RE-VIEWING THE TROPICAL PARADISE: AFRO-CARIBBEAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Abstract

This dissertation presents a new conceptual framework, a "pan-African feminist" critical model, to examine how Euzhan Palcy of Martinique, Gloria Rolando and the late Sara Gómez of Cuba, and the Sistren Collective of Jamaica have negotiated - individually or collectively - the gender/race/class constraints within each of their societies in order to obtain access to the media of film and video. I examine the aesthetic, political, social and economic strategies utilized by these filmmakers to reinsert themselves into recorded versions of history, and/or to intervene in racist, (neo)colonial and/or patriarchal systems of oppression.