LA Filmforum: Sara Gómez’s Cuba – Empathy and the Revolution

Los Angeles Filmforum presents Sara Gómez’s Cuba: Empathy and the Revolution - Program 1. Full info: www.lafilmforum.org Los Angeles Filmforum presents a three-part screening retrospective on the documentary works of Sara Gómez, recently restored by the Vulnerable Media Lab in Canada. The Criterion Collection will soon be releasing an Eclipse Box of the her films, and we are grateful to Janus Films for making the films available to us for this preview screening. Gómez was a pioneering Afro-Cuban filmmaker of the revolutionary era from 1962-1974 who, in her tragically short lifetime, created confrontational and educational shorts concerning childcare, racism, labor, music history, and geography, leading up to her seminal docu-fiction feature De cierta manera. Program 1 will be an introduction to her history and her relationship to ICAIC (the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry), while Screenings 2 and 3 will be followed by facilitated group discussions with the audience. Part propaganda, part investigative journalism and part observational documentary, the progression of her films escalates from straightforward didactic PSA’s to seriously challenging feminist critiques at the growing pains of a new revolutionary social world. All the while maintaining a French New Wave-inspired form of vibrant montage and vérité observation that is now considered the peak of the ICAIC style. Program 1 will present more of her early and personal works that demonstrates Gomez precocious skill as a student of ICAIC’s vision of modernist and new-wave documentary cinema as a way to communicate the ideals and discourses of the revolution, and re-orient the representation of Cuba’s history in a more marxist and post-colonial lens. However, once she starts her trilogy on Isla De Los Pinos, a small port city not far from Santiago, the work starts taking a closer inspection of racism, machismo and women’s perspectives to introduce a constructive discourse on the social dynamics that complicate the transition to a liberated Cuba, if left unaddressed. Guests before the screening include an introduction from Susan Lord, the co-editor of the 2022 book The Cinema of Sara Gomez: Reframing a Revolution and one of the key figures in the restoration of the films, and a short presentation by National Network On Cuba organizers from the Harriet Tubman Center that will connect the films with current efforts aiding Cuba’s current embargo crisis. Curated by Jorge Ravelo. Runtime: 91 min. (films) + introductions