Rethinking Peripheral Cinemas from the Margins

In recent years there has been an emergence of the notion of the peripheryl peripheral as a conceptual framework for the study of contemporary cinema. In the Iberian context, Josetxo Cerdán was one of the first critics to approach the production of experimental documentary non-fiction cinema in Spain though the conceptual lens of the peripheral, which he defines as avant-garde cinema on the margins of the mainstream audiovisual industry. His attention, however, has been mostly on Catalan experimental filmmakers and his essay, published in 2005, does not include any references to Galician documentary films. In the global sphere, Iordanova, Martin-Jones, and Vidal have edited the volume Cinema at the Periphery (2010), which offers a more theoretically informed peripheral view of world cinemas from a postcolonial perspective, focusing on cinemas “located in positions marginal to the economic, institutional, and ideological centers of image making” (5). Recognizing also the geopolitical location, the volume aims to “explore the connotations of the peripheral as a mode of practice, as a textual strategy, as a production infrastructure, and as a narrative encoded on the margins of the dominant modes of production, distribution, and consumption” (9). They thus propose a new model of polycentric vision, “by making the periphery the center of our study” (6, original emphasis).