where the family represents a haven from a social order that cannot be modified. 28 On the other hand, the movie reconstructs Emilia’s link with society by confronting her with history and the memory of the victims. This is the particularity of El brindis: the movie’s discourse endorses the Chilean Jewish identities and its organized community in an attempt to counteract the effect of the Chilean Palestinian community’s inroads into the public sphere, as well as disproving anti-Jewish prejudices in order to neutralize the intermittent antiSemitic belligerence. The Palestinian community in Chile is one of the largest of the Palestinian Diaspora, and also one of the most numerous ethnic minorities in the country. Since the year 2000, which marked the beginning of the Second Intifada in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, the community institutions have been working to sway the Chilean government onto the Palestinian side in the Middle East conflict. Moreover, there are also activist groups mobilized by the anti-Semitic hatred transmitted over the years by German Nazi refugees, in addition to the deeply entrenched violence in Chilean history. The Chilean government has succeeded in maintaining a state of equilibrium in its relationship with both ethnic groups, but the Jewish community, who feel threatened by the combined efforts of their antagonists, promote and support anti-discriminatory practices in general and anti-discrimination laws in particular. 29 This way, the film is consistent with the cultural creation of Chilean Jews in other genres, focusing on memory and identity because they are central themes in the Chilean post-dictatorship culture, and also because of their uncertainty about the future. 30 Two remarkable aesthetic resources in El brindis explain the size of its budget, uncommonly large for a directorial debut and achieved with the help of the Mexican coproducers, Goliath Films, a company that has participated in several films about the Jewish experience.31 The cast was chosen in a manner similar to Cinco días sin Nora: the Jewish protagonists are played by non-Jewish professional actors, thus disproving essentialist ideas

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about Jewish appearance, and linking the characters to white hegemonic European ancestry, whose social and cultural legitimacy is firmly established. This strategy is analogous to the personal experience of Agosín, who was the media idol of Chilean children when he hosted the popular Club Disney in the nineties, a local version of the Mickey Mouse Club aired by Disney Channel in the USA.32 The second resource concerns the cinematographic space in which the plot unfolds. El brindis has many scenes filmed on location in Valparaíso and its tourist attractions, as well as other scenes shot in Santiago and Mexico City. These sequences, filmed in the travelogue genre tradition, incorporate the idea that Jews are a part of society and move at will through the public space, invalidating prejudices about isolationist elitism or the antiSemitic myth that Jews conspire against the Nation from the shadows. Shooting in genuine urban locations is not usual in Chilean moviemaking; the permits have to be applied for at the municipal level and each borough uses different criteria and modifies them over time. Additionally the cost is so high that some moviemakers hold that it is cheaper to film in New York or Paris. The investment in these scenes has a deeper meaning than just the pursuit of realism; they corroborate the Jewish presence in the public space.33

Conclusion

While the image of Jews in American o European films has become ordinary or quotidian, in a period that can be called post-melting or post-assimilatory34, the two films analyzed testified the tensions at globalized but still under hegemonic National identities societies. Cinco días sin Nora constructs a Jewish Mexican identity restricted to the private sphere and subordinated to Mexican codes that seem to encroach on it, creating a white middle class microcosm whose ethnic particularity is manifested by Mexicanized religious

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rites. While characters constructed as “Mexican people” oversee compliance with the rites, the Jewish characters exhibit no other roots except for these same rites. It is a syncretism imposed by a multicultural discourse behind which a Catholic national identity, intolerant of diversity, hides from view. El brindis illustrates the will to overcome the annoyance caused by Palestinian inroads into the public sphere, as well as the anti-Semitic threat, by depicting Jewish ritual, historical, and institutional aspects for the benefit of the audience. It legitimizes a Jewish difference that brings a humanistic conception to light, and exhibits solidarity with the struggle for social justice and human rights. This discourse is consistent with the community’s organized policy toward the center-left Concertación government that was in power when the film was produced. If we compare both movies with the numerous Argentinean films made since 1995, which shifted the image of the Jewish experiences toward the identity focus and made the Jews an allegory for Argentinidad (Argentinean identity), we come to the conclusion that the analysis of films about the Jewish experiences in contemporary Latin American cinema helps to reveal the discourse and rhetoric that contributes to reinforce hegemonies by constructing ethnicity. Thus, instead of conveying an ethnocentric view centered on the conflicts of Jewish identities, the research helps to elucidate the cinematographic rhetorical approaches to Nation-building in the Era of Globalization.35 1

See the theoretical bases for this approach in: Zulema Marzorati and Tzvi Tal, "Introducción al dossier Memorias, Identidades y Cine – Perspectivas contemporáneas sobre la imaginación del pasado [Introduction to the dossier Memories, Identities and Cinema – Contemporary perspectives of the imagination of the past]", Imagofagia - Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios del Cine y el Audiovisual 4 (2010). Accessed 7/2/2011: http://www.asaeca.org/imagofagia/sitio/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=167%3Amemoriasidentidades-y-cine-perspectivas-contemporaneas-sobre-la-imaginacion-del-pasado&catid=42&Itemid=98 . 2

Erin Graff Zivin, The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2008; Amalia Ran, "Review of The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary ", EIAL 21.2 (2011): 158 - 160; Marcy Schwartz, "Reseña The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary", Revista Iberoamericana 231 (2010): 509-512.

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3

Ceri Peach, "Discovering white ethnicity and parachuted plurality", Progress in Human Geography 4 (2000): 620–626; Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein, "Challenging Particularity: Jews as a Lens on Latin American Ethnicity", Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 2 (2006): 249–263. 4

Santiago Bastos, "Judíos, indios y catalanes: Algunas propuestas para estudiar la etnicidad [Jews, Indians and Catalans: Some proposals for the study of ethnicity", Estudios sobre las culturas contemporáneas 6 (1997): 71-100; Judah M. Cohen, "The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry," in Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein (eds.), Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008, 266-281. 5

Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film. Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, London: I. B. Tauris, 2012, 7 – 18. 6

Angel Octavio Álvarez Solís, "La persistencia de los márgenes. Reflexiones epistemológicas en torno a la obra de Walter Mignolo [The persistence of margins. Epistemological reflections on the works of Walter Mignolo]" Araucaria 23 (2010): 94 – 114; Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, London: Pluto Press, 1997, 3-24; Sergio Della Pergola, "World Jewish Population, 2010", Connecticut: University of Connecticut, 2010. Accessed 1/3/2013: http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Reports/World_Jewish_Population_2010.pdf. 7

Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton: Princenton University Press, 2001, 10 – 17; Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto, "Framing Diaspora in Diasporic Cinema: Concepts and Thematic Concerns", Black Camera 1 (2007): 22-24. 8

Tzvi Tal, "Imaginando Querencias: imagen de Israel/Palestina en películas y telenovela latinoamericanas contemporáneas [Imagining homelands: the image of Israel and Palestine in Latin American films and soap operas]", in Raanan Rein (coord.) Mas allá del Medio Oriente – Las diásporas judía y árabe en América Latina [Beyond the Middle East – The Jewish and Arab diasporas in Latin America] ", Granada: Editorial Universitaria de Granada, 2012, 141-162. 9

Judith Bokser Liwerant et al. "Cuarenta años de cambios: transiciones y paradigmas [Forty years of changes: transitions and paradigms]", in Haim Avni et al. (coords.), Pertenencia y alteridad-Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios [Belonging and alterity –Jews in Latin America…] Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2011, 13-84. 10

María Teresa Herner. "Territorio, desterritorialización y reterritorialización: un abordaje teórico desde la perspectiva de Deleuze y Guattari [Territory, deterritorialization and reterritorialization from the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari]" Huellas 13 (2009): 158 – 171. 11

Jorge Rufinelli, "Nuevas señas de identidad en el cine de América Latina – Notas sobre como el cine épico devino en minimalista [New signals of identity in Latin American cinema – Notes on how epic cinema became minimalist] " in Carlos Vargas (coord.), Tendencias del cine iberoamericano en el nuevo milenio [Tendencies in Latin American cinema in the new millenium], Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2011, 121-132. 12

For example, the terrorist attacks on the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires increased the Jewish interventions in the public sphere and the images of the Jewish experiences in contemporary Argentinian cinema. See: Tzvi Tal, "Terror, etnicidad y la imagen del judío en el cine argentino contemporáneo [Terror, ethnicity and the image of the Jew in contemporary Argentinian cinema]" Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2011: http://nuevomundo.revues.org/index58355.html. 13

Manuel Delgado y Daniel Malet, "El espacio público como ideología [Public space as ideology]" presentation in: Jornadas Marx Siglo XXI, Universidad de La Rioja, December 2007. 14

About the Jewish experiences in both countries, see also: Luis Roniger, "Latin American Jews and Processes of Transnational Legitimization and De-Legitimization", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 2 (2010):

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185 – 207; Shulamit Goldsmit y Natalia Gurvich (cords.), Sobre el judaísmo mexicano: diversas expresiones de activismo comunitario [On Mexican Judaism: various expressions of community activism], México DF: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2009; Judith Bokser Liwerant, "Identidades colectivas y esfera pública en México. Transformaciones y ocurrencias" [Collective identities and public sphere in Mexico. Transformations and occurrences], Judaica Latinoamericana IV (2009): 305 – 336; Isaac Caro y Tomás Cabrera, "Oficialismo, disidencias y nuevas identidades en el judaísmo chileno contemporáneo" [Officialism, dissidence and new identities in contemporary Chilean Judaism], Persona y sociedad 3 (2008): 67 – 92; René Dávila, “El impacto del conflicto palestino-israelí sobre las diásporas árabe y judía en América Latina [The impact of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the Jewish and Arab diasporas in Latin America]”, accessed 1/3/2012: http://journalmex.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/desciende-casi-30-la-poblacion-judia-en-sudamerica/. 15

México/Daniel Fainstein: “La comunidad judía sigue con atención la definición de las elecciones presidenciales [The Jewish community follows the presidential elections attentively]". Iton Gadol, 5/7/2012, accessed 7/7/2012: http://www.itongadol.com.ar/noticias/val/64570/mexico-daniel-fainstein-lacomunidad-judia-sigue-con-atencion-la-definicion-de-las-elecciones-presidenciales.html.; "Nuevo presidente de la CJCh Shai Agosin debuta en viaje presidencial a Israel [Shai Agosin, new president of CJCh, makes his debut on the presidential visit to Israel] ", La Palabra Israelita, 4/3/2011, p. 8, accessed 3/5/2012: http://www.lapalabraisraelita.cl/2011/marzo4_11/marzo4_11.pdf ; Carolina P. Canales,"Lo humano ante todoShai Agosin 'En Chile nos hace mucha falta amar la diversidad'[Humanity above all- Shai Agosin’ [In Chile we must learn to love diversity’]”, Con Tinta Negra, accessed 5/6/2012: http://contintanegra.cl/2012/05/shai-agosin-en-chile-nos-hace-mucha-falta-amar-la-diversidad/ . 16

The Virgin of Guadalupe is between the most central symbols in the Mexican collective imagination. Estela Serret, "Identidad de género e identidad nacional en México" [Gender identity and national identity in Mexico], in ed. Raúl Béjar Navarro, La identidad nacional mexicana como problema político y cultural, Mexico DF: Siglo XXI, 1999, p. 266. 17

Concepción Moreno, "Cinco días sin Nora arrasa en los arieles [Nora’s Will sweeps to victory in the Ariel awards]" , El Economista 14/10/ 2010, accessed 20/4/2011: http://eleconomista.com.mx/entretenimiento/2010/04/14/cinco-dias-sin-nora-arrasa-arieles ; Brad Balfour, "The Jewish-Mexican Experience Via Mariana Chenillo's Award Winning Film", The Huff Post Entertainment, accessed 5/7/2012: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour/exclusive-qa-the-jewish-m_b_764653.html ; Lauro Zavala, "Tendencias temáticas y formales en las operas primas del cine mexicano, 1988 – 2004 [Thematic and formal tendencies in in Mexican directorial debut movies]", El ojo que piensa 4 (2011), accessed 23/1/2012: http://www.elojoquepiensa.net/elojoquepiensa/index.php/articulos/154. 18

Claudio Salinas Muñoz, "Melodramas, Identidades y Modernidades Latinoamericanas en el Cine Actual: de Amores Perros a Sábado [Latin American melodrama, identity and modernity in current movies]", Aisthesis 48 (2010): 112-127. 19

Claudio Lomnitz, La idea de La muerte en México [The idea of La Muerte in Mexico], México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006, p. 434; Jesús Martín Barbero and Zilkia Janer; "Transformations in the Map: Identities and Culture Industries", Latin American Perspectives 4 (2000): 27-48. 20

Teresa Alfaro Velcamp, "'Reelizing' Arab and Jewish Ethnicity in Mexican Film", The Americas 2 (2006): 261-280; Nora Glickman, "My Mexican Shivah", Chasqui 1 (2007): 192 – 195. 21

Hugo Nutini, "Class and ethnicity in Mexico: Somatic and racial considerations", Ethnology 3 (1997): 227-238; Carlos Monsiváis, "La intolerancia religiosa: 'Si no compartes mi fe, te parto la madre' [‘If you don’t share my faith, I’ll beat the hell out of you’", en Memoria del Seminario Internacional sobre Tolerancia, México D.F.: Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, 2001, 81-97. 22

"La nueva gran carta del cine."[Cinema Plays its Best Card], El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 25/3/2007, acceded 7/3/2012: http://www.mercuriovalpo.cl/prontus4_noticias/site/artic/20070324/pags/20070324233630.html; Carolina Canales, "Shai Agosin: 'En Chile nos hace mucha falta amar la diversidad' [In Chile We Need to Love Diversity].” Con Tinta Negra – Revista de los estudiantes del Instituto de Comunicación e Imagen de la

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Universidad de Chile, accessed 4/7/2012: http://contintanegra.cl/2012/05/shai-agosin-en-chile-nos-hacemucha-falta-amar-la-diversidad. 23

María de la Luz Hurtado. "El melodrama. Género matriz en la dramaturgia chilena contemporánea: constante y variaciones de su aproximación a la realidad [Melodrama. The Prime Genre in Contemporary Chilean Theater…]." Historia Analítica de los Medios Argentinos y Latinoamericanos, FADU – UBA, accessed 2/6/2012: http://www.hamalweb.com.ar/2010/contenedor_txt.php?id=47 . 24

Shai Agosin interviewed at Radio Cooperativa, 29/07/2008: http://www.cooperativa.cl/noticias/entretencion/cine/cine-chileno/shai-agosin-el-brindis-fue-hecha-para-elpublico-y-no-para-la-critica/2008-07-29/123028.html, acceded 15/01/2014. 25

Jorge Larrain. "Changes in Chilean identity: thirty years after the military coup." Nations and Nationalism 2 (2006) 321-338. 26

Hundreds of students where killed when the Mexican army attacked a peaceful demonstration demanding civil liberties and social justice at the Three Culture's Square in Mexico City ten days before the opening ceremonies for the 1968 Olympic Games. See the report by Elena Poniatowska in La afición reproduced at http://www.adnpolitico.com/2012/2012/09/28/elena-poniatowska-asi-fue-la-matanza-detlatelolco-en-1968, acceded 16/01/2014. 27

"Encuesta: La mayoría de los chilenos prefiere morir durmiendo o sin dolor [Survey: most Chileans prefer to die in their sleep...]" accessed 2/11/2012: http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2012/11/01/567604/encuesta-la-mayoria-de-los-chilenos-prefieremorir-durmiendo-o-sin-dolor.html. 28

Roberto Trejo Ojeda, "Cambio cultural y cine chileno actual: Transformaciones culturales y las nuevas narrativas del cine chileno [Cultural change and current Chilean cinema: Cultural transformations and new narratives…]", acceded 7/5/2012: http://www.ciberokupa.cl/CAMBIO%20CULTURAL%20Y%20CINE%20CHILENO.Pdf. 29

Denise Fagundes Jardim, "Os inmigrantes palestinos na América Latina [Palestinian immigrants in Latin America]", Estudos Avançados 20 (2006) 172-181, 178; Gilda Waldman, Book Review: "Extremismos de derecha y movimientos neonazis. Berlin, Madrid, Santiago, [Right-wing extremism and Neo-Nazi movements] Isaac Caro, Santiago: LOM ediciones, 2007", EIAL 2 (2009): 157 - 161; "Chile 2002-3", The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University. http://www.tau.ac.il/AntiSemitism/asw2002-3/chile.htm ; Tzvi Tal, "La reconstrucción de la identidad de judíos y palestinos en películas recientes de Chile y Argentina [The reconstruction of Jewish and Palestinian identities in recent Argentinian and Chilean movies]", in Raanán Rein (coord.), Árabes y judíos en Iberoamérica / Similitudes, diferencias y tensiones, Sevilla: Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo, 2008, 417 – 437. 30

Gilda Waldmann, "The Literary Construction of the Jewish Identity in Chile: A Cartography of Recent Memories", in Judit Bokser Liwerant, Eliezer Ben Rafael, Yossi Gorny and Raanan Rein, Identities in an Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism: Latin America in the Jewish World (Jewish Identities in a Changing World), Leyden: Brill, 2008, 231-251. 31

"Morirse esta en hebreo (Springall, México-USA, 2007) and "Acne" (Veiroj, Uruguay, 2008); http://www.imdb.com/company/co0172240/. 32

http://www.ceo.cl/609/article-2596.html acceded 15/1/2014.

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Gonzalo Rivas, "El desarrollo de nuevas industrias en Chile. El caso del cine y la biotecnología [The development of new industries in Chile. The case of cinema and biotechnology]" in Oscar Muñoz Gomá (Ed.), Desarrollo productivo en Chile: La experiencia de CORFO entre 1990 y 2009, Santiago de Chile: FLACSO, 2009, Cap. VII. E-book accessed 8/4/2012: http://www.corfo.cl/downloadfile.aspx?CodSistema=20020129172812&CodContenido=20091210112100&Co dArchivo=20091210151148. 34

Natan, The New Jew in Film…p.13.

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Tzvi Tal, "Migración y memoria: la reconstrucción de la identidad de judíos y palestinos en películas recientes de Chile y Argentina [The reconstruction of Jewish and Palestinian identities in recent Argentinian and Chilean movies]" in Raanan Rein (coord.) Árabes y judíos en Iberoamérica \ Similitudes, diferencias y tensiones, Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo, Sevilla, 2008, 417 – 438.

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