Beni Matias is one of the inaugural recipients of a production grant from NYWIFT’s Creative Workforce Initiative: Latina Women’s Pipeline, for her documentary, Coquito. Matías’s documentary, Coquito, explores the hidden history of Puerto Rico’s traditional Christmas drink, detailing its connections to business, colonialism, labor, agriculture, and politics. It is a meditation on culture that covers several important topics while showing a light-hearted approach to coquito tasting contests and the Christmas season. The heart of the film is how both the U.S. and island-based Boricuas preserve the culture and the changing idea of what is a Puerto Rican.
*In photo above: Left: Beni Matías cooking; Right: Beni Matías on set with food historian Miguel Ortiz Cuadra
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