Roots of my Heart

"Eyes of the Rainbow" deals with the life of Assata Shakur, the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader who escaped from prison and was given political asylum in Cuba, where she has lived for close to 15 years. In it we visit with Assata in Havana and she tells us about her history and her life in Cuba. This film is also about Assata's AfroCuban context, including the Yoruba Orisha Oya, goddess of the ancestors, of war, of the cemetery and of the rainbow.

In Oggun, Gloria relates the patakin or mythical story of Oggun, the tireless warrior who, enamored of his mother, decided as punishment to imprison himself in the mountains: only Ochun, goddess of love, succeeded in captivating him when she let fall a few drops of honey on the lips of the god of metal, war, progress, and civilization.

A beautifully constructed love letter transforming a 1993 interview conducted by the Cuban filmmaker with her grandmother, into a celebration of not only her grandmother’s legacy but also a tribute to the larger history, struggle and tenacity of Black Cubans and Black Cuban women in particular.

The great poet of equality, freedom, and the Turkish language, Nâzım Hikmet, receives an invitation from his Cuban poet friend Nicolas Guillen in 1961. Nâzım Hikmet, who was also the director of the World Peace Council at the time, travels to Cuba in May 1961 to witness the course and achievements of the 1959 Cuban Revolution firsthand. The film progresses with the testimonies of important Cuban intellectuals who met Nâzım during this trip, while also bringing the excitement and enthusiasm of the early years of the revolution to the screen with Nâzım's own voice reciting the lines of "The Havana Interview" from a previously unknown recording. It is the story of a sincere and comradely embrace between Cuba and the revolution's Nâzım, and Nâzım's profound influence on Cuban artists.