Join us for a screening of Resistimos (We Resist), a documentary about current socio-economic and political in Puerto Rico, as seen through the lives of people practicing Bomba music.

After the screening, filmmaker Diana Quiñones Rivera will be in conversation with Bomba practitioner Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Diaz. Carlos Javier Ortiz will moderate the conversation.

Bomba is an Afro Puerto Rican music and dance tradition that enslaved people used to form revolts and escapes communicating through the different beats on the drums. Resistimos documents the resurgence of this music as a tool to fight corruption, gender inequality and the austerity measures imposed in Puerto Rico by the US Fiscal Control Board in 2016.

BIOS:

Mentored by legendary filmmaker, the late Albert Maysles, Diana Quiñones Rivera started her filmmaking career in 2006. One of her documentary films, It’s a Feeling, Dancing with Jeff Selby was screened at the Dance on Camera Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2014 and at the Cinédanse Film Festival in Quebec in 2015. She completed a fellowship with Kartemquin Film’s Diverse Voices in Docs in 2016. The same year, Quiñones Rivera directed the music video for Zeshan B’s Cryin’ In The Streets. The video premiered in 2017 and was featured in Rolling Stone magazine, American Songwriter, Impose magazine and the Chicago Reader. In 2017, Quiñones Rivera screened the first episode of her new doc-series, Darling Shear, at the NewFest Film Festival in New York City and the DuSable Museum of Chicago. The first season of the series has been streaming on OTV since 2018. Diana obtained a B.A. in Film and Literature from University of Puerto Rico and an MFA degree in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.

Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazon” Díaz of Humboldt Park-Guayama is a cultural educator in Afro Puerto Rican
Bomba Traditions. At the young age of five, she began studying Bomba under the the mentorship of her beloved uncle Eli S. Rodriguez, a founding member of Chicago’s first Bomba and Plena collective Grupp Yubá.

Ivelisse is the Founder of La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón established in 2009, La Escuelita Bombera De Corazón was founded out of Ivelisse’s commitment to Black and Indigenous art education and her first-hand experiences of Bomba’s revolutionary power. She is the Co-Founder / Director Director of the all women Ensemble Las BomPleneras, Bomberxs De’ Cora and founding member and lead vocalist of Bomba con Buya.

MoCP Board Member Carlos Javier Ortiz is a director, cinematographer, and documentary photographer who focuses on urban life, gun violence, racism, poverty, and marginalized communities. In 2016, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for film/video.

This program accompanies Shift: Music, Meaning, Context, an exhibition produced in collaboration between Goethe-Institut Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Photography.

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Tags: Carlos Javier Ortiz, Chicago, Diana Quinones Rivera, Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Diaz, Loop, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Resistimos (We Resist)