Screenings for day two of the Cine-Memoria: Past and Present in Latin American Cinemas Conference.
“We Were All to Be Queens”: Feminist Disruptions in Latin American Cinemas (1960s-1980s)
Program curated by Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Film and Media Studies.
All screenings are offered with English subtitles.
Juguetes (Toys), María Luisa Bemberg, 1978, 12 minutes (Argentina)
A entrevista (The Interview), Helena Solberg, 1966, 20 minutes (Brazil)
Un sueño como de colores (A Dream as if in Colours), 1973, 23 minutes (Chile)
Mi aporte (My Contribution), Sara Gómez, 1969, 33 minutes (Cuba)
Total running time: 88 minutes
Followed by a conversation between Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Film and Media Studies, and Cristina Venegas.
About the Program
This double program brings together eight short films and videos by some of the most relevant women directors from Latin America made over two convulsive decades marked by revolution and political repression. The program takes its title from the famous poem by Chilean lesbian writer, educator, and Nobel laureate, Gabriela Mistral: “Todas íbamos a ser reinas.” The imperfect tense of the verse evokes the experience of becoming a woman surrounded by fairy tales that never materialize.
Unlike these patriarchal fables, the emancipated voices of the women reunited here expose these false illusions, deconstructing traditional discourses around marriage, motherhood, abortion, and immigration through sophisticated formal strategies that often blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Divided into two screenings, the first program gathers films and videos made collaboratively, either by militant feminist collectives like Cine Mujer (Mexico) or Cine Mujer (Colombia) or by activist couples such as the Brasilian lesbian video-makers Norma Bahia Pontes and Rita Moreira. The second one focuses on early feminist efforts by directors like Helena Solberg or Valeria Sarmiento, who favor the intimate dialogue and center on the domestic sphere to challenge the masculine voices that dominated the revolutionary period of their respective countries in the sixties.