Nuriel, Patricia and Luca Barattoni (eds.): Jewish Identities in Latin American Cinema , a special issue for Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities (2019)
The growing field of Jewish Latin American film studies in recent years accounts for the increasing presence of Jewish characters and cultural subjects in Latin American cinema. Since their early days, the Jews were among the innovators of the film and music industries in Latin America. However, cinematographic representations of Jewish topics started emerging only after the mid-20 thcentury. By virtue of this progression, portrayals of Jewish experience in Latin American film provide new insights of topics such as predicaments of acculturation and assimilation, collective memory, historical traumas, militancy and political agency, and diasporas and exiles. “Latin American Jewishness” transcends the status of an ethnic marker, working as a catalyst to rethink ways of membership to their particular nation and to dynamize discussions on modes of inclusion for ethnic, religious, gender, and other minorities. It goes beyond the mere representation of a milieu, shedding light on identity debates and proposing new forms of visibility in the global continuum.
