Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin American Cinema: Insurgent Skin

Book excerpt: Insurgent Skin: Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin American Cinema argues that twenty-first century Latin American cinema about lesbian, feminist, intersex, and transgender themes is revolutionary because it disrupts heteronormative and binary representation and explores new, queer signifying modes. Grounded in feminist and queer theory, Insurgent Skin conjugates film phenomenology and theories of affect and embodiment to analyze a spectrum of Latin American films. The first chapters explore queer signifying in Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy and the lesbian utopia of Albertina Carri’s Las hijas del fuego (2018). Next, the book discusses the female body as uncanny absence in Tatiana Huezo’s documentary Tempestad (2016), a film about gendered violence in Mexico. Chapter Five focuses on intersex films and the establishing of queer solidarity and an intersex gaze. The last chapter examines transgender embodiment in the Chilean film Una mujer fantástica (2017) and Brazilian documentary Bixa Travesty (2018).