The Followed Roads to Europe: Diasporic Documentary from a Gender Perspective

1. “No existimos” The Followed Roads to Europe: Diasporic Documentary from a Gender Perspective Ana Solano Tamara Bueno Doral Noelia García Castillo

2. Introduction • Utility of the vanguard documentary film to express the reality of the arduousroadsfollowedbyrefugeewomento the impregnable Europe. • To date, traditional and experimental cinema has beenthemain audiovisual media toarticulatetheexperiences of transit. • Due to the theoretical and social content, we could coincide with Diasporic Cinema: • Diasporic Cinema deals with movement related to nationality, ethnicity, race, gender or sexuality in an interconnected world. • Diasporic Cinema is transnational and heterotopic.

3. This Non-places are: • Physical and mental spaces that divest the human being of his identity, relations and history (Ponzanesi, 2012). • A delay in thetransit, in a transitory period in which identification processes are postponed (Tsianos y Melitopoulos, 2007).

4. We reflect on the element of transit, expressed on various routes linked to life and death, on the connection between consciousness and unconsciousness, on the absence of an identity. • We find thematic coincidences considered in this conference and in the documentary “We Don´t Exist”: belonging and identity when traveling through diverse borders, confinement and homesickness. • Nevertheless, we use a different perspective related to the tools of experimental cinema.

5. Research process • A theoretical-social continuous about exiled and refugee women in France and Spain.

6. Main objective: delve into the causes of these problems from a gender perspective. • Lack of similar audiovisual work that describes in depht the vulnerability of women refugees.

7. Their nonexistence is expressed in three areas: • Mass media: sensationalism, victimization, revelation of personal data. Virtually nonexistent for national and regional newspapers. • NGOs highlight the special vulnerability of women refugees: dependents, gender discrimination. Lack of statistical data distinguishing between men and women refugees. • On most occasions, women are not aware of the gender violence they are suffering. Victims of human trafficking can also apply for asylum.

8. Production • Documentary is a model of cinema linked to knowledge. • Our production process is not subordinated to conventional film production and its political and institutional mechanism.

9. The production of “We Don´t Exist” has been atypical and complex. • Freedom to research and denounce an issue intrinsically linked to the structures of the patriarchal system.

10. Language, script and direction • “We Don´t Exist” ends in a film essay. • No strategies nor narrative limitations are observed. • The film creates a dialogue with the existing reality and surpass the structural formalism of the aesthetic vanguard. • Images have as objective creating a parallel discourse, a narrative that is produced with different digital techniques and formats.

11. The narrative structure is not subject to temporal space. • Asking questions to reach our objective. • The interrelation of the semantic material with the metatext originated in the internal dialectic of the documentary. • The aesthetic part breaks the unity of spacetime.

12. Trailer Trailer Web page

13. Thanks for your kind attention. Ana Solano anasolano2046@gmail.com Tamara Bueno Doral trbueno@ucm.es Noelia García Castillo noeliagcastillo@gmail.com