by Jessica Mosby
- USA -
- March 8th - Today we celebrate International Women's Day with our sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers, cousins and daughters, and most of all, with our writers, who have become family. On this important day, we find it appropriate that Jessica's review is of a film about a group of remarkable women in Argentina who found their voices and by doing so transformed themselves from victims into successful entrepreneurs. The women of Brukman are yet further proof that women who empower themselves cannot be stopped. - Ed.
Christmas should be a happy time for families to congregate over lengthy meals while watching little kids open presents, but in 2001 Argentina’s economy collapsed a week before the holiday. Almost immediately factories shut down, business owners fled the country, and low-paid workers were out of their jobs just when everyone needed a little extra money. Yuletide joy was harder to find than a job. However the amazing women featured in the documentary film The Women of Brukman didn’t let the crumbling economy destroy their livelihoods, their spirit, or their Christmas.
• Delicia works the presses, perfectly ironing every piece of clothing that leaves the Brukman factory. Photograph by Gunes-Helene Isitan.
• The ninety minute documentary film, which is currently being screened at film festivals, follows a group of working class women who were employed at the Brukman garment factory in Buenos Aires as they fought for three years to operate the factory as a cooperative. Unwittingly, they started a movement in Argentina that has led to over 20,000 workers forming cooperatives to run over 200 formerly abandoned businesses. Director Isaac Isitan, who is Turkish by way of Canada, met the women while filming another movie in Argentina. He was so captivated by their spirit that he started filming. As he said during the Q&A at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, “They are inspiring people!”
One day in late 2001, the workers of the Brukman garment factory arrived for their shifts, only to find that the factory’s owners had fled the country – neglecting to pay anyone! The predominately female workforce decided to go about their jobs just like it was any other day; no one had any extra money and, with the recent economic collapse, few employment opportunities elsewhere. Everyone assumed that the Brukman family would eventually return to Buenos Aires and want the factory back.