The article appears in the journal’s special issue “Toward a Visual Sovereignty in South American Film.” Martínez-Arias examines the award-winning Peruvian film Retablo, directed by Álvaro Delgado Aparicio, focusing on how it draws on the aesthetics of the retablo ayacuchano, a traditional Andean art form consisting of painted wooden boxes containing figures arranged in narrative scenes. He argues that the film transforms the structure of the retablo itself into a visual language for exploring the tension between public conformity and private desire in an Indigenous Andean community.
The study also examines how Retablo challenges traditional portrayals of Indigenous characters as silent or psychologically inaccessible. Martínez-Arias shows how it uses bodies, gestures, enclosed spaces, windows, and narrow openings in place of extensive dialogue to represent sexuality, repression, and social exclusion. His analysis highlights how the film connects queer desire with questions of visibility, religious morality, and public punishment, while opening new possibilities for the representation of sexual diversity in Andean cinema.
Posted September 18, 2026
