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ITVS + LATINO PUBLIC BROADCASTING + BLACKSCRACKLE FILMS PRESENT
MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
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INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
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Jack Song - [email protected]
website: www.penitentheart.com
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LOGLINE
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
Twenty-five years after Miguel died of AIDS, his niece tracks down his estranged lover and cracks
open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama.
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SHORT SYNOPSIS
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Combining a wealth of recently discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully
shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a
documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. Originating from
filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film
charts her excavation of the buried family conflict around her uncle Miguel’s death, and her search
for Miguel’s partner Robert a generation later. After two years of dead ends, Robert turns up: but
he’s not the same man. He’s reinvented himself as Father Aquin, a Franciscan monk with twentyfive years of pent-up grief and bitterness. For the first time, a member of Miguel’s family wants to
hear Aquin’s side of the story—but is it too little, too late? A story about the mistakes of the past and
the second chances of the present, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a cautionary tale
about the unresolved conflicts wrought by AIDS, and a nuanced exploration of how faith is used
and abused in times of crisis.
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DETAILED SYNOPSIS
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Like any good detective story, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART began with 2 things: a
mystery and a clue. The mystery was the untimely death of Miguel Dieppa, a young Puerto Rican
actor; the clue was a shoebox of decaying 8mm home movies. Although these home movies
documented cheery moments like birthdays and vacations, they also prompted his niece Cecilia’s
investigation into a darker family history: Miguel’s deathbed conflict with his mother, and what had
become of Robert, the lover Miguel left behind.
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Miguel died when his niece Cecilia was only six years old; she’d barely met the man, and suddenly
she was in Puerto Rico at his funeral. But she grew up with Miguel’s legend: the brilliant actor who
left Puerto Rico for New York in search of Broadway fame, only to die tragically in 1987, at the
young age of 31. This was the official story. But over the years, people would hint at a darker side of
the family narrative: ‘Everyone knew he was gay.’ ‘As he was dying he saw a priest and repented of
his homosexuality.’ ‘He probably had AIDS.’ ‘He had a lover—maybe named Robert? No, we don’t
know Robert’s last name. No, we don’t know what happened to him.’ Originating from Cecilia’s
suspicion that there was something ugly and unresolved in her family’s past, the film charts her
excavation of the buried family conflict around Miguel’s death, and her search for Miguel’s partner
Robert a generation later. After two years of dead ends, Robert turns up: but he’s not the same man.
He’s reinvented himself as Father Aquin, a Franciscan monk with twenty-five years of pent-up grief
and bitterness. For the first time, a member of Miguel’s family wants to hear Aquin’s side of the
story—but is it too little, too late?
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Combining a wealth of recently discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully
shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a
documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. The intimate lens of
MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART refracts on a wider cultural context: the AIDS crisis of the
1980s and 1990s, and in particular, how families treat their LGBT members in a Latin American
cultural and religious context. A story about the mistakes of the past and the second chances of the
present, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a cautionary tale about the unresolved conflicts
wrought by AIDS, and a nuanced exploration of how faith is used and abused in times of crisis.
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT FROM CECILIA ALDARONDO
MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART straddles a lot of divides—between art and social justice,
between past and present, between the personal and the global. I’m making this film because I see
the story of what happened in my family as a cautionary tale; there are thousands of similar stories
buried across the world. I want viewers to see that bigotry doesn’t always look like a hate crime:
often, it looks like blind love.
I became a filmmaker on the day that my mother gave me a box of 8mm films she’d discovered in
her garage in 2008. Visceral memories of my uncle Miguel’s funeral came back to me, and suddenly
I found myself asking uncomfortable questions. When I was growing up, people told two different
stories about Miguel. The official story was about a gregarious, mischievous, brilliantly talented actor
who died tragically young. The unofficial story was darker. Told in whispers, out of the sides of
mouths: Miguel was gay. His mother didn’t approve. There was a lover, Robert, who disappeared
after Miguel died. As I got older and began to care about social justice and LGBT equality, I was
increasingly troubled at the casual way my family both did and didn’t talk about these events. Why
had this chapter in my family history been forgotten, and what could I do about it now?
Growing up in suburban Central Florida in the late 80s and early 90s, I learned about AIDS
through the very distorted lens of my parents’ Newsweek magazine—I remember sordid stories
about thrush, fevers, and emaciated men scaring the crap out of me. But while I gathered that it was
all very serious, I had a distinct impression of AIDS as a thing that was far away. Even when my
mother would hint that my uncle Miguel may have died of AIDS—he had Kaposi’s sarcoma, refused
to be tested, etc—I didn’t sense that this bit of family rumor had anything to do with this thing called
‘the AIDS crisis.’
In my family, it’s not that people didn’t talk about Miguel’s death—they did. It was just that there
were two distinct ways of talking about it: one nostalgic, celebratory, and open, and the other
oblique, told in whispers. And over the years, I found myself circling around a memorial black hole—
a negative space where my uncle’s life should have been.
If I had known what I would confront by making this film, I honestly don’t know that I would have
taken it on. Since I began chasing down the fragments of Miguel’s life and death, I have been
repeatedly sent into a world of unresolved grief and suffering that was hidden from me. I did not
know that while my family sat at the front of the church during Miguel’s funeral, Miguel’s partner of
12 years sat in the back row. I did not know that Miguel’s friends in New York had a separate
memorial service that my family did not attend. I did not know that Aquin was excluded from my
uncle’s death certificate, from every obituary, and from every trace of my family’s memory. I did not
know that my uncle had an entire other family in New York—a family of choice—a family that
lacked the legitimacy that Miguel’s biological family enjoyed, even though many of them spent more
time in the hospital with Miguel than my own family did. When I sat down to interview these newly
discovered friends, they repeatedly told me how Miguel’s death tore them apart as a group. As
Miguel’s close friend Ricky put it: ‘it was like bomb, and we were all shrapnel.’ This collective
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unresolved mourning—a space to grieve that I felt my family had effectively stolen from my uncle’s
New York family—was overwhelming to witness.
This is the story of MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART: a reckoning with my family’s
responsibility, and a confrontation with a grief that never healed.
There is a moment in the film when my grandmother’s best friend asks me—who are you to bring
this up now? I have often asked myself that question. I wasn’t there. I barely knew my uncle. So why
should I care what happened to him? But I think that this question—why should you care?—is central
to the themes of MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART. As I see it, AIDS became a crisis precisely
because most people didn’t think it had anything to do with them. Now as much as then, AIDS is
seen as a problem for queers and drug addicts, not ‘decent’ Americans. But the reality is that AIDS
has always been everyone’s problem. And I believe that we—LGBT people, their families of choice,
and their biological families—now have the chance to own this history collectively. We are in a
pivotal time in the history of AIDS: a generation after the worst of the crisis, we are at risk of
repeating the same omissions that made AIDS become a crisis in the first place. And I believe this is
the moment for taking stock, before AIDS becomes just another badly remembered story.
There have been many times throughout this process where I’ve felt like it’s my job to avenge my
uncle’s death. It’s a powerful feeling that carries equal parts responsibility and righteousness. But it’s
also a very arrogant place to be. I’ve spent a lot of time pointing fingers—at my grandmother, my
mother, and even Aquin—telling people what they should have done differently. But I have had to
come to terms with the fact that I have no right to make such judgments.
The sad truth is that everyone in this story played their part. Everyone hurt my uncle. But the other
truth—the more important truth—is that they also all loved him. And whenever I’ve begun to doubt
myself (Do I have the right to ask these questions? Who is telling the truth? Am I messing with
people’s lives? Am I playing God?), I’ve always come back to one guiding question—what would
Miguel have wanted?
I think Miguel would have wanted people to remember all of him—his artistic passion, his humor, his
poetic heart, his enthusiasm, his leadership and yes, his mistakes. I think he would have wanted
everyone he loved to put their differences aside and love each other as much as he loved them.
When people ask me what I want people to do when they see this film, I always tell them I want
them to cry. Not because I am a sadist or because I want the audience to feel manipulated, but
because I believe that this story is more than just an interesting story. It is a story I want people to
see in their own lives—not just people dealing with the aftermath of AIDS, but anyone who’s had a
conflict, a falling out, a seismic loss—and to ask themselves what they could do differently now. I
don’t just want people to ask, ‘What did Miguel do on his deathbed?;’ I want them to ask: ‘What
would I do on my deathbed?’
I don’t think that this film has healed the past. Not yet. But I continue to hope that Miguel’s entire
family—Aquin, my mother, Miguel’s friends, and everyone who knew and loved him—will find some
measure of peace. A complicated and challenging peace, perhaps, but peace nonetheless.
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
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FEATURED CHARACTERS
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MIGUEL DIEPPA: A born mischief-maker and class clown, Miguel Dieppa (1953-1987) grows up on
the island of Puerto Rico in a middle class family. After high school, Miguel moves to New York in
search of sexual freedom and artistic glory. There, he assimilates and reinvents himself as ‘Michael,’
falling in love with a man named Robert and devoting himself to his theater career. And then—one
day in 1980—Miguel starts getting sick. Lesions appear on his body, and doctors tell him he has
Kaposi’s Sarcoma. He dies at the young age of 31 at the height of the AIDS crisis, without finishing
the musical about Carmen Miranda that he had dreamt of staging.
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AQUIN (AKA ROBERT) DARIGOL: Miguel’s live-in partner Robert (b. 1945) is a ghost without a
last name: despite wearing a wedding ring and sticking by Miguel up until the end, no one in the
family seems to know or care what happened to him after Miguel died, except Miguel’s niece
Cecilia. After two years of false leads and dead ends, he turns up on Christmas Eve 2012 via
Kickstarter: he tells Cecilia, ‘I am the person you are looking for.’ He’s waited twenty-five years for
this moment. But Robert’s not the same man—he’s now Father Aquin, a Franciscan monk full of pent
up anger and bitterness. Like the thousands of men and women who lost everything during the
AIDS crisis, Aquin is in many ways a broken man.
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CARMEN DIEPPA: The people who knew Carmen in Puerto Rico like to say: if ever a saint walked
on earth, her name was Carmen Dieppa (1923-1996). From the age of 15, when she miraculously
recovered from a life-threatening ear infection, Carmen has dedicated her life to God: she directs a
prayer group, attends mass daily, and hosts a religious radio show on AM radio show Radio Oro.
Carmen is known for her everlasting patience, always ready with a kind word and a soft touch. But
as soft as she seems, Carmen can be a single-minded woman. When she learns her son is gay, she
digs in her heels. She prays fervently for his soul. And then—Miguel gets sick. Carmen is convinced
that his body is sick because God is punishing him for his sins. And as Miguel lies dying, she begs
him to repent.
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JORGE DIEPPA: No one would have described Miguel’s father Jorge Dieppa (1925-2007) as a
saint. Brilliant, cultured, gruff, foul-mouthed—yes. But never a saint. However, as his wife Carmen
starts hounding her dying son to repent, he stays in the background of the conflict, never intervening
directly. When Miguel dies, Jorge even pays for Robert to fly to San Juan for the funeral. No one
knows exactly why. But years later, a rumor starts to surface: one night, Miguel walked into a gay
bar in San Juan—and ran into his own father…
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NYLDA DIEPPA: While he was dying, Miguel’s big sister Nylda was saddled with 5 children under
the age of ten, and struggling with her marriage. Nylda was too preoccupied with her own life to
pay much attention to the struggle that was brewing between Miguel, his mother, and his partner.
Twenty-five years later, she sees herself as an innocent bystander to the conflict. But a letter from
Miguel tells a different story—a brother who felt abandoned, and unsuccessfully begged her to
advocate on his behalf to his parents. Should Nylda have done something? Now, as the sole
surviving member of her family, does she owe Aquin anything?
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CECILIA ALDARONDO: Miguel’s niece Cecilia plays different roles: she’s the excavator of a buried
family history, the detective who cracked open the Pandora’s Box and started asking questions about
events that had been repressed and forgotten for a generation. Remaining deliberately off-camera in
order to retain the focus on those who lived through the conflict, she is also the witness who listens to
conflicting versions of the same story, then pieces them together into a kaleidoscopic view of the past.
At other times, she is the judge, the one who pokes holes in people’s testimonies and thinks she can
decide what’s right and wrong. In the end, Cecilia stands in for the present generation, trying to
reckon with the aftermath of one of the most devastating moments in history.
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
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CREATIVE TEAM BIOS
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CECILIA ALDARONDO
Director, Producer, Writer
Cecilia Aldarondo holds an M.A. from Goldsmiths College and a Ph.D. from the University of
Minnesota. Her personal documentary MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a co-production of
Latino Public Broadcasting, and ITVS. The film has received additional support from the MacDowell
Colony, the Sundance Institute, Jerome Foundation, Firelight Media, and New York State Council
on the Arts, among others. In 2015 MEMORIES was selected for IFP's Independent Filmmaker Labs
as well as Sundance Institute's Edit and Story Lab, and was the winner of the 2015 Paley DocPitch.
Aldarondo is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Skidmore College, was the inaugural recipient of
the Roberto Guerra Documentary Award in 2015, and has been named by FILMMAKER Magazine
as one of 2015’s ‘25 New Faces of Independent Film.’
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HANNAH BUCK
Editor
Hannah Buck is a New York-based editor who received a BA in Media arts from the University of
Technology in Sydney, Australia. She has worked as an editor on the award-winning AN
OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (Sundance, 2012, Gotham award, 2012), the personal
documentary FAMOUS NATHAN (Tribeca, 2014), and the impressionistic documentary THE
TRIPTYCH (PBS 2015). In 2014 she was awarded a MacDowell Colony Residency Fellowship to
edit MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART.
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BRENNAN VANCE
Cinematographer
Brennan Vance is a filmmaker based in Minneapolis. He recently served as cinematographer for
Cecilia Aldarondo's MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (Tribeca 2016) and The Weinstein
Company's ROBERT KLEIN STILL CAN’T STOP HIS LEG (SXSW 2016). His work as Director of
Photography for Twin Cities PBS has earned him two Emmy Awards. Brennan's short
film Alma recently won Best Short Film at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival and
his Jerome Foundation-funded feature directorial debut THE MISSING SUN is currently in postproduction.
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ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN
Composer
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions,
toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Her music has been described as
“wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) and “mesmerizing and affecting” (Feast of
Music) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise” and her “quirky approach to
scoring.” Angélica is currently a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she
studies composition with Tania León.
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
SUPPORTING TEAM BIOS
PATRICIA BENABE
Producer
Writer/Producer Patricia Benabe served as Co-Producer on THE HAND THAT FEEDS (Audience
Award, Full Frame Film Festival, 2014) and REPORTERO (POV, 2013). Benabe was PMD for
PURGATORIO on IFP’s independent film distribution lab with Jon Reiss in 2012. In 2007, she was
Associate Producer for American Experience’s ROBERTO CLEMENTE (ALMA Award, 2009),
and Coordinating Producer on the Annenberg series “An Invitation to World Literature” (WGBH,
2010). Benabe also field produced for projects The Undocumented by Marco Williams and Aaron
Lubarsky’s THE NATURALIZED, commissioned by The History Channel.
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ESTHER ROBINSON
Executive Producer
Esther Robinson is an award-winning filmmaker and producer. Chosen as one of Filmmaker
Magazine’s ‘25 New Faces of Independent Film’ in 2006, her critically-acclaimed directorial debut A
WALK INTO THE SEA: DANNY WILLIAMS AND THE WARHOL FACTORY took top prizes
at the 2007 Berlin, Tribeca and Chicago film festivals. As a producer her projects include: HOME
PAGE by Doug Block (HBO/Cinemax) and THE CANAL STREET MADAM (SXSW/Hot Docs).
Robinson served as the director of Film/Video and Performing Arts for the Creative Capital
Foundation (1999-2006). Robinson is a contributor to Filmmaker Magazine, a board member of
Women Make Movies and the founder of ArtHome, a nonprofit that helps artists build solid
financial futures. She holds a film and television degree from NYU.
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RICARDO ACOSTA
Consulting Editor
Genie, Gemini and CSA-nominated and Emmy winner editor Ricardo Acosta has been working in
the film industry for over 25 years and his films have premiered in festivals worldwide. A Sundance
Institute alumnus, Acosta has been a fellow in 2006, 2011, 2013 and 2014 for the prestigious
Documentary Film Edit and Story Labs as well as The Composers and Sound Design Lab. His many
editor credits include HERMAN’S HOUSE (Emmy 2014, CSA Best Editing Award nominee);
MARMATO (Best Documentary Editing, AIFFl 2014 and Best Documentary Editor, Canadian
Cinema Editors 2015); and SEMBENE!, (Sundance and Cannes 2015).
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MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A Film By Cecilia Aldarondo
CREDITS
in memory of Miguel Dieppa
Written, Produced, and Directed by Cecilia Aldarondo
Producer: Patricia Benabe
Editor: Hannah Buck
Cinematographer: Brennan Vance
Executive Producer: Esther Robinson
Executive Producer for ITVS: Sally Jo Fifer
Executive Producers for POV:
Justine Nagan
Chris White
Executive Producer for LPB: Sandie Viquez Pedlow
Original Score by: Angélica Negrón
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Featuring:
Aquin Darigol
Nylda Dieppa
Gary Oliver
Beatriz Mallory
Rick Negrón
Nilda (Gilda) Reboyras
Lourdes Sanchez
Mark Schiffer
Ilene Shane
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Narration:
Lemuel Cabrera
Olga Merediz
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Associate Producers:
Virginia Thompson
Nylda Aldarondo-Jeffries
Matt Romanelli
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Post Production Coordinator: Patricia Benabe
Consulting Editor: Ricardo Acosta
Assistant Editor: Claire Ave’Lallemant
Contributing Editors:
Hillary Bachelder
Nathaniel Cunningham
Xavier Marrades
Additional Camera:
Morgan Adamson
Cecilia Aldarondo
Eric Breitenbach
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Kiran Chitanvis
Katinka Galanos
Marcus Lehmann
Xavier Marrades
Rachel Elizabeth Seed
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Sound Recordist: Dennis Schweitzer
Production Assistants:
Tina Rodriguez
Angee Meen
Intern: Ana Dorado
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Post-Production Facility: The ColourSpace
Colorist: Juan Salvo
Audio Post-Production Facility: Upland Sound
Sound Designer and Re-Recording Mixer: Ruy García
Dialogue/ADR Editor: Branka Mrkic
FX Editor: Roland Vajs
Sound Engineer: Oscar Zambrano
Cellist: Evelyn Farny Watkins
Music Mixer: Lawson White
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Publicity: David Magdael
Francisco Sanchez
Jack Song
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Legal Counsel: Cardozo School of Law Indie Film Clinic
Fiscal Sponsorship: Women Make Movies
Archival Materials Courtesy Of:
Aquin Darigol
Nylda Dieppa
Lisa Dennett
Matt Ebert
Pablo Flores
Pancho Mansfield
Belen Negrón
Lourdes Sanchez
Olga Sanchez Saltveit
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Additional Support:
Firelight Media
Sundance Institute
Jerome Foundation
Independent Filmmaker Project
The MacDowell Colony
New York State Council on the Arts
The Carpenter Foundation
National Association of Latino Independent Producers
The Paley Center For Media
Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation
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Roberto Guerra Documentary Fund
Skidmore College Faculty Development Grant
National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures
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Memories of a Penitent Heart was made possible by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts
with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
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Memories of a Penitent Heart is a co-production of Blackscrackle Films, LLC, Latino Public Broadcasting,
Independent Television Service (ITVS), and American Documentary | POV, with major funding provided by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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© BLACKSCRACKLE FILMS 2016
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