Aniki. Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image

Deadline: July 15, 2024

Coordinated by Gonzalo de Lucas (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Ana Daniela de Souza Gillone (Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades da Universidade de São Paulo) and Josep Lambies (ESCAC - Universitat de Barcelona).

Films made during periods of political transition provide fertile ground for analysing how history and cultural education become inscribed in the personal and corporeal memory, through gestures, emotions and new ways of expressing desires. The social changes and ideological tensions that occur in the workplace, the family and the public sphere have a clear impact not only on explicitly political militant cinema, but also on mainstream genres, in terms both of narrative and aesthetic approaches inherited from the preceding period and of elements inspired by the political events of the moment.

Actresses, who since the dawn of cinema have always made significant contributions to the cultural production of emotions, collective psychologies, social imaginaries and values, play a vital role in these periods of transition, conveying the historical and ideological tensions of their context. In many cases, the introduction of legislative changes and new social structures has been reflected in or aligned with their role as film stars and popular icons, often to a point where they become cultural symbols of the transformations themselves (e.g., Victoria Abril, Carmen Maura, Ana Belén and Ángela Molina in Spain; Lia Gama, Guida Maria, Zita Duarte and Ana Zanatti in Portugal; Fernanda Montenegro, Sônia Braga, Lucélia Santos and Fernanda Torres in Brazil; Gloria Münchmeyer, Amparo Noguera, Catalina Saavedra and Paulina Urrutia in Chile; Camila Perisé, Susú Pecoraro and Norma Aleandro in Argentina). Moreover, actresses of the new generations would often appear on screen alongside stars of the previous period, in a contrast that expressed the complex tensions between historical memory and historical amnesia.

The democratic transitions that took place in southern Europe in the 1970s as a result of the collapse of the Regime of the Colonels in Greece (1974), the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974) and the death of General Franco in Spain (1975) offer paradigmatic examples of the alignment of actresses’ on-screen performances with the political changes taking place. The same can be said of Eastern Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the communist regimes, as well as the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (both in 1991). Outside Europe, other examples can be found in the periods of transition that followed the end of dictatorships in various Latin American countries, such as Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985) and Chile (1990). In all these cases, the debate over the role of women in the public sphere, and of the representation of their subjectivity and desires on screen, constituted a key concern in the films made at the time of these sociopolitical changes, and the actresses who starred in those films played an important part in this process.

The aim of this special section is to explore how, during periods of democratic transition in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, Argentina, Brazil or Chile, actresses constructed distinct female subjectivities that transcended the prevailing social imperatives, in varying degrees of dialogue with the debates in feminist theory and activism. This is in line with Teresa de Lauretis’ suggestion to “return to a conception of female subjectivity in terms of the practices it involves and the needs sustained by desire when it is expressed through a woman’s body” (2000, our translation). We want to analyse the creative function of actresses in critiquing stereotypes, the degree of control they can acquire over their own self-representation, and the modes of production of new subjectivities who, based on an understanding of gender as a representation without a referent (as a representation of representations), are not afraid to manipulate traditional models and introduce unexpected forms of desire that embrace all the differences and contradictions existing in feminism on two levels: as differences that exist within feminist theory and as divisions within a single subjectivity.

Research on the evolution of actresses in periods of democratic transition can help clarify whether they create dissident, alternative or contradictory characters who expose sexual difference, on an indirect or implicit level in relation to the discourses foregrounded in the film. These subjectivities revealed in the actresses and their characters can be identified and analysed as icons of change and emancipation, constructing new forms of desire unique to the female experience and constructing other narratives about women that have rarely been shown before.

Proposed lines of research for submissions include but are not limited to:

-Analysis of the ways women are represented through the characters and specific creative work of actresses during historical processes of democratic transition;

-Studies of the production of new forms of female subjectivity through actress’ representations of narrative and visual motifs on issues such as work, economics and class relations, the family, sexuality and the body, love and desire, sexist violence, and human rights and legislative changes;

-Explorations of the cultural function of actresses through their work and their media images, in turbulent periods of sociopolitical transformation, in order to categorise stereotypes and identify forms of differentiation, dissidence and contradiction in women’s experiences;

-Studies from a gender perspective that include a conception of the actress as a creative subject in the political construction of new female imaginaries and in the filmmaking process, with a focus on periods of democratic transition.

More information

This thematic section is being coordinated by Gonzalo de Lucas (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Ana Daniela de Souza Gillone (Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades da Universidade de São Paulo) and Josep Lambies (ESCAC - Universitat de Barcelona).