The breaking of gender stereotypes in the experimental cinema of Narcisa Hirsch

Abstract

In Hirsch's work there are portraits and self-portraits made up of feelings, reflections and attitudes that break with the stereotypes of woman-mother, pregnancy-state of grace, woman-erotic object and romantic love, and express other subjectivities that are not closed, neither to an immutable identity nor to a definitive position in relation to gender. On a formal level, it opposes the institutional mode of representation of classical cinema, and its ways of generating pleasure in spectators. Although Hirsch never defined herself as a feminist, we find themes and interests in her films that allow us to establish relationships with premises of feminist film theory in her short films. The films analyzed here, Mujeres (1970-1985), Pink Freud (1973), Bebés (1972), Ama-zona (1983), A-Dios (1989), Orfeo y Eurídice (1976), express the artist's bond with herself as a woman and with other women and her relationship with men and men's relationship with the world.