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Editor's Note:
To order these videos, contact us by email at info@lavavideo.org, by phone 212-243-4804, or by fax 212-243-2007. Our website, www.latinamericanvideo.org, allows for secure purchases by credit card.
Lesbians in Buenos Aires Get Details and Purchasing Info
Santiago Garcia
Documentary 82 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
At work, at play, demonstrating in the street, and cooking dinner in the kitchen, this absorbing documentary features a variety of women’s voices speaking of the lives they have made as lesbians in the Argentine capital. Speaking of their daily lives and first loves, of negotiating with masculinist Argentine society, of politics, of coming out to their parents, and of having children of their own, the testimonies of these women depict lesbian life in contemporary Latin America.The differences between their experiences are indicative of the diversity of the lesbian community in Buenos Aires. One woman, when she came out to her family, was sent to a gynecologist and spent her adolescence in psychotherapy. Another was simply kicked out of her house. One couple holds hands in public, while another woman married a man – and later found a lifelong partner and had a child. Many of the differences are generational: older lesbians remember being arrested for merely going to gay dance clubs, but the younger generation has been able to take advantage of a slow cultural shift and the burgeoning Argentine gay and lesbian movement. All of the women recognize the importance of overcoming their invisibility in Argentine society, but while some don’t want their differences to be sensationalized, others are quite outspoken in their political activism.As women and as lesbians, they are subject to double discrimination, but the film’s eloquent and sympathetic protagonists do not see themselves as victims. They are in many ways typical Argentines, with the same passion for work, family, sports, and their beloved city as any other. This engrossing film shows how these tenacious women carve out purposeful lives for themselves without compromising who they are.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00
Born in Brazil Get Details and Purchasing Info
Cara Biasucci
Documentary 52 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
The World Health Organization suggests a maximum cesarean rate of 15%. Research shows that the majority of Brazilian women prefer natural birth. But statistics provide a different story --- 65% - 85% of all births in private hospitals in Brazil are by cesarean section. Many obstetricians attribute the high cesearean rate to patient demand, when in fact the unnecessary surgery is more convenient and lucrative for doctors. Born in Brazil challenges the dominant cultural belief that surgical delivery is the modern, painless way to give birth, and that cesareans are what women want.This 52-minute documentary reveals the subtle pressures that stimulate the gross misuse of cesareans through touching and humorous accounts of childbirth. Born in Brazil follows five pregnant women in private and public hospitals in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In interviews before birth, the women share their desires, fears, and expectations of childbirth. During birth, the ethical conflicts of modern obstetrics become clear as doctors narrate their patients’ progress. A few days after birth, the women reflect on their experience, often twisting facts and feelings to fit their obstetrician’s story of events.Childbirth is a manifestation of the spontaneous nature of life. In a fast-paced, convenience-oriented society where most things are planned, Born in Brazil serves as a wake-up call to the alarmingly high rates of cesarean section around the world. Indeed, frequent articles published in medical journals and newspapers throughout the world show that cesarean rates are on the rise in the United States, South America, and Asia. Born in Brazil brings to the screen an urgent and essential message. As it explores the relationship between birth and technology, and the pressures of modern society, this documentary provides critical insight on our desire to control the unpredictable by relying on calculated medical procedures.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Clean Eye, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Magali Meneses
Documentary 25 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
"During the time that I fought with language... I
used to hear myself as I wrote. Teeth cracking
away with anger. Sandpaper screech of the blunt
edge of language..." This documentary provides an
overview of the life of the Nobel-prize-winning
Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, using photographs
and archival footage. Mistral was a path-breaking
woman who traveled extensively in Europe and the
Americas, serving as an educational advisor to
the post-revolutionary Mexican government and as
the Chilean consul to Mexico, Brazil, and the
U.S., among other countries. The centerpiece of
the film is the only surviving recorded interview
with Mistral, broadcast on the radio in
Montevideo in 1938, in which she displays her
prodigious talents as a poet, comic, and orator.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Last Trace, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Paola Castillo
Documentary 67 minutes 2001
With English subtitles
The rugged and secluded hinterlands of Southern Chile were once the home of the Yagan Indians. But contact with the outside world has led to their assimilation and cultural disappearance. In 1832, there were 6,000 Yagans. In 1945, there were 39. Now, the only remaining speakers of the Yagan language are two elderly sisters, Úrsula and Cristina Calderón. The solitude of their twilight years is infused with their memories of the old people, the old values, the old songs and rituals, and with the knowledge that after their death it will all disappear.Beautifully shot in a harsh but achingly picturesque landscape of gravel beaches, snowy mountains, and the bright Antarctic sky, the film also evokes the past through old anthropological film and photographs of the community’s long-dead elders. The old sisters pore over the old photos, and visit the cemetery where their ancestors are buried, the plot where their home once stood, and a place called Frozen Bay, where the Yagans harvested pigment for ritual face-painting long ago. But the sisters and their descendants are determined to stem the loss of their traditional knowledge. They are deeply engaged in the work of preservation: writing a dictionary of the Yagan language, exhibiting photos at a local museum, and passing down the old traditional values of equality and mutual respect. THE LAST TRACE documents these women as living testaments of the traditional culture of the original occupants of this lonely and beautiful land.
Purchase Price: $ 200.00
Zulay Facing the 21st Century Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jorge Preloran
Documentary 108 minutes 1992
With English subtitles
Filmed over the course of eight years, this film is a dialogue between Zulay Saravino, an Otavalen indigenous woman from Ecuador, and Mabel Preloran, an Argentine anthropologist living in Los Angeles, California. They discuss the problems both of them have faced as women adapting themselves to life in the United States. A universal documentary on transculturation, and the decisions one must face regarding identity, education, economic improvement, and emotional ties.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Testimony: The Maria Guardado Story Get Details and Purchasing Info
Randy Vasquez
Documentary 63 minutes 2001
With English subtitles
This gripping and complex documentary recounts the story of Maria Guardado, whose political activism stems from the horrific ordeal she suffered during the civil war in her native El Salvador. Kidnapped and brutally tortured by CIA-assisted death squads, she now lives in Los Angeles. Testimony treats her odyssey, and the trauma that provoked it. But if the inner demons of her past still torment María Guardado, they have also moved this inconspicuous old woman to be an energetic and ubiquitous presence in political activism. The video documents her first return visit to El Salvador in twenty years, where Guardado reconfronts her past and draws inspiration for her tireless struggle for social justice.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Skirt Full of Butterflies, A Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ellen Osborne and Maureen Gosling
Documentary 15 minutes 1993
With English subtitles
Matriarchy. That is what explorers and other outsiders have simplistically labeled the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Oaxaca, Mexico. The Isthmus is a place where women run the economy, where cultural identity is of utmost importance, where being fat is regarded as an ideal of beauty and where female ancestors displayed ingenuity and spunk in times of war and political resistance. Anthropologists call it a partnership society where one is first a human being, an individual and only second and incidentally a man or a woman. (It is a love poem to the Isthmus women.) We hear from five women whose stories are interlaced with scenes of work and the resplendent festivities, music, poetry and paintings of the region. They show how valuable economic independence, community, friendship, cultural pride and respect for "women's work" are in giving a woman self-esteem and a sense of purpose in life. They are also a testament to what that sense of dignity contributes to the well-being of society. "Knocks traditional machismo on its ear!" -Guillermos Medina, El Mensajero, San Francisco. "Colorful and sensual ... the women's voices are heard strong and clear." -Film Arts Foundation. Received Honorable Mention for Best Film at CineFestival, San Antonio, Texas.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Courage Get Details and Purchasing Info
Alberto Durant
Feature 110 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
An inspiring story of bravery, sacrifice, and hope, Courage is based on the true story of María Elena Moyano, the Afroperuvian political activist who fought against poverty and malnutrition and ultimately paid with her life. Moyano was the leader of a women’s organization in the city of Villa El Salvador, a squatter community carved out of the desert surrounding Lima by poor urban pioneers. Founded and entirely run by poor mothers from the community like Moyano herself, the organization fought for human rights by addressing the most fundamental concerns, organizing community kitchens and clinics, income-generating projects, adult education centers, and milk distribution for the children of Villa.But the women’s struggle for human dignity was hampered by poverty, machismo, and the neglect of government bureaucrats. The outspoken and charismatic Moyano soon attracted the unwelcome attention of Peru’s Marxist insurgents, the Shining Path, who were threatened by her democratic vision and her feminism. After refusing to be intimidated by house-bombings, death threats, and slanderous rumors spread to undermine the community’s trust, Moyano publicly denounced their violence. When her family and friends finally convinced her to leave the country for her safety, she returned after only 10 days, deciding that she could not live in comfort while her community was crying out for justice. She returned to her family, her community, and her political struggle, rallying the community from the paralysis of fear and suspicion. At a fund raiser, which she attended despite persistent intimidation, the 33-year-old Moyano was brutally murdered in front of her sons, her body sadistically destroyed by dynamite.Using authentic slang and realistic settings in gritty lower class neighborhoods, Courage provides a very humanistic portrait of this complex woman, who defied the guerrillas’ threats, the government’s intractability, and her own community’s self-doubt to bring a vision of social justice and self-empowerment to the working-class women of Latin America.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00
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