Colectivo Cine Mujer

A young sociology student has an unintended pregnancy and is subjected to the terrible humiliation of an incompetent doctor. The girl falls ill from the poorly performed abortion and is taken by a friend to the General Hospital. Film that reports clandestine abortion in Mexico, with interviews with women who have had abortions in that hospital and shocking maternal death statistics from procedures carried out under unsafe conditions.

It follows a group of women working in maquiladoras on the U.S.-Mexico border; their testimonies tell the story of their working conditions.

Beatriz Mira, a Brazilian filmmaker living in Mexico, films the housework carried out by women at the end of a decade marked by numerous political and social movements, including feminist groups that disputed the fact that women had been banished from the public sphere, and thus confined to the household. In their fights and debates, they wielded the motto ‘what’s personal is political’.

The film describes in a simple way the division between girls and boys through education by assigning them different behaviors based on their sex difference.

The documentary captures the struggle of the Yalatecas Women’s Union, in a remote Zapotec indigenous community, in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. It recreates the seizure of the Municipal Palace that led to the end of the cacicazgo (ruling of the caciques), the organization of the Union, and achievements such as the cooperative of artisans, the communal mill and the support for the Castilianization Center and musical instruments for the band that is the heart of community.

Testimony from different women of different ages about housework, marriage, and gender roles: women cook, wash, and take care of the home, while men work.

This heterodox work draws on fiction resources and the register of documentary to denounce the phenomenon of rape in Mexico. With a complex essay-like structure, the film is a reflection on the various types of sexual violence, from the classist legal apparatus and the connivance of religious institutions, to rejection of and discrimination against victims. At the same time, it introduces community alternatives for victim support. A project by “Cine Mujer,” this film exemplifies the group’s motto and mode of production, and thus one of the maxims of feminism: no personal solutions; only collective action for collective solutions.