Born in Guanabacoa, near Havana (November 8, 1942 – June 2, 1974) Sara Gomez died at just 32 years old, but her work endures. She trained as a musician and ethnographer, studying at the Havana Conservatory. She turned to journalism to express her political views and after the revolution went to ICAIC to work on newsreels, where she assisted film directors such as Jorge Fraga, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and French director Agnès Varda.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Sara started making her own documentaries and then fiction, with her feature film De Cierta Manera (One Way or Another) begun in 1974 (and finally completed and premiered in 1977).

Her documentary work from the sixties includes titles such as Sobre Horas Extras y Trabajo Voluntario (About extra time and voluntary work), La Otra Isla (The other Island), Una Isla para Miguel (An Island for Miguel) and Mi Aporte (My contribution), which approach, from her point of view, the social changes after the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959, and their influence on people’s lives.

In black and white, she addresses racial prejudice, discrimination, marginalization and the consequences for families, machismo, breaking with the past and social programs aimed at improving life and dignifying Cuban men and women. The themes and problems that she chose, the treatment that she gave them and the originality of her approach placed her at the forefront and many of her messages are contemporary.

For Jorge Fernández, vice-rector of the ISA in Havana [at a Havana conference on Gomez’s legacy in 2007], she was one of those artists who look ahead, who transcend their time.  ”Not only did she stay in the language of cinema; her language was quite avant-garde and transgressive for her time…her work continues to dialogue with what is being done in young cinema, in Cuban documentaries and in fiction,” said Fernandez.

For Sandra del Valle Casals, a researcher at the Juan Marinello Centre, [in 2007] looking at Sara’s work made it possible to appreciate Cuban cinema from a gender perspective, “because it is important to broaden the analytical spectrum and reveal the gender constructs that are manifested in Cuban film … Sara Gómez’s work is very relevant, due to the issues she addressed as a woman, being black and revolutionary. In it there is a concern for the social project of the Cuban revolution from many perspectives and it is a legacy as an analysis of that reality,” she explains.

In Del Valle’s opinion, in Gomez’s work there is an anthropological and sociological search and perspective to examine the reality of her time. There are aspects that are a product of her moment, but there are others that we can recognise now [decades later]. “Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea used to say that he felt happy when his work aged, because it meant that the problems it posed were overcome. In the themes of Sara’s films, there are stories that are not overcome and that is why, among other aspects, they are still relevant,” added Del Valle.

For the Canadian scholar Susan Lord, Gomez was “a very brave woman, very advanced for her time on the subject of the possibilities of changing relations between different social groups … Even today there are few works with that imagination, with that way of filming to make a more democratic world,” she adds. “She is avant-garde. Her work can offer today’s world, full of globalization, ways to invent relationships and build a bridge, a dialogue between ethical, aesthetic and political aspects”.

Inés María Martiatu, a writer and friend of Sara, had the privilege of knowing her since childhood. “She was always very aware of what she was doing; deliberately, her cinema was inquisitive, so it’s very special, very hers,” she says.

“When the premiere of De Cierta Manera was finally screened, it was like a detonator. People who had never been to the cinema, went to see something that reflected their reality”, recalls Mario Balmaseda, the film’s male protagonist. “Sara transferred her own context to the cinema. She placed herself in the middle of the problems, without distancing herself. She did not set up a story, she used the testimony of people, the drama of their world, away from the official discourse of how they should behave; she played life with herself, she took risks artistically and emotionally,” he adds.

From Cuba50.org, this text is based on the full article in Spanish by Raquel Sierra, 2007, SEMlac, Cuba, published by Mujeres en la Red here

Screen Cuba is showing

De Cierta Manera/ One way or another| Sara Gomez| Cuba 1974/7 | 1hr 18min | Spanish with English subtitles | 15+

Sara Gomez, a genuinely original filmmaker and the first female director of the Cuban Cinema Institute (ICAIC), passionately explores everyday life with all its turmoil in the revolution’s early days. Female and black, Gomez was committed to the revolution and to changing society by creating a new cinematic language that addressed the contemporary themes of race, class and gender. In the film a female teacher is sent to work in a place where a slum has been demolished and new houses built. She begins a relationship with a local worker and the film combines testimony, documentary, and fiction to chart how the social changes influence everyday life.