Wind, Water, Women: Liminal Spaces and Border Crossings Between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic

Recent films in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have been telling stories in ways that contrast with approaches used in the past. At their best, these films undo existing film vocabulary and discursive structures. They do not just tell us stories we think we already know. They show us what their protagonists, who include an increasing number of female characters, see, and they show us how they see. This essay shows how film narratives are evolving in the emerging cinemas of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, situating women in the ever more varied and inclusive film narratives now being produced in these countries. Women are discussed as subjects, whether as directors of recent films and/or as subjects in films made in these countries, a poetics of relation in which the presence or absence of women, and the directions they take, whether as filmmakers or subjects of filmic narratives, matter.