Prayer for Marilyn Monroe (1983), a nine-minute film based on the poem by Ernesto Cardenal and directed by Marisol Trujillo, will be screened with four other shorts at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain on September 25 from 6:20 to 7:30 pm, as part of ‘On the Other Island,’ a series of 19 restored Cuban films dating from the 1960s to the 1980s.
“A reading of the poem Oración por Marilyn Monroe, by the Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, serves to connect the fatal demise of the mythical actress with the misery and exploitation of American childhood. An icon of popular culture, images of Marilyn Monroe are reappropriated and given a new meaning based on editing as a symbol of imperialist oppression and humiliation. The prayer is not only for the goddess of cinema, but for all humanity.”
Born in 1925, Ernesto Cardenal was a poet turned freedom fighter who was ordained in 1965, and later became Nicaragua’s Minister for Culture. He died in 2020.
It was after reading about Marilyn’s life and tragic death in Time magazine in 1962 that Cardenal was inspired to write one of his most famous poems. “I was studying for the priesthood in a seminary in Colombia,” he explained, “and, during a theology class, we got the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death. That’s when I wrote the poem.”
You can read Prayer for Marilyn Monroe in English here.
The Marilyn Report 