Abstract
Film brings together people of all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities. Film can bring a sense of escapism and can educate audiences about a dark past or represent on-screen individuals who have been ignored. One group of people that has been ignored both on-screen and in the historical record are the Andean Quechua peoples of Peru. In 1980, a Peruvian Internal Conflict began between the terrorist group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and the Peruvian Armed Forces. Andean Quechua people would find themselves in the middle of this conflict as they were tortured, kidnapped, and killed by people on both sides. During and after this period, film directors Francisco Lombardi, Marianne Eyde, and Claudia Llosa made films about the violence of the internal conflict and how Andean Quechua peoples were affected. These films are, respectively, La boca del lobo (1988); La vida es una sola (1993); and La teta asustada (2009). In these films, these three directors used Quechua actors and actresses. Grounded in Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of representation, I analyze in this thesis how each of these films represented Andean Quechua suffering, survival, and resilience during and after the internal conflict. In brief, Francisco Lombardi represented Andean Quechua people surviving the war through silence while at the same time, portraying them as silent. Marianne Eyde on the other hand, created a Westernized representation of Andean Quechua peoples, having omitted the Quechua language from her film. Finally, Claudia Llosa’s representation of Andean Quechua peoples’ resilience, in contrast to the other two films, emphasized perspectives of Indigenous women while also highlighting key social and cultural connections between the highlands and coastal Lima during the postwar period. In academia and the arts, I argue that responsible representation means portraying the issues that Indigenous peoples have faced in a manner that centers their perspectives and priorities.