Precariousness in Contemporary Venezuelan Filmmaking: Pelo malo and Brecha en el silencio

This chapter examines precariousness as represented in the two twenty-first century emblematic Venezuelan films, Pelo malo and Brecha en el silencio, and precariousness as a condition for the films’ modes of production, exhibition, and distribution. Undoubtedly, film-production conditions in the first seventeen years of the twenty-first century in Venezuela have been extremely challenging due to sweeping sociopolitical transformations initiated in 1999 that have polarized Venezuelan society. These two texts are suited for the examination of these transformations as well as of the contrasting reception of texts at international film festivals and critics’ forums, which privilege certain ideologies. All these intersections between the global and the local make Venezuelan cinematic culture an indispensable object for the study of the precarious in contemporary cinema.