This edited volume offers a wide-ranging picture of Argentine women filmmakers’ contribution to the film industry from the 1980s to the present by bringing together the work of highly acclaimed and emerging directors. Through thirteen critical essays by leading scholars in the field of Argentine cinema, the book acknowledges that contemporary women filmmakers have transformed the cinema of Argentina by questioning, challenging and debunking hegemonic patriarchal systems of representation. With a focus on women’s voices and experiences, the contributions redress both the under-representation of women and girls onscreen and the perpetuation of stereotypes, while exploring the innovative aesthetics used by these filmmakers.

Before Bemberg: Argentine Women Filmmakers calls into question the historiography of Argentine women filmmakers that has centered on María Luisa Bemberg to the exclusion of her predecessors. Its introductory discussion of the abundant initial participation by women in film production in the 1910s is followed by an account of their exclusion from creative roles in the studio cinema, which was only altered by the opportunities opened by a boom in short filmmaking in the 1960s. The book then discusses in depth the six sound features directed by women before 1980, which, despite their trailblazing explorations of the perspectives of female characters, daring denunciations of authoritarianism and censorship, and modernizing formal invention, have been forgotten by Argentine film history. Looking at the work and roles of Eva Landeck, Vlasta Lah, María Herminia Avellaneda and María Elena Walsh and Maria Bemberg, the book recognizes these filmmakers’ contributions at a significant moment in which movements to eliminate gender-based oppression and violence in Argentina and elsewhere are surging. Watch some of the films discussed in the book with English subtitles (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF_6F4am5024rklIWwExUVA?view_as=subscriber).

Examines contemporary cinematic representations of Argentine masculinities, the social construction of gender, and the financing of domestic film production following Argentina's 1990 change to a neo-liberal economic model.

Hear Me with Your Eyes examines the intrusion of the voice into the cinematographic gaze and the intersections (and ruptures) of the sound-image in Argentine women filmmakers from a feminist perspective. In different ways, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Lita Stantic, Lucrecia Martel, Albertina Carri, Maria Victoria Menis, Lucia Puenzo, Sabrina Farji, Paula de Luque, Anahi Berneri, Sandra Gugliotta, and Gabriela David explore the visual realm through the continuities, intrusions, irrelevancies, harmonies, and desynchronizations of the voice. Or, instead, they explore different voices and their modulations, including whispers, screams, singing, echoes, breathing, resonance, sighs, and the transcendent voice, the narrative voice, the silenced voice, the articulated and unarticulated voice, and that which is none of the above. These voices suggest another relationship with the audiovisual realm, one that seems to include a closeness that erases, if only intermittently, the unalterable relationship between subject and object that characterizes the patriarchal visual regime.

This book highlights the voices and stories of Latin American women directors from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico.

Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.