BULLETIN NO. 12

VIDEOS

Tejiendo Rebeldías

Now available from Telemanita is the video TEJIENDO REBELDÍAS on the 7th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter held in 1996 in Cartagena, Chile.

Filmed by Alejandra Novoa and Rotmi Enciso, the video gets off to a formal start with women giving speeches in turn behind a long table set with microphones. The audience listens --- until a disruption: Bolivian women from the group Mujeres Creando hang up a huge cloth denouncing power hungry women. This seems to be the signal for all hell to break loose, and soon the women from the formerly passive audience have the microphones, they gesticulate angrily, they shout, they denounce the very structure of the meeting "We feminists don't work like that."

The problem is a dichotomy known as institutionalism versus autonomy. Some women want an "autonomous" women's movement, and seem ready to kill those who walk the corridors of institutional power, be that government, United Nations or some fund-receiving NGO.

"If there is a woman here who works for the World Bank, she shouldn´t be here because she cannot be a feminist, as the WB has never recognized our existence, our struggle".

It is a jarring beginning to a video that aims to relate what happened in the Encounter. Necessarily it has to give testimony of a conflict seen by many as a storm in a tea cup ("What is it exactly that divides us?") while others considered questions like "All of us, sometimes we confront, sometimes we negotiate [with the system]."

We get a visual break about 15 minutes into the 1.35 hour long video, with shots of art work, good close-ups of details, of dancing women, theater, a slim white acrobat gliding in space, a broad shouldered black singer.

By the time workshops were held on day 3 to discuss feminism and autonomy, institutionalism and "neither one-nor-the-other", with a number of black and mulatto women in this last group, more moderate opinions were expressed, like "We shouldn't think all women who work in NGOs want money and power, we shouldn´t disqualify their work and dedication over many years."

One issue was clear: Nobody represents anybody else unless authorized to do so. Women don´t like others speaking in public in the name of "Latin American and Caribbean women" or "Latin American and Caribbean lesbians".

At the plenary session a Brazilian woman read the declaration of the colored women who denounced as a disgrace that the organizers of the Encuentro had not considered it appropriate to organize hold a workshop on race and ethnicism. They called for unity, not divisionism.

Conflict continued for lesbian feminists who were threatened that they would not be able to present two books with lesbian themes, and this led to a small but strong demonstration by the lesbians on the streets of Cartagena. The lesbians were disappointed to find lesbophobia among the feminists at the meeting.

Producer Alejandra Novoa has this to say about making the video:

"I have always enjoyed documenting the work of feminists, because each event is an ocean of knowledge and learning but the meeting in Chile was full of difficult moments for me, from the day I received plane tickets with five stopovers, although I had asked the Organizing Committee for a direct flight. When we got to Santiago we discovered our luggage had been ransacked and all our video equipment stolen during the flight with the LACSA airline.

Later in Cartagena, when we began recording the meeting with rented equipment (that was in pretty bad shape), I felt very nervous about everything going on around me, I knew very few feminists of the Autonomous group, and from their expression I could see a lot of strength and even aggression. Sometimes I felt my hair stand on end and although we were working up to 13 hours every day I felt strong, there was so much energy in the atmosphere.

Feminism has shown me that we can question each other and resolve our differences, I did not understand why each day of the Encounter the climate of hostility was growing among us, many were speaking about violence. I saw it all as a wealth of diversity and marked differences that would hardly be resolved in just a few days. For me it wasn't just another Encounter to record, it was that everything pushed you to think, to analyze situations, to revise attitudes and projects, it was impossible to remain apart from what was happening, but my work kept me from intervening or taking sides. I was there to register what was happening, to be impartial and objective, although we know that this is very difficult to achieve, because we always tend to give of point of view in the post production stage.

I tried to be honest in editing the material to show what happened in the Encounter in Chile, without distorting the information, and I had to decide that the video turn out rather long so as to be able to convey clearly the richness of the debate, and not make a souvenir video