This episode is in English
Further down you can also see the movie SUSANA.
In this episode of SAQMI Play we meet the Argentinian filmmaker Susana Blaustein Mūnoz, who became an early queer pioneer with her neverendlingly relevant autobiographical film Susana.
This film from 1980 marks one of the first Swedish lesbian stories to be portrayed in moving images - although Susana is not originally from Sweden, she lived in Stockholm for a while in the late 70’s - and was hanging out in circles involved with Lesbisk front (Lesbian Front). Christina, her Finno-Swedish girlfriend at the time, who was also new to Stockholm, also appears in the film. 40 years later their reborn love is depicted in the short film Old Love Dies Hard, which was meant as a longer follow up to Susana,But seems not to have made it past the 8-minute long documentary form that its in today.
Susana Blaustein Munoz had her broad international breakthrough in 1985 with the documentary film Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, which was nominated for an Oscar.
Las Madres is a film about the Argentinian women who challenged the nation’s military rule and waged a tremendous struggle for the right to know what happened to their children who’d disappeared during the years when Argentina was a military dictatorship. Every Thursday the women gathered in front of the President’s residency at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. Their white scarves became a symbol of their movement, and the movement grew famous across the world.
Susana Blaustein Munoz, now 68 years of age, has an art degree from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem - Israel, and a master in film from the San Francisco Art Institute in the US. Today she once again lives in her hometown of Mendoza in Argentina.
In just a sec we’ll let Susana talk about her work herself. Straight off the bat she mentions her self-portrait Susana, which came to life while she was studying film in San Francisco. Susana is a kind of diary of moving images as well as a meeting between two sisters who’ve chosen different ways of living their lives.
Susana weaves together cinema vérité and interviews to create a collage of stills, amateur films, and animations, to portray the cultural context in which female, sexual, and ethnic identities are formed. In the film, she asks her family members, lovers, exes, and friends to talk about her in front of the camera. What do you think about Susana? she wonders. Just like many of Susana’s films - The film ended up being censured by the Argentinian state. She says that today it’s almost impossible for her to work as a filmmaker in her home country.
Malin Holgersson and SAQMI’s founder Anna Linder had this discussion with Susana on the 28th of June, 2021.
Susana is sitting in her home in Mendoza in Argentina and Anna and Malin are sitting in Anna’s home in Majorna in Göteborg.
Text by Malin Holgersson. Translated to English by Alex Alvina Chamberland. Voice by Sam Message.
Trailer for the film SUSANA:
Related material:
Screen: 'Las Madres' of Argentina
Text by Walter Goodman, The New York Times, April 2, 1986
Swedish article:
Relationer blir film långt borta och nära, SvD
Text av Henrik Sahl Johansson, Publicerad den 4 augusti 2014.
Texts and films by Susana Blaustein Muñoz:
Filmography:
SUSANA, 1980, US/Argentina, 25 min, Black/White, 16mm.
Experimental documentary about Susana Blaustein Muñoz life. In this autobiographical portrait, Susana leaves her native Argentina to live her life outside the strictures of Latin American cultural and family pressures. Susana interweaves cinema vérité interviews of her family and lovers with snapshots, home movies and even a Disney cartoon to render the cultural context in which female, sexual and ethnic identity is shaped.
See the film SUSANA
Price: 40 skr. The money goes directly to the filmmaker.
Las Madres; The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, 1985, 64 min, 16mm. Co-directed and pro
