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Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos tem o prazer de convidá-lo a participar do dossiê "Vigência do marxismo latino-americano: pensando com, a partir e além da obra de Michael Löwy" correspondente ao número 21, que será publicado em outubro de 2023.

Cine Móvil: Lights, Projectors, and Screenings on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast

Autores

Resumo

Previous scholars have noted the importance of film and video to the Sandinista Revolution (Ryan 1996, Buschbaum 2003, Calvo 2008, Roncallo 2013, Gonçalves 2015). A subset of this scholarship critically assesses the structural implications of Sandinista media (Velásquez 2016, and Rodríguez, and Anangonó 2019), however, little attention has been paid to the racial dimensions of Sandinista media projects. This essay focuses on the historical, geographic, and racial dimensions of Cine Móvil, the mobile cinema project established by the Sandinista government as a consciousness-raising tool for the country’s rural communities. Through a combination of Sandinista-produced newsreels and narrative films, these screenings promoted decentralized, grassroots, and participatory media practices. I argue that Cine Móvil was anexpansion of Sandinista multiculturalist strategies that sought to suture the splits between a predominantly mestizo Pacific coast and the historically marginalized Afro-Indigenous Nicaraguan Caribbean coast. The screenings in places like Pearl Lagoon, Rama, and Orinoco were strategic for the Sandinista government, given that the contra war financed by the United States was primarily fought on the long-neglected coast. Trained to open with a revolutionary salute and to engage the audiences in conversation after the screenings, the projectionists who arrived on pack animals, motorboats, and vehicles across the vast terrain that separated the two coasts provided entertainment, didactic media, and a reassurance that they had a place in the larger project of Sandinismo.

Palavras-chave:

race, cine móvil, sandinista revolution, Latin American Cinema, Central American Caribbean