Navigating the Societal Standards Placed on Women in Dominican Culture through Documentary A Hybrid Essay/Film Research Project

Abstract

For my senior project I chose to create a documentary that is about my grandmothers' life and how she dealt with growing up and living in the Dominican Republic before immigrating to the U.S. for a better life and her experience in all of it as a woman. In my film I have made the effort to focus on subjects that pertain to hispanic women while using the reference of the documentary film Nana by Tatiana Fernández Geara and another documentary called La Ventana de Nena directed by Nino Martinez Sosa. I chose to focus on these documentaries in particular because they both carry the overall sense of independent, strong people that had to face the challenges of their home country growing up as a woman. For this written portion of my senior project I will be focusing on the approach that the documentary format takes on a role in navigating through the women in the documentaries I chose and my documentary about my grandmother. In my film and in the films that I am referencing there are themes and topics that are discussed which is what I aim to delve into more deeply through writing. The common themes that are shown through all documentaries are: womanhood (more specifically in Dominican culture), family, facing societal standards, financial hardships, immigrating elsewhere for a better life/more opportunities, etc. I also delve into works of Bill Nichols and Alisa Lebow to further analyze the utilization of documentary and its significance in giving these stories a platform. I find that it is important to acknowledge and recognize the challenges that women go through and the similarities between all the women across the films including my film about my grandmother.