Auteurism, Machismo-Leninismo, and Other Issues

Abstract

This article contextualizes and characterizes production practices in political cinema in Bolivia and Peru between the 1960s and 1990s, reading them as a communitarian endeavor that included many more women than official history acknowledges. It also documents the work of two overshadowed filmmakers—the Bolivian Beatriz Palacios and the Peruvian María Barea—mainly in their roles as film producers and managers of small producing companies, but also as directors. In order to effectively incorporate women into Andean cinema history, I advocate for a nonhierarchical historiographical methodology and the academic consideration of personal relationships as one of the driving factors in artisanal political production cultures. A non-auteurist approach to unearthing Andean women filmmakers is central to this revisionist project that aims to shed light on an entire range of women's labor in collaborative film production, not only directorial work.