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The colonial scar

Conversation with Aída Bueno Sarduy

Colonial intimacy

Debate

The anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Aída Bueno Sarduy, a leading expert on the history of the African diaspora to Latin America, will present the short film Guillermina and speak about how colonialism worked in the domain of intimacy.

In Guillermina, a white man recalls with great affection the black maid who raised him in Cuba in the 1940s. The tenderness of his words suggests a closeness to the woman which, despite everything, does not erase the harshness of her subaltern condition. Aída Bueno thus considers how racial discrimination is imposed even in the closest human relations, juxtaposing the man’s account with photographs and archive material about the enslavement of women in Cuba and Brazil. Can affection elude prejudice? What space does the black or Afro-descendant woman occupy in the contemporary imagination?

The session will begin with the screening of the short film Guillermina (17 minutes), which will be followed by a discussion in which Aída Bueno speaks with Gustau Nerín, historian and expert on Spanish colonialism, and the researcher Anyely Marín Cisneros, a specialist in the intersection of body politics and history of science. The conversation will be moderated by Marina Vinyes, head of Promotion at the Catalan Film Library and expert in the cinema of archives and memory.

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Aída Bueno Sarduy

Colonial intimacy

The anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Aída Bueno Sarduy, a leading expert on the history of the African diaspora to Latin America, speaks about how colonialism worked in the domain of intimacy.

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