 18, 48–53, 51n12, 82, 120n10, 169 See also Consejo Nacional de Cinematografía (National Film Council) Sexy Montañita, see Rivera, Alberto Pablo Sicarios Manabitas (Hitmen from Manabi), 77, 126, 135, 149 Siglo en el paraíso, un (A Century in Paradise), 142 Sin Muertos no hay carnaval (Such is life in the tropics), 40, 81, 82

 INDEX 

Sin otoño sin primavera (No autumn, no spring), 85 Socialism for the 21st century, 1n1, 2, 4, 6–13, 15, 17, 19, 27, 42, 43, 43n8, 47, 50, 53–55, 66n5, 71, 72, 74–79, 84, 90, 91, 93–98, 108, 113, 115, 120, 121, 123, 133, 134, 138, 143, 150, 151, 153–155, 161, 185, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193 See also Correa, Rafael; Pink Tide; Post-neoliberalism Solanas, Fernando, 24, 56, 65–68, 70, 81, 172 Spencer, Alberto, 105, 108 Spencer, 108 Sucre, Teatro, 32 Sueños en la mitad del mundo (Dreams from the middle of the world), 34, 63 Sumak Kawsay, see Buen Vivir Sumak Qamaña, 155 See also Aymara Supercines, 35, 37, 39, 41, 50, 77n9 SUPERCOM, 151 T Tarantino, Quentin, 127 Taxista, La (Taxi driver), 148 Telenovela, 140, 141 Television, 11, 34, 46, 76, 96, 96n3, 100, 101, 114, 123, 125, 138–143, 145–151, 148n6, 158n2, 168, 188, 190, 191 Third Cinema, 5, 6, 9, 12, 24, 27, 55–57, 64–71, 66n5, 78, 79, 81, 82, 90, 91, 155, 157, 158, 172, 175, 187, 189, 192 Third World Cinema, 24, 67, 68, 71 30S, 100

221

Tigra, La (The Tigress), 35, 36, 49, 51n12, 82 Tiré Dié (Toss me a Dime), 65 Titán en el ring, un (A titan in the ring), 140 Tola box, La, 108, 111 Touché films, 82 Tramontana, Gabriel, 34 Transitional justice, 114, 114n7 Transnational cinemas, 24, 26, 27, 78, 94, 98–101, 186 critical transnationalism, 6, 7, 16, 22, 48, 53 Tres familias (Three families), 148 Trinity, La, 148 A tus espaldas (Behind You), 79–81, 83 U Ukamau, Grupo, 20, 21, 70 Ulloa, Jorge, 83 Unasur, 45 Underdevelopment, 55, 64, 66, 66n5, 70, 71, 90 Underground cinema, 2 Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 118 Universidad San Francisco de Quito, 63, 84 Universidad Técnica Estatal de Quevedo, 142 University of Southern California, 63, 84 Un minuto de vida (A minute to live), 134 V Valencia, Carla, 109, 115n9 Van Weert, Jos, 141 Va por ti, Ecuador (It is for you, Ecuador), 104, 105 Variedades, Teatro, 32, 33

222 

INDEX

Vázquez, Mónica, 43 Vendedora de Rosas, La (The Rose Seller), 58 Vengo Volviendo (Here and there), 13, 97n4, 153–155, 171, 176–182, 189–191 Ventana Sur, 76 Venus Films, 40 Vernacular cinema, 11, 123–152, 188 modernism, 125, 129–138

Vietnam War, 67, 70, 127 Villa, Santiago, 100, 101 Villaroel, Fernando, 145, 148, 148n6, 151 Vivos (Alive), 148, 148n6 W West, Carl, 36, 148n6 Western, 132, 136, 138, 158, 159, 163, 190