Cinema and Ritual: Decolonial Feminist Approaches to Image-Making in the Americas and the Caribbean

Author

Natalie M. Erazo, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

2-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Women's and Gender Studies

Advisor

Red Washburn

Subject Categories

American Studies | Educational Methods | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Keywords

Decolonial feminism, Ritual, Latin America, Caribbean, Film studies, Open-access methodology

Abstract

This thesis project is composed of an open-access syllabus hosted on a CUNY commons site, as well as a paper that examines various films and texts responding to the theme of cinema and ritual. Referenced films will focus on ritual as a decolonial feminist methodological framework, rooted primarily in Afro-descended and Indigenous cosmovisions within Latin America and the Caribbean. From a dance ritual spell warding off U.S. imperialism in present-day Puerto Rico, to a poetic visual eulogy for murdered women in rural Mexico, to a community prayer to Yemaya bringing relief for water scarcity in Cuba to a cautionary tale against environmental devastation by forest spirit Kaapora in Brazil, the films cited in this syllabus engage ritual as a way of processing legacies of coloniality and dispossession and creating liberatory aesthetic practices. Through storytelling, auto-ethnography, collage, and weaving to name a few, these cinematic rituals detangle dominant approaches to filmmaking, and by extension, knowledge production.

Recommended Citation

Erazo, Natalie M., "Cinema and Ritual: Decolonial Feminist Approaches to Image-Making in the Americas and the Caribbean" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5610