Dr Charlotte Gleghorn
Sabbatical Fellow, July - December, 2026
Charlotte Gleghorn is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Film Studies in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests span questions of film authorship and authority, film and language, memory, and political uses of film and media, with a focus on Indigenous and Afrodescendant cultural production in Latin America. She has published widely on Latin American cinemas, media, and cultural politics, and is committed to developing creative ways of disseminating research. In 2013, she collaborated on EcoCentrix, a major, free public exhibition showcasing Indigenous performance arts, held at the Bargehouse (South Bank) in London, and more recently she co-produced the media project Creole Connections/Conexiones Creoles, building upon research engaging Black Creole and Raizal communities in Central America and the Caribbean. She is currently working on her book manuscript on authorship and authority in Indigenous cinemas in Abiayala/Latin America, which connects more broadly to the Indigenous Cinematics project.
Project title: Indigenous Cinematics: Film and Authorship in Abiayala/Latin America
During my IASH fellowship I will be continuing to work on my monograph, Indigenous Cinematics, which emerges from research conducted during two AHRC/British Academy fellowships in 2018-19 and 2023-24, respectively. This research examines how the constellation of works, individuals, practices, collectives and aesthetics assembled under the banner of Latin American Indigenous film is transforming in remarkable ways how we might understand cinematic authorship, its connection to self-determination, and collective cultural and intellectual property rights.
Despite potent critiques of auteur theory as an inadequate lens to account for collaboration in a film’s production and interpretation, Film Studies and funding and distribution structures continue to trade in vertical production models, a latent Anglo-Eurocentrism, and the magnetic value of a director’s name. Indigenous filmmakers are keenly aware of production hierarchies and their collusion with the auteur figure, imaginatively shaping their praxis through dialogic relationships with international and national film cultures, and navigating complex systems of patronage. My evolving book manuscript analyses the diverse ways by which Indigenous filmmakers convey and engrave their authority on- and off-screen, considering the dynamics of collaboration and authorship; cinematic intermediality; corporeal rhetorics; collective self-production; and the judicial discourses that frame and sustain these works.