LAUSR

cinema’, which identifies a multi-layered consciousness in the works of exiled or displaced filmmakers, in order to argue that Vázquez’s films are both part of the politically engaged New Latin American Cinema, and personal reflections on exile, with a correspondingly dissonant visual aesthetic. Naficy’s work is also important for Ramírez Soto’s analysis of the multiple, transnational narrative layers of Presencia lejana/Etäällä ja läsnä (1982), which tells the story of Hanna Hietala, a Finnish woman who emigrated to Argentina in the 1930s. Here, as in other chapters, physical displacement is mirrored by effects of alienation and by a defiance of genre norms, as the political documentary meets the cinematic musical. The final chapter in this section is the transcript of a conversation between Pick and Vázquez that took place at the Pésaro Film Festival in Italy in 1981, and which focuses on Gracias a la vida (1980). The book’s final section includes transcripts of conversations with Mallet, Sarmiento and Vázquez, full of technical information for each of the films discussed, and with a colour dossier of posters, stills, reviews and other written material relating to the three directors. The provision of this information means that the book is as useful for those who are new to the films discussed as it is for experts in Latin American or Chilean cinema. What is striking throughout the volume is the recurrence of certain critical tropes, from defamiliarisation and the performance of identity to the politicisation of domestic space and the exploration of audiovisual archives. It is intriguing to note (though this is not explicitly stated) that many of these techniques associated with the cinema of exile and displacement have ‘come home’ and have been used to explore the reconfigurations of Chilean identity in the cinema of the last 20 years. There is ample scope, then, for further studies of the legacy and impact of the pioneering filmmakers discussed here. For now, with its theoretical coherence and sophistication, Nomadías makes a brilliant case for the importance of Mallet, Sarmiento and Vázquez, and moreover suggests that Chilean cinema studies are in rude health.