Review:

Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema - written by Joanna Page, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 2009

In the introduction to her book CRISIS AND CAPITALISM IN CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE CINEMA, Joanna Page summarises the vicissitudes of the Argentine film industry from the 1990s until now and establishes the theoretical framework of her research. By highlighting the relationship between Argentina’s economic and political situation and its film industry, Page sets out to explore how Argentine cinema helped to construct different ‘modes of subjectivity relating to Argentina’s experience of capitalism, neoliberalism and economic crisis’ (p. 3). This study draws on Frederic Jameson’s theorisation on the intrinsically allegorical nature of third world cultural manifestations and Deleuze’s notion that all films which generally refer to money within their narrative can be considered to be reflexive because they implicitly comment on their own process of production. The figures of allegory and reflexivity are present in all film analyses throughout the book.