In Our Own Image: An Oral History of Mexican Women Filmmakers (1988-1994)

Abstract

In Our Own Image: An Oral History of Mexican Women Filmmakers (1988-1994) is a translation of Isabel Arredondo's Palabra de Mujer: Historia oral de las directoras de cine mexicanas 1988-1994. The translation is by Mark Schafer, Jim Heinrich, Elissa Rashkin, and Isabel Arredondo. The book includes an introduction, six interviews with Mexican women filmmakers, an epilogue and a filmography. The goal of the book is to accurately document the entrance of women filmmakers, as a group, into Mexico's film industry at the end of the 1980s into the 1990s. These interviews trace the emergence of a new perspective within Latin American cinema. Beginning in the 1980s, social problems are approached from the perspective of the individual; a person's gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation become the link to the society. The filmmakers, studied in In Our Own Image as a group, give a coherent overview of the problems in Latin American society, especially Mexican society, from a gender perspective at this time. The introduction, which includes interviews with key figures of the state film industry in Mexico, describes how films are produced within this industry, the rationale for having a state film industry, and the openings it provides for women. The interviews with filmmakers Guita Schyfter, Busi Cortes, Marisa Sistach, Mar­a Novaro, Dana Rotberg and Eva Lopez-Sanchez explain how each filmmaker made her way into the film industry. The interviews also highlight the filmmakers' personal preoccupations and experiments in approaching social problems from a gender perspective.

In 2013 Isabel Arredondo will publish Motherhood in Mexican Cinema, 1941-1991 The Transformation of Femininity on Screen, a study drawing on the interviews published here in In Our Own Image. You can read more about Motherhood in Mexican Cinema at the publisher's website: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-6804-1