Cecilia Aldarondo named Guggenheim Fellow
Cecilia Aldarondo, a filmmaker and assistant professor of English at Skidmore College, has been named a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the prestigious award to 168 scholars, artists and writers Wednesday, April 10. The foundation said recipients are selected for “prior achievement and exceptional promise.”
“When applying for an honor as elusive as a Guggenheim Fellowship, I mostly had to close my eyes and hit 'submit,' and put all hope out of my mind,” Aldarondo said. “I am thrilled to have the support I need to continue two documentaries I am currently directing, one on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and the other exploring the keen anguish of adolescence.”
Aldarondo creates “deeply intimate, personal films that telescope outward onto broader
social and existential issues, including sexuality, bigotry, family and religion,”
according to a description of her work on the Guggenheim Foundation website. Memory is a central component of her films, which have received support from ITVS,
HBO, A&E, the Sundance Institute, Cinereach, Tribeca Film Institute and the Jerome
Foundation.
At Skidmore, she teaches multiple courses on film, especially documentary film, including the course HIV/AIDS in Film and Video. In addition to teaching courses in the English Department, she is involved in the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative or MDOCS.
Aldarondo’s “Memories of a Penitent Heart” premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on the “POV” documentary series in 2017.
She has received numerous honors and awards. She is an alumna of IFP’s Documentary Lab as well as Sundance Institute’s Edit and Story Lab, a 2017 Women at Sundance Fellow and a two-time MacDowell Colony Fellow. She received a 2019 Bogliasco Foundation Residency and has been named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
Additional information about her fellowship can be found on the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.
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