The Ontology of Twentieth-Century Puerto Rican Cinema

May Santiago Martinez

Advisor: Alison Landsberg, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Matthew Karush, Jessica Scarlata

Horizon Hall, 5223
November 20, 2026, 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the ontology of twentieth-century Puerto Rican cinema in view of its enduring colonial relationship with the United States, challenging conventional paradigms of national cinema. I argue that Puerto Rican cinema must encompass films made in and about Puerto Rico by government agencies, foreign industries, and native filmmakers, revealing how colonial power shaped cinematic production and representations of Puerto Rican identity from 1898 to 1999. 

Drawing on archival research, filmmaker interviews, and close readings of over 250 films, this dissertation catalogs 558 titles across three production categories: government, foreign, and native. Through interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, I demonstrate how government productions promoted colonial modernization and compliant citizen-spectators; foreign productions exploited Puerto Rico as a cinematic backlot; and native filmmakers negotiated colonial identity through transnational hybridity, foreign mimicry, and anti-colonial resistance. This research also produced a bilingual digital repository collating archival data from these productions. 

Together, these cinematic histories reveal an ontology characterized by colonial double consciousness, contested national identity, and tensions between cultural expression and political subjugation. This dissertation redefines Puerto Rican cinema as a contested cultural formation that exposes colonialism's persistent structures and possibilities for cinematic self-representation. 

Format: hybrid

Zoom link: https://gmu.zoom.us/j/94284782861?pwd=dVZfIeijC1LJVUqu76apSjzQ8nY5Hp.1