| Abstrakt: |
The documentary films Aguaviva (2005) by Pujol and Extranjeras/Foreign Women (2005) by Taberna, feature women immigrants in twenty-first century Spain. Aguaviva presents the title village's bold initiative to counter depopulation while Extranjeras shows an array of immigrant women living in Madrid. Gender difference structures the immigrants' narratives, manifest in the centrality of domesticity to both films. In addition, these narratives of immigration have a concern for 'the real', specifically with presenting their Spanish audiences with a putatively 'accurate reflection' of the truth of immigration. The films' documentary format satisfies the audience's desire for visual information about immigration. This tendency towards realism runs counter to the construction of a fantasy about the immigrant Other in favour of veracity and transparency. This desire to capture the immigrant 'as is', however, veils the elements of fantasy and the collective imagining of Otherness that also inform the films despite their aspirations to re-present the Spanish social milieu through documentary realism. This article studies the documentary form central to both Aguaviva and Extranjeras and the concomitant questions of representation that function in documentary films that claim to present the world objectively. Further, this article assesses the manner in which immigrant women are incorporated into Spanish sociality in the films, which, as mentioned, underscore the primacy of the private sphere and domesticity for the assimilation of women immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
