Abstract
This chapter argues for the centrality of cinema memory and qualitative methods in the study of comparative cinema histories, particularly in relation to gendered and transnational aspects that are often invisible in big-scale, quantitative data collections. To do so, the chapter discusses a research project exploring the affective and transcultural knowledge offered by migrant cinema memory, looking at the experiences of movie-going of an intergenerational group of Latin American women living in Barcelona and Milan. Following a biographical and comparative design, the study elicited memories of cinema-going across different countries, historical periods, and cultures, while a reflexive and feminist approach to the interview method ensured the harmonisation of comparisons. To further demonstrate the productivity of this framework, the second part of the chapter offers a thematic analysis of extracts discussing the different types of cinematic venues—cines de barrio (neighbour theatres), cines del centro (cinemas of the centre), cine clubs cinematheques, and the multiplex—recurring in the memories of the interviewees.
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Notes
- 1.
Participants were all first-generation, voluntary migrants, with 2+ years of permanence in Barcelona or Milan. They were coming from the following countries: Bolivia (1), Ecuador (5), Mexico (3), Argentina (4), Colombia (8), Peru (5), Venezuela (1), Brazil (6), Honduras (1), and Uruguay (1). Recruitment was conducted through snowball sampling. The interviewees have in common an averagely high level of education (high school diploma/degree), and have all lived, at least for a period of their life, in a large Latin American city. The interviews were conducted on-line between April and December 2020 in Spanish (except for one in Italian), audio recorded, and transcribed. The analysis was made with NVivo, using both inductive and deductive thematic approaches. All the participants have given their written consent for the publication of anonymised extracts.
- 2.
Looking at the Projects Map published on the website of the History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception Network (HoMER), a scholarly association linked to the development and dissemination of NCH methods, we can observe a concentration of projects in Europe (49), followed by North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico) with 14, and a handful of other countries (Turkey 3, Australia 2, Malaysia 1, South Africa 1, Brazil 1). Although the map may not be updated, it mirrors a still incomplete process of expansion of the field beyond Europe (HoMER, n.d.). In this context, it is also worth mentioning that, as the most recent editions of HoMER annual conferences demonstrate, the field is welcoming a growing number of projects focusing on a variety of geographical areas. However, to date and to the best of knowledge, it has not yet been systematically discussed whether NCH’s emphasis on quantitative methods is sustainable for research conducted on postcolonial and scattered archives affected by the migration, dispersion, and absence of documents.
- 3.
Advanced by feminist and minoritised scholars, the politics of citation scrutinises citation as a practice that contributes to consolidate patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the production of knowledge, by articulating an intellectual economy of legitimacy and property over ideas. As Annabel L. Kim explains, citation practices “most often violently erases the contributions of minoritized scholars such as women and people of color, thus abetting the continued consolidation of intellectual influence in a white, heteronormative, masculine center. […] The phrase ‘politics of citation’ was first coined by legal scholar Richard Delgado to point to the exclusion of minority scholars of civil rights by white scholars who coopted the field for themselves—the notion of citational politics is itself rooted in the idea that citation has victims” (Kim 2020, p. 5).
- 4.
I discussed the opportunities for a “mobile” approach to cinema memory in Missero 2021.
- 5.
Typical street food from Honduras.
- 6.
The very diverse age of the respondents reflects the intentionally open criteria for the recruitment of participants (over eighteen and based in Milan or Barcelona for at least two years). By design, the project aimed to mirror the “superdiversity” (Vertovec 2007) characterising contemporary global migrations, which are marked by the intertwining of regulatory channels, routes, temporalities, and social positionings. In this respect, interviewing first-generation migrant women of very different ages enabled also a set of trans-historical comparisons, like in this case, using the biographical narrative structure of the interviews as a thread.
- 7.
I am referring to two ongoing projects, respectively, focusing on cinema-going in Buenos Aires and Santiago del Chile: Historia de los públicos de cine en Buenos Aires (1933–1955), led by Clara Kriger, University of Buenos Aires; “Públicos de cine en Chile: cultura cinematográfica, cinefilia y procesos de formación,” led by María Paz Peirano, University of Chile.
- 8.
The cine clubs date their first steps in many Latin American countries in the first decades of the twentieth century. From their beginnings, they became sites for cosmopolitan exchanges across the region and with Europe (Navitski and Poppe 2017). During the 1960s and 1970s, they found a fertile ground in the universities, where they promoted a politically and socially conscious form of spectatorship, in dialogue with similar European experiences. Today, the cine clubs are currently experiencing a phase of revival in certain areas of the region, as they continue to promote forms of alternative spectatorship (Broitman and Esverri 2018). The cinematheques were founded in various Latin American capitals throughout the 1970s, promoting the preservation and dissemination of national cinema and the diversification of the offer, attempting to reach remote and rural audiences with targeted initiatives.
- 9.
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Missero, D. (2024). Transnational Cinema Memory: Latin American Women Remembering Cinema-Going Across Borders. In: Treveri Gennari, D., Van de Vijver, L., Ercole, P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative New Cinema Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38789-0_21
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