by Charles Ram�rez Berg
The obvious question raised by this month-long, eye-opening retrospective of
films by Mexican women directors (every Thursday night throughout October at
the Dobie Theatre) is: Why don’t we know more about these talented women
filmmakers? But that only begs the larger question: Why don’t we know more
about Mexican filmmaking – period?
Quick! Name five Mexican films other than Like Water for Chocolate and
Los Olvidados. Name three Mexican directors other than Luis
Bu�uel (who was, after all, a Spanish exile living in Mexico). Name
three Mexican actors other than Cantinflas and Ricardo Montalban (nope, Raul
Julia was Puerto Rican and Antonio Banderas is Spanish). Name three Mexican
actresses other than Dolores Del Rio (sorry, Sonia Braga is Brazilian). If your
response to these questions is, “Who were Cantinflas and Dolores Del Rio?” you
are, like many other American filmgoers, largely in the dark so to speak, when
it comes to Mexican cinema.
Why is that? If Mexico’s were an anemic cinema with an erratic output, that
would be one thing, but the history of Mexican cinema celebrates its centennial
next year. And for much of this century, Mexico has been the leading producer
of Spanish-language films in the world. During the 1940s and into the ’50s, the
output of the Mexican film industry numbered over 100 films per year. If its
filmmaking was unoriginal and uninspired, there would be little reason for the
Mexican cinema to be known or appreciated, despite its wide circulation. But
anyone familiar with this national industry knows that Mexico’s cinematic
tradition encompasses a rich treasury of films made by world-class filmmakers
of whom Alfonso Arau (Like Water for Chocolate) is only the most recent
example.
Naturally, most Mexican-Americans of my parents’ generation knew Mexican
cinema intimately and follow it passionately (they would have made a perfect
score on the above Mexican film quiz). But apart from them, how could it be
that most American moviegoers – even the rabid ones – know more about Japanese,
Italian, and Swedish film than about the national cinema of our next-door
neighbor?
If you will allow me a brief, three-paragraph rant on the subject, the answer
is, in two words, ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism. To begin with, we Americans
like our movie entertainment home-grown. By and large, foreign films are
shunned. This is an easy out – no subtitles to read, no awkward dubbing to
contend with.
If, however, there manages to be a popular foreign (most likely Western
European) film with a marketable story line, then Hollywood does (for
Hollywood) the next most sensible thing: It produces a remake which corrects
the film’s major flaw – the fact that none of the actors speak their lines in
English. Thus, The Return of Martin Guerre (French, 1982) becomes
Sommersby; Three Men and a Cradle (French, 1985) becomes Three
Men and a Baby; Profumo di Donna (Italian, 1974) becomes Scent of
a Woman; The Vanishing (French-Dutch, 1988) becomes The
Vanishing, and so on.
There is one more way for a foreign film to gain attention in this country,
and that is to garner solid critical approval. But for that to happen, the film
must be anointed by media critics who are based in New York and Los Angeles and
have little or no exposure to Mexican cinema. “Poor Mexico,” Mexican dictator
Porfirio D�az was said to have once mused. “So far from God and so close
to the United States.” In terms of Mexican film, that might be rephrased, “Poor
Mexican cinema, so far from the critical gods (in New York), and so close to a
region of the U.S. (the Southwest) generally ignored by the rest of the
country.” So, despite the fact that during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, Mexican
films did lucrative business in Spanish-language theatres throughout the U.S.
(not just along the border, but in Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago), they were
largely neglected by Hollywood, New York, and the rest of the United States.
Thanks, I feel better now.
To answer my original question, the reason we don’t know Mexican women filmmakers is because we don’t know
Mexican film. Thanks to the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria and an
impressive list of supporters of Austin’s film culture (Austin Community
College’s Radio-Television-Film Department, the Southwest Alternative Media
Project, the Austin Film Society, Austin CableVision, The Austin
Chronicle, and the Department of Radio-Television-Film at UT-Austin), we
have a chance to begin to rectify that cultural deficit via this impressive
series of films that spans nearly 60 years of women’s Mexican cinema.
The series receives its name from the title of pioneering actor-director Adela
Sequeyro’s film, Nobody’s Woman (1937), which opens the series (Oct. 5).
Interestingly, that title can be understood in two ways. First, “nobody’s
woman” could refer, at best, to an unattached woman, at worst, to a woman alone
in the world, an orphan or outcast. But secondly – and importantly because it
sets the tone for this series – it also means an independent woman who doesn’t
feel the incessant need to be some man’s woman. The films in this series, then,
are products of women filmmakers who were determined and talented enough to go
it alone in Mexican cinema’s male-dominated world.
The films span the work of Mexicana directors from the 1930s to the present,
and include both features and shorts. Actually, women’s participation in
Mexican film goes all the way back to the origins of the nation’s narrative
cinema.
1917 proved to be a key year in Mexican film history, a year when Mexico’s
film production dramatically shifted from documentary to story films. An
enterprising stage actress, Mimi Derba, took it upon herself to produce, write,
and star in Mexico’s third narrative film, En Defensa Propria (In
Self Defense). The indefatigable Derba went on to write, co-produce,
sometimes direct, and usually star in four other films that same year.
Unfortunately, all of those films are lost, so the “Nobody’s Women” series
begins in the mid-1930s, when another iconoclastic writer-actress-director,
Adela Sequeyro, came on the scene.
Nobody’s Woman, Sequeyro’s second film, is the story of a young woman
(played by Sequeyro) who escapes her abusive father and is found and taken in
by three artists (a poet, a musician, and a painter) who all proceed to fall in
love with her. On the one hand, it’s a charming, guileless piece of filmmaking
and, in its opening sequences, a powerful indictment of abusive machismo. On
the other, it’s a sort of feminist fantasy which finds the positive side of
Mexican maledom to be peopled by sensitive – if childlike – artists. Also on
the program is Luz Eugenia (Busi) Cort�s’ first film, the short Las
Buenromero (1979). Cort�s, who studied and now teaches at the Centro
de Capacitaci�n Cinematogr�fica in Mexico City, would go on to
direct the critically acclaimed feature and winner of an Ariel (Mexico’s
equivalent of an Oscar), Romelia’s Secret (1988), based on Rosario
Castellanos’ novel, El Viudo Rom�n (Roman the Widower).
Angustias the Black (1949), the second feature in the series (Oct. 12),
is directed by Matilde Soto Landeta, Mexico’s most internationally recognized
woman filmmaker. It tells the story of Angustias, who defies tradition and
becomes a colonel in the revolutionary army. It is accompanied by Matilde
Soto Landeta (1992), a short documentary on the life and career of Landeta,
directed by Patricia Mart�nez de Velasco.
Marcela Fern�ndez Violante became, in 1975, the first woman to join
(and be allowed to join) the Mexican film directors’ union. Her distinguished
films include Cananea (1977), a historical drama that relates the tragic
events of a miners’ strike in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico in the early years of
this century, and Misterio (Mystery, 1979), an eerie
psychological thriller about a soap opera actor who can’t find his way out of
his role and back to his real life. Stroke of Luck (1991), Violante’s
sixth feature film and her most successful and popular one, is the third film
of the series (Oct. 19). It’s an ironic tale of a middle-class government
worker, Jeronimo, whose stroke of good fortune – getting a loan to buy a house
– turns into a disaster. It is paired with Violante’s Frida Kahlo (1971), her fascinating, award-winning short (only 13 minutes long) on the life
of the Mexican artist.
The final program (Oct. 26) is comprised of two examples of the younger
generation of Mexican women filmmakers. Ana’s Steps (1991), directed by
Marisa Sistach, is the story of Ana, a 30-year-old divorced mother of two who
is committed to media. She works as an assistant director by day, and
video-records her encounters with men by night. Eva Lopez Sanchez’s short,
Lost Objects (1991) ends the series. It tells of the meeting of two
travelers, Pilar and Juan, whose relationship takes an interesting turn when
they discover that each is mistakenly in possession of the other’s luggage.
What viewers of the series of women’s films will discover is not so much a
different, oppositional, or difficult cinema. Rather, they will see women
directors who, for the most part, use a traditional narrative style to look at
things from a feminine perspective. In so doing, they will linger on themes and
images felt to be unimportant by male filmmakers. Viewers familiar with Maria
Novaro’s Danz�n (1991) know how delightful such cinema can be.
But the other, sharper side to the films in this series results from the fact
that these filmmakers can’t help but investigate machismo. As they do so, they
reveal – sometimes playfully, sometimes caustically – machismo’s underlying
contradictions, inanities, and inconsistencies. n
This article appears in October 6 • 1995 and October 6 • 1995 (Cover).