Anita: Journeying Through Landscapes of Loss and Hope
Abstract:
<p>This paper traces young people’s urban experiences of loss and hope through an engagement with the film <i>Anita</i> (Argentina, 2009). Anita is a young woman with Down syndrome who gets lost in Buenos Aires after the bombing of the Argentine Israeli Association in 1994. I draw on the notion of journeying to explore young people’s spatiotemporal relationships to the everyday geographies of a global Latin American city. Anita’s journey cuts across different parts of the city characterized by racial, gender, and class inequality. I identify key themes that tie the film together: fatherhood, motherhood and family, urban poverty and the informal economy resulting from neoliberal reforms, the transformation of Argentina into a multicultural society, and the trauma and legacy of terrorism (both state-sponsored and otherwise) on the fabric of urban life and politics and Argentine society. By documenting Anita’s encounters with people who are also experiencing their own losses or misfortunes, I describe the physical, social, and emotional ways in which young people relate to others in the city, and how Anita herself becomes a source of hope and agent of change for those she interacts with in her own unexpected journey. </p>
Keywords: Argentina, film, journeys, landscape, young people
Authors:
Fernando Bosco, San Diego State University; Submitting Author / Primary Presenter