The Mother: Mitos Maternos

A film by Marta Bautis

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SYNOPSIS

This wry, self-reflective film explores the mythical figure of the mother from multiple viewpoints-documentary and fiction, Spanish and English, theory and experience. The director interviews people on the street, views Hollywood stalwarts of maternal sentiment like Stella Dallas, reads what feminist thinkers have to say on the subject, and copes with life as a single Latina mother. A feminist telenovela for the 90s, THE MOTHER challenges popular beliefs about the mother's place and traditional representations of sacrifice and guilt.

PRESS

"A moving, thoughtful film dealing with a serious conflict within many women about mothering."

E. Ann Kaplan SUNY, Stonybrook

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Marta Bautis

Argentinean filmmaker Marta Noemí Bautis began her career as a photojournalist and has worked throughout Latin America. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been screened at numerous national and international film festivals, including the Sydney Latin American Film Festival, the Human Rights Film Festival and Women in the Director’s Chair. Her films include: DREAMING THE FUTURE, GLOBAL TANGO and NICARAGUA: THE CHILDREN ARE WAITING. Bautis is a faculty member at the School of Contemporary Arts, Ramapo College of New Jersey and founder of Tiempo Azul Productions. (01/20)

Subject Areas

Home is Struggle

Using interviews, photographs and theatrical vignettes, Home is Struggle explores the lives of women who have come to the United States from different Latin American countries-Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic-for very different reasons, economic and political. In sharing stories about their pasts and present and their views on issues such as sexism and personal and political repression, Home is Struggle presents an absorbing picture of the construction of 'Latina' identity and the immigrant experience.

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Mothertime

MOTHERTIME is a personal video diary that takes us on a corporeal journey in parenting via a small portable Go-Pro camera mounted on the filmmaker and her toddler over the period of a year and a half.

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The Motherhood Archives

Archival montage, science fiction and an homage to 1970s feminist filmmaking are woven together to form this haunting and lyrical essay film excavating hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century. After several years of buying films online and working in historical archives, award-winning filmmaker Irene Lusztig amassed an unusual and fascinating collection of found footage aimed at teaching women how to be pregnant, give birth, and look after babies, along with training films for obstetricians and health care professionals, and a handful of home movies. Assembling her extraordinary trove from over 100 different sources, including newly rediscovered Soviet and French childbirth material tracing the evolution of Lamaze, THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES inventively untangles the complex, sometimes surprising genealogies of maternal education. This extraordinary achievement illuminates our changing narratives of maternal success and failure while raising important questions about our social and historical constructions of motherhood.

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Daughter Rite

"Daughter Rite is a classic, the missing link between the 'direct Cinema' documentaries and the later hybrids that acknowledged truth couldn't always be found in front of a camera lens. Scandalous in its day for bending the rules of representation to enlighten its audience about filmmaking, DAUGHTER RITE has a lot to teach folks hooked on reality TV, too. Citron's documentary inquiries into feminism, women in the trades, and feminist approaches to media representation are time capsules that merit re-opening." -B. Ruby Rich, author of " Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement" Includes special bonus feature, WHAT YOU TAKE FOR GRANTED, also by Michelle Citron.

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