(Re)Writing With the Feet

The Flâneur as Urban Cartographer in Alicia Scherson's Film Play (Chile, 2005)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2170256
AutoresPhilippa Jane Page, Philippa Page (0000-0002-7411-4129), Nadia Lie (0000-0001-7131-8938)
Año2016
Volumen25
Número4
Páginas533-553
Fecha de publicación2016-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2016.1229658
OpenAlexW2523881629
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas14

This article approaches Chilean filmmaker Alicia Scherson’s first feature-length film, Play (2005), from the perspectives of mobility and social cartography in relation to the spatial practices of the main characters. Through the paradigmatic figure of the flâneur, the article explores the representative function of both the characters’ and the camera’s drifting itineraries across the city, as they subtly perform a peripatetic cartography of present-day Santiago. The diegetic threads that are spun by the characters progressively interlace to weave an urban text which lays bare – as they are transgressed – a series of frontiers that cut across the cityscape. The film maps out two very different human geographies of post-dictatorship Chile, a lived urban space that reveals the stark social divide propping up the nation’s neoliberal economic structure. Scherson’s roving camera engages in a politics of perception which invites the spectator to view the city differently, thus exploring the possibility of upsetting this divide

Art · Art history · Cartography · Cityscape · Dictatorship · Film director · Geography · Movie theater · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Spanish Culture and Identity