Sara Gómez Yera

Filmmaker, screenwriter, musician, and Black Cuban journalist. She was the first Cuban woman to direct a feature film: De cierta manera (1974).

She was born in the traditional city of Guanabacoa, about 5 km southeast of La Habana Vieja. While studying in secondary school, she took six years of music at the Municipal Conservatory of La Habana «Amadeo Roldán» (on calle Rastro and Calzada de Belascoaín). Meanwhile, she also worked as a journalist for the student newspaper Mella and the weekly Hoy, Domingo.

After finishing secondary school, in 1961—at just 18 years old—Sara Gómez spent a few months in New York City. In August of that same year (1961) she began studying at the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos). The following year (1962) she made three short documentaries for the Enciclopedia popular directed by filmmaker Octavio Cortázar (1935-2008).

Later she was assistant director for Belgian filmmaker Agnès Varda (on the documentary Salut les cubains! —'Greetings, Cubans!'—, 1963), for Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (on the feature film Cumbite, 1964), and for Jorge Fraga (on the feature film El robo, 1965).

While developing her work as assistant director, she began her career directing documentaries. The fundamental themes of her work were popular culture and traditions, marginality, racism, feminism, and social inclusion of women.

In early 1974 she was promoted at the ICAIC to fiction film director, and began her debut film, De cierta manera. During filming, on June 2, 1974, she died—at the early age of 31—from respiratory failure caused by one of her frequent asthma attacks, and the film had to be completed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa.

Filmography
As director
1962: Plaza Vieja, 8-minute documentary for Enciclopedia popular, no. 28).
1962: Solar habanero, 10-minute documentary for Enciclopedia popular, no. 31).
1962: Historia de la piratería, 10-minute documentary for Enciclopedia popular, special issue).
1962: El solar, 10-minute documentary for Enciclopedia popular, special issue).
1964: Iré a Santiago, 15-minute documentary.
1965: Excursión a Vuelta Abajo, 10-minute documentary.
1966: Guanabacoa: crónica de mi familia, 13-minute documentary.
1967: ...Y tenemos sabor, 30-minute documentary.
1968: En la otra isla, 41-minute documentary.
1968: Una isla para Miguel, 22-minute documentary.
1969: Isla del tesoro, 10-minute documentary.
1970: Poder local, poder popular, 9-minute documentary.
1971: Un documental a propósito del tránsito, 17-minute documentary.
1971: De bateyes, 20-minute documentary (unreleased).
1972: Atención prenatal, 10-minute documentary.
1972: Año uno, 10-minute documentary.
1972: Mi aporte, 33-minute documentary.
1973: Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario, 9-minute documentary.
1974: De cierta manera, 79-minute fiction film; with dramaturgy by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa (who would take charge of completing filming).

As assistant director
1964: Cumbite, 82-minute fiction film; directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
1965: El robo, 99-minute fiction film; directed by Jorge Fraga.

Awards
1973: Mention in the Annual Critics' Selection (La Habana), for Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario (within the group of documentaries made on the occasion of the XIII Congress of the CTC).
1977 (posthumous): De cierta manera, mention in the Annual Critics' Selection (La Habana) as "one of the ten most significant films of the year".

Sara Gómez Yera believed in the popular culture of Cuba and America. She affirmed her being in the midst of a vertiginous social process, and translated it with a clean, frank, and tenacious spirit; she believed in the substantial changes that every revolution generates, she assumed her essential human condition through three unavoidable components: race, sex, and nationality; she was sharp-tongued and daring; a mother, cook, and photographer; she was tender and industrious, versatile enough to place herself at the highest point of that immense rainbow that dances before our eyes as an unmistakable sign of her cinema.
Nancy Morejón (1944-), Cuban poet, critic, and essayist

In La Habana, the Mediateca de la Mujer Realizadora Cubana «Sara Gómez» was named in her honor. Also in her honor, the Consejo Nacional de Casas de Cultura (La Habana) awards the «Sara Gómez Prize» each year.

Private life
She had three sons. The youngest of them—Alfredo Hernández Gómez, a musician and sound designer for film—lives in Cuba.

In the midst of the Cold War, with educational and social systems imported from Russia, she raised her own voice to denounce the real situation on the Island and the stoic participation of its people in the dream of a society that for many was considered a social model. [...] I lost my mother when I was very small; I am the youngest of three brothers. What has been curious is discovering her over the decades through her films. There you find her purest essence, that of a feisty, curious Cuban, always on the side of justice. [...] Her work is current because it is absolutely truthful: they were times of the Russian Gulag, of atrocious surveillance, where most Cuban children and young people grew up under an educational and social program in which voices like Sara Gómez's seemed scandalous. [...] My mother's work showed a type of Cuban who at that time had clean ideology, full of hope to build a better homeland, but most importantly she never forgot criticism, she was not interested in showing idealized worlds, only in being a faithful witness to her time and era. [...]