FilmCrit: using cinematic critical race counterstorytelling as critical race feminista methodology

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of a Critical Race Feminista praxis-oriented methodological framework in development called FilmCrit, and a critical race method expanded into filmic form called Cinematic Critical Race Counterstorytelling. Critical Race Feminisita Praxis informs this work by drawing on a Critical Race Theory in Education framework and Chicana Feminist theories and epistemologies. In discussing two FilmCrit studies, a qualitative documentary study, No Somos Famosos (We Are Not Famous), and my dissertation study, From the Classroom to the Screen: Experiences of Women of Color MFA Film Students, I detail the theoretical, methodological, and analytical development, as well as the scholarly significance, of FilmCrit and (auto)biographical and composite Cinematic Critical Race Counterstorytelling.

Keywords:

• Critical race theory
• critical race feminista methodology
• chicana feminism
• qualitative methods
• film methods
• documentary methods
• education research
• screenwriting

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my research collaborators, my community of colegas: Cindy Raquel Escobedo, Lorena Camargo Gonzalez, Magali Campos and many more, my mentors, my creative and loving family, and my beautiful six-month-old son who was still kicking me from the inside when I started the process of writing this manuscript and then lovingly sat in my lap as I finished. Their critical support, joy, and insights shaped this work. This project began with my mentor and advisor, Danny Solórzano’s graduate CRT seminar, where he invited me to bring the whole of who I was to the process of becoming a scholar. I will always hold a special appreciation for Mike Rose for making writing feel possible for a first generation college student, for the voicemails I still have saved, and the books he gifted me. Thank you to Ananda Marin for showing me that reimagining research processes can be empowering (and fun!). Thank you to Inmaculada García-Sánchez for opening up a world into narrative analysis for me. Thank you to my wonderful partner in life and filmmaking, Mohammad Tavakoli. Finally, thank you to Lindsay Pérez Huber, Veronica Velez, and Maria Malagon for their leadership, care, and patience in bringing this special issue forward and making room for this first time mother on her first publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A platica is a Chicana/Latina feminist, collaborative research methodology that engages storytelling, building community, reciprocity, and reflexivity by positioning research collaborators as co-constructors of knowledge, honoring everyday lived experiences as important to research, and opening opportunities for healing (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016).

2 By (auto)biographical I mean that this is a biographical counterstory of my family, while also being an autobiographical counterstory for me. In this way I am both subject and researcher.

3 See (Gonzalez, 1985, 2001); (Donato & Hanson, 2012); (García et al., 2012).

4 See Counterstory by Aja Martinez, 2020 where she discusses adding a 6^th tenet to CRT: accessibility.

5 See Donald E. Staples revisting the influence of auteur theory twelve years after it was introduced, (1966) and Barry Keith Grant’s reader which opens by stating the prominent use of auteur theory in the film school classroom, and how the reader was created to provide film students with historical context of the theory, challenge notions of singular authorship focused on directors, and lastly, take a close look at the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality and the auteur theory (2008).

6 See Critical Media Literacy (Kellner & Share, 2019).

7 Testimonio, as defined by Lindsay Pérez Huber and her research participants, is “a verbal journey of a witness who speaks to reveal the racial, classed, gendered, and nativist injustices they have suffered as a means of healing, empowerment, and advocacy for a more humane present and future” (p. 644, 2009).

8 Racial microaggressions are verbal and/or nonverbal, cumulative attacks directed at People of Color, often layered and intersecting across gender, class, and phenotype etc., and take a psychological and physiological toll on People of Color (Solórzano & Perez Huber, 2020).

9 Racial Microaffirmations are “everyday strategies of validation & acknowledgement People of Color utilize with and among each other” (Solórzano & Perez Huber, 2020, p. 86).