The International Online Conference ‘Cozinhando imagens, tejiendo feminismos. Latin American Feminist Film and Visual Art Collectives’ took place on April 19th and 20th in Zoom. It gathered researchers, filmmakers, artists, and activists from Latin America, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom; and also, from different backgrounds and at different stages of their careers. The overall aim was to provide a space for reflection and discussion on the relationships between art and activism within feminist and women's movements through the study of artistic production at two key moments: the late 70s and early 80s, which was a formative moment of Latin American feminist cinema, and the current revitalization of feminist movements through the emergence of numerous feminist collectives throughout the region that use a variety of disciplines to expose many of the issues that were initially addressed almost 50 years ago.
The conference included two panels: ‘Towards a Latin American Feminist Cinema’ and ‘Latin American Feminists Leading the Struggle.’ These panels addressed the work of feminist filmmakers and visual artists from the 1970s to the present from Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco, Isabel Seguí, Elena Oroz, Ana Lucia Nunes de Sousa, Phoebe Martin, Lita Rubiano Tamayo, Nayla Vacarezza, Deborah Martin, and Deborah Shaw. The conference also included screenings of the documentaries: Cosas de mujeres (Rosa Martha Fernández, 1978, México) and Carmen Carrascal (Eulalia Carrizosa, 1982, Colombia). There were two round-tables where filmmakers, artists, and activists shared and reflected on their work and experiences. The first round table was with the filmmakers and feminists Rosa Martha Fernández (Cine Mujer in Mexico), Patricia Restrepo (Cine Mujer in Colombia), and Gioconda Espina (Grupo Feminista Miércoles). The second round table counted with Julia Cabrera (Afroféminas), Teresa Jiménez and Tirza Yanira Ixmucané Saloj Oroxom (Colectiva Lemow, Guatemala), and Alondra Flores and Cristina Renteros (Trenzar Perú). There were coffee breaks with four organizations that promote the work of Latin American women. These are: RAMA, EmpoderArte, ColectiVIS-Arts, and Amalgama. To close this two-day conference, we were delighted to welcome our keynote speaker, Professor Julia Lesage, with her talk "Looking Back on Working collectively."
One of our priorities was to make the conference linguistically accessible to speakers of Spanish, English and, albeit without much success, Portuguese. Thus, all the papers were delivered in Spanish, English, or Portuguese and subtitled in Spanish or English. All the videos are available in our YouTube channel, where subtitles in other languages can also be activated. We used #colectivosfeministas to expand the discussion in twitter.
The conference was organized by Lorena Cervera, Sonia Kerfa, Phoebe Martin, and Ana Lucia Nunes de Sousa and funded by SLAS, LAHP, ILCEA4, ColectivisArt and IDEX. The funding was invested in subtitling, technical assistance, live interpretation, translations, graphic design, childcare, and film’s rights.
More than 350 people registered to attend via Eventbrite. 210 people attended during the first day and 139 during the second day. We livestreamed the entire conference via our YouTube channel and these videos have more than 100 views.