Cinema and ecofeminism in public debates promoted by cultural spaces

The case of the International Environmental Film Festival (FINCA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This article is the result of a long-range research whose main objective is to analyze the role of the experiences of environmental cinema in different networks of actors involved in territorial and ecological issues in the main metropolises of Argentina. In this line, this paper aims to analyze the experience of the International Environmental Film Festival (FINCA) of the DerHumALC Multimedia Institute (Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean), understood as a cultural space that enables public debate in Buenos Aires and that socio-environmentalist mobilization networks integrate as part of their visibility and recognition strategies.

The research is based on a sociological perspective that focuses on the following aspects: the way in which FINCA establishes links with the groups and communities with whom it establishes networks; the ecofeminist gender approach that the FINCA experience adopts within the framework of the different territorial and environmental issues registered in the films chosen for screening and debate; and the socioecological imaginations that are constructed as a product of the discussions that FINCA facilitates in the public sphere. Part of the results indicates that, in its latest editions, FINCA has been encouraging public conversations around films that document the emergence of territorial ecofeminism in Latin America and the Global South. The main lines of discussion publicly claim the ethics of care in search of pursuing water, environmental and gender justice, as well as the right to communication, culture and audiovisual sovereignty.