Marie-José Durquet, Photographer — San Francisco, CA Creator’s Fund Recipient
ABOUT THIS SHORT FILM
In the summer of 2024, with the support of a letter from the Basque Cultural Center, Marie-José Durquet traveled to Cuba to document the traces of Basque immigration to the island. Working as a photographer and researcher, she sought out physical remnants of Basque presence — street names, buildings, gravestones, and other markers — and compiled notes and images that tell a lesser-known chapter of the diaspora’s story.
Durquet completed the project ahead of schedule, producing three 40-page photobooks, each slightly different in format and sequence, through various online publishing platforms. The process, she has noted, pushed her to refine her editing and sequencing skills and deepened her attention to detail in the craft of book production. The Creator’s Fund award supported the publication of these books, making them available to the broader community. Durquet has also shared her work at the Basque Cultural Center in conjunction with a BEO Basque Film Series event.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Basque diaspora didn’t go in one direction. It scattered — to Argentina, to Chile, to Nevada, to the Philippines, to Cuba. Each of those threads is its own story, and most of them haven’t been told. Durquet went looking for what’s still there: the street names, the gravestones, the buildings that haven’t been torn down yet. That kind of documentary work is urgent precisely because it’s disappearing. A photobook doesn’t just preserve an image — it preserves the fact that someone was there, that they built something, that they mattered. That’s worth having.