POV - Ella Es el Matador (She Is the Matador) . Trailer | PBS 2009

Broadcasting on PBS: September 1, 2009
Check local listings, watch the entire film online (through Oct. 2, 2009) and more: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2009/matador

By Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco

For Spaniards — and for the world — nothing has expressed their country's traditionally rigid gender roles more powerfully than the image of the male matador. So sacred was the bullfighter's masculinity to Spanish identity that a 1908 law barred women from the sport. Ella Es el Matador reveals the surprising history of the women who made such a law necessary and offers fascinating profiles of two female matadors currently in the arena: the acclaimed Mari Paz Vega and neophyte Eva Florencia. These women are gender pioneers by necessity. But what emerges as their truest motivation is their sheer passion — for bullfighting and the pursuit of a dream. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB).

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Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• bullfighting
• matador
• spain
• bullfighter
• women bullfighter
• women matador
• feminism
• feminist
• female athlete
• women

[PeterZandorff]

HOPE SHE GET´S KILLED BY A BULL SOONER OR LATER. SPAIN: A TOTAL LOOSER COUNTRY - ECONOMICALLY AS WELL AS EDUCATINALLY!

[saijai587]

Wow Mathador girl but bull is very pity.

[kopi5896]

Thank you for sharing.

[minami935]

Ella Es el Matador is great.

[theinkbrain]

@kkontiki no need to apologise.

i very much enjoyed our exchange, because it encouraged me to reach a little beyond myself.

this documentary, so powerful and paradoxical, made me examine my own internal contradictions and conflicts. it gave me the insight that my beliefs and my feelings could collide, and demonstrated for me that the glorious and the reprehensible could coexist like in a greek drama. now for me the bull ring exemplifies both beauty and savagery. i didnt know this before.

[kkontiki]

@theinkbrain

OK, I understans where you are coming from. Sorry, I misunderstood your position on this issue, I take back what I've said about you.

[theinkbrain]

@kkontiki you are right. human rottenness seems deeply embedded in our species. you are also right in questioning whether eating meat is as deplorable as paying to watch an animal killed. perhaps some people go to watch the human being risk his or her life, and not the bull being killed. i dont think i could stomach watching an actual bullfight. i never said bulfighting is great. i said that watching this woman i felt a sense of awe.

i havent read 'the jungle', but i will order it today.

[kkontiki]

@theinkbrain

Animals rights is a cliche nowadays used, we should instead speak about human rotenness. Demagogy at it's greatest to infer that people who eat meat are as rotten as someone who pays to see an animal being tortured to death.

Od course theres injustice in the meat industry: have you ever read Upton Sinclai'r "The Jungle"?

If you proclaim that bulfighting is great you are in no way mirrorring a good spirit within.

[theinkbrain]

@kkontiki

it does not require an education to recognise that animal cruelty is wrong. no doubt people who are gratuitously cruel to animals are inhumane, and it is easy to see that in the context of bullfighting, the bull is at a grave disadvantage.

despite that, i recognise a paradoxical reaction in myself. even as i deplore cruelty to animals, when i watch maripaz vega i feel a sense of awe. i admit this is illogical, but this is how i feel.

[theinkbrain]

@kkontiki i am thinking that your moral outrage bespeaks a deep concern for animal rights and a distaste for animal cruelty. bravo. what do you think about people who eat meat? do you think they are as sensitive as you when it comes to sticking a fork into a steak?

as for abortion being a solution in my case - perhaps you are right. i don't know if the world would have been better off had i not been born, and i too sometimes question my own humanity. being a decent human is no easy task.