A Feminist Counter-History of Latin American Documentary: Contexts, Processes, and Forms

A Feminist Counter-History of Latin American Documentary provides a new lens through which to revisit the history of Latin American cinema and proposes three approximations to the study of women’s documentary produced between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s.

With a focus on documentaries with clear political intents, this book illustrates some of the thematic interests, authorial modes, production practices, formal devices, and aesthetic strategies employed by women filmmakers. Through analysis of the contexts, processes, and forms of a selection of films, the author shows how these non-fiction films shed light on the precarious conditions that characterised women’s greater entry into the workforce, on the circulation of feminist ideas, and on the inevitable questioning of identity that resulted from migration and displacement.

This volume will appeal to scholars and students interested in women’s and feminist cinema, documentary history, theory, and practice, and Latin American history and culture.

Lorena Cervera Ferrer is a writer and filmmaker. She works as a Senior Lecturer in Film Production at Bournemouth Film School (Arts University Bournemouth). Previously, she taught at the University of Essex, University College London, the University of Westminster, and University of the Arts London. Lorena holds a PhD in Film Studies from University College London. She has published her research in international journals and edited collections. As a filmmaker, Lorena has worked on several films and has directed three documentaries, Pilas (2019), #PrecarityStory (2020), and Processing Images from Caracas (2023).