Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua

Following the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, young bohemian artists rushed to the newly formed Nicaraguan national film institute INCINE to contribute to "the recovery of national identity" through the creation of a national film project. Over the next eleven years, the filmmakers of INCINE produced over seventy films-documentary, fiction, and hybrids-that collectively reveal a unique vision of the Revolution drawn not from official FSLN directives, but from the filmmakers' own cinematic interpretations of the Revolution as they were living it.

This book examines the INCINE film project and assesses its achievements in recovering a Nicaraguan national identity through the creation of a national cinema. Using a wealth of firsthand documentation-the films themselves, interviews with numerous INCINE personnel, and INCINE archival records-Jonathan Buchsbaum follows the evolution of INCINE's project and situates it within the larger historical project of militant, revolutionary filmmaking in Latin America. His research also raises crucial questions about the viability of national cinemas in the face of accelerating globalization and technological changes which reverberate far beyond Nicaragua's experiment in revolutionary filmmaking.

Author: Jonathan Buchsbaum
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 10/01/2003
Pages: 343
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.28lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.18w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780292705241

About the Author
Buchsbaum, Jonathan: - Jonathan Buchsbaum is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, City University of New York.