Cosmopolitan (non-)cinema: impurity, recognition and hospitality in The Cambridge Squatter (2016)

This chapter puts forward the idea of cosmopolitan non-cinema to examine Eliane Caffé’s The Cambridge Squatter (Era o Hotel Cambridge 2016). The film focuses on the occupation of an abandoned hotel in São Paulo, Brazil, and incorporates non-cinematic and impure elements to address the issue of housing rights in a context marked by transnational migration. Cosmopolitan non-cinema puts into dialogue the notions of non-cinema and cosmopolitanism. The first approach, as theorised by William Brown and Lucia Nagib, relates to non-mainstream and non-commercial films that dialogue with other arts and new media to articulate passages to reality. The idea of cosmopolitanism refers to ethico-political dispositions towards those deemed Others and facing social injustices. This chapter explores The Cambridge Squatter as an example of cosmopolitan non-cinema, proposing that the film’s use of digital technology and language, and its close engagement with architecture, articulate cosmopolitan discourses on recognition and hospitality, respectively.