Witnessing Women: Quo Vadis, Cinema?

Studies in World Cinema ◽

10.1163/26659891-bja10003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Dijana Jelača

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Experience ◽

Women Filmmakers ◽

Bearing Witness ◽

Women’S Experiences ◽

Women's Experiences ◽

World Cinema ◽

Female Protagonist ◽

The Spectator ◽

Quo Vadis ◽

Bear Witness

Abstract The essay explores how two women filmmakers, each deploying her unique vision through the perspective of a female protagonist, stage a transformative encounter with the act of bearing witness to genocide. The Diary of Diana B. (Dnevnik Diane Budisavljević, 2019, Croatia) directed by Dana Budisavljević, and Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020, Bosnia-Herzegovina), directed by Jasmila Žbanić, both compel us to bear witness to mass atrocities while avoiding the pitfalls of turning suffering into a spectacle, and by sidestepping the predictable cinematic conventions of redemption and closure, both formally and narratively. In my analysis of the films as anti-spectacles through the framework of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘speaking nearby’, I argue for the concept of ‘women’s world cinema’, a kind of cinema that is made by women, speaks to women’s experiences, and/or addresses the spectator as female while also speaking nearby instead of about its subjects in ways that eschew conventional spectatorial alignments and co-optations of traumatic experience.

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“Not a nice experience, not at all”: Underprivileged women's experiences of being confronted with cervical cancer

Palliative & Supportive Care ◽

10.1017/s1478951513001247 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 239-247 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Johanna E. Maree ◽

Gayle Langley ◽

Lucy Nqubezelo

Keyword(s):

Cervical Cancer ◽

Demographic Data ◽

Cervical Screening ◽

Target Population ◽

Bad News ◽

Traumatic Experience ◽

Public Healthcare ◽

Women’S Experiences ◽

Additional Information ◽

Women's Experiences

AbstractObjective:Research on women's experiences of cervical cancer as a health problem focuses primarily on cervical screening, while their experiences of cervical cancer as a disease seem to be underresearched. This study addresses this understudied area and aims to yield insight into the experiences of underprivileged women confronted with this disease.Method:Our study was qualitative, exploratory, and contextual with descriptive and interpretive elements. The context of the study was a radiation oncology department at an academic hospital in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. The target population was all patients diagnosed with cervical cancer referred for treatment at the specific hospital. Convenience sampling selected participants typical of the population. Nineteen open-ended unstructured interviews were conducted after demographic data were collected. One question was posed: “Please tell me what made you think there was something wrong with you?” Thematic analyses were used to analyze the data.Results:The average age of participants was 47.2 years, with a youngest participant of 29 and oldest of 70. Three themes arose from the data: experiencing the symptoms of cervical cancer, hearing the bad news, and what remained unsaid.Significance of Results:Being confronted with cervical cancer is a traumatic experience. Women suffer unexplained, severe, humiliating vaginal bleeding and unrelieved pain. They have to face a dual healthcare system: on the one hand, unaffordable effective private healthcare and, on the other, the free-of-cost public healthcare that failed them. The bad news of their cervical cancer is most commonly broken in a kind and sympathetic manner, yet misunderstandings and a need for additional information prevail after the bad news conversation. Having to inform their families of their cancer adds to their suffering.

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