Remixing The American Dream – Raquel Cepeda

Remixing the American Dream

Wednesday, October 4, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The American Dream, Cepeda argues, is a pipedream for some and a birthright for others. Challenging the absurdity of the black-white national conversation about the American dream, Cepeda offers a working and accessible revision to suit generations of Americans, like her, who have been pushed to the margins.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Popel Shaw Center for Ethnicity & Race, the Division of Student Life, and the Departments of Spanish & Portuguese, English, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, award-winning journalist, cultural activist, podcaster, and documentary filmmaker Raquel Cepeda is the author of Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. Equal parts memoir about Cepeda’s coming of age in New York City and Santo Domingo, and detective story chronicling her year-long journey to discover the truth about her ancestry, the book also looks at what it means to be Latinx today. Cepeda’s latest documentary Some Girls, produced by Henry Chalfant and Sam Pollard, focuses on a group of troubled Latina teens from a Bronx-based side prevention program who are transformed by an exploration of their roots via the use of ancestral DNA testing, followed by a treat to the seat of the Americas. Cepeda is currently in production on her next documentary and currently writing East of Broadway, a story about one community in New York as soon through the lives of several of its inhabitants. She lives with her husband, Sacha Jenkins, a filmmaker, musician, and creative agency partner, her daughter, 20, and five-year-old son in New York City, “…concrete jungle where dreams are made of [and] there’s nothin’ you can’t do…”

 

Read the article: EXAMINING IDENTITY by Kaila Basile ’20 

Imagining Cuba: Emerging Documentary Filmmaking within Social Change

Imagining Cuba: Emerging Documentary Filmmaking within Social Change

Thursday, October 19, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Sainz explores the struggles of the emerging generation of documentary filmmakers in contemporary Cuba.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Spanish & Portuguese; Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies; Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies; Film Studies; the Women’s & Gender Resource Center; and First Year Seminars.

Biography (provided by the speaker)


Damián Sainz
  graduated from the University of Arts, Havana, Cuba with a degree in media arts and from the EICTV (International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños) with a degree in documentary direction. Sainz also studied at the Mel Oppenheim Film School in Montreal, Canada and at the Cinema Department at HEAD Genève, Switzerland. Sainz has worked as director, editor and producer in documentary films in Cuba, Canada, Switzerland and Spain and has collaborated with visual arts projects like Galeria Continua, Inventario at the Ludwig Foundation and online project Docuselfie. His short documentary films, focused on LGBTQ culture in the island and Cuban youth, have been selected and awarded in several international film festivals like Havana Film Festival, Fribourg in Switzerland, FICUNAM in Mexico, DocumentaMadrid in Spain and FICU in Uruguay. Sainz teaches documentary cinema at the EICTV in San Antonio de los Baños, The Ludwig Foundation in Cuba and at the Cinema Program of Altos de Chavón in Dominican Republic. He lives and works as an independent filmmaker in Havana, Cuba.

Read the article: EMERGING DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING WITHIN SOCIAL CHANGE by Lara Dunkelberg ’20