Cultural Dyslexia and the Politics of Cross-cultural Excursion in Claudia Llosa's Madeinusa
Claudia Llosa's controversial Madeinusa (2006) has inspired unprecedented debate in the Peruvian media and blogosphere. Despite being the most awarded film in the history of Peruvian cinematography, it was disparaged by local left-leaning critics and intelligentsia, who accused Llosa of perpetuating racist colonial stereotypes of primitive and perverted natives. This essay examines the highly politicized debate surrounding Madeinusa and re(views) the film within a postcolonial feminist framework. In this reading the murderous impulse of the young indigenous protagonist is seen not as a sign of an evil and abject native but as a radical act of self-realization.
European Co-production Funds and Latin American Cinema: Processes of Othering and Bourgeois Cinephilia in Claudia Llosa’s La teta asustada
Latin American women’s filmmaking has an unprecedented international profile thanks to the films of the Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, and the Argentine directors Lucía Puenzo and Lucrecia Martel. What is frequently unacknowledged when discussing the work of these award-winning filmmakers is the fact that all of their films are co-productions with Europe, and that programmes such as Cinéfondation, a programme aligned with the Cannes film festival, the Hubert Bals Fund, the World Cinema Fund and Ibermedia have been instrumental in their production. This article will tell this story through a discussion of the work of Claudia Llosa with an introduction to the issues raised by her award winning festival film Madeinusa (2006), and a focus on La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (2009). It will consider the arguments of theorists who critique what they see as neo-colonial European interventions in ‘world cinema’, and those who celebrate the enabling work of the funding bodies. The chapter asks where can we place the cultural production of Llosa within these paradigms? Does the film confirm the critical positions by being subject to a process of othering for a European cinephile festival audience? Does it create its protagonist Fausta, an Andean migrant to Lima, from racist, neo-colonial stereotypes as some critics claim? Or, does it raise important questions relating to class and ethnic divisions within contemporary Peruvian society? The article ends with a discussion of how Llosa’s second film, that presents the urban poor and the colonial class from a bourgeois point of view, compares with the films of Lucrecia Martel and Lucía Puenzo which provide a bourgeois point of view on the bourgeoisie itself.
Women's choice in the gender and ethnicity of her obstetrician and gynaecologist
Objective: To ascertain women's preferences in the gender and ethnicity of her obstetrician or gynaecologist and to determine whether there were differences in preferences among different ethnic and age groups.