Today we’re speaking with Mara Avila who’s documentary, Femicide. One Case Many Struggles, highlights the very important issue of violence against women through her own story. This is a powerful documentary and one that we hope is seen widely. Thank you for sitting down with us.
Chris McClure, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): First, was it a difficult decision to make this documentary?
Mara Avila (MA): The decision to embark on this documentary was made as a student of Communication Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. It was March 2014 and I was working on my thesis when I thought it could be meaningful to hand in an audiovisual thesis about my mother’s story of gender violence. After getting funds from the Audiovisual Institute of Arts and Filmmaking (INCAA in Spanish) I could start working on a feature film, but originally I was thinking of making a short focusing on the media coverage of my mother’s femicide, which was eventually only one of the many topics the film depicted.
(UM): For the sake of those who do not know, could you explain what femicide is and why it is different than murder?
(MA): The concept of femicide was first used by Diana Russell in 1976, when she defined it as “the killing of women by men because they are women”. “Establishing a word that signifies the killing of females is an important step toward making known this ultimate form of violence against women” (Russell, 1992). It is important to use the term femicide and to differentiate it from other types of murders, since gender violence is involved. Most times, women are killed by those who know them, most frequently their partners or ex partners. As it happened to my mother, some women are murdered after they decide to end a relationship with a violent man.
(UM): Future projects?
(MA): I am currently working on a new documentary I started writing and developing last year in the middle of the pandemic. It deals with issues related to the body and mental health in the context of confinement and how three dancers are affected by it, as they build a virtual relationship.
(UM): Can you tell us about the production? How long did it take to film? Did anything interesting happen while you were filming?’
(MA): As I mentioned before, the project was born at the University of Buenos Aires in March 2014, and then it grew after getting grants from INCAA, the Film Institute. Those resources allowed me to choose a professional team and to write the script during 2015, when I took a scriptwriting workshop with filmmaker and Professor Gustavo Fontán. Most of the shooting took place in 2017, though we shot some scenes in previous years, namely at the National Gathering of Women (Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres) in Rosario in 2016.
The most amazing thing during this whole journey was the fact that as I was mourning my mother’s femicide after ten years, the whole feminist movement was growing exponentially in Argentina, with massive and unprecedented demonstrations such as the one under the banner of “Ni una menos” (No more killed women) on June 3rd 2015 and all the demonstrations on Women’s Day, two of which were recorded for the film while marching along the streets of Buenos Aires.
The documentary was finished and thus I graduated in December 2018, which was both a symbolic and political event. In March 2019, the film premiered in Buenos Aires, in the week of The International Women’s Day, which was also very meaningful and helped in terms of promotion.
Unfortunately, the number of femicides in Argentina have always been one every thirty hours on average since 2008, as the NGO Casa del Encuentro has informed.
(UM): One of the striking things about the film is the reaction that other people had to your grief. You mentioned that everyone expected you to be happy and they didn’t want to hear about what had happened to you. Partly this reaction may come from the fact that others aren’t sure what to say. What advice do you have for speaking with those who’ve suffered such a tragedy?
(MA): One of the purposes of the script was to show the journey of struggle and mourning of a daughter of a victim of femicide. Having been through that process myself, I can empathize with those who need to mourn their loved ones, a situation that is harder for those like me who also had to deal with a trial and misogyny in court.
My advice for speaking to those who have suffered the way I did –though I am aware of the beneficial aspect of my being a middle-class woman– is to understand that a mourning process may take a long time and that we need psychological help as well as the empathy from those that surround us. If we cannot find this empathy at hand, we will always be able to find it in the feminist movement. Comprehending the social and political aspect of this type of mourning process is crucial to the process of healing ourselves. The way out is always through collective support and struggle.
(UM): I was also very struck by how much art helped you. There is rising interest in art therapy, so this makes a lot of sense. Can you explain a bit how art helped you to cope?
(MA): When it comes to healing, art will always be helpful, together with different therapies. Mourning is a long process and healing a trauma requires a great deal of will and the right professional help. In my case, while I was making the film, I was diagnosed with depression, melancholization and posttraumatic stress (I knew that my mother’s murderer had been freed from jail and this troubled me). Adopting my cat, Dinah, helped to overcome depression, as well as the film itself and my therapeutic way of approaching dancing. I believe the answers and the power to heal trauma always lie in our own bodies, they also being our means of making a social change.
(UM): With most documentaries, there are many interesting parts that must be cut. Was that the case with Femicide? Were there scenes you liked but had to cut?
(MA): Not really, but I may have liked to include more of the dance and improvisation scenes, since they were very beautiful in the way that we all interacted smoothly on stage. I also wrote and sang a rap that I wished we might have been able to include. Still, I believe the editor, Marisa Montes, did a great job and that the film problematizes all the topics that were written in the script.
(UM): Can you tell us about any future projects?
(MA): I have answered this question in number three.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.