Congratulations to Celia Rodríguez Tejuca, whose article "Bodily Archives: The Cinema of Alejandro Alonso as Reenacted Memories," was recently published in Memory in Contemporary Cuban Film and Digital Media: Entangled Temporalities. Tejuca's article examines how three documentaries by Cuban filmmaker Alejandro Alonso employ the cinematic medium to archive embodied memories of a decaying revolutionary Cuba, foregrounding the body as a site of memory, trauma, resistance, and lived historical experience that challenge and exceed official narratives.
The volume shows how Cuban filmmakers, journalists, and activists use film and other digital media to create competing notions of memory and history that challenge official narratives about Cuban society. In the wake of the economic and ideological crises of Cuba’s Special Period, suppressed political differences and personal experiences have resurfaced in the contemporary mediascape, which has become a principal political arena for Cubans both inside and outside the island.
In this volume, contributors examine topics including how filmmakers use audio to subvert official histories, media representations of sanatoriums and other settings at the margins of the Revolution, and a COVID-era digital archive that preserves personal memories outside government oversight. By tracing the interplay of film, digital technologies, and the internet, contributors reveal how alternative archives and online platforms resist state-sanctioned stories, circulate new materials, and broaden ideas of citizenship, time, and identity. Together, these essays offer fresh perspectives on the complexities of Cuba’s late-socialist context.
“As the first in-depth study of contemporary Cuban film and digital media, this book engages with the complex process of reconsidering the history of a nation, its memory in an inclusive and broad sense, and the multiple political layers that govern ways of remembering, archiving, creating, and dreaming.”—Michelle Farrell, Fairfield University
Congratulations, Celia!