Elena Guzman
Elena Herminia Guzman is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and anthropologist raised in the Bronx with deep roots in the LES. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and is currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities (HCAH) and Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies at Haverford College. She co-directed a film entitled Bronx Lives that explores homelessness for Latinx and African Americans in New York. Her work has shown at MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana and she has received grants from Scribe, Leeway Foundation, Cornell Council for the Arts, Society for the Humanities, and the 2020 Summer DocuLab sponsored by Haverford College. She is also the director of the film Smile4Kime, currently in post-production, that explores the intersections of race, gender, and mental health. As a part of her work in film, she co-founded a feminist filmmaking collective called Ethnocine and is a producer of the podcast Bad Feminists Making Films.
Awarded Grants
2020
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Elena’s Smile4Kime is a collaborative documentary portrait that explores friendship and intimacy through the lens of race, gender, and mental illness. Kime and Elena cook meals together, write each other letters, and show up for each other in moments of crisis. After Kime's passing, their connection transforms into dreams, memories, and apparitions, which Elena experiences as she moves through the grieving
