Mary Leonard

The Short Version

 

Mary Leonard teaches, writes about, curates, and hosts events related to film, literature and the arts in general. She specializes in Caribbean film, especially film in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Here, she writes about a variety of arts-related topics. 

 

The Long Version

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Mary Leonard is the founder of the Film Certificate, which is the film program at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez. She has presented her work at conferences in many countries, published articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as in local publications in Puerto Rico, been invited to lecture and present Puerto Rican films at universities in the U.S. and in Trinidad, and been interviewed numerous times on television and radio programs. Publications on Caribbean cinema include “Wind, Water, Women: Liminal Spaces and Border Crossings Between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic” (Black Camera, 2019), “De la DIVEDCO al Documental Contemporaneo en in Puerto Rico” (Exégesis, 2019-20), a review of Los Viejos Cines de Puerto Rico by José Hernandez Mayoral (Vivomatografías 2021).  and “El Lente Cosmopolita de Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias” (forthcoming in La Gran Pantalla Dominicana, Almenara, 2023).    She has organized and directed conferences on visual narration at the University of Puerto Rico (2005 & 2007), and on Caribbean film in the Dominican Republic (2020). She has also produced/coordinated and/or supported the production of numerous films made by students and graduates of the UPRM film program, and other filmmakers since 2007. She is the co-founder and co-host of Caribbean Film Forum, a series of online conversations on topics related to film in the context of the Caribbean (2021 - present), and of the Caribbean Film Education Network (2022 – present). She is one of the recipients of a National Endowment of the Humanities grant for the 2022 year which funded the establishment of an Oral History Center at UPRM with a documentary film production component. In October of 2022, she curated and hosted Jurakán, a film series about hurricanes from Caribbean perspectives as part of the programming of the Fotofocus Biennial in Cincinnati, Ohio.