Sara Gómez

Sara Gómez
Born November 8, 1942
Havana, Cuba
Died June 2, 1974 (aged 30–31)
Havana, Cuba
Organization ICAIC

Sara Gómez (November 8, 1942 – June 2, 1974) was a Cuban filmmaker. Brought up in a middle-class black family in Havana, she studied literature, piano and Afro-Cuban ethnography. She worked as a journalist 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. One of only two black filmmakers at ICAIC at the time, and for several years its only woman director, Gómez made a series of documentary shorts on assigned topics before directing her first feature.

Contribution to Cuban cinema

Gómez's last film, the 1974 hybrid narrative/documentary De cierta manera, which was completed posthumously by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa, has been hailed as the "first movie to truly explore conflicting threads of racial and gender identity within a revolutionary context,"[1] with noted Cuban film scholar Michael Chanan observing 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."[2]

Death

Gómez died, at the age of 31, due to an asthma attack.

Filmography

  • 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)
  • De cierta manera (1977)

References

  1. ↑ Andrea Easley Morris, Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film: Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2012), p. 12.
  2. ↑ Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image (London: BFI Publishing, 1985), pp. 284–85.

See also


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