Deborah Shaw, University of Portsmouth, UK

As part of the SLACextras takeover of Mediatico, we are delighted to continue with a manifesto* in which Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Portsmouth, reflects on the growth of, and critical response to, women’s filmmaking in Latin America. Professor Shaw is founding co-editor of Transnational Screens, author of Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Ten Key Films, Continuum Publishers, (2003), The Three Amigos: The Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón, Manchester University Press (2013) and co-editor of  The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro, Palgrave Macmillan, (2014), Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, I.B.Tauris (2017), and Sense8: Transcending Television Bloomsbury Publishers (2021)

*Published in Spanish as 2018 – ‘Cómo estudiar el cine de mujeres iberoamericanas: un manifiesto’ in Scholz, Annette and Álvarez, Marta, Cineastas emergentes. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Verwuert. 

This post is a reflection on the field of women’s filmmaking, occasioned by co-editing a book. Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics published by I.B Tauris (Martin and Shaw, 2016),and an invitation to present a keynote talk for a Latin American women’s filmmaking conference in London in 2017.[1] Our edited book and the  keynote talk are responding to two cultural moments in filmmaking in Latin American film and in academia: 1) the growth of women’s filmmaking and 2) the critical response to this filmmaking in a growing and dynamic field. There are too many directors to name in this article, but those currently drawing critical attention in Latin America include Alicia Scherson, Paz Encina, Lucrecia Martel, Lucía Puenzo, Claudia Llosa, Anna Muylaert, Yulene Olaizola, Paz Fábrega, Natalia Almada, Marialy Rivas, Marcela Zamora, Tatiana Huezo, Marcela Said, Julia Solomonoff, Dominga Sotomayor, Alejandra Marquez Abella, Maite Alberdi, Patricia Riggen, and Issa López

These cultural shifts are then behind this manifesto created to ensure that we have a comprehensive approach in our analysis of women’s filmmaking. It was written with Latin America in mind, but can be adapted to apply beyond this geo-cultural area.

This manifesto’s aim is to lay the foundations for an approach to studying women’s filmmaking through a focus on my area of specialism Latin American cinema, and to spark a conversation in a dynamic and growing field. As Scott MacKenzie notes in Film Manifestos, and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology manifestos present ‘calls to action for political and aesthetic changes in the cinema and, equally important, the cinema’s role in the world’ (2014, 1). While women filmmakers have created many passionate film manifestos, of which more later, there is not, to my knowledge, a manifesto for critics on how to study women’s filmmaking. This article addresses this gap and presents its own call for action for ways in which we can effect change in this critical field of study. This manifesto was conceived because any critical work on women filmmakers must be part of a collective project, and it seeks to offer a comprehensive series of areas that we should be covering. Those working on Hispanic women’s filmmaking form a network of scholars and we all have diverse approaches to our specific subject area; thus, this manifesto argues for what the field of study in its totality should encompass, not what every study has to cover.

A Word on Manifestos

Manifestos have long been central to film culture and many of them have been collected in an anthology compiled by Scott MacKenzie, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology (2014). An entire section of this resource is dedicated to manifestos by women filmmakers and reproduces calls to action by American, German, Arab, African, Spanish and British directors. Some examples of landmark feminist manifestos freely accessible in MacKenzie’s anthology are: ‘Manifesto for a Non-sexist Cinema’ by the FECIP (Fédération européenne du cinéma progressiste) (Canada, 1974); Womanifesto’ by Feminists in the Media (USA, 1975); ‘Manifesto of the Women Filmmakers’ by Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen  (West Germany, 1979); ‘For the Self-Expression of the Arab Woman’ by Heiny Srour, Salma Baccar, and Magda Wassef (France, 1978); ‘Thoughts on Women’s Cinema: Eating Words, Voicing Struggles’  by Yvonne Rainer (USA, 1986); ‘The Post Porn Modernist Manifesto  by Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, et al.; ‘Statement of African Women Professionals of Cinema, Television and Video’  by FEPACI (Fédération panafricaine des cinéastes)(Burkina Faso, 1991); ‘Puzzy Power Manifesto: Thoughts on Women and Pornography’ (Denmark, 1998); ‘Cinema with Tits’ by Iciar Bollaín (Spain, 1998)[2] and Sally Potter’s ‘Barefoot Filmmaking Manifesto’ (UK, 2009).   

Many of these manifestos are concerned with combatting misogynistic forms of representation. Other manifestos are primarily concerned with generating opportunities and granting rights for women filmmakers who have been marginalised from the means of production across the world. For instance, the West German ‘Manifesto of the Women Filmmakers’, created by the Association of Women Filmmakers, illustrates both of these aspects. One of their principal aims is ‘to support, promote and distribute all films by women, which are committed to feminist, emancipatory and non-sexist forms of representation and goals’ (377). In his introduction to this section MacKenzie notes that feminist (and queer manifestos) are predominantly ‘concerned with questions of visibility and the possibility of finding a new feminist voice to combat patriarchy’ (325). Yet, of course, women’s languages are characterised by plurivocality as stated in the manifesto, ‘Thoughts on Women’s Cinema: Eating Words, Voicing Struggles’ by filmmaker and writer Yvonne Rainer.  Rainer speaks of the ‘conviction that it is of the utmost urgency that women’s voices, experience, and consciousness—at whatever stage—be expressed in all their multiplicity and heterogeneity, and in as many formats and styles—narrative or not—from here to queendom come and throughout the kingdom’ (in MacKenzie, 2014, 378). What they share for Rainer is patriarchal ‘economic and sexual oppression’ (381) albeit through different manifestations.

Feminist manifestos like all others are ambitious and have a transformative intent; as MacKenzie states, manifestos ‘reimagine the world by calling a new world into being through the act of writing (2014, p 4). This manifesto also seeks to reimagine a world, that of film scholarship, and while those referenced above have been written by filmmakers, what follows is a manifesto for critics on how to study women’s filmmaking.  I certainly do not want to tell women what sort of films they should be making, or attempt to contain their creativity within prescriptive paradigms, or give any instructions on how they should fight patriarchy.  But I do want to share a vision of feminist film scholarship. Our role as critics is to be allies of feminist filmmakers (whether female or male and in a multitude of roles); to take their films to our students, to fellow academics and to a wider interested public; to help make sense of the worlds filmmakers create; to use any specialist knowledge we have to share with others; to chart trends and patterns; and to hold filmmakers accountable for their visions of the world. This manifesto can serve as a checklist to ensure that we fulfil this role.

The Manifesto:[3]

1. To raise awareness, promote and critically engage with the work of women filmmakers.[4]
2. To act as cultural commentators and analyse representations and themes within the film texts and assess what social, national and transnational patterns these are responding to.
3. To analyse the work of women in film industries as directors, but also as other industry professionals – producers, scriptwriters, production designers, costume designers, actors, composers, editors, cinematographers, technicians, and mentors.
4. To create better links, contacts, and collaborative events between academics and filmmakers.
5. To forge and map connections and disconnections between (his)stories of women’s filmmaking in a global context.
6. To tell and reveal untold and invisible histories of women behind and in front of the camera.
7. To examine women’s relationship to the industry and assess constraints, difficulties and opportunities.
8. To pay attention to the industrial sectors/genres in which the work is taking place.
9. To account for the transnational funding mechanisms and the role of co-productions and assess the relationship between the funding and the text.
10. To analyse visual and aural languages applied and dominant and disruptive aesthetic and generic modes.
11. To trace the relationship between macro (institutional) and micro (private familial) contexts to account for the state of women’s filmmaking.
12. To examine influences on women’s production and attempt to establish a cinematic genealogy of women’s filmmaking.
13. To consider how women’s creativity is enabled (development of film schools; women’s collectives; national and transnational film policies, funding mechanisms; the role of technological developments; and critical promotion).
14. To assess the effects of large social and historical milestones on creating the movements that allow women’s filmmaking to develop.
15. To assess the relationship between women’s filmmaking and socio-political-historical events.
16. To reconsider definitions of the political in women’s filmmaking.
17. To assess the role of male allies in the collaborative nature of women’s filmmaking.
18. To have an inclusive vision of women’s cinema and to consider male directors as feminist filmmakers when they are.
19. To embrace intersectionality and seek to understand how gender intersects with sexuality, class, ethnicity, political discourses, and (trans)nationality.
20. To turn our gazes away from privilege and consider new representations of marginalised communities and non-conformist individuals.
21. To have a comprehensive view of Latin America, Hispanic and Latinx film cultures that includes those from nations and peoples that have been neglected.
22. To apply, re-apply, appraise and generate theoretical frameworks within which to analyse film cultures and creative works.
23. To consider what the history of film looks like when seen through a woman-centric lens and focus. But…
24. To avoid pitfalls of ghettoization and ensure we do not remain in the margins in academia/or the industry.
 25. To assess how films with female identified co-creators have been distorted by a misogynistic industry.

I do not want to write at length about each point due to space limitations and as many are self-explanatory. Nonetheless, I would like to add a short discussion for points 14, 17, 18, 23. 24 and 25.

Point 14 argues that we need to assess the effects of large social and historical milestones on creating the movements that allow women’s filmmaking to develop. In the introduction to Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics we argued that women’s filmmaking cannot be examined in isolation from social phenomena (Martin and Shaw, 2016, p 9). While it is known that texts need to be seen with their contexts, specific feminist milestones help to understand the conditions that have allowed women’s filmmaking to develop and flourish. We highlighted the UN Conference on Women held in Mexico City 1975 and the UN International Decade For Women inaugurated in 1976.  These events led to the Primer Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe (in Bogotá 1981), which formed the backdrop against which women’s filmmaking collectives emerged across Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s (such as Cine Mujer in Colombia) (Martin and Shaw, 2016, p. 9).

Points 17 and 18 argue for the need to assess the role of male allies and to have an inclusive vision of women’s cinema and to consider male directors as feminist filmmakers when they are. Lúcia Nagib in the chapter, ‘Beyond Difference: Female Participation in the Brazilian Film Revival of the 1990s’, frames Eduardo Coutinho as feminist filmmaker juxtaposing his filmmaking with that of Lúcia Murat recognising equally their political feminist credentials, while noting that the filmmaker ‘repeatedly turned to women’ and documented their lives in favelas, as performers and as Northeastern peasants’ (2016, p 42), Coutinho’s female focused filmmaking is reproduced in the work of many other feminist male filmmakers and I would argue that we can we assess the impact of female experience on filmmaking in Latin America without reducing creation to an essentialist understanding of femininity or gender.

Other prominent examples of male directors who have directed feminist films are David Pablos and Jayro Bustamente among many others. Pablos’s Las elegidas/The Chosen Ones (2015) is an exposure of enforced prostitution in Mexico that manages to condemn the exploitation of women and official collusion without subjecting the sex workers to a male sexualising gaze. Ixcacnul (2015) by the Guatemalan director Bustamente can be seen as an example of women’s cinema for a number of reasons: it tells a neglected story of a Guatemalan Mayan Kaqchikel speaking woman, María; its main themes are maternity and loss, and the power and limitations placed on women in patriarchal societies, and it has a female point of view. [5] In addition, two of the producers and the executive producer are women.[6] Bustamente is also engaging with point 20 of the manifesto by turning his gaze away from privilege and considering new representations of marginalised communities/individuals. He summarises the feminist intent behind the film:

For me, Mayan women in Guatemala today are like that volcano that rumbles and resounds but hasn’t yet erupted. Real change will happen when these women erupt and release what they have inside. That’s the metaphor we wanted to convey, the connection between these women and the volcano’ (Aguilar, 2015).

Clearly, we must be careful not to marginalise women from telling women’s stories. So Mayer in Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema celebrates ‘the emergence of openly feminist cismale filmmakers’, and highlights the work of Jafar Panahi, Warwick Thornton and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Yet, as Mayer also says, their work often seen as exemplary while women’s creative labour is seen as niche (2014, 6).

To expand on points 23 and 24 that focus on the importance of shifting the lens to female identified filmmakers without wanting our subject area to fall into the margins in academia or programming, I want to mention our experiences of responding to male dominated curricula, and our attempts to effect change in our roles as critics, scholars, students, and external examiners. This relates to us having the eyes to see how male dominated much of our cultural curriculum has been and continues to be. Many of our colleagues only seem to realise their courses are exclusively populated by male figures when we point this out. We need to keep vigilant in showing others how to see the absence of women. Nonetheless, we also need to avoid capturing women’s filmmaking in single modules leaving others to feel free to be lacking in diversity. This can result in  the phenomenon of the one bookshelf in the bookshop, the single women’s filmmaking festival, or the isolated course module.  We need to protect women’s cultural spaces, but also argue for more integrated spaces.

The final point 25 – to assess how films with female co-creators have been distorted by a misogynistic industry – was added in response to an essay published by Salma Hayek in The New York Times (December 2017), ‘Harvey Weinstein is My Monster Too’ that presents a powerful indictment of Weinstein and the culture surrounding him and his ilk, and makes us revisit films that we may have analysed without sufficient knowledge of abuse committed against female directors, actors, writers and other key cast and crew. Indeed, I wrote an article on Frida (Shaw 2010), in which I critique the ‘lesbian’ scene in which Frida (Hayek) dances provocatively with Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd) for the benefit of Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) and Siqueiros (Antonio Banderas), a scene that Hayek explicitly references in her article in relation to the distortion of the film by Weinstein. In the article I implicitly held director Julie Taymor and Hayek responsible for lesbian representations that conform to the patriarchal male gaze (208).  Yet the insight into Weinstein’s abusive interference in the film’s production (Hayek, 2017) demonstrate that this scene was insisted on by him and, as a result, caused Salma Hayek anguish and trauma, and I am grateful for the opportunity that this subsequent article affords to correct my previous misreading of the production context.

Concluding thoughts

The keywords that highlight approaches for this manifesto are: industrial; institutional; historical; theoretical; political; technological; aesthetic; biographical; thematic; and representational. This is a comprehensive list but requires two other key terms to allow this to be enacted: collective and collaboration. Studying women’s filmmaking in Latin America is, happily, an enormous task, that can only be done well with a network of scholars, which also happily, now exists. This current boom in films by women and feminist film scholarship requires four main forms of collaboration:

1.  Between academics in our dialogues with each other’s work.
2.  Between academics and filmmakers.
3. Between filmmakers to create spaces for networking and mentoring and to foster good working relationships between women and between women and men.
4. Between filmmakers and industry professionals and institutions to ensure equality, inclusivity, opportunities and fair treatment in working environments.

The collaboration discussed in point 4 extends to the funding support mechanisms in place for women’s filmmaking to develop and flourish. Previously marginalised cultural forms can only be sustained with national and transnational funding mechanisms, and women’s filmmaking should not be the result of a handful of exceptional, often privileged women working against the grain.

We also seek collaboration from filmmakers and critics in a transnational context to situate Latin American women’s cinema within a culture of global filmmaking. Anglophone scholarship (that with which I am most familiar) such as that produced by Patricia White (2015), and So Mayer (2015), has incorporated a transnational approach in their work on women’s cinema. Nonetheless, there is more for us to do to ensure that Latin American women’s cinema does not remain confined to Latin American Studies and takes its place in the pantheon of global filmmakers.

References

Gutiérrez-Albilla, Julián and Nair, Parvati (eds.) (2013), Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theory, Practice and Difference, Manchester: Manchester University Press

MacKenzie, Scott (2014) Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology

LasTesis (2023), ‘Set Fear on Fire’, Translated by Camila Valle, London, New York: Verso, 2023. 

Bustamente, Jayro (2015) ‘ “Ixcanul” Director Jayro Bustamente on the Strength of Mayan Women and Guatemala’s Indigenous Majority” Indiewire 1 December https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/ixcanul-director-jayro-bustamante-on-the-strength-of-mayan-women-and-guatemalas-indigenous-majority-168343/

Hayek, Salma (2017), ‘Harvey Weinstein is My Monster Too’, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/12/13/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein/ (accessed 19 December 2017).

Mayer, So (2015), Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, London: I. B Tauris

Mayer, So(2017), ‘An Open Letter to the UK Film Industry on Addressing Harassment and Discrimination’, <https://www.raisingfilms.com/action-open-letter/> (accessed 5 December 2017).

Martin Deborah and Shaw, Deborah (2016), Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, London: I.B Tauris

Shaw, Deborah (2010), ‘Transforming the National Body: Salma Hayek and Frida. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 27(4), 299 – 313.

White, Patricia (2015), Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms, Durham: Duke University Press.

Marsh, Leslie L. (2012). Brazilian Women’s Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Rangil, Viviana (2005). Otro punto de vista: mujer y cine en la Argentina, Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora.

Rashkin, Elissa (2001). Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Torres San Martín, Patricia (2002). Mujeres y cine en América latina, Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.

Trelles Plazaola, Luis (1991). Cine y mujer en América latina: Directoras de largometrajes de ficción, Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

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[1] The talk was entitled, Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics: Connections and Collaborations, and this article is based on my talk. The lecture was a joint presentation with Deborah Martin who focused on redefinition of the political in Latin American women’s filmmaking. The conference was held at Senate House, University of London, 18^th-19^th September 2017 and organised by the Institute for Latin American Studies and the Institute for Modern Languages Research.

[2] Bollaín’s manifesto was first published in Spanish as “Cine con tetas,” in Carlos F. Heredero, ed., La mitad del cielo: Directoras españolas de los años 90 (Málaga: Primer festival de cine español de Málaga, 1998), 51–53. Trans. Fabiola Caraza.

[3] This manifesto can and should be adapted for diverse national and cultural contexts.

[4] I concur with the definition of ‘woman’ given by Chilean feminist performance collective LasTesis who say write in their own feminist manifesto (2023, xiii) ‘when we use woman, we are referring to all subjectivities who understand themselves as such, independent of anatomy’.

[5]  For more on the film and its production process see the interview with the director in Aguilar, 2015.

[6] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4135844/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1