NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY RE-VIEWING THE TROPICAL PARADISE: AFRO- CARIBBEAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS by HASEENAH EBRAHIM PH.D DISSERTATION SUBMITTED 1998 DEPT OF RADIO/TV/FILM, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS, USA 1 ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a new conceptual framework, a "pan-African feminist" critical model, to examine how Euzhan Palcy of Martinique, Gloria Rolando and the late Sara Gómez of Cuba, and the Sistren Collective of Jamaica have negotiated - individually or collectively - the gender/race/class constraints within each of their societies in order to obtain access to the media of film and video. I examine the aesthetic, political, social and economic strategies utilized by these filmmakers to reinsert themselves into recorded versions of history, and/or to intervene in racist, (neo)colonial and/or patriarchal systems of oppression. 2 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Purpose and Scope of the Dissertation This dissertation examines the aesthetic, political, social and economic strategies utilized by selected Afro-Caribbean women filmmakers in exploiting the media of film and video to reinsert themselves into recorded versions of history, to challenge their (mis)representations, and/or to intervene in racist, (neo)colonial and/or patriarchal systems of oppression.1 I offer what I have termed a “pan-African feminist” analytical framework2 as a methodological tool to examine the manner in which these Afro- Caribbean women filmmakers have negotiated, individually as well as collectively, the gender/race/class constraints within each of their societies in order to obtain access to the media of film and video, to adopt culturally relevant communication strategies and themes, and to pursue their goals of social transformation and cultural empowerment. NOTES 1 For the sake of brevity, I will use the term "filmmaker(s)" to include those people who work in the medium of film as well as video and/or in television production. 2 The concept of a pan-African feminist framework, which will be discussed more fully in Chapter 2, is one which I have constructed by drawing upon various African and African Diaspora feminisms, tales of legendary black women, and the orature of African/Diaspora female deities. I use the term “pan-African” synonymously with the term “of Africa and the African Diaspora.” I use the term with a lower-case “p” to distinguish it from the term “Pan-African” as the ideology that advocates political union of all people of African ancestry. 3 This dissertation arises out of my broader area of research interest, i.e., cinemas of Africa and the African Diaspora. As I will discuss in greater detail later in this chapter, African/Diaspora women have received little attention in the body of scholarship emerging out of interest in black cinema as well as feminist investigation of women filmmakers. The absence of any systematic appraisal of black women's filmmaking around the world has provided the impetus for this project. However, difficulty of access to the films/videos directed by many black women filmmakers, especially those who live or work outside the United States, consolidates/reinforces the importance of examining the broader socio-economic context within which the filmmakers work, emphasizing as it does, the extratextual constraints independent filmmakers face in attracting attention to their work. It is my hope that this project will provide a greater understanding of the greater process of filmmaking beyond the act of making the film itself. When I initially conceptualized this project, I did not anticipate the number of black women filmmakers existing “out there”, around the world, nor the number of film/video texts they have generated, although I did anticipate the paucity of scholarship on the work of black women filmmakers from outside the United States -- despite academia's and feminism's increasing acknowledgment of African-American/Black British filmmakers such as Julie Dash, Ayoka Chenzira, Ngozi Onwurah, Zeinabu irene Davis, and others. Even Euzhan Palcy, the first black woman to have directed a Hollywood production, and who has three features to her credit in addition to other short works, a three-part television documentary, and a made-for-TV movie for Disney, has 4 received little scholarly attention in English-language publications-- reiterating the continued significance of nationality/national origin as a vector of marginalization in addition to the now commonly acknowledged triad of race/gender/class. It is my regret that this project could not include all the other black women filmmakers in Africa, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and wherever else they may be toiling, usually against the odds. Your turn too, will come. For many years, Caribbean cinema generally meant Cuban cinema, Cuba being the only Caribbean country with a long history of indigenous film production. Today, the distinctive histories and geopolitical configurations of the Caribbean islands provide a number of fascinating contexts for cinematic production, from socialist Cuba to the French “overseas territories” of Martinique and Guadeloupe, to independent nations such as Jamaica and Haiti. This dissertation will examine how black women filmmakers from the three Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Cuba and Martinique have negotiated the specific opportunities and constraints represented by the distinct geopolitical, social and institutional contexts within which they work. The selection of Afro-Caribbean women filmmakers in this dissertation represents specific confluences of modes of production and geopolitical positioning of the islands they call home. While my desire to explore the ramifications of being black and female has necessarily limited the scope of this analysis, I do not mean to diminish the contributions of non-black women filmmakers in the Caribbean. The contribution of 5 Cuban women filmmakers of all races has been documented elsewhere.3 Caribbean cinema reflects a vitality that mirrors Caribbean filmmakers' often cosmopolitan lifestyles and forced adaptability to a diversity of cultural influences, including African, European, North American and South American. Within this young cinema, women filmmakers are forging a space for themselves, so that a cinema which has been described as a cinema in its infancy (Cham 1992) has, nevertheless, produced a filmmaker who became the first black woman to direct a Hollywood studio production. Euzhan Palcy of Martinique catapulted to international recognition when she directed MGM's 1989 release, A Dry White Season, set in apartheid South Africa. Sarah Maldoror, of Guadeloupean and French parentage, is a pioneer of pan-African filmmaking and became the first black woman to direct a feature film when she made Sambizanga in 1972. Sara Gómez, of Cuba, directed De cierta mañera /One Way or Another, a film that is now considered a classic of both Latin American and feminist cinema. Initially, the scope of this dissertation ambitiously aimed at including all black women filmmakers working outside the US and the UK.4 I say "ambitiously", because 3 See Benamou (1994) and the articles by Benamou and Fusco, and the short profiles on Cuban women filmmakers in Center for Cuban Studies (1992). However, these discussions either neglect to discuss the work of Rolando, or mention her only in passing. 4African-American and black British women filmmakers appear to be the two national black groups that receive consistent, if not frequent, critical and scholarly attention. For this reason, I had intended to exclude these two groups of filmmakers. 6 working under the mistaken assumption that I would identify only a handful of black women filmmakers in Africa, Europe, Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean, I fell into the trap of allowing the marginalization of black women filmmakers in North American feminist and other film discourses to cause me to underestimate the extent of their existence and productivity. When I began this project, I not only identified about 35 black women working around the world in the media of film and video, but they lived and worked in over 20 countries (these figures probably remain an underestimation). Since my approach to the examination of these filmmakers and their work emphasizes the social, cultural, political and economic contexts from which they emerge, such a research project would have entailed huge amounts of funding and time, both of which are, of course, only available to a limited extent to any doctoral candidate. For practical reasons, mainly that of accessibility to the actual works in the US, I have limited the scope of this examination to the work of black women filmmakers from Cuba, Martinique and Jamaica.5 I have also excluded detailed analyses of the lives and works of black women filmmakers who are born in Europe or North America of Caribbean parentage, but I have included a brief overview of this category of filmmakers in Chapter 3. It should be emphasized that the work of all the filmmakers who have been excluded as a result of this practical determination continue to demand recognition and 5 Two Afro-Caribbean women filmmakers whose work I have not been able to obtain include Elsie Haas of Haiti and Lydia Rene-Corail of Guadeloupe. 7 are no less worthy of analysis than the ones that have been included in this dissertation. This analysis of the cinematic expression of Afro-Caribbean women will make a contribution to the scholarship on pan-African cinema as well as to feminist film criticism, both areas of research in which the absence of Afro-Caribbean women has been notable. There are several modes of production in filmmaking, and a global perspective reveals a range of cinematic practices and politics of production, distribution, reception, stylistic and ideological frameworks and relations with the state.6 The modes of film production that can develop and flourish in any society are inevitably constrained or supported by the overall political and economic ideologies and structures of that society. The larger social environment, within which a film industry functions, or filmmaking practices survive, is a crucial determinant of both content and style.