This edited volume offers a wide-ranging picture of Argentine women filmmakers’ contribution to the film industry from the 1980s to the present by bringing together the work of highly acclaimed and emerging directors. Through thirteen critical essays by leading scholars in the field of Argentine cinema, the book acknowledges that contemporary women filmmakers have transformed the cinema of Argentina by questioning, challenging and debunking hegemonic patriarchal systems of representation. With a focus on women’s voices and experiences, the contributions redress both the under-representation of women and girls onscreen and the perpetuation of stereotypes, while exploring the innovative aesthetics used by these filmmakers.
Author(s): Mirna Vohnsen, Daniel Mourenza
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 273
City: London
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction. Women Filmmakers in Argentina: Reworking Cinematic Practices
In Context
Women Filmmakers
The Pioneers
María Luisa Bemberg
After Bemberg
The Chapters
References
Part I: Auteurs
Chapter 2: Lita Stantic: “The Personal Is Political” Is Professional
Stantic the Filmmaker
Stantic the Director
Un muro de silencio: A Film Made by a Director Who Is a Producer
Conclusion: On Emotional Labour
References
Chapter 3: Jeanine Meerapfel, Cosmopolitan Auteur of the Immigrant Condition
Germany: First Films
The Return to Argentina
International Co-productions
References
Chapter 4: María Victoria Menis’s Counter-Cinema: La cámara oscura (2008) and María y el Araña (2013)
La cámara oscura
María y el Araña
Conclusion
References
Part II: Traumatic Experiences
Chapter 5: Sisterhood on the Threshold in Julia Solomonoff’s Hermanas (2005)
The Levin Sisters
Entering Liminality
Exploring Liminality
Exiting Liminality
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Screaming into the Abyss: Trauma and Witnessing in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios (2003) and La rabia (2008)
The Cinematic Voice of Albertina Carri
Traumatic Dehumanisation and Psychic Contagion
The Wordless Testimony of a Neglected Child
From Representation to Witnessing: Carri’s Artistic and Ethical Interventions
References
Chapter 7: Are You Listening? Voices and Images in Gabriela David’s Taxi, un encuentro (2001) and Lucía Puenzo’s El niño pez (2009)
Taxi, un encuentro: Moans, Cries and Wounds
El niño pez: Whispers, Songs and Secrets
A Sonorous Path to Narrative Voices
References
Chapter 8: Intersectionality in Gabriela David’s La mosca en la ceniza (2010)
Intersectionality
Entrapment
Impunity
Conclusion
References
Part III: Aesthetics
Chapter 9: They Are All Around Us: Pain, Memory and Multisensory Images in Paula Markovitch’s El premio (2011)
Marks and Althusser: From the Elusive to the Evident
Postmemory Cinema and the Figure of the Child
Multisensory Images and the Unseen Evil
Pain, Wounds and the Repressive Role of the School as State Apparatus
The School and the Army as an Optical Parallelism
References
Chapter 10: The Oppositional Gaze in the Argentine Cinema of Migration: Negotiating Chinese Identity and Coloniality of Seeing in Nele Wohlatz’s El futuro perfecto (2016)
A New Perspective in Context
Subverting the Gaze
Hypothetical Futures as Visual Agency
References
Chapter 11: Manipulating the Gaze in La novia del desierto (dir. Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato, 2017)
Service On-Screen in South America
Watching the Maid’s Journey in La novia del desierto
Teresa in Focus
Teresa in the Distance
Teresa Confined
Conclusion
References
Part IV: Genre Cinema
Chapter 12: Women, Hybridity and Genre in the Films of Verónica Chen
Mujer conejo (2013)
Rosita (2018)
Marea alta (2020)
Conclusion
References
Untitled
Chapter 13: A Different Terror: Crudo Films and Women’s Horror Cinema in Argentina
Women’s Cinema and Horror Films
Forms of Horror Within Horror
Haptics and Horror Cinema
Conclusion
References
Chapter 14: Girlhood and the Uncanny in the Coming-of-Age Genre: Abrir puertas y ventanas (dir. Milagros Mumenthaler, 2011) and Mamá, mamá, mamá (dir. Sol Berruezo Pichon-Rivière, 2020)
Planeta ciénaga
Girlhood and the Uncanny
The Presence of Memory
Conclusion
References
Chapter 15: Epilogue. On Cinematic Disobedience
References
Index
