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I added a Photo of Sara Gómez as well as add to her career section. I expanded upon her film and added to her overall legacy.
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'''Sara Gómez''' aka '''Sarita Gómez''' (November 8, 1942 &ndash; June 2, 1974) was a [[Cuba|Cuban]] filmmaker. As a member of [[Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos|ICAIC]] during its early years, she was one of only two black filmmakers in attendance. She was the institute's first and for her lifetime Cuba's only, woman director. Gómez is known for her first and final feature-length film ''[[De Cierta Manera]]'' (1974) and as, "a revolutionary filmmaker with intersecting concerns about the [[Afro-Cuban]] community and the value of its cultural traditions, women's issues, and the treatment of the marginalized sectors of society."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.films.com/id/111618|title=Sara Gomez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker|website=Films Media Group|language=en|access-date=2018-11-15}}</ref>{{Infobox person
{{Infobox person
| name = Sara Gómez
| name = Sara Gómez
| birth_name = Sara Gómez Yera
| birth_name = Sara Gómez Yera
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| death_cause = Asthma
| death_cause = Asthma
| religion =
| religion =
| image =
| caption =
| years_active = 1962–1974
| years_active = 1962–1974
| organization = [[ICAIC]]
| organization = [[ICAIC]]
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| children = 3
| children = 3
}}
}}
[[File:Sara Gomez.jpg|thumb|371x371px|Photograph of Sara Gomez]]
⚫
'''Sara Gómez''' aka '''Sarita Gómez''' (November 8, 1942 &ndash; June 2, 1974) was a [[Cuba|Cuban]] filmmaker. As a member of [[Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos|ICAIC]] during its early years, she was one of only two black filmmakers in attendance. She was the institute's first and for her lifetime Cuba's only, woman director. Gómez is known for her first and final feature-length film ''[[De Cierta Manera]]'' (1974) and as, "a revolutionary filmmaker with intersecting concerns about the [[Afro-Cuban]] community and the value of its cultural traditions, women's issues, and the treatment of the marginalized sectors of society."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.films.com/id/111618|title=Sara Gomez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker|website=Films Media Group|language=en|access-date=2018-11-15}}</ref>


== Early life and education ==
== Early life and education ==
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==Career – contribution to Cuban cinema==
==Career – contribution to Cuban cinema==

⚫
Sara Gómez's last film, the hybrid narrative/documentary ''De cierta manera'', (translated for US audiences as ''One Way or Another)'' has been hailed as the "first movie to truly explore conflicting threads of racial and gender identity within a revolutionary context."<ref>Andrea Easley Morris, ''Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film: Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance'' (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2012), p. 12.</ref> However, Gómez died before the film could be completed and so [[Tomás Gutiérrez Alea]], Rigoberto Lopez, and [[Julio García Espinosa]] supervised the sound-mix and post-production stages of preparing "One way or Another" for theatrical release.<ref name=":0">Julia Lesage. ''One Way or Another: dialectical, revolutionary, feminist''. from Jump Cut, no. 20, may 1978; Jump Cut, No. 57, Fall 2016</ref> Noted Cuban film scholar Michael Chanan observes that the film is "an aesthetically radical film...mix[ing]...fiction and documentary, in the most original way...by using real people to play themselves alongside professional actors."<ref>Michael Chanan, ''The Cuban Image'' (London: BFI Publishing, 1985), pp. 284–85.</ref> Haseenah Ebrahim writes about how Gómez's work brings attention to religious groups such as the [[Abakuá]], "Afrocuban religions make an appearance in the films and videos of almost all Afrocuban filmmakers, and feature prominently in the work of Gómez..." and highlights the importance of Sara Gómez's background as a black Cuban woman in cinema by noting, "In the case of both Gómez and [[Gloria Rolando|Rolando]], race has functioned to provide a perspective that is not mirrored in the work of non-black Cuban filmmakers. Significantly, both women self-identified themselves as black Cubans: Sara Gómez has been quoted as saying she did not want to be 'just another middle-class black woman who plays the piano'".<ref name=":1" /> Essayist Roberto Zurbano Torres states, "it is also essential to mark her commitment to popular culture and her critical and self-critical passion through which she expressed the complexity of a world under construction: contributing a cinema of conscience, pointing out the virtues and defects of a social process that tried to change the world from an island in the Caribbean."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hgfilmfest.com/single-post/2018/10/12/SARA-GOMEZ-A-BLACK-FILMMAKER-ABLE-TO-ACHIEVE-THE-MYSTERY-AND-SILENCE-OF-THE-TRUE-CLASSICS|title=SARA GOMEZ: A BLACK FILMMAKER ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE MYSTERY AND SILENCE OF THE TRUE CLASSICS {{!}} Havana Glasgow Film Festival|website=Havana Glasgow Film Festival|language=en|access-date=2018-11-16}}</ref>
=== ''De Cierta Manera (One Way or Another)'' ===
⚫
Sara Gómez's last film, the hybrid narrative/documentary ''De cierta manera'', (translated for US audiences as ''One Way or Another)'' has been hailed as the "first movie to truly explore conflicting threads of racial and gender identity within a revolutionary context."<ref>Andrea Easley Morris, ''Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film: Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance'' (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2012), p. 12.</ref> This revolutionary film was produced by the ICAIC in 1974. This film takes place in the lower class neighborhoods of Havana, Cuba. This film addresses issues of class, race, and gender with a backdrop of the revolution. This film shifts between a documentary style that analysis the revolution and a fictitious love story that challenges the attitudes around race, social class and gender in Cuban culture. At the begging of the film Gomez Says it is "a film about real people, and some fictitious ones.” Noted Cuban film scholar Michael Chanan observes that the film is "an aesthetically radical film...mix[ing]...fiction and documentary, in the most original way...by using real people to play themselves alongside professional actors."<ref>Michael Chanan, ''The Cuban Image'' (London: BFI Publishing, 1985), pp. 284–85.</ref> Haseenah Ebrahim writes about how Gómez's work brings attention to religious groups such as the [[Abakuá]], "Afrocuban religions make an appearance in the films and videos of almost all Afrocuban filmmakers, and feature prominently in the work of Gómez..." and highlights the importance of Sara Gómez's background as a black Cuban woman in cinema by noting, "In the case of both Gómez and [[Gloria Rolando|Rolando]], race has functioned to provide a perspective that is not mirrored in the work of non-black Cuban filmmakers. Significantly, both women self-identified themselves as black Cubans: Sara Gómez has been quoted as saying she did not want to be 'just another middle-class black woman who plays the piano'".<ref name=":1" /> Essayist Roberto Zurbano Torres states, "it is also essential to mark her commitment to popular culture and her critical and self-critical passion through which she expressed the complexity of a world under construction: contributing a cinema of conscience, pointing out the virtues and defects of a social process that tried to change the world from an island in the Caribbean."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hgfilmfest.com/single-post/2018/10/12/SARA-GOMEZ-A-BLACK-FILMMAKER-ABLE-TO-ACHIEVE-THE-MYSTERY-AND-SILENCE-OF-THE-TRUE-CLASSICS|title=SARA GOMEZ: A BLACK FILMMAKER ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE MYSTERY AND SILENCE OF THE TRUE CLASSICS {{!}} Havana Glasgow Film Festival|website=Havana Glasgow Film Festival|language=en|access-date=2018-11-16}}</ref> Gómez died before the film could be completed and so [[Tomás Gutiérrez Alea]], Rigoberto Lopez, and [[Julio García Espinosa]] supervised the sound-mix and post-production stages of preparing "One way or Another" for theatrical release.<ref name=":0">Julia Lesage. ''One Way or Another: dialectical, revolutionary, feminist''. from Jump Cut, no. 20, may 1978; Jump Cut, No. 57, Fall 2016</ref>

=== Legacy: ===
As of 2011 Gómez remains the only Cuban women filmmaker to direct a feature length film produced by the ICAIC. She is still the only black women who was apart of this institution. <ref>{{Cite book|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/800925792|title=Venceremos? the erotics of black self-making in Cuba|last=Allen, Jafari S. (1968- ...)., Auteur.|date=2011|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=9780822349327|oclc=800925792}}</ref> Gómez's films are used in feminist studies due to their reflections of marginalization. Susan Lord, a professor in the Film and Media department at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada wrote that Gómez's films embody feminist, radical, and democracy. <ref>{{Cite journal|date=2009|editor-last=Frazier|editor-first=Lessie Jo|editor2-last=Cohen|editor2-first=Deborah|title=Gender and Sexuality in 1968|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230101203|doi=10.1057/9780230101203}}</ref>


== As a subject ==
== As a subject ==

Revision as of 04:13, 6 November 2019

Sara Gómez aka Sarita Gómez (November 8, 1942 – June 2, 1974) was a Cuban filmmaker. As a member of ICAIC during its early years, she was one of only two black filmmakers in attendance. She was the institute's first and for her lifetime Cuba's only, woman director. Gómez is known for her first and final feature-length film De Cierta Manera (1974) and as, "a revolutionary filmmaker with intersecting concerns about the Afro-Cuban community and the value of its cultural traditions, women's issues, and the treatment of the marginalized sectors of society."[1]

Sara Gómez
Born
Sara Gómez Yera

November 8, 1942
Guanabacoa, La Habana Province, Cuba
DiedJune 2, 1974(1974-06-02) (aged 31)
Havana, Cuba
Cause of deathAsthma
Years active1962–1974
OrganizationICAIC
Notable workDe cierta manera (1977)
Spouse(s)Germinal Hernandez, Hector Veitia
Children3
File:Sara Gomez.jpg
Photograph of Sara Gomez

Early life and education

Brought up in a middle-class black family in Havana, she studied music (piano), literature, and Afro-Cuban ethnography. She had family members who played in the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and inspired her studies at the Conservatory of Music in Havana[2]. She worked as a journalist on the youth publication Mella before joining the newly-formed Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) in 1961, where she subsequently served as assistant director to Jorge Fraga and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, as well as to the visiting French director Agnès Varda. Gómez made a series of documentary shorts on assigned topics before directing her first feature.[3]

Career – contribution to Cuban cinema

De Cierta Manera (One Way or Another)

Sara Gómez's last film, the hybrid narrative/documentary De cierta manera, (translated for US audiences as One Way or Another) has been hailed as the "first movie to truly explore conflicting threads of racial and gender identity within a revolutionary context."[4] This revolutionary film was produced by the ICAIC in 1974. This film takes place in the lower class neighborhoods of Havana, Cuba. This film addresses issues of class, race, and gender with a backdrop of the revolution. This film shifts between a documentary style that analysis the revolution and a fictitious love story that challenges the attitudes around race, social class and gender in Cuban culture. At the begging of the film Gomez Says it is "a film about real people, and some fictitious ones.” Noted Cuban film scholar Michael Chanan observes that the film is "an aesthetically radical film...mix[ing]...fiction and documentary, in the most original way...by using real people to play themselves alongside professional actors."[5] Haseenah Ebrahim writes about how Gómez's work brings attention to religious groups such as the Abakuá, "Afrocuban religions make an appearance in the films and videos of almost all Afrocuban filmmakers, and feature prominently in the work of Gómez..." and highlights the importance of Sara Gómez's background as a black Cuban woman in cinema by noting, "In the case of both Gómez and Rolando, race has functioned to provide a perspective that is not mirrored in the work of non-black Cuban filmmakers. Significantly, both women self-identified themselves as black Cubans: Sara Gómez has been quoted as saying she did not want to be 'just another middle-class black woman who plays the piano'".[3] Essayist Roberto Zurbano Torres states, "it is also essential to mark her commitment to popular culture and her critical and self-critical passion through which she expressed the complexity of a world under construction: contributing a cinema of conscience, pointing out the virtues and defects of a social process that tried to change the world from an island in the Caribbean."[6] Gómez died before the film could be completed and so Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Rigoberto Lopez, and Julio García Espinosa supervised the sound-mix and post-production stages of preparing "One way or Another" for theatrical release.[7]

Legacy:

As of 2011 Gómez remains the only Cuban women filmmaker to direct a feature length film produced by the ICAIC. She is still the only black women who was apart of this institution. [8] Gómez's films are used in feminist studies due to their reflections of marginalization. Susan Lord, a professor in the Film and Media department at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada wrote that Gómez's films embody feminist, radical, and democracy. [9]

As a subject

Salut les Cubains

At the end of Agnès Varda's short documentary Salut les Cubains (1963), Sara Gómez is featured as a young filmmaker dancing Cha-cha-cha with her fellow ICAIC filmmakers (illustrated through photographic animation.) Agnès Varda describes Gómez in the documentary as one who, "directs didactic films."[10]Throughout the production of this film, "She [Gómez] had the opportunity to accompany the prestigious gala director Agnès Varda in her tour of our country and collaborate with her in the documentary"[11]

Sara Gómez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker

A few decades after Gómez's time, The Swiss filmmaker Alessandra Muller directs the documentary film: Sara Gómez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker (2004), supported both by ICAIC and Agnès Varda, a film which looks back on her life and revisits Gómez's family and friends. In the documentary, they describe her film sets as social events and that Sara would listen to everyone's input, of professionals and those who were not. Actor Mario Balmaseda notes "We spent a lot of time with people from this area, almost three, four months living with them sometimes sleeping and eating in their home, and this made it a lot easier. We slipped from a professional level into friendship." In the documentary, she is praised by her family as a woman who refused to choose between family and normal life. [12]

Death

Gómez died after editing her feature, at the age of 31, due to an asthma attack.[7]

Filmography

Short films

  • Plaza Vieja; El solar; Historia de la piratería; Solar habanero (1962)
  • Iré a Santiago (1964)
  • Excursión a Vueltabajo (1965)
  • Guanabacoa: Crónica de mi familia (1966)
  • ... Y tenemos sabor (1967)
  • En la otra isla; Una isla para Miguel (1968)
  • Isla del tesoro (1969)
  • Poder local, poder popular (1970)
  • Un documental a propósito del tránsito; De bateyes (1971)
  • Atención prenatal; Año uno; Mi aporte (1972)
  • Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario (1973

Feature length

As an Assistant Director

  • Salut les Cubains (1963) dir. Agnès Varda
  • Cumbite (1964) dir. Tomas Gutierez Alea
  • El Robo (1965) dir. Jorge Fraga

Further reading

Chanan, Michael. Cuban Cinema Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. ISBN 0816634246 ISBN 978-0816634248

References

  1. ^ "Sara Gomez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker". Films Media Group. Retrieved 2018-11-15.
  2. ^ Benson, Devyn Spence (2018-04-20). "Sara Gómez: Afrocubana (Afro-Cuban Women's) Activism after 1961". Cuban Studies. 46: 134–158. doi:10.1353/cub.2018.0008. ISSN 1548-2464.
  3. ^ a b Ebrahim, Haseenah (Winter 1998). "Afrocuban Religions in Sara Gomez's One Way or Another and Gloria Rolando's Oggun". Western Journal of Black Studies. no.4: 239–251 – via Ebscohost. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
  4. ^ Andrea Easley Morris, Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film: Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2012), p. 12.
  5. ^ Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image (London: BFI Publishing, 1985), pp. 284–85.
  6. ^ "SARA GOMEZ: A BLACK FILMMAKER ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE MYSTERY AND SILENCE OF THE TRUE CLASSICS | Havana Glasgow Film Festival". Havana Glasgow Film Festival. Retrieved 2018-11-16.
  7. ^ a b Julia Lesage. One Way or Another: dialectical, revolutionary, feminist. from Jump Cut, no. 20, may 1978; Jump Cut, No. 57, Fall 2016
  8. ^ Allen, Jafari S. (1968- ...)., Auteur. (2011). Venceremos? the erotics of black self-making in Cuba. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822349327. OCLC 800925792.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Frazier, Lessie Jo; Cohen, Deborah, eds. (2009). "Gender and Sexuality in 1968". doi:10.1057/9780230101203. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. ^ Agnes Varda. Salut les Cubains (1963) France, Film.
  11. ^ "Sara Gomez". cubacine.cult.cu. auto-translation from Spanish using Google Translate. Retrieved 2018-11-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. ^ Alessandra Muller. Sara Gomez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker. (2004)

External links

See also


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