front cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Short History of Film Melodrama in Latin America -- 1. Melodrama of the Spirited Woman: Aventurera -- 2. Melodrama and the Emergence of Venezuelan Cinema -- 3. The Building of a Nation: La geurra gaucha as Historical Melodrama -- 4. Women as Civilizers in 1940s Brazilian Cinema: Between Passion and the Nation -- 5. The Humiliation of the Father: Melodrama and Cinema Novo's Critique of Conservative Modernization -- 6. Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Cinema de lagrimas -- 7. Luis Alcoriza -- or, A Certain Antimelodramatic Tendency in Mexican Cinema -- 8. Weeping Reality: Melodramatic Imagination in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary -- 9. Televisual Melodrama in an Era of Transnational Migration: Exporting the Folkloric Nation, Harvesting the Melancholic-Sublime -- Contributors -- Index of Names and Titles -- back cover.