Transnational Latin American Television: genres, formats and adaptations

Abstract

captures the particularity of the non-western political cinema of this age without getting lost in the outer reaches of Deleuze-speak. Curiously, despite explicit engagement with complex post-structuralist thinkers, Holtmeier frequently rests within the liberal-phenomenological. Holtmeier asserts that ‘film is an affective medium’ (19), that ‘cinema brings verisimilitude to politics by depicting the lived experiences of individuals caught in the midst of these cultural clashes’ (40), and in approaching mainstream critique of ISIS militants as overly humanised in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (2015), Holtmeier demurs that they are not ‘humanized so much as their militant subjectivities are compromised and complicated.’ (77) So – humanised then? If ISIS fighters are not individual agents who spend time grooming children or travelling to warzones and damning local culture but ‘complicated, globally networked subjects’ (78) then exactly what liberation or progress beyond neoliberalism and boundaries and precarity is made? Holtmeier is strong and precise when unpacking the subtle juxtapositions of globalism and fundamentalism in Timbuktu and more, but it is unclear which politics are being served in this analysis of the political cinema.