Memories of a Penitent Heart

GALLERY

ABOUT THE FILM

Producer/Director: Cecilia Aldarondo

Genre: Documentary

Program Length: 60 Minutes

Broadcast Date: July 31, 2017 on PBS (POV)

Combining a wealth of recently discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. Originating from filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film charts her excavation of the buried family conflict around her uncle Miguel’s death, and her search for Miguel’s partner Robert a generation later. Directed, produced, and written by Cecilia Aldarondo, this documentary is a cautionary tale about the unresolved conflicts wrought by AIDS, and a nuanced exploration of how faith is used and abused in times of crisis.

MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a co-production of Blaclscrackle Films, LLC, Latino Public Broadcasting, Independent Television Service (ITVS), and American Documentary | POV, with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Cecilia Aldarondo (Producer/Director)

Cecilia Aldarondo holds an M.A. from Goldsmiths College and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her personal documentary MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. The film is a co-production of POV, Latino Public Broadcasting, and ITVS, and is slated to broadcast on POV in 2017. MEMORIES has received additional support from the MacDowell Colony, the Sundance Institute, Jerome Foundation, Firelight Media, and New York State Council on the Arts, among others. In 2015 Aldarondo was selected for IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs as well as Sundance Institute’s Edit and Story Lab, and was the winner of the 2015 Paley DocPitch. Aldarondo is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Skidmore College, was the inaugural recipient of the Roberto Guerra Documentary Award in 2015, and has been named by FILMMAKER Magazine as one of 2015’s ‘25 New Faces of Independent Film.’