Images in transit: betweenplace and residency in a comparative study of the short film Esquélitan
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| Autors: | , |
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| Format: | artículo original |
| Estat: | Versión publicada |
| Data de publicació: | 2026 |
| Descripció: | This article analyzes the short film Esquélitan (1983), directed by Alonso Venegas, as an audiovisual adaptation of Abel Pacheco’s homonymous short story from a comparative perspective. Situated within the cultural context of the Costa Rican Caribbean, the study argues that the cinematic adaptation operates as a space of translation and rewriting that exceeds a moralistic reading of Afro-descendant alterity. To this end, it articulates two central theoretical notions: the Space In-between, as formulated by Silviano Santiago, and the category of the radicant, developed by Nicolas Bourriaud. Through a detailed examination of the film’s narrative and visual organization, the article shows how the adaptation displaces the social determinism of the literary text toward a poetics of transit, in which the protagonist’s identity is constructed as unstable, relational, and internally divided. The fantastic motif of the double, together with the staging of social ascent and decline, allows Esquélitan to be understood both as a narrative situated within a cultural between-place and as a radicant work, in which forms of belonging appear as provisional. In this way, the film illuminates key tensions within Caribbean and Central American literatures and cultural productions of the late twentieth century, underscoring the critical potential of movement across languages, media, and identities. |
| Pais: | Portal de Revistas UNA |
| Institution: | Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica |
| Repositorio: | Portal de Revistas UNA |
| Idioma: | Español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.revistas.una.ac.cr:article/22408 |
| Accés en línia: | https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/istmica/article/view/22408 |
| Paraula clau: | Costa Rican cinema Film adaptation Short film Costa Rican contemporary short story cine costarricense adaptación cinematográfica cortometraje cuento costarricense contemporáneo |