The political blockages of Peruvian memory cinema

This chapter examines the difficulties facing twenty-first-century Peruvian films in their attempts to contribute to society by encouraging their audiences to remember the violence experienced by the country from 1980 to 2000. It examines five difficulties: first, the opposition between film as industry and as art; second, how production and distribution are conditioned by unequal power relations between the Andes, Lima and the global North; third, the complexities of representing victims without suppressing their agency; fourth, the adversity facing Andean film productions in reaching audiences and fifth, the tension surrounding representations of the Shining Path and its members in the face of polarized memories of political violence in Peru.