Building Memories to Advance Community Engagement: A Conversation with Cynthia Tobar

January 25, 2024byAmy Aronoff

Image: Film still from Mujeres Atrevidas, Courtesy of Cynthia Tobar

Activist-scholar, filmmaker, and oral historian Cynthia Tobar talks about her latest bilingual documentary-in-progress, Mujeres Atrevidas, and shares insights on collaborating with presenting venues.

Mujeres Atrevidas, a bilingual documentary-in-progress and a NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship project, chronicles the strength of Latin American female app-delivery, domestic, and construction workers as they fight for their rights. This is Cynthia Tobar’s most recent attempt to create interactive, participatory stories documenting social change and further advance community engagement with archiving and storytelling.

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA): Tell us about your documentary project Mujeres Atrevidas. How does the project reflect the focus of your creative practice?

Cynthia Tobar (CT): Mujeres Atrevidas is chronicling the strength of Latine female immigrant gig workers as they confront harsh working conditions and organize for justice. The film spotlights how these workers fight for labor rights through their involvement with the Workers Justice Project, a worker center based in Brooklyn that organizes for better working conditions and justice for low-income, immigrant workers.

Drawing inspiration from the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, immigrants’ rights struggles, and movements of the global South, from which many workers had emigrated, worker centers focus on grassroots organizing to build worker power, necessarily outside the purview of traditional collective bargaining. Founded in 2010, the Workers Justice Project organizes low-wage, immigrant workers who are fighting to raise workplace standards in the construction, house cleaning, and app-based delivery industries.

The film will testify to the ability of bold female-identifying workers to sustain and improve their lives as they reflect on questions regarding New York City’s future and its relationship to labor. As a bilingual film in Spanish and English, this project promises to reframe history and language, as well as promote care and worker empowerment. In looking at the daily conditions that female frontline workers face, Mujeres Atrevidas will document the role that workers centers can have in cities and states across the country, where new labor policies and standards (e.g., domestic workers’ bills of rights and higher minimum wages) are being enacted.

Weaving together moving interviews and footage of these female workers’ stories, composed largely during the course of a day in their lives, Mujeres Atrevidas will portray the journeys of four female workers and worker center leaders, their legacy, and the enduring power of resilience. These narratives express the hopes and fears of this workforce, as well as struggles in acts of resistance. Driven by deep reverence for how local residents work to resist increasing inequalities in NYC, I apply a community-based, participatory approach to documentary filmmaking that seeks to generate solidarities that sustain and amplify ongoing work on the ground, while also facilitating deep transformation, engagement, and agency with my narrators.

NYFA: Mujeres Atrevidas is part of NYFA’s Fiscal Sponsorship program. In what context did you decide to apply for fiscal sponsorship and how has the fundraising tool supported Mujeres Atrevidas?

CT: I needed support in strategizing my fundraising goals for my film, and I was able to find that support through NYFA. Being a NYFA fiscal sponsored project enabled me to apply for larger grants and NYFA’s staff have been extremely helpful in their guidance as I continue to raise funds. Additionally, the fundraising tool has helped me keep track of donations for my project and inform marketing as I move forward with my project.

NYFA: At this stage, Mujeres Atrevidas have been screened in places such as MayDay Space, New York Theater Workshop, and BRIC. How did you locate opportunities like this and what are some tips when it comes to collaborating with presenting venues?

CT: While I wanted to capture how Latine immigrant women were fighting for dignity in the workplace as gig workers, it was important for me to build collaborations with other groups to find new ways to enhance community engagement with these stories that reflect these instances of resilience and community-building. I also wanted to have it rooted in the Latine community.

One tip is to identify community partners and maintain connections with local neighborhood and cultural organizations whose mission align with your project’s own mission. For me, that included being part of the Dominican Artists Collective, a collective of storytellers, community-centered gate openers, and culture expanders, which partnered with us to secure space at New York Theater Workshop for our screening this past October. I also maintain close ties to MayDay Space, a dynamic movement center and event space based in Bushwick, which was a co-presenter along with cinemovilnyc, a revolutionary mobile cinema collective, and Circuito de CineClubes Cali based in Colombia, that organized the CaliShorts program we were a part of this past December. It was thrilling to have my film shown in Cali, Colombia thanks to this wonderful collaborative program!

Another tip is to take part in any creative initiatives that are going on in your area. Being a Brooklyn-based artist, I was delighted to be part of the 2022-2023 BRIC Documentary Intensive cohort, which provided me with additional guidance in finishing my short film, helped me expand my network and included me in their screening last January at BRIC. Identifying community partners and doing outreach to art-based groups definitely helped me share these stories of tenacity more extensively among other Latines and allies in caring for their community and mobilizing for justice.

Identifying community partners and doing outreach to art-based groups definitely helped me share these stories of tenacity more extensively among other Latines and allies in caring for their community and mobilizing for justice.
Cynthia Tobar

NYFA: What ‘s next for Mujeres Atrevidas?

CT: Alongside my producer Brett Halperin, a design researcher and practitioner, we want to expand the film’s narrative to examine the potential and pitfalls of the technology applications these workers use to obtain gig work. We question how technology facilitates empowerment on one hand and exploitation on the other. While app-based gig work follows democratized, techno-utopian promises, it perpetuates structural inequities across race, gender, and citizen status.

Through the documentary process, we will investigate how Latine immigrant female workers can navigate digitally-mediated structural inequities to mobilize their organizing efforts. In doing so, we want to envision future technology that is reclaimed around gig worker empowerment. I’m very excited to see how this extended narrative will take shape while we also plan to continue screening the short to additional audiences throughout NYC. A great way to stay updated on future screenings is to visit our film site at mujeresatrevidasfilm.com and follow us on Instagram at @mujeresatrevidasbk.

About Cynthia Tobar
Cynthia Tobar is an artist, activist-scholar, filmmaker, and oral historian passionate about creating participatory stories documenting social change. A first-generation Ecuadorian American born and raised in NYC, she strives to blend rigorous research with diverse artistic mediums to shed light on marginalized narratives and forgotten histories. She is the founder of Cities for People, Not for Profit, an oral history project documenting gentrification and displacement in Bushwick. Tobar’s work has been exhibited and screened at several venues, including the Museum of the City of New York, Flux Factory, the Greek Consulate in NYC, and BRIC. Her latest bilingual documentary-in-progress, Mujeres Atrevidas, chronicles the strength of Latin American female app-delivery, domestic, and construction workers as they fight for their rights. Learn more about her work at cynthiatobar.net.