Imagination as a social practice; contemporary Latin American films in the Netherlands

Abstract

This masters’ thesis concerns the way the daily social lives of the Dutch are influenced by the global cultural flow of Latin American cinema. Film is a powerful medium for it has the ability to show its audience an alternative life and the audience is able to identify with these images. An important theoretical concept in this research is the idea that the imagination can function as a social practice, a concept as introduced by Appadurai (1990). Through images presented to them in Latin American films, the Dutch audience is able to adapt or complement their imaginary on Latin America and they take these images back into their daily social lives. The central goal in my research was to find how people could act on these images in practice. How do Dutch film viewers actively incorporate the images that are introduced to them by contemporary Latin American films, into their daily social practice?