[Cuba, February 2023] Film director Diana Moreno is using her production company, Wajiros Films, to redefine what it means to be Cuban and train the next generation of filmmakers. Since she attended the Academy of Women Entrepreneurship (AWE), a U.S. government exchange program, her and her company’s business has accelerated and contributed to the company’s expansion.
Cuban filmmaker and AWE alumnus Diana Moreno uses her film company to promote women’s perspectives in the Cuban film industry. |
It also helped her bring a unique feminist perspective to Cuban cinema. One of Moreno’s personal goals is to use the company to promote more inclusive and diverse voices in Cuba’s small but growing independent film industry.
“The majority of people working in the film industry are men,” Moreno said. “I had to mark my territory, which was very difficult. But now I have more women working with me.”
Moreno began making films in Camaguey, a small town in central Cuba about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the capital. However, she didn’t have many opportunities to pursue her films on a professional level, so she moved to Havana and she founded Wajiros Films with her husband in 2017.
She sold her car to raise money to buy a professional film camera. And with that, her business was born.
āWe wanted to make a film that portrayed this country as a whole,ā said Moreno, who said the company hopes to overcome geographic barriers and create a more balanced version of Cuba through storytelling in underprivileged and rural areas of the island. I emphasized how I was trying to portray the point of view.
This is Moreno’s first professional movie camera. I sold the car and bought it. |
She added that this ambition was the inspiration for the company’s name, ‘Waziros’. The word is a play on the Cuban word “guajillos,” which roughly means “country folk.” According to Moreno, changing the spelling of words creates new meanings, turning a derogatory connotation of rural life into a source of national pride, a theme in many of her company’s films. It is said that there is.
Participating in the AWE program allowed Moreno to take her company to the next level through three months of entrepreneurial development and mentorship, she said.
She was part of a class of 30 female entrepreneurs who learned core business skills in strategic planning, marketing, and finance using the DreamBuilder learning platform developed by Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Moreno on the set of Los Colechonitas, a short feature film set in a small fishing village. |
āAWE was great,ā Moreno said. āIt allowed me to take a step back from my business and really analyze it.ā
Moreno said she left the AWE session with questions in her head that later helped her make important strategic decisions in marketing and finance.She worked closely with her AWE mentor
ā A female entrepreneur who graduated from the AWE program in 2021 and helped improve her business plan.
āThrough AWE, we realized we needed a professional social media person to monitor the web and develop targeted strategies for us,ā Moreno says.
As a result, she ended up hiring a marketing agency, which gave her less time to look for new clients and more time to do what she loved, like writing and directing movies.
She had a similar epiphany about the company’s finances and hired a finance director to help the company strategically leverage resources in line with long-term goals.
“We are artists. But this is a business and we need to run it to make money to pay our employees,” Moreno said.
Moreno is helping bring a female perspective to the film industry by educating other women as producers, directors, and screenwriters. |
After hiring two more staff members, the company’s monthly revenue jumped from $4,000 to nearly $12,000. This is a significant amount for a company in the Cuban economy.
Moreno said the region is suffering from inflation and frequent shortages of basic necessities such as food and water.She said increased income has allowed them to sustain
The company has a staff of 15 and is contributing to the expansion of Wajiros’ production capacity. The company has released 50 short features and documentaries, 10 feature films, and various corporate video projects.
Moreno has bigger goals than running a successful production company.
“Part of the reason we founded the company is to promote women in the film industry,” Moreno said, adding that more than half of the company’s employees are women.
Part of Diana Moreno’s purpose is to foster more inclusive storytelling by training the next generation of Cuban women filmmakers. |
Wajiros Films is sponsoring a community project called āVarentierraā that teaches women and underprivileged youth from outside the metropolitan area the power of storytelling through film. Every year, Valentiera hosts her two-day festival to mentor the island’s next generation of filmmakers.
Already using the camera and microphone in our pockets, we work through short film projects that address tough social issues from poverty to climate change.
“We want them to create responsible video projects, even using their own cell phones,” Moreno said.
Through Valentiera, Moreno has trained approximately 24 women, helping to bring a more nuanced, intimate and inclusive perspective to Cuban filmmaking. Her own short feature film Los Colechonistas (Collectors) depicts the lives of two young brothers from a fishing village struggling in the shadow of sexual abuse.
has been praised by critics as an example of provocative feminist storytelling, part of a systematic increase in female voices in independent film.
Moreno’s short feature film “Los Coleccionistas” provides a provocative look at social issues in a small Cuban fishing village. (Courtesy of Diana Moreno) |
Moreno was recently selected to mentor the next AWE class. She said she wants to pass on her optimism and support she received during her time at AWE to her future Cuban women entrepreneurs.
“It’s complicated for women to run a business in Cuba,” Moreno said. āSharing our experiences with other women is an exciting and gratifying experience. [AWE] It made me realize that I can do anything and that I am not alone. ā
The U.S. Embassy recently resumed consular services in Havana in January 2023, but starting in 2020 it will run the Women’s Entrepreneurship Academy as a virtual program in Cuba, helping more than 120 women start businesses like Diana Moreno. It benefits the home and builds the relationship between the United States and Cuba.
AWE has provided 25,000 women entrepreneurs in 100 countries around the world with the knowledge, networks, and access they need to start and grow their businesses.
For more information about AWE, visit https://eca.state.gov/awe.