JUANAMARIA CORDONES-COOK
"Documentaries: image, sound and movement of my research."
Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of Romance Languages
University of Missouri
Documentary Filmmaker
In November, CubanaBooks published:
Cimarroneando: Poemas escogidos de Georgina Herrera. / Always Rebellious: Selected poems by Georgina Herrera. Edition and selection, with introduction and notes by Juanamaria Cordones-Cook. Accompanied by documentary, Cimarroneando con GH. Chico, California: Cubana Books (2014). (170 pages)
Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco
FILM SCREENING | Art & Resolution: Films of Afro-Cuban Life and History
Thursday December 4, 2014
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
In conjunction with our current exhibition Drapetomania: Grupo Antillano and the Art of Afro Cuba, curated by Harvard Professor Alejandro de la Fuente, we will screen a program of documentaries on contemporary social reality in Cuba largely expressed by cultural workers. The films were produced and directed by University of Missouri Professor Juanamaria Cordones-Cook.
DIAGO: A MAROON ARTIST (Juanamaria Cordones-Cook, 2013, 28 minutes) Prominent multi-media artist Juan Roberto Diago employs recycled objects to create a unique body of work and shows how race and poverty are represented in his paintings and installations. The film is enriched by readings by acclaimed poet Nancy Morejón. Diago’s work is presented in the current MoAD exhibit.
ROGELIO MARTINEZ FURÉ: A CUBAN GRIOT (Juanamaria Cordones-Cook, 2014, 30 minutes) Furé is a repository of the oral tradition, Africanist, scholar of folklore and religion and founder of Cuba’s National Folkloric Ballet. Conversations with Furé and other Afro-Cuban intellectuals are supplemented by extraordinary images of religious rituals and dances.
Cornelius Moore, Co-Director of California Newsreel and curator of the series, will introduce and lead an audience discussion. All films are in Spanish with English subtitles.
Los documentales, Cimarroneando con GH y Nancy Morejón, paisajes célebres fueron exhibidos en el congreso de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, organizado por la Universitat de Barcelona, celebrando el bicentenario de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda en el Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística, La Habana, Cuba, Noviembre de 2014.
The documentaries, Cimarroneando con GH y Nancy Morejón, paisajes célebres were screened at the Congress of Hispanic Femenine Literature and Culture organized by the Universitat de Barcelona, celebrating the 200 years of Gertrudis gómez de Avellaneda at the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística, Havana, Cuba, November, 2014.
In September 2014, my documentary Battle, Change from Within received an Emmy award nomination.
Saturday, May 10th, 2014
For those of you in Santiago de Cuba, you are cordially invited to the film screening of my documentary, Nancy Morejón: Paisajes célebres / Famous Landscapes (2012). Film will be presented by poet Teresa Melo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B2ZZq8pqHXgfollowed by Q & A.
Please note that this film screening will take place at dusk at the Fundación Caguayo and it will be followed by Q&A with Nancy Morejón.
El pasado sábado 10 de mayo, a las siete de la noche, se realizó en el Patio del Caguayo el encuentro con la escritora Nancy Morejón, Premio Nacional de Literatura, quien visitaba a Santiago de Cuba como parte de las actividades del Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana.
En esta actividad fueron proyectados fragmentos del documental Nancy Morejón: Paisajes célebres , de la realizadora uruguaya, Juanamaría Cordones-Cook, dedicado a la vida y obra de Nancy, que daría paso a la lectura de sus textos y al diálogo con esta personalidad de la literatura cubana. El encuentro estuvo conducido por la poeta santiaguera Teresa Melo, especialista de la Fundación.
On April 25th there was the Missouri premiere of Nancy Morejón, Famous Landscapes, a film produced and directed in Cuba in 2012 by Juanamaría Cordones-Cook, MU Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, and funded by MU Research Board and Research Council. This is Professor Cordones-Cook's twelfth documentary on a series she is producing and directing on contemporary Cuban culture and art with concentration on what she calls Havana's Black Renaissance, the intellectuals and artists of African descent who came of age after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Nancy Morejón, Famous Landscapes offers a unique perspective on contemporary Cuban culture and intellectual life through the world and artistic achievements of Nancy Morejón (Havana 1944), the most celebrated and widely translated living Afro-Latin American poet, whose writings address contemporary issues of ethnicity, gender, history, and Afro-Cuban identity. Showing Morejón’s Havana, as a real non-touristic city, this film also includes voices and images of other prominent Afro-Cuban intellectuals accompanied by music performed by icons of the 20th century Cuban musical world, Richard Egües, Marta Valdés, and Elena Burke.
Film Screening, Lectures & Discussion:
Nancy Morejón, Famous Landscapes featuring distinguished scholars:
Dr. Efraín Barradas, University of Florida, and
Dr. Patricia González, Smith College.
6 p.m., Leadership Auditorium,
2501 MU Student Center, at the University of Missouri in Columbia
Sponsored by the MU Afro-Romance Institute, Arts & Humanities Small grants, Office of the Vice Provost of International Programs, and Office of Diversity Initiative.
Homenaje a Georgina Herrera en Universo Avellaneda
17 marzo, 2014 de Negra cubana
En el marco del Encuentro Universo Avellaneda, se realizó un homenaje a la escritora cubana Georgina Herrera, que incluyó la exhibición del documental Cimarroneando con G.H (30.51′), de Juanamaría Cordones-Cook. El documental es una entrevista a Georgina Herrera, sobre su vida y su poética, en diálogo con su poesía, también leída por ella.
La proyección del documental tuvo lugar en la sede nacional de la UNEAC, el día 18 de marzo, a la 1:00 pm, como cierre del evento.