Housemaids

The documentary was built from footage shot by seven teenagers. The director handed each of them a camera. What he asked was that they film their family’s housemaid for one week. The teenagers did this inside their own homes. Then they handed the footage over to the director. The film was assembled out of that material. What comes out is not a simple portrait. The relationship between housemaids and their employers is complicated. Intimacy and power are tangled together in the same house. The women appear to be part of the family. What their labour is worth, and where they stand, is plain enough. Because the camera is in a teenager’s hand, the distance changes too. Some moments are uncomfortably open. The film shows the traces of a colonial past in Brazil today. In the seventy six minute documentary the housemaids describe their own days. It is a Brazilian production Gabriel Mascaro finished in 2012.