New column by Jelena Pašić

If we were to roll back the historical timeline of the celluloid film strip, we would find, in fact since its very beginnings, echoes of class and gender relations that have been recorded on film in different ways and have affected our understanding of the film medium itself. The Lumière brothers’ Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, considered the first film ever made, documented – as its descriptive title suggests – workers at the end of their workday as they exit the Lyon photographic camera factory owned by the Lumière family. This pioneering endeavor thematically centered on movement, which is logical given that this was the first incarnation of the moving image that would later become known as motion pictures. However, the relationships between capitalism and production, based on a deep-seated hierarchy of social relationships, was thus also (perhaps unintentionally so) woven into the very beginnings of cinema. That same year, in 1985, the Lumières also organized the first screening of the film, for which they charged entry, consequently framing the system of production and consumption of cinema within capitalist logic. The commercial aspect of cinema was soon sealed by the establishment of live-action fiction film as the dominant cinematic category, of which mainstream Hollywood production was by far the most popular form during the 20th century, while the cinematic narrative and the treatment of female characters were mostly driven and shaped by the conventions of patriarchal social relations. At the same time, within a wider context of film production, the contribution of female authors was systematically marginalized, resulting in the exclusion of many of them from the history of cinema. 

In 1966, some 80 years after the Lumière brothers’ film, Krešo Golik made From 3 to 22, a documentary short, hailed as one of the highlights of Croatian documentary filmmaking, in which he drew a link between class and gender inequalities. Thematically, this time the film directly and unambiguously centers on work, however, the focus is neither on a group of anonymous workers nor on an isolated worker, singled out as a symbol of the entire class. The film traces the daily life of Smilja Glavaš, a young factory worker, mother and wife whose daily routine continues exactly between the hours suggested in the title. Between three in the morning and 10 at night, Smilja steadfastly and almost without a break performs a series of often physically quite demanding tasks and duties (both at the factory and at home, as a mother and housewife), while the remaining five hours in the day (or rather, the night) are reserved for sleeping. Every night, Smilja’s alarm clock goes off at exactly 3 AM, the relentless, shrill sound, which opens and closes the film, announcing the beginning of a new day. The 24 hours of Smilja’s life are condensed into the 30 minutes of the film’s duration, however, the quick succession of scenes in which she performs all sorts of tasks lay bare the essence of the experience of living for one working class woman. 

The traditional positioning of women within the sphere of caring for the family and the household has been combined with a somewhat newer model of woman as worker, who also participates in the process of production in a strictly capitalist sense. That is, by working at the factory, she contributes to the production (of goods and capital) in the public sphere, while, alongside this process of production, a process of reproduction simultaneously takes place in the private sphere of the household. Unlike her husband, whose participation in the production process is much more clearly demarcated from his involvement within the family sphere, Smilja’s day consists of an almost uninterrupted succession of similar activities, while the only thing that differentiates them is that her work at the factory is remunerated, while her work at home is not. The idea that family is the central place in which patriarchal relationships are established and from which they then spill over into other spheres, is one of the still persistent problems to which the feminist movement has been calling attention for almost five decades. Overall, over the past fifty years there have been many positive shifts in achieving gender equality, from the structure and organization of the household to the social and professional position of women, yet, patriarchy (hand in hand with neoliberal capitalism) still continues to shape our relationships. 

Two recent Croatian animated films from our database problematize this issue from a contemporary perspective: mimicking computer games, Gamer Girl (2016), directed by Irena Jukić Pranjić, portrays the life of its heroine as a series of tasks predetermined by the system that makes her collect points by satisfying the different needs of her family, workplace and society. In turn, Rebel Girls (2017), directed by Maša Udovičić and Juliana Kučan, is a celebration of all those shifts, both big and small, that comprise the rebellion against society’s expectations, which we have inherited from the generations of women that came before us. As we remind ourselves of the persistent and vocal collective struggle for women’s rights at the core of celebrating International Women’s Day, it bears stressing time and again that achieving complete gender equality will require a fundamental and radical shift in the dominant political, social and economic horizon and the creation of a new one – one not based on the production of (gender, class, ethnic and other) differences.