Women filmmakers in Mexico: the country of which we dream.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Women Filmmakers in Mexico: the country of which we dream, by Elissa J. Rashkin. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001

In this intelligently conceived, well-researched study, Elissa Rashkin traces the development of cine de mujer, or "woman's cinema" in Mexico during the last decade of the twentieth century. As late as the mid-eighties, there were few professional Mexican women directors, but in the late eighties a new generation emerged. Rashkin analyzes the work of the most acclaimed of these: Marisa Sistach, Busi Cortes, Guita Schyfter, Maria Novaro, and Dana Rotberg. She concludes with an excellent annotated filmography and bibliography, making this book a particularly useful research tool.

The release in 1988 of two feature films by women, Cortes's El secreto de Romelia (Romelia's Secret) and Sistach's Los pasos de Ana (Ana's Steps) marked the beginning of a new era. Two more significant films by women debuted in 1989, Novaro's Lola and Rotberg's Intimidad (Intimacy), followed, in 1991, by Cortes's Serpientes y escaleras (Serpents and Stairs) and in 1992, by Schyfter's Novia que te yea (To See You a Bride). During this period two films by Mexican women went to Cannes, Novaro's Danzon (1991) and Rotberg's Angel de fuego (1992). Not only were women directing films, but they were challenging the female archetypes of the suffering mother and the treacherous "evil woman." Rashkin stresses that representations of women had actually never been as one-dimensional as commonly believed. But with the emergence of women directors, women were telling their own stories and creating new female identities, developments that would have far-reaching ramifications beyond the realm of cinema.

The emergence of the "other" cinema both nourished and was nourished by the increased participation of women in the intellectual sector. While few women studied film in the sixties, by the end of the eighties their representation in film schools was equal to men's, a phenomenon that mirrored the increased participation of women in other spheres of intellectual life. The new women...