Latin American Literature and Film Archive

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Welcome to the Latin American Literature and Film Archive website.  

 

The site is an attempt to research, gather, organize, and disseminate information about the relationship between Latin American literature and film.  The literary side of this pairing has directed the project: the archive aims to identify works by Latin American authors whose novels, short stories, drama, poetry, and other writings have served as the point of departure for the production of feature films, documentaries, shorts, and films for television produced inside and outside Latin America. In addition, information about film scripts written by Latin American authors--both original scripts and scripts based on Latin American literature--has been incorporated into the archive.

 

The project began in a graduate seminar at the University of Southern California in Spring1999.  Left suspended for more than ten years as members of the seminar relocated to other cities, countries, and institutions, the project was expanded, updated, and launched for public access in September 2012.

 

I want to acknowledge the project’s original co-creators, the seminar members whose generous collaboration as a group and illuminating contributions as individuals shaped the original undertaking.  My thanks go to Gloria Arjona, Galina Bakhtiarova, Joanna Boampong, Mario Michelena, Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro, and Claudia Soria. And to Deborah Gill for the technical support she provided to the group.

 

In addition, from 2008-09, when I began to plan the project’s expansion and updating, until the 2012 launching of the site I had the invaluable assistance of Ismael E. Abdala. My thanks to him for his impeccable research, hard work, and imaginative, as well as practical, proposals, which helped to create the current archive and provide a foundation for its future development.

 

The assistance of the technical staff in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences at Northwestern University has also been invaluable, and we thank them for their support.

Exploring the site

The following clickable phrases, as well as the tabs above, will allow you to explore the site and learn more about how it was developed, what it contains, and how it might be expanded.

 

            Authors, Literary Texts, Films, and Directors contain archive material organized under these rubrics.

            The Project presents a brief narrative about the project’s beginnings.

            Site Development describes possible options for expanding the site in the future.

           

 

Lucille Kerr, Ph.D.

Professor

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Northwestern University

Evanston, IL

USA

latamlitfilm@northwestern.edu

 

Updated - Spring 2020