A Study Of Women’s Films In Latin America (Since 1990s)

Throughout the history of Latin America,both white European women who migrated to Latin America and native indigenous women have suffered from traditional patriarchal ideology,religious secularism,and racial persecution by white colonialists.In the second half of the 20 th century,with the establishment of dictatorships in Latin American countries,women’s survival was increasingly threatened,with a large number of women being kidnapped and killed,and the authoritarian rule established by dictatorial governments further reinforced the patriarchal power structure within society and the family.Even now,after the return of democracy,the deep-rooted traditional concepts are still the spiritual shackles that bind women’s freedom,and the neo-liberal economic policies implemented by Latin American countries since the 1990 s and the economic control imposed by European and American countries on Latin American countries in the context of globalization have further led to an increase in the gap between rich and poor in Latin American societies,thus triggering various social conflicts,and women are precisely the most vulnerable group.They are especially vulnerable to poverty,employment discrimination,gender violence,and other problems,including homosexuality,transgender and other "Queer" groups,who also face the risk of social exclusion.Based on this,this paper will take women’s films created by women directors in Latin America since the 1990 s as the object of study,aiming to explore how the group of women directors in Latin America uses films to represent the real experiences of women who are oppressed by unequal gender,race and class relations in the historical and real context of Latin America.In their films,women directors often take a strong feminist stance to look at the life experiences of other women directors also explore a "women’s films aesthetic" by subverting,transforming and utilizing mainstream film language in order to better express feminist ideology.Because mainstream film language expressions tend to reinforce the marginalized situation of women in established power relations,new film languages often help to present women’s experiences,thus subverting the dominant ideological discourse from within film forms and structures.Along this line of thought,this paper will analyze the cultural expressions in Latin American women’s films since the1990 s from the practical standpoint of film criticism,and explain how women directors convey themes and ideas through a film language and form different from mainstream films in three dimensions: narrative strategy,visual style,and spatial rhetoric.This dissertation is divided into five chapters:The first chapter compares the development history and background of the rise of Latin American women’s films.From the development history of Latin American women’s films,the Latin American women’s films before the 1990 s developed in a tortuous way,and the specific industrial,political,social and cultural backgrounds were the key factors restricting its development.By comparing the Latin American women’s films before the 1990 s,it will help to further clarify the background and characteristics of the rise of Latin American women’s films.The rise of Latin American women’s films is mainly due to the following reasons: the relaxed cultural environment created by the return of democratic politics in Latin America since the 1990 s,coupled with the multi-level film financing mechanisms explored by Latin American countries during this period,have greatly contributed to the rise of women directors.In addition,the positive impact of the return of democracy in Latin America on the development of local feminist movements and the introduction of the third wave of feminist trend of thought not only promoted the development of women’s films,but also greatly enriched the cultural outreach of women’s films.All these factors have created the identity of women directors as "authors",so that they can use the camera as a pen to write freely about women’s experiences,just like male film authors.The second chapter illustrates the cultural expression of Latin American women’s films since the 1990 s.On the one hand,the deep-rooted patriarchal ideology in Latin American history and reality has kept women imprisoned,in which women directors not only reveal women’s otherness in the unequal gender power relations,but also portray how women resist male power discourse.On the other hand,the plight of ethnic minority women has also been paid attention to by women directors.In their films,ethnic minority women not only face the oppression of patriarchy,but also suffer from the oppression of race,class and identity.While revealing the marginalized situation of minority women directors also incorporate a certain critical discourse in their films to show the resistance of minority women against the powerful power.In addition,the survival of the "Queer" oppressed by the heterosexual hegemony in traditional Latin American society has also attracted the attention of women directors.In the films,the "Queer" group often resists the dominant discourse by actively "coming out",establishing "Queer sisterhood" with other "Queer" groups,and actively playing the role of the "weak self".The second three chapters of the dissertation focus on how Latin American women directors since the 1990 s have used a specific film language to represent women’s emotions and experiences in their films.The third chapter will analyze the narrative strategies of Latin American women’s films since the 1990 s,aiming to reveal how women directors use different narrative devices to represent the life experiences and existential dilemmas of Latin American women.In terms of narrative stance,women directors use the womeneye to perceive women’s fate and focus on the real historical situation of women’s lives to gain insight into the damage caused by historical violence to women.In addition,women directors also adopt a warm perspective to portray the strong inner worlds of their womenclients,and their personal experiences of growing up can often have a profound impact on their work.In terms of narrative structure,many women directors are able to explore a variety of narrative structures according to the themes and contents of different films and the narrative rules of films,including documentary,episodic realism,multi-temporal interlacing,prose,and psychological-emotional narrative structures,and the audience can precisely feel the womenfeelings of women directors in telling the fate of their compatriots through different narrative structures.In terms of narrative voice,the essay is based on an American narrative.In terms of narrative voice,based on American feminist narrative scholar Susan S.Lancer’s theory of narrative voice,the article illustrates how women directors adopt three narrative voices(authorial、personal、collective)with distinct feminist ideological tendency to speak about women’s life experience and subject value.The fourth chapter explores the visual style of Latin American women’s films since the 1990 s.On the one hand,women directors adopt Documentary imaging strategy to restore the real state of women’s existence,and also "defamiliarization" treatment of Documentary imaging strategy,presenting the real time and space while giving a strong emotional impact to the reality to reveal more essentially.On the other hand,women directors will try to construct a kind of magical realism image,so as to reflect the suffering of women in Latin America through absurd and bizarre magical spectacle.In addition,the visual presentation of indigenous mythology and folklore elements with magical realism can also help the audience to think about how the ancient traditional civilization has shaped women.In addition,the baroque color style is also a means for women directors to represent women’s experience.The strong realistic color objects in the film not only reveal women’s repressed desires and metaphorically change women’s fate,but also externalize women’s subjective psychological state and emotional world.The fifth chapter analyzes the rhetoric of space in Latin American women’s films since the 1990 s.The film space in this section is not only the ontological space of images and the place where the story takes place,but also a field with the function of meaning production.In their films,the relationship between space and identity is fluid,and gender,race,and class are no longer the only factors determining the meaning of space.The original space is transformed into a place of women dominance and freedom,in which women gain subjectivity and are no longer bound by gender,race,class and other factors.This section will analyze the discursive hegemony in the urban,landscape and transnational liminal(discrete)spaces in the film and explain how the women director constructs women’s subjectivity in these spaces.It is important to note that the reshaping of space is also a kind of transformation of traditional film language,because space itself is a symbolic system with referential meaning,and space exists as an important creative element of the film.In the epilogue,the article analyzes the international influence of Latin American women’s films since the 1990 s.On the one hand,the left-wing tendency of Latin American women’s films in terms of theme and content is an important reason why they are favored by international film festivals.On the other hand,although Latin American women’s films frequently win laurels at international film festivals,but they do not perform satisfactorily in the international market.Take Europe,the largest market for Latin American women’s films,as an example.In recent years,the rise of right-wing populism in Europe has made the Latin American women’s films are becoming more and more "cold",and in other countries,differences in language,culture,and politics have also weakened their market competitiveness.This requires Latin American women’s films producers to continuously innovate film promotion strategies to reduce film dissemination as much as possible Cultural discounts in the process.The conclusion also looks forward to the future development of Latin American female films in the digital era.The article points out that the development of film digital technology has brought new opportunities and challenges for Latin American women’s films both in the creation level and in the communication level.