Jurakán, A Film Series: After Maria, The Two Shores

After Maria: The 2 Shores is the second film of the film series Jurakán, curated and hosted by film professor Mary Leonard. Jurakán is part of the programming of the Fotofocus Biennial.

It will be followed by a conversation with the director, Sonia Fritz, and a reception.

The Series:

Jurakán is the name given by the Tainos, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, to the god of chaos and discord who controls the often turbulent weather that affects the region. The images and narratives that predominate about the Caribbean today often evoke images of  the sun, but representations of wind and water recur in Taino imagery more than those of the sun, and remain part of the imaginary of the people who live in the region. The word hurricane, derived from Jurakán, refers to storms that originate in the Caribbean, unlike other words, like cyclone or monsoon, that describe storms with turbulent winds in other parts of the world. This series explores what hurricanes are, their mythological and metaphorical associations, what it is like to experience them sensorially; factual, scientific and practical information about them; as well as artistic/poetic representations of hurricanes in cultural context. It looks at how they signify and how everything that they mean resonates in Caribbean societies in multifarious ways. It will consist of four presentations. In each, there will be a conversation and question and answer session with the audience following the film in which the ideas described above will be explored.

The Director:

Sonia Fritz was born and raised in Mexico City, and studied film at the Autonomous University of Mexico. She moved to Puerto Rico in 1985. She has directed fiction films and documentaries from 1983 to the present. Moving between Puerto Rico, Mexico and the United States, major themes in her work are the life-experiences of women in all three countries, and migration. Her films include Myrna Baez, The Mirrors of Silence (1989) about a Puerto Rican painter, Visa for a Dream (1990) about undocumented female Dominican workers in Puerto Rico, Luisa Capetillo, Passion for Justice about a female labor organizer and anarchist in Puerto Rico (1995), A History of the Puerto Rican Community of Lorain (2001) about Puerto Ricans in Lorain, Ohio, and Mariachis with Pants (2019), about a female Latina mariachi band in New York.

The Curator and Host:

Mary Leonard is full professor in the English Department of the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus where she teaches courses in film, media and literature. She is also the founder and director of the university’s film program, the UPRM Film Certificate. She has presented her work at conferences in many countries, published articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as in local publications in Puerto Rico, been invited to lecture and present Puerto Rican films at universities in the U.S. and in Trinidad, and been interviewed numerous times on television and radio programs. She has organized and directed conferences on visual narration at the University of Puerto Rico (2005 & 2007), and on Caribbean film in the Dominican Republic (2020). She has also produced/coordinated and/or supported the production of numerous films made by students and graduates of the UPRM film program, and other filmmakers since 2007. She is the co-founder and co-host of Caribbean Film Forum, a series of online conversations on topics related to film in the context of the Caribbean (2021 – present). She is also one of the recipients of a National Endowment of the Humanities grant for the 2022 year which will fund the establishment of an Oral History Center at UPRM with a documentary film production component.

Co-host:

Sara Drabik is a documentary filmmaker and film professor at Northern Kentucky University