Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he teaches courses in film history, theory, and criticism, Richard Peña served as program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and head of the New York Film Festival selection committee for a quarter of a century from 1988 to 2012.
Richard Peña on LA CIÉNAGA and NEIGHBORING SOUNDS
(Big House and Slave Quarters)
MASTER/SERVANT | Guest Lecture
MASTER/SERVANT | Guest Lecture
(Big House and Slave Quarters)
Richard Peña on LA CIÉNAGA and NEIGHBORING SOUNDS
Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he teaches courses in film history, theory, and criticism, Richard Peña served as program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and head of the New York Film Festival selection committee for a quarter of a century from 1988 to 2012.
ROMA might be the most well-known example and epic rendering of the subject, but master-servant relations have proven a popular narrative format with which to address inequality in contemporary Latin American cinema, whether this means films by Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas (BATTLE IN HEAVEN, POST TENEBRAS LUX), Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel (THE HEADLESS WOMAN), or Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.
In his guest talk focusing on Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA (2001) and Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (2012) – set and shot in the directors’ respective hometowns of Salta and Recife – Richard Peña stresses the historical roots to the ethnic divisions between European colonizers and indigenous Amerindian populations that persist to this day in the form of master-servant relations.
From the erotic thoughts and romantic feelings a bourgeois adolescent harbors towards her family’s maid in Martel’s loosely autobiographical film to the spatial configuration of the master’s “big house” (casa-grande) in relation to the “slave quarters” (senzala) manifested in Filho’s racially complex vision of Recife as an uneasy admixture of gated communities and slums, master-servant relations are front and center in recent Latin American films’ vision of a stratified society.
ROMA might be the most well-known example and epic rendering of the subject, but master-servant relations have proven a popular narrative format with which to address inequality in contemporary Latin American cinema, whether this means films by Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas (BATTLE IN HEAVEN, POST TENEBRAS LUX), Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel (THE HEADLESS WOMAN), or Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.
In his guest talk focusing on Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA (2001) and Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (2012) – set and shot in the directors’ respective hometowns of Salta and Recife – Richard Peña stresses the historical roots to the ethnic divisions between European colonizers and indigenous Amerindian populations that persist to this day in the form of master-servant relations.
From the erotic thoughts and romantic feelings a bourgeois adolescent harbors towards her family’s maid in Martel’s loosely autobiographical film to the spatial configuration of the master’s “big house” (casa-grande) in relation to the “slave quarters” (senzala) manifested in Filho’s racially complex vision of Recife as an uneasy admixture of gated communities and slums, master-servant relations are front and center in recent Latin American films’ vision of a stratified society.
ROMA might be the most well-known example and epic rendering of the subject, but master-servant relations have proven a popular narrative format with which to address inequality in contemporary Latin American cinema, whether this means films by Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas (BATTLE IN HEAVEN, POST TENEBRAS LUX), Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel (THE HEADLESS WOMAN), or Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.
In his guest talk focusing on Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA (2001) and Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (2012) – set and shot in the directors’ respective hometowns of Salta and Recife – Richard Peña stresses the historical roots to the ethnic divisions between European colonizers and indigenous Amerindian populations that persist to this day in the form of master-servant relations.
From the erotic thoughts and romantic feelings a bourgeois adolescent harbors towards her family’s maid in Martel’s loosely autobiographical film to the spatial configuration of the master’s “big house” (casa-grande) in relation to the “slave quarters” (senzala) manifested in Filho’s racially complex vision of Recife as an uneasy admixture of gated communities and slums, master-servant relations are front and center in recent Latin American films’ vision of a stratified society.