SITIO EN ESPAÑOL

PAUSAS | PAUSES

As part of the project, we have published a video essay entitled ‘PAUSAS | PAUSES‘, which explores seven contemporary Latin American films that feature protagonists who undertake paid domestic or cleaning work.

The video essay was co-authored by Dr Rachel Randall and Professor Catherine Grant. It has been published in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies (12.2).

PAUSES examines films including Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico, 2018), The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, Mexico, 2018), The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, Brazil, 2015), Maids (Fernando Meirelles and Nando Olival, Brazil, 2001), Live-in Maid (Jorge Gaggero, Argentina, 2004), Réimon (Rodrigo Moreno, Argentina, 2014) and Alanis (Anahí Berneri, Argentina 2017). It collects and juxtaposes sequences from these films in which the employees snatch breaks from their labours. 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.

In 2025, PAUSES was shortlisted for a practice-based research award by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS); it was also selected to be screened in the video essay competition at the Marienbad Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

Dr Randall and Professor Grant are currently collaborating on a second video essay, provisionally entitled ‘Ambivalent Inclinations’, which will be shared on this website after its publication.