Female Subjectivities from a Distance: A Comparative Study of Three Films of the 1980s and 1990s by Latin American Women Filmmakers

Abstract

This article offers a comparative analysis of three films directed by Latin American women filmmakers in the 1980s and early 1990s: Fragmentos de un diario inacabado [Fragments from an Unfinished Diary] (Angelina Vázquez, 1983), Desembarcos - When Memory Speaks (Desembarcos, un taller de cine en Buenos Aires, Jeanine Meerapfel, 1989) and A Wall of Silence (Un muro de silencio, Lita Stantic, 1993). Although the first two are documentaries and the third is a fiction film, all three explore various situations of exile, migration and the enunciation of the self in terms of female subjectivities. This enunciative position facilitates discourses and subversions of identity, which is constructed as multiple and defined to differing degrees in terms of gender through the establishment of intersubjective relationships between the protagonists (the directors themselves or their alter egos) and other significant characters in the story. The study examines the different levels of reflexivity present in the films, the authorial presence of the filmmakers and the forms of geographical, subjective and narrative distancing.