Women filmmakers in Mexico were rare until the 1980s and 1990s, when women began to direct feature films in unprecedented numbers. Their films have won acclaim at home and abroad, and the filmmakers have become key figures in contemporary Mexican cinema. In this book, Elissa Rashkin documents how and why women filmmakers have achieved these successes, as she explores how the women's movement, film studies programs, governmental film policy, and the transformation of the intellectual sector since the 1960s have all affected women's filmmaking in Mexico. After a historical overview of Mexican women's filmmaking from the 1930s onward, Rashkin focuses on the work of five contemporary directors—Marisa Sistach, Busi Cortés, Guita Schyfter, María Novaro, and Dana Rotberg. Portraying the filmmakers as intellectuals participating in the public life of the nation, Rashkin examines how these directors have addressed questions of national identity through their films, replacing the patriarchal images and stereotypes of the classic Mexican cinema with feminist visions of a democratic and tolerant society.
Women are noticeably marginalized from the Latin American film industry, with lower budgets and inadequate distribution, and they often rely on their creativity to make more interesting films. This book highlights the voices and stories of some of these directors from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Roberts-Camps’s insightful exploration is the most broad-ranging account of its kind, making the book relevant to the study of literature as well as film.
Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.
In 1950, Mexican American miners went on strike for fair working conditions in Hanover, New Mexico. When an injunction prohibited miners from picketing, their wives took over the picket lines--an unprecedented act that disrupted mining families but ultimately ensured the strikers' victory in 1952. In On Strike and on Film, Ellen Baker examines the building of a leftist union that linked class justice to ethnic equality. She shows how women's participation in union activities paved the way for their taking over the picket lines and thereby forcing their husbands, and the union, to face troubling questions about gender equality. Baker also explores the collaboration between mining families and blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers that resulted in the controversial 1954 film Salt of the Earth. She shows how this worker-artist alliance gave the mining families a unique chance to clarify the meanings of the strike in their own lives and allowed the filmmakers to create a progressive alternative to Hollywood productions. An inspiring story of working-class solidarity, Mexican American dignity, and women's liberation, Salt of the Earth was itself blacklisted by powerful anticommunists, yet the movie has endured as a vital contribution to American cinema.
This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies.
Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.
A look at how the modern woman was envisioned in postrevolutionary Mexican popular culture and how she figured in contestations over Mexican national identity.
A study of how and why women in early twentieth-century Hollywood went from having plenty of filmmaking opportunities to very few. Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood explores when, how, and why women were accepted as filmmakers in the 1910s and why, by the 1920s, those opportunities had disappeared. In looking at the early film industry as an industry—a place of work—Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and business within modern industrial organizations. In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root. Mahar’s study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate “big business” of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women. “With meticulous scholarship and fluid writing, Mahar tells the story of this golden era of female filmmaking . . . Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood is not to be missed.” —Samantha Barbas, Women’s Review of Books “Mahar views the business of making movies from the inside-out, focusing on questions about changing industrial models and work conventions. At her best, she shows how the industry’s shifting business history impacted women’s opportunities, recasting current understanding about the American film industry's development.” —Hilary Hallett, Reviews in American History “A scrupulously researched and argued analysis of how and why women made great professional and artistic gains in the U.S. film industry from 1906 to the mid-1920s and why they lost most of that ground until the late twentieth century.” —Kathleen Feeley, Journal of American History “Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood offers convincing evidence of how economic forces shaped women’s access to film production and presents a complex and engaging story of the women who took advantage of those opportunities.” —Pennee Bender, Business History Review
How were femininity and motherhood understood in Mexican cinema from the 1940s to the early 1990s? Film analysis, interviews with filmmakers, academic articles and film reviews from newspapers are used to answer the question and trace the changes in such depictions. Images of mothers in films by so-called third-wave filmmakers (Busi Cortes, Maria Novaro, Dana Rotberg and Marisa Sistach) are contrasted with those in Mexican classical films (1935-1950) and films from the 1970s and 1980s. There are some surprising conclusions. The most important restrictions in the depiction of mothers in classical cinema came not from the strict sexual norms of the 1940s but in reactions to women shown as having autonomous identities. Also, in contrast to classical films, third-wave films show a woman's problems within a social dimension, making motherhood political--in relation not to militancy within the left but to women's issues. Third-wave films approach the problems of Latin American society as those of individuals differentiated by gender, sexuality and ethnicity; in such films mothers are citizens directly affected by laws, economic policies and cultural beliefs.
