Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love)

A film by Ruth Behar

2002 | 82 minutes | Color | DVD | Spanish/English | Subtitled | Order No. 03784

Host a screening

SYNOPSIS

Distinguished Anthropologist Ruth Behar (recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship) returns to her native Cuba to profile the island’s remaining Sephardic Jews and chronicle her family’s journey to the U.S. as Cuban-Jewish exiles. Highlighting themes of expulsion and departure that are at the crux of the Sephardic legacy, Behar seeks reconciliation with Cubans on the island and advocates for the possibility of return and renewal. She debunks myths about the country’s Jewish community and unravels the influence of interfaith marriage, Afro-Cuban santería, tourism and the embargo on contemporary Cuban-Sephardic cultural identity. The result is a bittersweet, lyrical, and often humorous portrait of modern-day Cuba that few know exists today. Narrated by Elizabeth Peña.

PRESS

“Personal, poetic, and reflective…offers a glimpse into a relatively unknown realm of the Cuban reality. Recommended.”

Visual Anthropology Review

"A wonderful second-generation exploration of Sephardic emigration and the yearning for return of nostalgic memory, painful 'adioses', and the survival of a rich heritage and vision of life. Ruth Behar's film, like her best anthropological writing, is poignant, humorous, gentle, insightful, smart. One comes away from it both knowing much more and touched in the heart."

Leo Spitzer Professor, Dartmouth College and President, Latin American Jewish Studies Assoc.

"…the best examination of the Jewish Sephardic and Cuban diaspora I have ever seen. It is the artistic and critical work of a brilliant ethnographer…a major contribution to diaspora and mestizaje cultural studies."

José David Saldívar Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

“…a moving and insightful film. It traces with sensitivity and love the enduring ties between the Sephardic Cuban-Jews and their homeland.”

Teofilio Ruiz History Department., UCLA

“With the gaze of a poet and the fortitude of an audacious traveler Ruth Behar reveals, unveils and discovers with her audience the emigrant experience of the Jewish refugees in Cuba.”

Marjorie Agosín Wellesley University

"Recommended."

A. Cantu Video Librarian

"Highly recommended. A well-paced, heartfelt documentary."

Debra Mandel Educational Media Reviews Online

"Offers an easy-to-view introduction to a fascinating culture. Libraries with strong Jewish studies collections should definitely have this one."

Paul Kaplan Library Journal

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Cine Festival - PREMIO MESQUITE Honorable Mention
  • East Lansing Film Festival - Documentary Award
  • San Fran. Bay Area Latino F F - Jury Award
  • Tulipanes Latino Art and Film Festival
  • Miami Jewish Film Festival
  • New York City Reel Jews Film Festival
  • Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival
  • Miami Film Festival
  • Ann Arbor Human Rights International Film Festival
  • Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana
  • Los Angeles Sephardic Film Festival
  • Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival
  • Boston Jewish Film Festival
  • North Carolina Jewish Cultural Arts Festival
  • Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival
  • Washington Jewish Film Festival
  • Vistas Film Festival
  • San Diego Latino Film Festival
  • Cine Accion San Francisco International Latino Film Festival
  • Athens International Film and Video Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Ruth Behar

Ruth Behar, a Cuban-American anthropologist and writer, was born in Havana, Cuba, and grew up in New York. She was twenty-six when she received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University and she is now the Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. A writer, a cultural anthropologist, and a modern nomad, Behar has lived and worked in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. She is known for her humanistic approach to understanding identity, immigration, and the search for a home in our global era.

In 1988, Behar was the first Latino woman to be awarded a MacArthur fellowship and she is also a recipient of the Belpré Medal. Her research on the dwindling Jewish community in Cuba is also the focus of her film, ADIO KERIDA (2002). It featured camera work and editing by her son Gabriel Frye-Behar and has been shown in festivals around the world. (01/20)

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN

Havana Divas

Offering a window into the experience of Chinese migration to Cuba, HAVANA DIVAS follows two Cantonese opera singers who perform for decades in Cuba before, and during, Fidel Castro’s revolution.
Learn more

Motherland

How do we decide where is home? Feeling increasingly isolated in her adopted homeland, accomplished documentarian Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (SILENCE BROKEN: KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN) travels to Cuba to unearth stories from a relatively unknown group in the Asian diaspora. On the island, she meets Martha, a woman of Korean descent who identifies herself as Cuban. Like many of her contemporary countrymen and women, Martha possesses family ties that span multiple nations, cultures and politics. Her story inspires Kim-Gibson to travel to Miami to meet Martha's émigré sister and the rest of their mulitcultural family, in a journey that reveals how very different worldviews can co-exist in one family separated by place and ideology. Asking probing questions about identity and economic and social justice, Kim-Gibson explores the ways in which we determine our ethnic, national, and cultural loyalties. The compelling stories in Motherland Cuba Korea USA weave a complex web and illuminate the search for an understanding of "motherland" in a globalized society.
Learn more

Maestra and Maestras Voluntarias

MAESTRA (2012) MAESTRAS VOLUNTARIAS (2022) Two films tell the courageous history of the first Volunteer Teachers in Cuba and the women who laid the groundwork for a massive National Literacy Campaign that would teach more than 707,000 Cubans how to read and write. 
Learn more
Shopping Cart