Santo Domingo Waltz

“Since I was a young girl, I’ve had trouble listening to phrases that start out with “Girls can’t…”

When I was 14, I spoke to the P.E. teacher about signing up for basketball practice. Back then, there was only one basketball team, and it was just for boys. Although my pink bedroom walls were decorated with Michael Jordan posters and I stayed after school at all their practices, I was never officially part of the team. In the eighth grade my afternoons were spent playing basketball with only boys or taking ballet lessons with only girls. I had been dancing since the first grade.

I spent most of my teenage years and adult life arguing with people – like my mother – about why others were allowed to do things I was not allowed to do just because I was a girl. I envied my brother’s freedom.

I ended up studying photojournalism, a career where women are in the minority, and eventually became a documentary filmmaker. After working on my first film “Nana”, one of the things that struck me the most was how the machismo culture had affected the lives of all the women in the documentary. And on the opening night, before going up to the microphone to say a few words to the audience, I asked my boyfriend at the time to please hold my purse. His response: “No. Give it to your mom. Men don’t hold purses.”

The machismo culture has permeated my entire life in the Dominican Republic. Seeing these three characters – 14 and 15 years old – dealing with the same kind of discrimination I dealt with when I was their age for being a girl, inspired me to explore their stories and learn how machismo culture is experienced from a boy’s point of view.”

– Tatiana Fernández Geara, Director