The second half of the 20th century was characterized, in
many countries, by the emergence of a new relationship between women and space.
Easier access to the labour market, as well as to higher levels of education,
were important victories for women, even if these were defined by obvious
asymmetries in terms of class, race and location. Across the world, while
fighting for fairer social, workplace and sexual rights, women not only
abandoned, and occupied in new ways, the domestic space; they also began to
inhabit, in a more affirmative manner, the public space, as well as that of the
media.
It wasn’t long before such changes had an impact on film. It
is not a coincidence that in many films of the 1960s and 1970s we see on screen
women walking, working or fighting for their survival in the streets of
different cities. Nature, often used as a metaphor for women, because
attributed values traditionally associated with the feminine condition, such as
purity, emotion and irrationality, also became a space for contestation. Women
simultaneously came to occupy the spaces of representation and of production of
film. In Brazil, in the 1970s, there was, for the first time in history, a
growing number of women directors. Many of these have not only been able to
direct more than one film since beginning their careers, but are also still
active. In Portugal, three decades after Bárbara Virgínia, conventionally known
as the country’s first woman filmmaker, active in the 1940s, women filmmakers
finally re-emerged in the 1970s. The growing number of women that have been
playing important roles in the most diverse areas of the cinematographic
industry is not, of course, restricted to these two countries.
