Uruguayan film criticism in the post-dictatorship era: Traditions and ruptures, theoretical perspectives and relationships within the critical field

This article charts the history of two Uruguayan film journals, especially during the period that followed the country’s return to democracy in the mid-1980s: Cinemateca Revista, published by the Cinemateca Uruguaya, and El País Cultural, the cultural supplement of Uruguay’s premier daily newspaper, El País. The article charts the similarities and differences between the two publications, analysing how on the whole the latter journal rejected a political/politicized criticism of films and film culture to achieve a desired objectivity, while the former overtly lobbied for changes in Uruguay’s film production and distribution policies. These differences are highlighted by close analyses of the writings of two journalists from the period: Homero Alsina Thevenet of El País Cultural and Manuel Martínez Carril of the Cinemateca Revista. The article explores how these differences are also manifested through the respective authors’ approach to authorship, genre and the relationship between cinema as art and cinema as industry, and in their writing styles.