Feminist collective filmmaking and collaborative practices: María Barea and the Warmi Group
Screening and talk with María Barea moderated by Raquel Schefer
07 June, 6pm
The fourth screening of the research programme “Amérika: Cinematographic Gestures to Re-enchant the World” approaches feminist collective filmmaking and collaborative practices in
Latin America through the filmography of Peruvian filmmaker María Barea and the Warmi Group.
Born in 1943 in Chancay, Peru, Barea started working in cinema as a production assistant on Jorge Sanjinés and Ukamau Group’s project “El Enemigo Principal” (1973). In 1982, she co-founded the film collective Grupo Chaski, with which she made the films “Miss Universo en el Peru” (1982) and “Gregorio” (1985). Three years later, Barea left Chaski due, according to Isabel Seguí, “irreconcilable differences regarding project management and the allocation of power within the group” or, in the filmmaker’s words, “Machismo-Leninismo.”
In 1989, Barea co-founded the Warmi Group (Quechua for “woman”), the first collective of women filmmakers in Peru and began developing collaborative projects. If the foundation of Warmi stands as a turning point of collectivist filmmaking, allowing to complexify its history in light of the persistence of power structures within film collectives and in terms of gender categories, among others, the production of the feature “Antuca” (1992), focusing on the life of its titular character, a
young domestic worker from Cajamarca, is one of its key moments. Shot in 35 mm and premiered at Berlinale but swiftly made invisible, “Antuca” was made by Barea in collaboration with Warmi and the organization IPROFOTH (Domestic Workers’ Promotion and Training Institute), dedicated to educational work for migrant and Indigenous women domestic workers. Horizontal collaborative modes of organization were developed for the film’s production against the backdrop of a society structured by internal colonialism and intertwined categories of class, race and gender domination, such as the Peruvian one. But horizontality also acquires formal expression on the figuration of the
Indigenous cosmovision and temporal conception through narrative structures and film forms such as the circular camera movements. “Antuca” is indeed one of the most prominent examples of a situated aesthetic in the history of Latin-American (and international) cinema.Screening of Antuca
35 mm colour film with sound, Peru, 75’, 1992, Original version in Spanish with English
subtitles.Maria Barea was born in 1943 in Chancay, Peru. For over 30 years, she has worked as an actor, director and producer of films. In 1982, she co-founded the film collective Grupo Chaski. In 1989, she co-founded the Warmi group, the first collective of women filmmakers in Peru. In 2018, she received a tribute at the Latin American Non-Fiction Film Meeting held in Arequipa. Raquel Schefer is a researcher, a filmmaker, a film curator, and an Associate Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Studies of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University. She holds a PhD in Film Studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, a Master’s in Documentary Cinema from 1 the University of Cinema of Buenos Aires, and a degree in Communication Sciences from NOVA University of Lisbon. Raquel was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles and a postdoctoral FCT fellow at the CEC/University of Lisbon, the IHC/NOVA University of Lisbon and the Department of History of the University of the Western Cape. She is co-editor-in-chief of the quarterly of theory and history of cinema “La Furia Umana”.
‘Amérika: Gestos Cinematográficos para Reencantar o Mundo’ is a Research Program curated and mentored by Raquel Schefer.
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12 r/c, 1170-112 Lisboa
In Catalan
3rd floor, with stairs
Free entry
