ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book contributes to advancing the international debate on the representation of violence sustained on the gender regime. It highlights cinematic techniques and film practices that subvert traditional film modes of representation. The book analyses film narratives that highlight the subjective position of the female film-maker and articulate the “unofficial versions” of the violent experience. These film practices juxtapose the stereotype of the powerless, gendered victim with the active female subject, endowed with agency in a variety of contexts where violence is exercised in the Hispanic world. The book looks at a particular genre, horror film, notorious for offering numerous representations of “the terrorized woman victim”, since women make the best victims. It describes how the 1990s saw the raising of stories about women who had been tortured, raped, murdered, and abandoned in the desert surrounding the U.S.–Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez.
