Always Love Your Man (Ama l’Uomo Tuo, Cara DeVito, 1975) is a portrait of the director’s grandmother and a telling critique of a patriarchal society. Interviewed by DeVito in her Brooklyn home, she recounts the violence suffered at the hands of her abusive husband, emerging from her experience a scarred yet determined survivor. Ironically, the grandmother concludes by saying “Ama l’uomo tuo. Always love your man. No matter what,” revealing how deeply rooted is her adherence to the social code that almost destroyed her.
Gift of a Girl (Mayyasa Al-Malazi and Jo Smith, 1997) explains how thousands of baby girls are killed every year in India. This is in part due to the tradition of dowry payment, which makes a daughter a liability to a family. In a country where being a woman means living a life of hardship, the murder of female infants may be seen by some mothers as a humane solution. This powerful and moving film explores the complexity of female infanticide in southern India and shows the steps being taken to eradicate the practice.
This film and video program on technologies of gender violence, security and social violence - with special reference to the theme of in/security in a global context - has been especially curated by Virginia Villaplanafor CoW 2005. The work is based on a Spanish analytical project entitled Cultural Stories on Gender Violence which was developed by Villaplana over the past two years. It zooms in on and addresses multiple perspectives and attitudes towards social violence, from such aspects as gender, war and post-war, migration, domesticity, class, race - from the global to the local - flowing through various media.
