Jurakán, A Film Series: Candela

This is the fourth and final film of the film series Jurakán, curated and hosted by film professor Mary Leonard. Jurakán is part of the programming of the Fotofocus Biennial.

The screening of the film will be followed by an in person conversation between director  Andrés Farias Cintron, Rey Andujar, the writer of the novel the film was based on, and co-hosts Mary Leonard and Mauricio Espinoza, 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:

Andrés Farias Cintron is a filmmaker and visual artist from the Dominican Republic. In 2014 he won the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Award for his video installation Honey Pot. In 2015, he was selected for the Emerging Leaders of the Americas Program (ELAP) for his research project on the representation of the Caribbean Women in Film. In 2018 he shot his first feature film Candela, which was supported by the Sundance Institute and La Fabrique des cinémas du Monde of the French Institute, and released in 2021. Candela won the Jury Prize at the Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Film and Best Film at the La Silla Awards in the Dominican Republic. The film is currently being shown in festivals. He is co-founder of Caribe Pop: https://www.caribepop.com.

The Writer:

Rey Andújar (Santo Domingo, 1977) is the author of several novels and short stories, including The Triangle Man and Candela, recently adapted to film by director Andrés Farías Cintrón. His novel Los gestos inútiles received the VI Alba Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Narrative, during the Havana Book Fair in 2015. Andújar writes for film, theater, and academia. He holds a Ph.D. in Caribbean Philosophy and Literature from the Center for Advanced Studies of the Caribbean. He is a professor of Spanish and Latin American Culture at Governors State University in Chicago. He is co-founder of Caribe Pop: https://www.caribepop.com.

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: Mauricio Espinoza is professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature/Cultural Studies at the University of Cincinnati.