Est. Puerto Rico, 1912

The Viguié Legacy

Four Generations of Filmmaking

For more than a century, one Puerto Rican family has stood behind the camera. What began with an orphan boy in Ponce watching the first flickers reach the island became a lineage that shot Puerto Rico's first moving pictures, made its first sound film, built its first movie studio, and continues today across film, television, books, and immersive art.

First Generation ·
Juan E. Viguié Sr. 1891–1966

A pioneer film and documentary producer born and raised in Puerto Rico. Orphaned in childhood, his passion for motion pictures sparked at age ten when he witnessed the first silent flickers, and he decided then that making films would be his life's calling. At fourteen he was working as a projectionist at his town's theater. At sixteen he filmed Escenas de Ponce, and exhibited them at a movie theater he bought with his own earnings.

Seeking to further his craft, he left for New York just as the first studios were emerging. After seven years of hands-on work on the East Coast and later in the early days of Hollywood, he returned to Puerto Rico as a cinematographer for American productions shooting on the island. In 1922 he founded his renowned newsreel Viguié Telenews, and earned international recognition for documentaries distributed by MGM and Fox News. He also produced films for the Puerto Rico Department of Health, for the Dominican Republic, and for the Rockefeller Foundation. When synchronized sound arrived, he incorporated it into his newsreels.

Romance Tropical 1934

In 1934, he produced, directed, and photographed Romance Tropical, Puerto Rico's first sound film and the second feature-length Spanish-language talkie in the world. The screenplay was written by renowned poet Luis Palés Matos, the original score composed by legendary bandleader Rafael Muñoz, and the costumes designed by his wife, María Viguié. Distributed by MGM, the film premiered to great success in both Puerto Rico and the continental United States.

Then, it mysteriously disappeared.

For more than eight decades, Romance Tropical existed only in memory, regarded as one of cinema's great lost films. In 2017, a surviving print was discovered at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Following an extensive restoration, it returned to the big screen for the first time in 83 years with a world restoration premiere on November 4, 2017, at the Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles.

Three years later, on September 24, 2020, the film finally came home. It was presented in a series of private screenings at the historic CinemaBar 1950 in Old San Juan, organized and introduced by Viguié's own descendants.

Second Generation ·
Juan E. Viguié Jr. 1923–2004

Born in Ponce on April 4, 1923, Viguié Jr. worked alongside his father from childhood and learned cinematography and the business of film early. After an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army in 1946 he founded Puerto Rico Industrial Photography, dedicated to commercial and advertising work.

In 1950 he grabbed his camera and rushed to Jayuya to film the Nationalist uprising and the violent counterattack that followed. After he exhibited the footage in theaters across the island, its impact led him to establish his own newsreel, the famed El Noticiero Viguié. A few years later, he founded Viguié Film Productions, Inc., the first movie studio in Puerto Rico, with soundproof stages, 16mm and 35mm developing laboratories, sound recording, a woodshop for set construction, editing rooms, and a full camera and grip department. He also built the island's first animation studio.

With scarcely any trained crew available at the time, the studio became a training ground for a generation of Puerto Rican cinematographers. When television arrived in Puerto Rico in 1954, Viguié Films produced El Observador, the island's first television newscast to incorporate filmed footage and sound interviews into its regular newsfeed, and began producing the majority of its television commercials. He also opened offices in New York City to serve the major Madison Avenue agencies, filming and producing a quantity of TV commercials geared for the US mainland markets. In 1971 he sold the company to Telemundo, which renamed it Creative Films, a sale that carried a ten-year non-competition clause barring him from establishing another film studio.

So he built something else. In 1975, joined by his son John, he founded Viguié Multimedia, producing Epcot-style audio-visual presentations: hundreds of simultaneous images projected onto vast screens through arrays of up to thirty Kodak projectors, synchronized to narration and score by the analog computers of the day. It became the first and largest multimedia company on the island, operating from a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot facility in Hato Rey. When personal computers arrived in the early 1990s, the company moved to digital. He retired in 1996, leaving behind an indelible mark on the film and entertainment industry. Both his and his father's newsreels and documentaries are preserved in the Puerto Rico Archives and the Carnegie Library, among others.

Third Generation ·
John E. Viguié

Following in his grandfather and father's footsteps, John was involved in the film industry from early childhood. Upon finishing his cinematography studies at New York University in 1975, he returned to Puerto Rico to help his father launch Viguié Multimedia, an innovative studio producing Epcot-style audio-visual presentations. In 2000 he redirected the company back toward film production and restored its original name, Viguié Films, where he produced and directed extensive high-end television commercials, along with two feature films in co-production with Spain: Agua con Sal (2005) and La Mala (2008).

He is currently co-creator of Somewhere in the Nowhere, a book and television series inspired by four generations of the Viguié family's cinematic legacy and the evolution of filmmaking. The project serves as the cornerstone of TheRaccoonteurs, the family's multidisciplinary storytelling studio, where he collaborates with his children, Stephanie, Michelle, and Jon-Emile, on an expanding slate of original films, series, books, music, animation, immersive experiences, and digital media.

Fourth Generation ·
TheRaccoonteurs

Born and raised within the world of film and entertainment, Stephanie, Michelle, and Jon-Emile Viguié embody the fourth generation of a creative lineage rooted in the seventh art. Through their father, they inherited a legacy first established by their great-grandfather, one they now carry forward through TheRaccoonteurs and a body of work distinctly their own.