Politics and Performance in Post-dictatorship Argentine Film and Theatre

Book excerpt: This comparative study examines the strategies of re-politicization and socialization employed in contemporary Argentine film and theatre produced in the wake of the 1976-83 dictatorship. It focuses on the socio-political facets of performance across a range of films and dramatic compositions. This comparative study examines the strategies of re-politicization and socialization employed in contemporary Argentine film and theatre produced in the wake of the 1976-83 dictatorship. It focuses on the socio-political facets of performance across a range of films and dramatic compositions. The book highlights the manner in which the trope of performance represents the place in which film and theatre experiment with generic and mediatic hybridization. Each chapter takes as its point of departure a series of politically motivated appropriations made by cinema and theatre from neighboring genres/media. In each case, genre is shown to take on the role of mediator between competing aesthetic forms: between aesthetics and politics; aesthetic performance and social performance; reality and fiction; postmodern heterogeneity and an increasingly present modern anxiety regarding the perceived need to preserveartistic purity/autonomy, thus restoring what is specific to theatre and cinema's type of communication. Philippa Page has managed the cultural programme at the Maison de l'Argentine in the Cité Internationale Universitaire, Paris and continues to research in the field of Argentine performance studies.