A Women’s Nation: Feminism, Class, and National Identity in Margarita Ledo Andión’s Nación (2020)

Abstract

Through her films, the Galician filmmaker Margarita Ledo Andión builds a singular benchmark on the margins of a peripheral cinema per se: the Novo Cinema Galego. Her performative and experimental narratives, in line with avant-garde films of other small European cinemas, her nationalist and feminist (political) discourse, and her condition as a woman filmmaker situate her filmography on the intersection of multiple peripheries. This paper analyzes her most recent film, Nación (2020), from the perspective of cinema made by women as minor cinema and an example of “fourth cinema” as an instrument to make visible the role of women in the class struggle and the construction of Galician national identity.