Images to Remember: Nostalgia and Hegemonic Identities in <i>Italia 90: The Movie</i>
Abstract
The reconstruction of the past and memory is examined in the feature film Italia 90: The Movie (2014) by Miguel Gómez, which depicts the first participation of a Costa Rican team in a World Cup. The analysis includes the narrative, visual, and sound operations with which the past and memory are recreated (... or created), as well as the ways in which the story involves the viewers, particularly those who remember the episode. It is explained that, although the story resorts to certain topics of sports cinema, it is presented more as an adventure of the community, which would eventually include an entire country, and favors the exploration of the intimate over the epic. Italia 90: The Movie appeals to nostalgia, through recognizable images and sounds, as well as figures anchored in the hegemonic Costa Rican imaginary (such as the “common peasant”), to narrate an episode that, in addition to being central in the history of sports in Costa Rica, it is among the events that symbolically mark the country's entry into the globalized world.
Keywords
Soccer; National Hero; Memory; Nostalgia; Costa Rican Cinema; Identity
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University of Costa Rica Costa Rica
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1624-5320
Bértold Salas-Murillo is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Costa Rica. He has a Masters in Cinematography from University of Costa Rica and a Ph.D. in Literature and Arts of the Stage and the Screen (Littérature et arts de la scène et de l'écran) from Laval University, Canada. He is the assistant director of the Postgraduate in Arts of the University of Costa Rica. His recent publications include "Forging Her Path with Her Own Fists: Autonomy and Contradictions of Age, Class and Gender in Florence Jaugey's La Yuma/Yuma (2010)," "La intermedialidad: las oportunidades y los riesgos de un concepto en boga," "Un hoy que se narra a la sombra del ayer. El cine costarricense y la inquietud por el tiempo," "Los subterfugios digitales de Jafar Panahi," and "Entre la scène et l'écran. Le parcours intermédial dans l'euvre de Robert Lepage," among others.
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