Amalia Córdova Hidalgo’s Frames of Resistance: The Cinemas of Abya Yala guides readers through a comprehensive and informed overview of Indigenous filmmaking in Latin America. This volume critically engages with scholarly debates in Indigenous media studies, traces the genealogy of these filmmaking practices, and recognises how the circulation of this filmic material in Indigenous film festival spaces has formed a promising, ‘pulsating network’ (p. 6) that fosters Indigenous self-representation and promotes Indigenous audiovisual sovereignty. Through a decolonial lens, Córdova Hidalgo manages to disrupt the perception of Indigenous filmmaking as a marginal practice and instead argues that it is ‘ever-expanding’ (p. 20), varies vastly between regions, and presents alternative worldviews and epistemologies that allow spectators to re-think dominant Western narratives on indigeneity, territory, memory, history and ecology. The author’s desire to ensure a process of ‘epistemic decolonization’ (p. 4) with this study commences with her decision to address the ancestral territorial expanse belonging to these Indigenous filmmaking practitioners as ‘Abya Yala’, a Kuna term used to refer to the continent of the Americas.

Córdova Hidalgo delivers a convincing analysis on the growth, dynamics and structural concerns surrounding Indigenous audiovisual media production in Abya Yala. Her authority and expertise on the matter are the result of her more than 20 years’ experience working as a curator, scholar and media-maker in the Indigenous filmic sphere. Due to her first-hand engagement in the field, Córdova Hidalgo is able to uplift the voices of prolific Indigenous creatives by including many speeches and interviews in the volume. These personal reflections and anecdotes, such as in the opening of Chapter 4, lend to this publication’s uniqueness and separate it from realms of Western, ‘Ivory Tower’ scholarly discourses that are out of touch with the lived realities of the Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala. Another admirable aspect to mention about the volume – that stems from the author’s positionality – comprises the author’s critical engagement with the intersectional power dynamics at play in these practices. Both subsections ‘Widening the Lens’ (Chapter 2) and ‘The Continental Network of Indigenous Women Communicators’ (Chapter 5) discuss the democratisation of Indigenous filmmaking and training initiatives that are increasingly more targeted towards Indigenous women.

As a scholar working on Quechua–Aymara filmmaking practices in the Andes (specifically the 1983 Taller de Cine Minero [Mining Film Workshop]), and as someone with heritage from Potosí, Bolivia, I suggest some revisions to Córdova Hidalgo’s paragraph written on this filmmaking training workshop (p. 71). Firstly, the workshop took place in Atocha, Potosí, and not in La Paz. This is a significant amendment given the scarcity of cinema productions from this region of Bolivia; Potosí’s history of state neglect, persecution and erasure; and the Quechua cultural identities and language featured in the Super 8 documentary shorts – the primary Indigenous language of La Paz is Aymara. Secondly, there were around 15 youths who participated in the Taller de Cine Minero; they were all sons and daughters of miners, rather than ‘young miners’ (p. 71) themselves. Finally, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron was absent from the workshop due to – as María Aimaretti explains in Video Boliviano de los ’80: Experiencias y memorias de una década pendiente en la ciudad de La Paz (2020), p. 184 – ‘compromisos laborales en México’. Rather, the workshop was led by a team of Bolivians (María Luisa Mercado and Gabriela Ávila, amongst others) and two French coordinators from the Ateliers Varan (Jacques d’Arthuys and André Van In).

Córdova Hidalgo structures Frames of Resistance: The Cinemas of Abya Yala into seven chapters. In Chapter 1, ‘For a Cinema of Abya Yala’, the author contextualises pan-Indigenous movements for legal, representational and territorial rights and connects these struggles with notions of Indigenous visual sovereignty. Córdova Hidalgo also addresses the nuances that envelop debates on terminologies and definitions of indigeneity and how these terms complicate ‘what makes a film “Indigenous”’ (p. 8). Chapter 2, entitled ‘From the Four Directions: The Rise of “Indigenous Video” in Abya Yala’, discusses the emergence of Indigenous audiovisual training projects across Latin America, using examples to review the logistics and practicalities of these training programmes including the economic and structural obstacles that frequently arose. In Chapter 3, ‘The Puma and the Jaguar: Indigenous Imaginaries across Abya Yala’, Córdova Hidalgo examines several seminal case studies and extols the profiles of influential Indigenous filmmakers who have produced an array of filmic projects that vary vastly in genre, themes and aesthetics. Chapter 4, ‘The Eagle and the Condor: Indigenous Media and Its Spaces of Performance’, addresses the politics of cinema funding and the integral importance of Indigenous film festivals as sites of dialogue, cultural resistance, the circulation and distribution of Indigenous media, networking for creatives, and cross-cultural ‘Indigenous expression and self-representation’ (p. 8). In Chapter 5, ‘Following the Path of the Serpent: CLACPI Case Study’, the author gives a detailed account of the dynamics, Indigenous methodologies, practices and organisational structures behind the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI). As part of this overview, Córdova Hidalgo delves into the significance of the two rotational, international film festivals primarily run by CLACPI: the Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas and the Premio Internacional Anaconda. In Chapter 6, ‘An Invisible Archive’, the author expresses her reservations over the management and upkeep of archives that store Indigenous audiovisual materials. Córdova Hidalgo views these spaces as repositories of Indigenous cultural memory and criticises and explains the neglect that these archives face in their respective national contexts.

Finally, Chapter 7, entitled ‘Toward a Global Indigenous Cinema’, serves to tie together all the conversations opened in previous chapters and lays out Córdova Hidalgo’s conclusive thoughts. Despite the author’s concerns for the precarity of funding in the Indigenous media sphere, she praises the sophisticated Indigenous productions and the collaborative efforts and empowering networks that have been formed by Indigenous filmmakers and non-Indigenous stakeholders and allies. Much as in the previous chapters, Córdova Hidalgo confidently articulates the paramount decolonial importance of Indigenous filmmaking practices and Indigenous film festivals as spaces to celebrate ‘Indigenous resilience, cultural continuity, and innovation’ (p. 217).