Myth and Masculinity in the Western: An Illustrated Talk and Conversation + Zama
classified 15 SPlease note: This was screened in Nov 2021
Join us in this illustrated talk, conversation and screening of Zama.
An iconic and influential genre in American cinema, the classic Western is ultimately a celebration of white male power. Whilst films such as The Searchers and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly remain firm favourites and staples in cinematic history, the figure of the cowboy has grown darker and more complicated in today’s sociopolitical climate.
Westerns set in 19th century America are inextricably linked to the genocide of Native Americans, with many films from the genre treating Indigenous people as one-dimensional villains, a monolithic other with no rights to property or respect, there to be defeated by righteous white men.
Join UWE MA Curating student, Lola Mckinnon, for an illustrated talk tracking the problematic history of representation in the Western and its revival at the hands of a new generation of female filmmakers. The talk will be followed by a conversation between Lola and Watershed Cinema Curator, Mark Cosgrove, and then there will be a screening of Lucrecia Martel's Zama.
More information about Zama:
One of the most interesting filmmakers in contemporary world cinema, Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman) returns with this epic film adapted from Antonio Di Benedetto's classic of Argentine literature about the abuses of colonialism.
Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Cacho) is an officer in an unnamed colony of the 18th-century Spanish crown, desperate to return home to the city his family lives in. As his request gets repeatedly delayed by endless bureaucracy, Martel charts his decline with gorgeous visuals and a multi-layered soundscape.
Screening as part of our New Frontiers: Myth and Masculinity season, Zama nods to the Western through its protagonist, the isolated colonial ‘man alone’, surrounded by an Indigenous ‘other’ he can’t understand in the midst of a wondrous and evocative landscape with which he seems to be at odds. What ensues is a strange and dreamlike tableaux of longing, alienation, desire and defeat by the colonial syndrome of dislocation.