UCLA

This thesis analyzes the ways that Mixtec women directors employ cine comunitario to center Mixtec communal representation and ownership of Native Oaxacan narratives as opposed to Indigenista commercial cinema. Utilizing methods and theories from Indigenous Film studies and decolonial queer and memory work scholars and creators, I draw on Mixtec cosmological concepts associated with the four cardinal directions in order to frame and interpret the ways that two Mixtec filmmakers, Ángeles Cruz and Itandehui Jansen, speak to Indigenous knowledges, understandings of community, space, and gender, as well as what I define as “Indigenous carework.” I also explore the ways Mixtec women’s films expand concepts of memory work and offer ways of re/membering which successfully foster Indigenous well-being and futurity.