Colectivo Cine Mujer

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.

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.

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.

Women working in factories (Maquilas) at the border, a look into their working conditions and worries (fiction film) and their use of video to document their situation.

A Latin American man and wife find out their daughter has a brain tumor. They are told it will cost 10s of thousands of dollars to have a neurosurgeon operate. In attempting to to get money for the surgery, the father enters into an illegal scheme but is challenged when seeing others suffering in a desperate situation.

As in Vicios de la cocina (1978, Beatriz Mira) the documentary gathers the testimony of different women of different ages about domestic work, marriage and gender roles: women cook, wash, take care of the home while men work. This is one of the Colectivo's last together, here are present certain features of their previous filmography such as the work with animation by Guadalupe Sánchez (Y si eres mujer, 1977).

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.

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’.