Imagining Latin America: Magical Realism, Cosmopolitanism and the !Viva! Film Festival

Winner of the 2016-17 AHGBI/Spanish Embassy Publication Prize

This book focuses on the contemporary production and consumption of Latin American culture in the UK through the lens of the !Viva! Film Festival in Manchester. It offers a comprehensive analysis of how the British press has used the framework of magical realism to interpret Latin America for readers and applies these findings to the festival in order to explore deeper questions of identity formation and cultural appropriation. The book traces the growth of Latin American communities in Britain; the popularity of Latin American literature, music, and film in many of the country’s largest cities, including London and Manchester; and shows how people in Britain who do not have Latin American origins consume Latin American culture to reconcile issues of self-identity and cosmopolitanism. Imagining Latin America presents a new and innovative approach to Latin American Studies and makes an important contribution to contemporary debates about the cultural integration of immigrant communities and transnational exchange.