- When:
- Friday, January 23, 1998, 1:30pm - 4:30pm
- Description:
- Frances Negron-Muntaner is a cultural critic, writer and filmmaker who was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She holds an M.A. in Visual Anthropology and an M.F.A. in Film/Video from Temple University and is writing her dissertation towards a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Among her film/video works are Homeless Diaries (1996), Puerto Rican I.D. (1995, produced for public television), Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994; 1995 Whitney Biennial, 1995 San Juan CinemaFest Audience Award, 1995 LASA Merit Selection) and AIDS in the Barrio (1989, co-directed with Peter Biella and winner of the Gold Award at the John Muir Medical Festival). She is the recipient of several professional and academic fellowships, including the Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship, Mid-Atlantic Regional Media Art Fellowship (1994), the Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1993), Future Faculty Fellowship-Temple University (1991) and the Ford Foundation Fellowship for Minorities (1988). She has published creative literature and critical essays, edited two books, Shouting in a Whisper: Latino Poets in Philadelphia and Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics (with Ram=A2n Grosfoguel), and her first collection of poetry, Anatomy of a Smile and Other Poems, is forthcoming in 1998. Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994, 55 min., subtitled) Refreshingly sophisticated in both form and content, Brincando el charco contemplates the notion of "identity." In a wonderful mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, the film tells the story of Claudia Marin, a middle-class, light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer and videographer who is attempting to construct a sense of community in the US. Confronting the simultaneity of both her privilege and her oppression, Brincando el charco becomes a meditation on class, race and sexuality. An ITVS production.
- Co-sponsored by Mass Culture Workshop and the Sawyer Seminar Program (1997-98) on Sexual Identities and Identity Politics: Cross-Cultural Investigations sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Sexuality and Identity in the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican
with filmmaker Frances Negron-Muntaner