Portrait of Teresa
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
            For The Women's Show, WMNF-FM, Tampa, FL

    This is Latino Heritage Month at WMNF and the topic on the
Women's Show today is women and work, and I have a film for you
today that's right in keeping with both themes.  I was cruising my
local video emporium and discovered they have an English subtitled
version of "Portrait of Teresa," a Cuban film directed by veteran
director Pastor Vega.

    In 1991, I was in Cuba for a philosophy conference but spent a
good bit of time exploring the intersection between Cuban feminism
and Cuban filmmaking.  I even brought home a copy of "Portrait of
Teresa" but never thought of reviewing it because I didn't think it
would be available to listeners who wanted to see it.

    From a feminist perspective there are things about Cuba since
the revolution to be admired--an early literacy campaign to teach
peasant women and men to read, reproductive freedom and access to
free abortions, passage of the 1975 Cuban Family Code which made
sex equality in the family the law of the land, and a successful
major effort to incorporate women into the paid labor force at all
levels.  All of these efforts were led by Vilma Espin and the
organization she founded in 1961, the Federation of Cuban Women
(Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas or FMC).  Since Espin was herself
one of the leading figures in the Revolution--known then as the
guerilla Deborah--and eventually became Fidel Castro's sister-in-
law, the FMC has political clout undreamed of in this country. {It
would be something like having a Cabinet-level department of
women's affairs where the secretary was a relative of the
President).

    While in Cuba I had numerous opportunities to interact with
Espin and women on the staff of the FMC.  And because they knew of
my interest in women and film they set up a special screening for
me of a film called "Mujer Transparente" the latest in a long series
of Cuban films dealing with the lives and problems of contemporary
Cuban women.  For all their progressive social legislation, getting
the macho Cuban man to change has been difficult. Though women now
comprise 40% of the paid labor force in Cuba, women are still often
expected to bear the double burden of work booth outside and inside
the home. "Portrait of Teresa" is a 1979 film on this subject.  It
gives what appears to be a realistic portrait of the life of a
women struggling to break free from the strictures of traditional
gender relations while her husband, her mother, and older friends
try to get her to give up the struggle and devote her life to
doing what they think is best for her husband and children.  In the
end, she has the strength to say no to those pressures .

    This is not what anyone would call great filmmaking, but it is
a serious attempt to deal with a social problem that plagues every
modern society in which women have entered the work force in recent
years.  It's refreshing to see a film about working women that ends
with her making the choice she wants to make and not suggesting
that her problems will all be solved if only she finds the right
man.  The film also has moments of humor, it has some delightful
music and dance numbers because Teresa works with an amateur Cuban
dance group from the textile factory she works in.  And it is
interesting for the insight it gives into life in Castro's Cuba 10
years ago.  Things are considerably less rosy now due to the
economic crisis in Cuba caused by the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe and the continuation of our 30-year old trade
embargo against them.

   You may be interested to know that the FMC is now trying a new
approach to this problem--starting a whole series of grassroots
programs in what are called Casas de Mujeres (women's houses) all
across the island.  They're going to try working with very young
children--male and female--to orient them early to the ideas of
sex equality that are the law if not the reality in present-day
Cuba.

    For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on
women and film.