“I Can’t Control It”: Lila Avilés’s Feature Films as Environmental Mourning
Climate change has had a profound impact on Mexico. Notably, in 2024, climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum was elected president. Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés’s two feature films – La camarista (The Chambermaid, 2018) and Tótem (Totem, 2024) – have garnered significant press attention but little...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Lagoonscapes |
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| Online Access: | http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/02/008 |
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| Summary: | Climate change has had a profound impact on Mexico. Notably, in 2024, climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum was elected president. Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés’s two feature films – La camarista (The Chambermaid, 2018) and Tótem (Totem, 2024) – have garnered significant press attention but little scholarly analysis. Through a detailed examination of Avilés’s portrayal of hygiene and animals, the author argues that the films highlight humanity’s interconnectedness with nature and reflect the failed efforts – through religion, psychology, politics, and other means – to control it. In this sense, Avilés films the ‘anthropological machine’ in the making, and these works should be understood as instances of environmental mourning.
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| ISSN: | 2785-2709 |