Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican

Puerto Rican social, political, and sexual identities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico are explored.

Still from Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican
Premiere Date
June 1, 1996
Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
Producer

Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, curator, and scholar. Among her books and publications are: Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), and The Latino Media Gap (2014). Her films include Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (Whitney Biennial, 1995), Small City, Big Change… Show more (2013), and War for Guam. For her work as a scholar and filmmaker, Negrón-Muntaner has received Ford, Truman, Scripps Howard, Rockefeller, Pew, and Chang-Chavkin fellowships. Major funders such as Social Science Research Council, Andy Warhol Foundation, and ITVS have also supported her work. In 2008, the United Nations' Rapid Response Media Mechanism recognized her as a global expert in the areas of mass media and Latin/o American studies; in 2012, she received the Lenfest Award, one of Columbia University's most prestigious recognitions. At present, Negrón-Muntaner is the director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and the Media and Idea Lab at Columbia University. She is also founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive, Butler Library. Show less

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The Film

Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican contemplates the notion of “identity” through the experiences of a Puerto Rican woman living in the U.S. With a mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews, and soap opera drama, Brincando el Charco tells the story of Claudia Marin, a middle-class, light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer/videographer who is attempting to construct a sense of community in the U.S. Confronting the simultaneity of both her privilege and her oppression, Brincando el Charco becomes a meditation on class, race, and sexuality as shifting tides.

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