Spotlight on Cuba: Sara Gómez 2

Programme

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  Iré a Santiago

  “Mulatto is a state of mind,” says the voice-over in Iré a Santiago (I’m going to Santiago). This dynamic black and white film made five years after the Cuban revolution captures that state of mind in scenes from everyday life in the port city of Santiago de Cuba. The narrow streets pulse with activity, with street vendors touting pineapples, people flirting on café terraces, a funeral taking place, and carnival celebrations.
  
  The voice-over, meanwhile, brings us the history of the city. Columbus set foot here in 1492, and it was in Santiago that Hernán Cortés planned his conquest of Mexico. When French plantation holders fled to Cuba with the people they had enslaved following the Haitian revolution in 1791, it led to a significant rise in the Black population in Santiago.
  
  Iré a Santiago presents the influence of them and the mulattos on life in the city. The film is a celebration, an ode to this vibrant, pluralistic city, where the vitality of the present - as Gómez captured it in 1964 - overcame the colonial past.
  
  Iré a Santiago was digitally restored by Vulnerable Media Lab as part of the Sara Gómez Project.

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  Y... tenemos sabor

  Sophisticated musical instruments are all well and good, but four pieces of wood and four pieces of metal provide everything you need to play a rumba, explains the esteemed singer and songwriter Alberto Zayas towards the end of his journey into Cuban musical history. Still, that doesn’t stop the stylish Zayas – checkered shirt, ever-present cigar – from energetically explaining where the traditional instruments originated and how they developed, with the help of some delightful musical interludes.
  
  In this homage to a music genre that resonated around the world, Sara Gómez betrays her musical and ethnographic background as she affectionately offers a platform to Zayas. He identifies and demonstrates each instrument, with particular attention to the rhythm section – because dance is the measure of all things, after all.
  
  Many of these percussion instruments originated in continental Africa. Enslaved people brought them to the Spanish colony, where they became part of a process of cultural fusion that gave rise to a unique musical tradition.
  
  Y... tenemos sabor was digitally restored by Vulnerable Media Lab as part of the Sara Gómez Project.

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  De bateyes

  In this short documentary, Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez explores the history of bateyes, simple workers’ settlements surrounding sugarcane mills on the islands. Shots of bateyes and their ruins alternate with interviews with former workers. In painting a picture of daily life on the plantations, their testimonies reveal a rich oral tradition.
  
  We also hear from the poet Pablo Armando Hernandez, who himself grew up in a batey. His story draws a parallel between the living conditions of workers on Cuban plantations and those of Afro-Americans in the United States – both groups are mostly descended from enslaved Africans.
  
  De bateyes is suffused with Gómez’s revolutionary socialist ideals. She makes it clear early on that her documentary is all about the sugarcane cutters and their emotional and cultural world, and not her own perspective. So it is their words, stories, and poetic myths that form the thread running through this nearly-forgotten film.
  
  De bateyes was digitally restored by Vulnerable Media Lab as part of the Sara Gómez project.

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  Guanabacoa: Crónicas de mi familia

  In this autobiographical film, Sara Gómez takes us to Guanabacoa, a town southeast of Havana where her father’s family come from. Shots of historical colonial buildings, a Jewish cemetery and a Santería altar evoke the cultural influences feeding into streetlife at the time this film was made.
  
  Gómez uses old portrait photographs and contemporary footage to introduce members of her family – one in which making music plays a cherished role. The film is dedicated to the director’s elderly godmother, the family’s moral compass. Her recollections and anecdotes from the pre-revolutionary days reveal a keen awareness of race and class.
  
  The film concludes with a soundless scene at the kitchen table, in which the free and uncomplicated spirit of Gómez’s favourite aunt Berta is palpable. Guanabacoa is more than merely a family chronicle: this is an evocative portrait of the Black middle-class in pre-and post-revolutionary Cuba.
  
  Guanabacoa: Crónicas de mi familia was digitally restored by Vulnerable Media Lab as part of the Sara Gómez Project.