The memories of the trace left in a nine-year-old child, the son of a well-to-do family in Havana in the 1940s, by his wet nurse, a black woman named Guillermina.
Director | Aída Esther Bueno Sarduy |
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A man describes how he was separated from his black nanny by the Cuban revolution in this first-person narrative that talks poignantly about trying to find the woman who looked after him when he was a child. Visually, the childish animation soon gives way to black & white photographs. Dozens of family photos where black women hold white children on their laps to keep them still. By accumulating these anonymous pictures, this short film becomes more than just a personal quest as it reveals the foundations of a racist, classist system. The gaze of these women haunts us for a long time, as we grasp the care they gave and the affection they must have lavished on their masters’ children. A just and worthy reminder of this little-known aspect of history.
Éva Tourrent
Filmmaker and Tënk's Artistic Director, France
A man describes how he was separated from his black nanny by the Cuban revolution in this first-person narrative that talks poignantly about trying to find the woman who looked after him when he was a child. Visually, the childish animation soon gives way to black & white photographs. Dozens of family photos where black women hold white children on their laps to keep them still. By accumulating these anonymous pictures, this short film becomes more than just a personal quest as it reveals the foundations of a racist, classist system. The gaze of these women haunts us for a long time, as we grasp the care they gave and the affection they must have lavished on their masters’ children. A just and worthy reminder of this little-known aspect of history.
Éva Tourrent
Filmmaker and Tënk's Artistic Director, France