Cecilia Aldarondo
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“I Believe That Post-María Puerto Rico Functions Like a Handbook For Our Times”: Director Cecilia Aldarondo on Her Hurricane María Doc, Landfall
2017’s Hurricane María was an undeniable disaster, borne most brutally by the thousands who died in Puerto Rico during the storm and those who were left to mourn them. But as Cecilia Aldarondo’s new documentary Landfall makes clear, there is nothing ‘natural’ about the devastation — before, during, and after the hurricane — that the people of Puerto Rico have had to endure. A haunting meditation on the aftershocks of crisis and the trauma of state failure, Landfall is an exquisite film, by turns tender and compassionate, cinematically adventurous and self-assured, and politically unflinching in its indictment of those moneyed interests […]
by Brett Story on May 28, 2020 -
Personal Doesn’t Mean Small: IFP Week Filmmakers On Tackling Big Issues With Intimate Stories
“I think we have this profound misrepresentation around personal films being small,” said Cecilia Aldarondo, one of three filmmakers of personal docs who spoke at IFP Week 2017. The panel was called “When the Personal Gets Political and the Political Gets Personal.” In the case of all three filmmakers’ films, they’re both. “I’ve gotten so many responses from potential funders of people who think that way. They hear ‘personal’ and they hear ‘small.’ They think it won’t have an audience. With these projects, I think we’ve demonstrated that’s not the case. If we’re dealing with questions of social change and […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 22, 2017 -
On the Southern Circuit in the Time of October Surprises: Sidewalk, Third Horizon Caribbean and Hot Springs Film Festivals
Birmingham, tucked right in the middle of Alabama, is easily the biggest city in “the heart of Dixie”; its 1.1 million-person metropolitan area dwarfs the populations of Huntsville and Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa. The central business district, like that of many American cities that haven’t gentrified after white flight, can feel eerily vacant on the weekends or at night. But during the Sidewalk Film Festival, whose 18th edition was held on the final weekend of August, the center of its modest downtown contains many wonders. Sidewalk knows how to throw a party; in front of the historic Alabama theater, the street is […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 20, 2016 -
Cecilia Aldarondo
“In 2008, my mother found a box of decaying 8mm home movies and several hundred slides in the garage, and she called me in Minnesota and said, ‘Do you want this stuff?’” So began Cecilia Aldarondo’s first feature Memories of a Penitent Heart, currently in postproduction and on track for a festival launch next year. The home movies and slides shed light on Aldarondo’s uncle Miguel, who died in 1987 of AIDS. His status in a Puerto Rican family intolerant of homosexuality was always a shadowy matter, and Aldarondo — who had vague memories of attending his funeral as a […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 23, 2015 -
IFP Announces Documentary Line-Up for Annual Independent Filmmaker Labs
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced today the ten documentaries selected for the 2015 Independent Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual yearlong fellowship for first-time feature directors. The creative teams of the selected films are currently attending the first week’s sessions – The Time Warner Foundation Completion Labs – taking place May 11-15 in New York City. The Independent Filmmaker Labs are a highly immersive, free mentorship program supporting first-time feature directors with projects in post-production as they complete, market and distribute their films. The Labs provide filmmakers with the technical, creative and strategic tools necessary to launch their films and careers. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on May 13, 2015
