The Problem of Reproduction in Mazu's Shady River (2020)

"During the 1940s, the mine at Rio Turbio, Argentina was established for the extraction of coal. Tatiana Mazú González's Shady River(2020) directs its attention to the town that shares its name with the Patagonian mine in order to interrogate the gendered division of labor that persists in the regime of coal extraction. Beyond the question of labor alone, the affective language of Shady River lays bare the ecological, biological, and subjective forces at work in the problem of social reproduction on a global scale."

"With few exceptions, discussions of social reproduction originally emerged in European and Anglo-American feminist circles in order to address the role of women's labor understood as integral to the conditions for the reproduction of life and capitalism. Figuring in a long genealogy of approaches to reproduction, feminists analyzing reproductive labor have challenged the idea that the reproduction of life depends solely on the consumption of necessary goods and services."

Shady River (2020) focuses on Rio Turbio to interrogate persistent gendered divisions of labor within coal extraction. The film exposes ecological, biological, and subjective forces that shape social reproduction across local and global scales. Feminist frameworks situate reproductive labor as central to the reproduction of life and capitalism, challenging models that reduce reproduction to consumption of goods and services. Subsequent debates expand the concept to include institutional arrangements, racialization, and global hierarchies. Shady River confronts reproductive labor in Patagonian mines against the legacies of colonialism, revealing complex interdependence among human beings, nature, production, and the work of life-sustaining practices.

Read at Apaonline