Summary

In her film entitled Rough Red, Amanda Devulsky endeavours to tell History differently, to show the reverse angle of political action, as well as to postulate that another form of resistance is possible. By shedding light on the lived experience of those who are unseen in public space, she has authored a historiography of the hidden. We’re following the lives of Jô, Eunice, Alessa and Fabiana, four women who were still teenagers when they became mothers, at a time when Brazil itself was becoming a democracy, during the 1985-1995 decade, in Brasilia. Four women experiencing the strains of motherhood, and whose struggles were not played out in public but rather in the private space of the home. Blending personal archives with images shot in 2018, during the campaign leading up to Jair Bolsonaro’s election, Amanda Devulsky constructs a monumental narrative.