Feminist ironic montage to dismantle gender essentialism

Abstract

This article compares two Latin American feminist short documentaries that challenge mainstream representations of women by making use of ironic montage to dismantle gender essentialism. In Woman's World (María Luisa Bemberg, Argentina, 1972) and Miss Universe in Peru (Chaski Group, Perú, 1982), the capitalist/patriarchal mandate is contested in the editing room through rhetorical devices that, although similar, also bear remarkable differences, such as the use, for storytelling, of two different types of irony: dramatic and situational. Moreover, to introduce these films to a potentially lay audience in feminist and/or Latin American nonfiction cinema, we interrogate the complex production modes of feminist films, focusing on how they respond to their makers' heterogeneous social positionalities and agendas. An inclusive framework of analysis is proposed to shed light on the negotiations between diverse and even divergent enunciative positions. Our contrasting positionality and feminist scholarly practice mimic the collaborative film processes we study.