April 21: Moving Across the Diaspora: Black Visual Storytelling

April 14: El abrazo de la serpiente

Monday, 5-7 McCormick Screening Room

El abrazo de la serpiente (2015) features a visually rich and disturbing exploration of the ravages of colonialism. The third feature by Ciro Guerra, the film was an Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015. Serpiente centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, following his relationship with two scientists over the course of 40 years. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of the explorers Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who traveled through the Colombian Amazon in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant. 

Ciro Guerra was born on Río de Oro (Cesar, Colombia) in 1981 and studied film and television at the National University of Colombia. At the age of 21, after directing four multi-award-winning short films, he wrote and directed La Sombra del Caminante, his feature directorial debut, which won awards at the San Sebastian, Toulouse, Mar de Plata, Trieste, Havana, Quito, Cartagena, Santiago, and Warsaw film festivals, and was selected for 60 more. (From http://embraceoftheserpent.oscilloscope.net/#)

April 15: Screening and Discussion with Director Diana Montero (Cuba)

Friday, 5-7, McCormick Screening Room

Diana Montero is a young filmmaker from Cuba, who studied Art History at the University of Havana and documentary filmmaking at the Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños. Her work often focuses on women in rural Cuba, and includes the short documentary "Abecé: The Universe of a Girl, Mother and Woman” (2013), which received honorable mention in the 13 Muestra Joven and the ICAIC, and the International Festival of Cinema in Trinidad and Tobago, and which chronicles the history of 12-year-old Leonedi and her infant child. Her earlier work, “Milagrosa,” tells the story of the Dalkys, who lives in the small community of La Salada, in Santiago de Cuba, and is known as the community healer. Her documentary “Como los gatos,” looks at the life of an 86-year-old man who, for the past decade, dedicated his life to collecting garbage and recyclables. 

April 18: Mestizo

Monday, 5-7, McCormick Screening Room

Mestizo is set in a village on the Venezuelan coast, a place of fishermen and big haciendas. Jose Ramon, son of a white aristocrat and a black fisher-women, is trying to define his own identity while dealing with social and sexual conflicts, power, culture, the law, and the impossible relationship he has with both of his parents. (From www.africanfilm.com/mestizo.htm).

Matio Handler is a director, photographer, and editor from Montevideo, Uruguay. 

April 20: Screening A Dios Momo

Wednesday, 5-7, McCormick Screening Room

A Dios Momo Obdulio is an 11-year-old Afro-Uruguayan boy who lives with his grandmother and sells newspapers for a living while he cannot read or write. Obdulio is not interested in going to school until he finds out that the night watchman of the newspaper's office is a charismatic magical "Maestro" who not only introduces him to the world of literacy but also teaches him the real meaning of life through the lyrics of the "Murgas" (Carnival Pierrots) during the mythical nights of the irreverent and provocative Uruguayan carnival. (From www.africanfilm.com/Adios%20Momo.htm).

Leonardo Ricagni is a director based in Barcelona. 

April 21: Moving Across the Diaspora: Black Visual Storytelling

Screening, Performance and Conversation

with filmmakers Kumi and Jalise Beamon, and performer Storyboard P.

Thursday, 5-7, McCormick Screening Room

Moderated by Sandra Johnson

Kumi is an artist, storyteller, and healer. Her current work focuses on using art and storytelling tool to heal from trauma. 

Jalise Beamon is a student filmmaker from Chino, Ca. She is currently an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine studying Film and Media and African American Studies. Jalise's short experimental films focus on Black folks and the ways in which they navigate themselves through structures of violence in order to live, love and dream.

Sandra Johnson is a 4th year graduating senior at UCI. She is an African-American Studies major, whose research on race relations in Cuba, "Anything But Black: A Contextual Analysis of the Afro-Cuban Experience in a Communist Regime," was presented in the 2015 UROP symposium. 

April 11: Screening — Sara Gomez and Nicolás Guillén Landrián shorts

Monday, 5-7 McCormick Screening Room

Sara Gomez (1942-1974), best known for her feature fiction film De cierta manera, was the first woman filmmaker at the Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, which was established immediately following the 1959 revolution. She was also the first woman to make a feature fiction film in Cuba, followed only by Gloria Rolando; both are among the few Afrocubans to make feature films. She studied under Tomás Gutierrez Alea and the French filmmaker Agnes Varda beginning when she was 19-year-old. While best known today for De cierta manera, she worked primarily in documentary filmmaking, honing a distinct style that, like other “Third Cinemas” of the era, rejects Hollywood and other more commercial filmic conventions. A dedicated revolutionary, Gomez’s films document Cuba’s struggle against imperialism, sexism, and classism, while remaining critical of racial divisions and celebrating African presence in Cuban culture.


Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938-2003), nephew of poet Nicolas Guillen, was an Afrcocuban experimental filmmaker, painter and writer. He made 13 documentaries, all which focus on the lives of everyday people, not as part of the masses, but rather as individuals. His experimental films have been called irreverent and pointed, and were subject to heavy censorship. He was jailed twice, and institutionalized where it is said he underwent electroshock treatment. He immigrated to Miami in 1989.