New Waves: Memories of Underdevelopment

María Caridad Cumaná was professor of Film and Television in the School of Arts and Letters at the University of Havana, Cuba for 15 years and Chief Coordinator for the Audiovisual Portal for Latin American and Caribbean Cinema at the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema (FNCL). She received the “Excellence in Investigative Online Journalism” award from the AVINA and DAROS Foundation and has authored and co-authored several books including A Look at Cuban Cinema, Latitudes of the Margin: Latin American Cinema before the Third Millennium, Plethoric Latitudes of the Margin: Latin American Cinema before the Third Millennium, Habaname: The Musical City of Carlos Varela, My Havana and forthcoming this year by Indiana University Press, Images of Utopia: Sara Gomez’s Contribution to Cuban and World Cinema. She produced the documentary Out My Windows, filmed in Havana by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and is currently adjunct faculty at Miami Dade College where she teaches Cinema Appreciation and Art History.

Cristina Venegas is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at UCSB, where she teaches and researches film and media history of Latin America, critical approaches to digital media and the history, and politics and practice of film festivals. She is the author of Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual and Digital Culture in Cuba (Rutgers, 2010), co-editor of the Media Matters book series, and her essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.