Memory and gender as migrant audience formations : Latin American women remembering cinema and films across borders

Missero, Dalila (2021) Memory and gender as migrant audience formations : Latin American women remembering cinema and films across borders. Participations, 18 (2). pp. 436-453.

Abstract

This article discusses the findings of a qualitative research project exploring the memories and habits of cinema-going of an intergenerational group of Latin American women living in Barcelona and Milan. Specifically, it offers a thematic analysis of migrant cinema-memories to read broader practices of home-making, mobility, transnational relationships, and digital ecologies. The article shows that an interdisciplinary methodology, combining feminist audience studies, memory studies and migration research, represents a valuable key to understanding contemporary audience formations. Such reflexive and gendered methods emphasize the potential of migrant memory to overcome limitations of audience research, such as methodological nationalism and fragmentation. It also suggests that a sensory approach to research tools and materials offers a key to overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic to fieldwork. In conclusion, the article calls for a broader exploration of migrant cinematic memory as a necessary, interdisciplinary perspective on the transnational and gendered aspects of the contemporary audience experience.