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Mi Aporte-Tea del Valle

Today in class we watched 4 of Sara Gomez’s shorter documentaries. I was most taken back by Mi Aporte from 1972, which explores cuban women entering the workforce in the midst of the revolution. At the end of the film we see a group of four women discussing the conditions that make it possible or impossible for women to go to work. Followed by this we see a group of 10+ women in a theater discussing the scene that we have also just seen. This for me was a clear breaking of the 4th wall, even though it is not a fiction film, the scene of the audience at the end shows them clearly interacting with the rest of the film. I was most surprised by both the conversations from the groups of women. The discourse brings up several points that I think are still completely relevant in the present day. They bring up whether or not they should teach their sons how to do house chores, because it is considered a traditionally female duty, and their sons may be bullied for doing chores (cleaning, cooking, childcare) that women would do. The women question if they are upholding sexism themselves by not teaching their sons how to do “female work”. Some of the women are more than willing to work, but they do not have the necessary means as they have no one to take care of their children or their housework. They also mention how some of their husbands that are a part of the revolution still forbid their wives from working. I was interested by this discourse because it sounds like a conversation that women would still have to this day in 2025, over 50 years since the documentary was made. Maybe not necessarily mothers in New York City, but mothers in Latin America and maybe mothers in the sunbelt of the U.S. as sexism and gender roles are still very much alive, everywhere. This documentary reminded me a lot about the film Hasta cierto punto (Up to a certain Point) directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and released in 1983. The fiction film follows a cuban revolutionary, Oscar, who is making a documentary about female workers; he follows one female worker specifically, Lina, who is a single mother and is a dock worker. Oscar eventually falls in love with Lina and becomes possessive over her, contradicting his revolutionary values that he is basing his whole documentary on. I think this film clearly displays some of the hypocriticism that male Cuban revolutionaries had towards women, as it focuses on some of the same issues that are discussed in Mi Aporte.


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