PREVIEW
SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN
Directed by Lourdes Portillo
Wednesday, April 16
Murray Fraser Hall 162 (U of C)
The border-towns of Mexico are without a doubt sites of dislocation, vice and corruption. If you ever wondered what impact the North American Free Trade Agreement had on Mexico, see Señorita Extraviada, Missing Young Woman.
The documentary is set in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where serial ritual murder has been added to the unsavoury mix of border-town corruption. When you see how the women of Ciudad Juarez are being treated by authority figures, it makes Canadian whining about softwood lumber appear self-indulgent.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Lourdes Portillo investigated the cases of 230 missing women in order to shed light on their still unsolved disappearances (All slim, dark-haired and young, they began to disappear in 1990). She first learned about the women from small, insignificant articles that appeared periodically in the newspapers, with the number of missing women increasing with each notice. It was the apathy surrounding the unsolved murders that prompted her to make the film.
"(It was) the fact that the issue was being ignored, that no one felt that it was important enough to address in a profound manner," says the Mexico-born Portillo, who describes herself as a Chicana (half-Mexican and half-American).
All the films in her illustrious career reflect her identity and centre on Hispanic subject matter, including The Mothers of Plaza de Maya. Made in collaboration with writer-director Susana Muñoz, The Mothers was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1985.
Señorita Extraviada first screened at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won a special jury prize and earned Portillo more critical acclaim. It has since been shown at film festivals around the world, picking up awards at almost every screening.
Portillo uses the film to examine the broader context of contemporary life in Mexico – border towns, maquiladoras (the big plants where Mexicans work for appallingly low wages), free trade and police corruption – in addition to the core subject matter of extreme violence against women. Unimpressed with the information she receives from media accounts and incomplete police files, Portillo decided to talk to the families of the missing women – the only reliable source of information on the subject. The results are moving, low-key accounts of grief, sorrow and confusion. Many of the cases remain unsolved and the families of the murdered women are unsatisfied with the bumpy trail of evidence gathered by incompetent and corrupt police investigators.
As she started to ask questions, Portillo found that many leads were not followed. The ongoing deaths of these young women – which continued as she shot the film over a two-year period – were in danger of being dismissed, and the whole mess becomes an example of social injustice and the flagrant disregard for basic human rights. Señorita Extraviada is a stinging indictment of the botched investigation, and Portillo clarifies the connection between the murders and the devaluation of women’s lives in the border town’s culture of indifference and corruption.
"Investigating the lives and the deaths of women who are regarded as not important enough was very hard to (do)," she says. "It lived inside of me as a seething anger and desperation for years. But as the film started to take shape, it liberated all those feelings and started to give me and the women involved in human rights efforts a sense of power and hope."
The sensitive portrayal of the topic, the inventive camera techniques and the slow pace of the film all transmit daily life, showing the viewer the everyday experience of people in Ciudad Juarez. Portillo’s moving account of social injustice is poetic, hard-hitting and hard to watch – but very necessary to see.
For her part, the filmmaker is pleased with the response to Señorita Extraviada.
"The film has been used as a banner to actually bring about change in Mexico and it has succeeded on that realm, beautifully," she says. "The film has recently been nominated for an Ariel, which is the highest honour given to film in (Mexico). This will further the cause for justice, for which I am happy." |
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