NEW DAY FILMS BY
Maria Raquel Bozzi:

Palenque: Un Canto

Born in Cartagena de Indias, Maria Raquel Bozzi grew up in Colombia as the daughter of a Swedish-American mother and a Colombian father. As a "dual national", her identity has always been defined in terms of a cultural duality. Her work as a filmmaker deals with that duality and different aspects of ethnic and cultural diversity.

An avid traveler throughout the world (the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Islands of South East Asia), Ms. Bozzi settled in Southern California where she pursued her Masters in Film and Television at UCLA. While at UCLA, she was honored repeatedly with the University Fellowship and the Motion Picture Association of America Awards.

She debuted as a filmmaker in 1988 with the experimental film Instructions for Crying, a commentary on emotional repression and a celebration to crying as a universal form of expression. It was a finalist at the 1989 Athens Internatonal Film Festival.

One year after the completion of Instructions for Crying, she returned to her hometown, Cartagena de Indias in the Caribbean, seeking to learn more about one of her childhood wonders: Palenque, the village of Black Cimaroons that for centuries have interacted with Cartagena, maintaining their African traditions. In Palenque, she developed community journalism workshops that generated the basis for the production of her documentary, Palenque un Canto, a unique and personal view into the life of the descendants of African rebel slaves in Palenque. The documentary was broadcast on Colombian National Television and has been acclaimed internationally at numerous film festivals and special events, including the Leipzig International Documentary Festival in Germany, the Robert Flaherty International Film Seminar and the Margaret Mead International Film Festival in New York.

Based on her pesonal experience, she is currently working on a film titled Family Tree--a personal genealogy of America, a video diary that celebrates the coming together of three generations of people from across the world at the beginning of a new century in America.

Maria lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Malaysian artist Ali Rahamad, and their son Kris Sebastian. She divides her time between her film projects, mothering and teaching Film Production at the University of California, Irvine.