The researcher Juanamaría Cordones Cook has produced 40 audiovisuals on the Cuban black intelligentsia. This Uruguayan was fascinated by the work of Georgina Herrera, Belkis Ayón, Alberto Lescay and Rogelio Martínez Furé, among other figures.
Precisely for promoting Afro-Latin American creation and studying it from the University of Missouri, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) awarded her the Dulce María Loynaz International Prize on Tuesday.
“For me it is a great honor and a very unexpected one. I started all this work with the Afro-Cuban intelligentsia without planning it. The reason why I focused on it is because great changes took place here after the Cuban Revolution, it was a transformation of values, of all social and political structures. Then that flourishing was propitiated generation after generation. The African diaspora has in common the sad experience of crossing the Atlantic and slavery. The Latin American and Afro-Latin American problems, his creative spirit arises from colonization. There is the root of everything that came after: the suffering and the desire for liberation”, affirmed the researcher.
The meeting was attended by Luis Morlote Rivas, president of UNEAC, Fernando Rojas, vice minister of Culture, and other members of the organization founded by Nicolás Guillén in 1961.
As part of the event, National Literature Award winner Nancy Morejón highlighted Juanamaría’s sensitivity to understand the universes of each artist, which is why she was one of the most helpful for the documentalist to develop her work.
«I have known the work of Juana María Cordones since the early nineties. She made very important contributions to Latin American and Afro-Latino theater. That made her very interested in the work of the Cuban Eugenio Hernández Espinosa. Her poetry, mainly that written by women, is also the focus of her attention. Her audiovisuals reveal that talent of hers to scrutinize and know why an author enters certain worlds, “said the Cuban poet.
The documentary filmmaker has a strong interest in decolonial theories. She is interested in those characters that do not fit into the Creole mold and connect with the native cultures of the continent.
(Taken from the UNEAC site)