Film Screening: “Reyita”

Casa de las Américas’ Afro.doc cycle will end tomorrow, Thursday, December 15, 2011, at 3:00pm with the screening of Reyita, by Catalan filmmakers Oliva Acosta and Elena Ortega. The Afro.doc cycle has taken place this year at the Manuel Galich Room at Casa, in Havana, Cuba, where they have presented a series of documentaries dealing with the history and the current state of black presence in Cuba and the Americas.

This 2006 documentary focuses on María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno (Reyita), a black woman—poor, devotee of the Virgin Mary, mother of eight children, and victim of racial discrimination from an early age—who lived in Cuba between 1902 and 1997. A year before her death, Daisy Rubiera Castillo presented to the Casa de las Américas Award, the testimonial narrative of this woman, her mother; the jury considered the book to be a jewel of the testimonial genre. In Spanish…