Representations of reality through four ecuadorian films from 1999 to 2018

Abstract

The investigative process is installed in Ecuadorian cinema, studied with a critical social sense, through a content analysis, allowing us to understand the relationship between artistic representation and the national environment. The article starts with the study of fiction as a transcription of realities through cinematographic and epistemological theory, and with the analysis of culture within the Ecuadorian context. Furthermore, cinema is explored through the concept of representation: how it reconstructs and projects collective imaginaries given by stereotypes to naturalize and reinforce the social conventions examined by communication, social phenomenological observation and cultural studies. This article shows how the representations exposed in the cinematographic milestones reveal the diverse reality of Ecuador and analyzes the stereotypical representation of the identity in the main characters of the films Ratas, Ratones y Rateros (1999), Qué tan lejos (2006), Cuando me toque a mí (2011) and Alba (2016).