PANEL DISCUSSION

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 led to many fleeing the country. At the same time, it inspired the formation of liberation movements throughout the Americas. Just over a decade later, military dictatorships in the Southern Cone imprisoned, tortured, killed and “disappeared” tens of thousands; many survivors became exiles around the world. In this panel three daughters of exiled parents discuss the impact of their life experiences on their creative work.

Carmen is a Vancouver-based theatre artist who has written and cowritten fifteen plays. She has sixty film, TV, and stage acting credits and is currently working on a memoir entitled “Something Fierce”, to be published in 2010 by Douglas & McIntyre in Canada, and Granta/ Portobello in the United Kingdom. Carmen is the daughter of Chilean exiles who arrived in Vancouver in 1974. She is a graduate of the pres- tigious theatre training program Studio 58.

Maiana Bidegain was born in 1977, in Bayonne, in the French Basque country. Her parents had arrived a few months earlier, fleeing the threats of the Uruguayan dictatorship. Growing up under the weight of a dual identity and dual identity and culture, in her work, Maiana explores her need for memory, so as to fulfill a wish for belonging; a wish well-known by children of exile, but most often unrealized. She is the director of Secretos de Lucha.

Vivien Lesnik Weisman was born in Havana, Cuba. She grew up in Miami, where her childhood was marred by bombings and assassination attempts on her father. Her father, Max Lesnik, a former revolutionary, is considered an enigmatic and controversial figure in the Cuban exile community. For many years he was the publisher of Replica, a magazine that was a forum for debate and for his incendiary point of view. Vivien Lesnik is the director of The Man of Two Havanas.

Her parents came to Canada in 1976, shortly after the military coup in Argentina. When the military junta fell and elections were called, they tried to return home, but found that it was difficult to reinsert them selves in Argentine society. She is a founder of H.I.J.O.S. (Children for identity and justice against forgetting and silence) an association that includes sons and daughters of the disappeared, assassinated, politi- cal prisoners and refugees from Latin America.

Presented by the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies of the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival.