Call For Papers Meridional 26: "Archives, Violence, and Subjectivities: Practices, Discourses, and Aesthetics in 21st-Century Latin American Documentary Cinema"

Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos is pleased to invite submissions for the issue "Archives, Violence, and Subjectivities: Practices, Discourses, and Aesthetics in 21st-Century Latin American Documentary Cinema", which will be published in April 2026 as issue number 26.

Since the early 21st century, Latin American documentary cinema has undergone a series of transformations, both in terms of its specific field (production mechanisms, consecration instances, circulation and exhibition networks, consumption habits) and in the framework of its discourses and aesthetics. While these transformations partially replicate those seen in global documentary filmmaking, they also acquire specific inflections tied to the traditions of Latin American documentary, regional production conditions, the socio-political history of Latin America, and the region’s conflicts and ways of inhabiting the present. Some of the most significant modifications in recent years relate to three key concepts: archives, violence, and subjectivity.

The turn to the archive, as proposed by Hal Foster (2004) in contemporary art and also present in audiovisual practices of the period, involves the exploration of both public, widely circulated archives and those intended for restricted circulation, spanning a broad spectrum from repressive archives to personal or domestic records. Within this variability, Latin American documentary cinema has developed a range of strategies to explore different modes of intervention in these archives. In some cases, this involves revisiting archives of dictatorial terror (Paz Encina, Anita Leandro, Teresa Arredondo); in others, it entails recovering family archives of victims of state terrorism (Nicolás Prividera, Agustina Comedi). Certain documentaries make use of television or official archives (Lucas Gallo), while others appropriate home movies and family films to intertwine intimate and historical records (Moreira Salles, Natalia Garayalde, Ignacio Agüero, João Moreira Salles, Eryk Rocha).

To a large extent, these interventions into the past through the recovery of archives are aimed at reassessing the history of violence that has plagued Latin America. Latin American documentary cinema has mapped both the criminal practices of dictatorships (Patricio Guzmán, Albertina Carri, Carmen Castillo) and the effects of neoliberal economic policies, often overlapping with these repressive regimes (Fernando Solanas, Carolina Adriazola, and José Luis Sepúlveda). A significant portion of Latin American documentary production stems from a desire to scrutinize the living conditions of the most precarious sectors of society. However, this approach has taken on new forms, distancing itself from both the tradition of "poverty porn" and the politically instrumentalized cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, violence has also come to refer to the imposition of political models centered on coercion and authoritarianism, such as the expansion of drug trafficking as a "parallel state" (Tatiana Huezo, Everardo González), police repression (Carlos Araya), and prison conditions (Tana Gilbert, Francina Carbonell, Sepúlveda, and Adriazola).

If documentary cinema has managed to articulate discourses on the ruptures and continuities between past and present and has structured an approach to the present that accounts for different degrees and intensities of violence, it has also explored the emergence of new modes of subjectivity and new strategies of subjectivation. The intersection of identity politics and audiovisual practices has led to experiences that materialize discourses on subjectivities (individual and/or collective) that have historically been marginalized in regional documentary filmmaking. The emergence of dissident sexual identities, Indigenous populations, and minoritized ethnic or religious identities within the social fabric raises new questions about possible forms of representation for identities that have often been "othered" in Latin American history (Camila José Donoso, Aldo Garay, Juan Carlos Rulfo).

Additionally, documentary cinema in the region actively engages with its own tradition as a creative practice, establishing both breaks and affiliations with previous works. By incorporating elements such as essayistic approaches, experimentation, and hybrid formats, contemporary documentary expands its language beyond its own limits. In this sense, it constitutes an ever-evolving creative practice, incorporating not only new thematic approaches but also novel processes and aesthetic explorations. Filmmakers such as Albertina Carri, Ignacio Agüero, Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff, Gustavo Fontán, Susana Barriga, and Andrés Di Tella, among others, explore essayistic and exploratory forms, blending registers, tones, and processes whose ultimate goal is to expand the documentary format through creative action.

Thus, contemporary Latin American documentary cinema serves as a site of critical exploration of themes such as history, politics, and the evolution of social structures while also functioning as a distinct language undergoing profound expansion.

Suggested (but not exclusive) thematic areas:

• Reassemblies and archive aesthetics in relation to memory
• Interventions in family archives: history in tension through the intimate
• Precarious lives in contemporary neoliberalism: forms of violence and resistance
• Subjectivity, body, and performativity beyond zero-degree documentary
• Audiovisual activism and militancy in contemporary Latin American documentary: from protest to virality
• Aesthetics, process, and essayistic approaches in contemporary Latin American documentary: hybrid languages for an expanding field
• Violence and subjectivities: documentary cinema and its inscription in history beyond established maps
• Documentary cinema at risk: violence and state disintegration. Drug trafficking, police repression, and the vulnerability of bodies

Meridional is indexed in the following databases: ERIH-Plus, Latindex Catalog, DOAJ, Dialnet, Gale-Cengage, Prisma.

Final deadline for manuscript submissions: September 30th, 2025.

For inquiries, contact, and submission of proposals: revistameridional@gmail.com

Guest Editors
Mariano Veliz (IAE-FFyL-UBA, Argentina)
Iván Pinto Veas (Film School, Ciah, Universidad Mayor, Chile)