More Than Meets the Eye: On Facing without Fully Knowing the Queer Worlds around Us

This chapter tracks a recent trend in queer narrative films that minimize psychological transparency, leave plot lines unresolved, and make facial close-ups affectively illegible. Such opacities regarding story and character refocus spectators instead on nuanced operations of power within specific cultural milieus. Thus, these films yield stealth versions of political cinema, hailing audiences into complex acts of richly intersectional social analysis and pushing film’s formal capacities to convey “personal” stories in ways that evade voyeurism and deprioritize identification. After opening with the Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016), which stipulates its lead character’s inscrutability to himself and others, including audiences, this inquiry delves further into three lesser-known contemporaries: Spa Night (2016), about a closeted Korean American teen; They (2017), a meditation on gender transition and national exile; and Tomcat (2016), an Austrian parable of the unknowability of humans and other animals.

Beatriz Palacios: Ukamau’s Cornerstone (1974–2003)

Beatriz Palacios’s instrumental role in the Ukamau group has been largely ignored by film historiography and criticism. The authorial persona of her comrade and husband, Jorge Sanjinés, has eclipsed Palacios’s work and ideas. Her erasure is due to the perspectives chosen to analyze Ukamau (male-centered auteurist and formalist approaches) and to the almost exclusive use of the voice of Sanjinés (interviews, essays, and films interpreted in an authorial key) to construct the group’s history. Ignoring the contribution and importance of Palacios’s work and not accounting for her share in the authorship of the films made during the years they lived and worked together impedes a correct understanding of the complexity of the production context and the amplitude of the contribution of Ukamau to Latin American cinema. While her work as a producer is increasingly recognized, delving into her roles as a disseminator of political cinema in alternative circuits, evaluator of the impact of the movies on the popular classes, and documentary director completes the portrait of her all-encompassing life and career. En gran medida, el papel instrumental de Beatriz Palacios en el grupo Ukamau ha sido ignorado por la historiografía y la crítica cinematográficas. La persona autoral de su camarada y esposo, Jorge Sanjinés, ha eclipsado la obra e ideas de Palacios. Dicha eliminación se debe a las perspectivas elegidas para analizar Ukamau (enfoques y formalistas) y al uso casi exclusivo de la voz de Sanjinés (entrevistas, ensayos y películas interpretadas en clave autoral) para construir la historia del grupo. Ignorar la contribución e importancia del trabajo de Palacios, así como su participación en la autoría de las películas realizadas durante los años que vivieron y trabajaron juntos, impide una correcta contribución de Ukamau al cine latinoamericano. Mientras que su trabajo como productora es cada vez más reconocido, ahondar en su labor como divulgadora de cine político en circuitos alternativos, evaluadora del impacto de las películas en las clases populares y directora de documentales, completa debidamente retrato de su vida y carrera.