Transnational Cinema Memory: Latin American Women Remembering Cinema-Going Across Borders

This chapter argues for the centrality of cinema memory and qualitative methods in the study of comparative cinema histories, particularly in relation to gendered and transnational aspects that are often invisible in big-scale, quantitative data collections. To do so, the chapter discusses a research project exploring the affective and transcultural knowledge offered by migrant cinema memory, looking at the experiences of movie-going of an intergenerational group of Latin American women living in Barcelona and Milan. Following a biographical and comparative design, the study elicited memories of cinema-going across different countries, historical periods, and cultures, while a reflexive and feminist approach to the interview method ensured the harmonisation of comparisons. To further demonstrate the productivity of this framework, the second part of the chapter offers a thematic analysis of extracts discussing the different types of cinematic venues—cines de barrio (neighbour theatres), cines del centro (cinemas of the centre), cine clubs cinematheques, and the multiplex—recurring in the memories of the interviewees.