Creative negotiations on treacherous terrain : the strategies and struggles of Latina directors and producers

This thesis explores the experiences of Latina directors and producers to better understand strategies for negotiating and resisting the industry’s overrepresentation of whiteness. I draw from in-depth interviews with Latina directors and producers and auto-ethnographic data from my own experience as a Latina producer to illuminate the roles both structural inequality and network making have in shaping the industry experience of these professionals and creatives. While their underrepresentation was acknowledged by all, the women had diverse ways of interpreting and negotiating this reality to meet their creative goals. I found that race, and especially gender, shape how Latina directors experience film school, pre-production, and on-set production, and that these filmmakers deploy networks and ideological frameworks to access the resources needed to make their projects.