Gloria Rolando, Cuba 

 :: Eyes of the Rainbow :: My Footsteps in Baraguá::

Screening: Sunday, October 19 – 7.45 p.m.
Meet the Director: Thursday, October 16 from 2.00 p.m. - 4.15 p.m.

Gloria Rolando's career spans over 20 years at ICAIC, the Cuban national film institute. She now also heads an independent film-making group, Imágenes del Caribe, based in Havana, where she has finished working on her 6th film, Los Marqueses de Atarés, about a carnival comparsa uniting expressions of the rumberos, santeros and abakuá in the Atarés neighborhood of Havana. She has also completed the English subtitle version of her 2001 film concerning the 1912 massacre of the Independents of Color "Roots of My  Heart." In 2000, she finished another documentary, El Alacrán (the Scorpion), concerning the comparsas, the music and dance style of congo origin so popular in the Cuban carnivals.

The Films:

Eyes of the Rainbow (1997)

Country: Cuba 
Running Time: 47
Language: English 
Genre: Documentary

An English language documentary by the independent video group Imágenes del Caribe, the film deals with the life of Assata Shakur, the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader who escaped from prison and was given political asylum in Cuba, where she has lived for close to 15 years. In it we visit Assata in Havana and she tells us about her history and her life in Cuba. This film is also about Assata's AfroCuban context, including the Yoruba Orisha Oya, goddess of the ancestors, of war, of the cemetery and of the rainbow. Special performances: Grupo Vocal Baobab; Sweet Honey in the Rock; Danza Nacional de Cuba; Junius Williams and the Magic Harp.

My Footsteps in Baraguá

Country: Cuba  
Running Time:  53 mins
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary 

Migration has been and is a constant theme in the life of the people of the Caribbean. In the municipality of Baragua, in the present province of Ciego de Avila, Cuba, the stories and customs of the English speaking West Indians and their descendants still remain alive. Today, they are a part of Cuba. For some, there is always the nostalgia for the country to which they will never return; others express their total rootedness in today’s Cuba. The youngest will nevertheless be able to learn of their ancestry and better understand the origins of the English surnames they have.

In the style of the documentary are merged family memories in a process very familiar to other Caribbean people: for example the trip from Jamaica, Barbados, and other islands to Panama and subsequently to Cuba which started the heady development of the sugar industry in the early years of this century. Direct testimony does not preclude the poetry present in the charm of the environment of the old sugar barracks, the re-creation of the traditional music and dance such as the Maypole, and the use of old photos that allow us an imaginary approach to that past.

These immigrants brought two cultures: that of the English colonizers and the genuine one born under the Caribbean sun with the mixing of African rhythms. In Baragua, all the roots merge into a common trunk. That is how time marked it, and that is what happens with the interlocked cotton trees that are a liet-motif throughout the documentary.

The video is dedicated to 3 important Caribbean intellectuals: Nicolas Guillen (Cuba), George Lamming (Barbados), and Rex Nettleford (Jamaica). "My Footsteps in Baragua" is a contribution to the history of the Africans in Cuba, and to the study of the African Diaspora at the end of this century.

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