The Contemporary Documentary Road Movie in Latin America: Issues on Mobility, Displacement, and Autobiography

Abstract

This chapter studies the representation of displacement and mobility in contemporary documentaries influenced by the road movie genre in terms of iconography, narrative patterns, and visual cues. Piedras analyzes three first person documentaries made by female directors: The Illusion (Susana Barriga, Cuba, 2008), Diario de uma busca (Flávia Castro, Brazil, 2010), and Hija (María Paz González, Chile, 2011). These non-fiction films have employed conventions of the road movie to put in flux issues of identity—personal and collective—and memory with a distinctive focus on gender. Piedras argues that Latin American women’s directors have found in contemporary first person documentaries a cogent genre to articulate a strong female agency and face issues such as their relationship with conflictive paternal figures.