Saturday     14:30
The Chopin House
2024, 12 min., English

Director: Rachel Randall and Catherine Grant

Pausas/Pauses is a videographic compilation that draws on seven contemporary Latin American films featuring women protagonists who undertake paid domestic or cleaning work. It collects and juxtaposes sequences in which these employees snatch breaks from their labours. Pausas/Pauses thus discovers and discloses a repeated trope that compellingly figures the possibilities for interiority and psychic freedom enjoyed or engaged in by these workers.

Rachel Randall is Reader in Latin American studies at QMUL. Her research interests encompass Latin American cultural studies with a focus on film. Her most recent book is Paid to Care: Domestic Workers in Contemporary Latin American Culture (UT Press, 2024).

Catherine Grant is Honorary Professor at Aarhus Universitet and Senior Research Fellow at University of Reading. She undertakes her research mostly in the form of remix-based video essays and was a co-founding editor of [in]Transition.