The Cinema of Cuba: Contemporary Film and the Legacy of Revolution 9781350988545, 9781786732538

Citation preview

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Guy Baron is Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University, UK. He has published widely on Cuba, in particular on Cuban cinema –​including his book Gender in Cuban Cinema: From the Modern to the Postmodern (2011) –​and his many articles have appeared in Hispanic Studies, Revista Cine Cubano and the Bulletin of Latin American Research amongst other publications. Ann Marie Stock is Vice Provost and an award-​winning Professor of Hispanic Studies and Film and Media, as well as a university library faculty scholar, at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. She is the author of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (2009, 2015) and editor of World Film Locations: Havana (2014). Dr Stock is the founding director of Cuban Cinema Classics (www.cubancinemaclassics. org), a non-​profit initiative designed to subtitle and disseminate Cuban documentaries. Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga is Vice-​Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana. He specialises in Cuban cultural history and is published widely, including his book Revolución, hegemonía y poder: Cuba 1985–​1898 (2012).

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Series Editors: Lúcia Nagib, Professor of Film at the University of Reading Julian Ross, Research Fellow at the University of Westminster Advisory Board: Laura Mulvey (UK), Robert Stam (USA), Ismail Xavier (Brazil), Dudley Andrew (USA) The Tauris World Cinema Series aims to reveal and celebrate the richness and complexity of film art across the globe, exploring a wide variety of cinemas set within their own cultures and as they interconnect in a global context. The books in the series will represent innovative scholarship, in tune with the multicultural character of contemporary audiences. Drawing upon an international authorship, they will challenge outdated conceptions of world cinema, and provide new ways of understanding a field at the centre of film studies in an era of transnational networks.

Published and forthcoming in the World Cinema series: Animation in the Middle East: Practice and Aesthetics from Baghdad to Casablanca By Stefanie Van de Peer Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History By Rob Stone and María Pilar Rodríguez Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia By Lúcia Nagib The Cinema of Cuba: Contemporary Film and the Legacy of Revolution

Edited by Guy Baron and Ann Marie Stock, with Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga The Cinema of Jia Zhangke: Realism and Memory in Chinese Film By Cecília Mello The Cinema of Sri Lanka: South Asian Film in Texts and Contexts By Ian Conrich and Vilasnee Tampoe-​Hautin Contemporary New Zealand Cinema Edited by Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen By Sarah Barrow

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Cosmopolitan Cinema: Cross-​cultural Encounters in East Asian Film By Felicia Chan

Performing Authorship: Self-​inscription and Corporeality in the Cinema By Cecilia Sayad

East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film Edited by Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-​Fai

Queer Masculinities in Latin American Cinema: Male Bodies and Narrative Representations By Gustavo Subero

East Asian Film Noir: Transnational Encounters and Intercultural Dialogue Edited by Chi-​Yun Shin and Mark Gallagher Film Genres and African Cinema: Postcolonial Encounters By Rachael Langford Global Portuguese Cinema: Industry, History and Culture Edited by Mariana Liz Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film Edited by Lúcia Nagib and Anne Jerslev Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond By Lina Khatib New Argentine Cinema By Jens Andermann New Directions in German Cinema Edited by Paul Cooke and Chris Homewood New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory By Asuman Suner On Cinema Glauber Rocha Edited by Ismail Xavier Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Narratives of Memory and Identity in the Middle East By Yael Friedman

Realism in Greek Cinema: From the Post-​War Period to the Present By Vrasidas Karalis Realism of the Senses in Contemporary World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality By Tiago de Luca The Spanish Fantastic: Contemporary Filmmaking in Horror, Fantasy and Sci-​fi By Shelagh-​Rowan Legg Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures Edited by Andrea Bandhauer and Michelle Royer Theorizing World Cinema Edited by Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah Viewing Film By Donald Richie

Queries, ideas and submissions to: Series Editor: Professor Lúcia Nagib –​ [email protected] Series Editor: Dr Julian Ross –​ [email protected] Cinema Editor at I.B.Tauris, Maddy Hamey-​Thomas –​ mhamey-​ [email protected]

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‘These varied and vibrant essays at the cutting edge of Cuban cinema research offer important accounts of film directors’, such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, analysis of headline themes – like “documentary-versusfeature” debates, the “Special Period”, pop music and the zombie movie – and insider information to complement the assessments coming from abroad. A highly recommended collection!’ Stephen M. Hart, University College London

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THE CINEMA OF

CUBA CONTEMPORARY FILM AND THE LEGACY OF REVOLUTION EDITED BY GUY BARON AND ANN MARIE STOCK, WITH ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ PITALUGA

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Published in 2017 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright Editorial Selection © 2017 Guy Baron and Ann Marie Stock, with Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga Copyright Individual Chapters © 2017 Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga, Guy Baron, Michael Chanan, Dunja Fehimovic, Alejandro L. Fernández Calderón, Jessica Gibbs, Oneyda González, Jesús Guanche, Ryan Prout, Carlos Y. Rodríguez, Ann Marie Stock, Rob Stone, Aram Vidal, Zaira Zarza The right of Guy Baron and Ann Marie Stock, with Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by the editors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Tauris World Cinema Series ISBN: 978 1 78453 814 9 eISBN: 978 1 78672 253 9 ePDF: 978 1 78673 253 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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Contents List of Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements

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I  PAN /​CONTEXT /​NATION

Introduction to Part One: History of Cuban Cinema: A Pending Task for the Social Sciences in the Twenty-​First Century Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga

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1 Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–​2015) Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga



2 Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium: Dysfunction, Isolation and the Struggle for Identity Guy Baron

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3 Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba Jesús Guanche

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4 Cinema, Race and Revolution: Dialogue and Disagreements of a Cuban Trilogy Alejandro L. Fernández Calderón

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II  ZOOM /​TEXT /​AUTEUR

Introduction to Part Two: Cuban Cinema: Crisis or Transition? Guy Baron



5 Cubist Cuba: Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010) Rob Stone

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6 Then Came the Special Period: Cinema of Fernando Pérez Michael Chanan

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7 Zombie Nation: Monstrous Identities in Three Cuban Films Dunja Fehimovic

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8 Director as Social Critic: Guantanamera and Barrio Cuba Jessica Gibbs

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9 Within, Against, Inside, Out: Ian Padrón, Fuera de liga, Habanastation and Music Video Ryan Prout

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III  REVERSE SHOT /​INDIVIDUAL /​TESTIMONY​

Introduction to Part Three: Struggling against Separation: Cuban Filmmakers Create and Connect in the Twenty-First Century Ann Marie Stock

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10 Circular Road: National Cinema –​Global Film Aram Vidal

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11 Trains of Silence Oneyda González

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12 From the Community to the World: Perspectives of an Individual Creator within the Televisión Serrana Audiovisual Collective Carlos Y. Rodríguez



13 From Exilic to Diasporic: New Cuban Cinemas in the United States Zaira Zarza Bibliography Index

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281 302 314

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List of Illustrations

2.1

Carla (Thaís Valdés) in Nada (ICAIC, 2001)

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4.1

Irremediablemente juntos (ICAIC, 2012)

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5.1–​5.2

Collages of sex and revolution (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.3–​5.4

Collages of power and surrender (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.5–​5.6

Claudia, real and imagined (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.7–​5.8

The fragmented Deirdre, contemplated (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.9–​5.10

The exchange of human contact for simulacra (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.11–​5.12

Simulacrum that replaces the real Claudia (Pirámide, 2010)

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5.13–​5.14

Narrativisation and the spectacle of the self (Pirámide, 2010)

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7.1

Juan de los muertos (La Zanfoña Producciones and Producciones de la 5ta Avenida, 2011)

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8.1

Barrio Cuba (ICAIC, 2005)

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9.1

Ian Padrón (Courtesy of Ian Padrón)

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Part 3.1

Larga distancia (ICAIC, 2010)

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10.1

Aram Vidal directing on set (Courtesy of Aram Vidal)

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11.1

Poster for Severo secreto by Alucho (Alejandro Rodríguez) (Poster courtesy of director Oneyda González)

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List of Illustrations

12.1 Poster for Bohío (Televisión Serrana. Poster courtesy of director Carlos Y. Rodríguez)

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12.2 Carlos Y. Rodríguez (Courtesy of Carlos Y. Rodríguez)

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13.1 Bubbles Beat (Kastalya, 2012)

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Contributors ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ PITALUGA is Vice-​Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana. He specialises in history and cultural theory and has published widely in Cuba and abroad, his most notable publications being La familia de Máximo Gómez (2008) and Revolución, hegemonía y poder: Cuba 1895–​1898 (2012). GUY BARON is Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. He received a grant from the British Academy in order to carry out a series of seminars that eventually led to the production of this volume. He is the author of Gender in Cuban Cinema: From the Modern to the Postmodern (2011) and has published numerous articles in Revista Cine Cubano and other journals on the subjects of Cuban cinema and internet governance in Cuba. MICHAEL CHANAN is a seasoned documentarist, writer and Professor of Film & Video at the University of Roehampton, UK. He is the author of Cuban Cinema (2004) and numerous other writings on film in Latin America, and has filmed in most countries in the continent at intervals since the early 1980s. He blogs as Putney Debater (www.putneydebater. com). DUNJA FEHIMOVIC is Lecturer in Spanish at Newcastle University, UK. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she investigated the repetition and reconfiguration of a central anxiety concerning national identity in Cuban cinema made since 2000. She has published on related themes in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and the Bulletin of Latin American Research. Her research interests include national identity, soft power, nation branding, cosmopolitanism, and the Caribbean.

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List of Contributors ALEJANDRO L.  FERNÁNDEZ CALDERÓN is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Havana and a specialist in themes of race and racism in Cuba. In 2011 he received the ‘Premio Calendario’ for his book Sobrevivir a la masacre del Doce (1912–​1920), and in 2015 he received the ‘Premio Catauro’ for El debate racial en la prensa habanera (1912–​1930). JESSICA GIBBS is Lecturer in History at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. She spent three years living in Cuba between 1994 and 2001, teaching at a teacher training college and the International School of Havana and working as translator and editorial assistant for a Cuban political magazine. She completed a PhD on US–Cuba policy at Cambridge University in 2005, and her publications include US Policy Towards Cuba: Since the Cold War (2011). She has particular interest in the links between US domestic politics and foreign policymaking, in US-​hemispheric relations, and in using film as a historical source. ONEYDA GONZÁLEZ is the author of Polvo de alas: el guión cinematográfico en Cuba (2009), comprised of interviews with film critics, directors and scriptwriters. She is the director of the documentaries Al ánimo (Starting to Dance), El silfo (The Sylph, 2010) and Esperando que caiga el jabalí (Waiting For the Boar to Fall), the latter of which won third prize in the 2013 instalment of the Festival Santiago Álvarez in memoriam. She contributed the idea, script and production for Todas iban a ser reinas (They Were All Going to be Queens, 2006) about the immigration of Russian women in Cuba. González’s documentary about the Cuban poet-​painter, Severo Sarduy, received support from CINERGIA and Ibermedia as well as from the Norwegian Fund for Cuban Cinema and a grant from the Friends of Princeton University Library. JESÚS GUANCHE is a researcher at the Fundación Fernando Ortiz in Havana and a member of the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba. He is widely seen as one of the most important anthropologists alive today in Cuba. He has published numerous articles on anthropology and Cuban Society and is the author of Componentes étnicos de la nación cubana (2008) and La Savia de España en Cuba (1999).

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List of Contributors RYAN PROUT is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Cardiff University, Wales, UK. His publications include the monograph Piensa diferente:  Rethinking Neurodiversity in Spanish and Latin American Visual Cultures (2016) and the edited volume Seeing in Spanish:  From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee –​22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures (2011). CARLOS Y. RODRÍGUEZ has worked in the community media organisation, Televisión Serrana since 2001. His recent documentaries include El bohío (The Hut, 2010), Rapsodia para Lezama (Rhapsody for Lezama, 2013), El camión de Daniel (Daniel’s Truck, 2013), Haití en nuestras venas (Haiti in our veins, 2014) and Des-​velorios en Media Luna (Un-​ vigils under the Media Luna, 2014). In 2015 he began an audiovisual project of a personal nature; Rodríguez vs. Rodríguez narrates the story of his life, one that parallels the lives of many Cubans. His documentaries have been awarded prizes at festivals in Cuba and abroad. ANN MARIE STOCK is a Swem Library Faculty Scholar and Professor of Hispanic Studies and Film and Media at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, USA. She is author/​editor of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (2009, published in Havana as Rodar en Cuba: Una nueva generación de realizadores, 2015), World Film Locations:  Havana (2014) and Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (1996) as well as more than 100 articles and book chapters. She is the founding director of Cuban Cinema Classics (www.cubancinemaclassics.org), a non-​profit initiative designed to subtitle and disseminate Cuban documentaries, and a frequent contributor to cultural events in Cuba, the USA and elsewhere in the world. ROB STONE is Professor in the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham, UK and directs B-​Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies. He has published widely on Basque, Spanish, Cuban and independent American cinema. His publications include Spanish Cinema (2001), Julio Medem (2007), Walk, Don’t Run:  The Cinema of Richard Linklater (2013) and, co-​written with María Pilar Rodríguez, Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History (2015).

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List of Contributors ARAM VIDAL is a filmmaker with various short features, including Gato (Cat, 2015), Relevo (2013), y Recursivo (Recursive, 2012), along with several documentaries. Since 2009 he has lived in Mexico City where he works as a writer and director of fiction and documentaries. His most recent project is El pez azul (The Blue Fish), a 30-minute short on the theme of Cuban migration. ZAIRA ZARZA is an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. She obtained her PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University where she held an Ontario Trillium Scholarship. Her archival/​curatorial project Roots and Routes: Cuban Cinemas of the Diaspora in the Twenty-First Century toured various cities in Canada and Cuba in 2015–​16. Zarza is the co-​editor of ‘Havana’, a special issue of the Toronto-​based journal Public, and author of Caminos del cine brasileño contemporáneo (2010). Her current research focuses on creative industries, intellectual property and new economies of film production in present-​day Cuba.

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Acknowledgements This volume would not have been possible without a grant from the British Academy UK/​Caribbean Link Programme to Dr Guy Baron at Aberystwyth University in 2012–​13. The grant enabled conferences to be organised in both Havana and Aberystwyth in order to bring together many of the book’s contributors on two separate occasions to share their love, passion, enthusiasm and expertise on the subject of Cuban cinema. Thanks must also go to both the Universities of Havana and Aberystwyth, who helped to organise these conferences successfully, particularly to Dr Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga, Vice-​Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana, whose work was invaluable in gathering together the people necessary. Thanks must also go to the University of Aberystwyth who made it possible, through the University Research Fund, for filmmakers Juan Carlos Cremata and Gerardo Chijona to travel to Aberystwyth to show their films (during the coldest spring in living memory of 2013) as part of the Wales One World (WOW) film festival to coincide with the Aberystwyth leg of the British Academy conference. The cold (and snow) did not dampen the enthusiasm of the filmmakers or the audiences who attended the film viewings. Thanks also to Fernando Pérez, who kindly gave up his time in the middle of filming to come to the conference in Havana to speak (and listen) to us all. It was this combination of film practice, dialogue with practitioners, reception and theory that the conferences and film viewings attempted to put together, and which we hope this volume reflects. Some chapters speak of individual practice, some of theoretical concepts that can be applied to various Cuban films. Some speak of personal testimony, of lives changed by cinema, and some speak of how Cuba has been reflected on the screen. All of them speak with affection for how a small island, constantly grappling with itself, can produce such a diverse, intelligent and moving cinematic experience that challenges ideas about the island both from within and without. xv

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Part One

Pan / Context / Nation

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Introduction to Part One

History of Cuban Cinema: A Pending Task for the Social Sciences in the Twenty-​First Century ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ PITALUGA Translated by Guy Baron

There have been some notable failings from within Cuba in writing the history of contemporary Cuban cinema. The first of these is the lack of social science research and the second is how few academic historians on the island work closely on the subject of cinema.1 This of course does not diminish in any way the various approaches to the historical development of film made by other specialists; on the contrary, thanks to them we have a well-​researched written memory of Cuban cinema. However, social scientists and academic historians on the island have not been particularly interested in cinema as an object of study. I am one of those historians who has, up until recently, neglected cinema as a research topic and so I take this as a personal responsibility. There are several reasons for this lack of attention on Cuba’s film history: • The traditional concern of the social sciences with other aspects of society and national history such as the demographic, the political or the economic.

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The Cinema of Cuba • The traditional way that Cuban Social Sciences has treated art and literature as mere complements to their investigations and not as a means in and of themselves to understand history. • The priorities set by Cuban historians during the second half of the twentieth century, and their lack of desire to chronicle the revolutionary period sufficiently. • The dominant role that the nineteenth century has held as a historical period for the study of the formation of Cuban nationality and the nation, largely due to the three Wars of Independence (1868–​78, 1879–​ 80 and 1895–​98) which for decades have been the focus for historians; in fact, seventy to eighty per cent of all history books published on the island deal with the nineteenth century. • At the same time, Cuban historians have maintained the idea that they need to chronologically distance themselves from their subjects by a minimum of thirty to forty years before they can interpret and write about historical issues concerning the content and evolution of art. • Finally, to understand art and literature not simply as events, but also as part of a complex and critical sociocultural process was, for decades, not the privilege of many historians, as most were persuaded by a culture of positivist thought from the beginning of the twentieth century. From 1990 this particular approach to art and literature among historians began to change. It was at this time that Cuban society took a new direction due to the end of European socialism and the arrival of the disastrous economic crisis known as the ‘Special Period’. To paraphrase the Cuban historian Juan Pérez de la Riva, 1990 symbolically marked the end of ‘Cuba A’ and the beginning of ‘Cuba B’. At that point social history and cultural studies began to emerge among the new generation of students of Cuban history. Critical Marxism and studies of Antonio Gramsci, along with studies from theoretical schools such as Frankfurt and Birmingham became more understood on the island. From the traditionally used theoretical and methodological instruments, some historians began to implement approaches from cultural studies to allow them to observe and understand cinema as a

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History of Cuban Cinema powerfully informative and interpretive instrument of the country’s recent history. The limited production of Cuban Revolution historical studies coming out of the island itself left open a field of social interpretation that has been covered to some extent by national film production and in novels. In fact, from the beginning of the decade, Cuban cinema deepened its anthropological vision of reality to the point of being a great visual anthropological museum of Cuba. It is no secret that for a social, historical and anthropological perspective of contemporary Cuban society one should go to the movies and read the Cuban novels of the past six decades, as Cuban social sciences have not been able to match this close examination of the social. More recently, Cuban historians and social scientists have used the contemporary production of film as a starting point and focus several of their investigations on the necessity of placing film and its social analysis firmly within the mechanics of power relations that articulate hegemony in the modern state. After all, film is both a technological and ideological product of modernity. Imbued with this necessary, new perspective, in 2011–13 a group of Cuban history scholars, along with another group of British and US academics, developed a joint research project on Cuban cinema post-1990. The project was perhaps the first time such a large group of Cuban historians analysed such a variety of social issues in today’s Cuba through an examination of Cuban audiovisual production. One of the attractions of these texts is that they examine, from a distinctive historical viewpoint, some of the various problems in Cuban society as presented through its cinema. Thus, issues such as the general evolution of Cuban cinema in relation to cultural policies and different historical periods of the country; the presence of burning issues such as racial identity and racism; visual anthropology and the treatment of rural communities; and the reflection of national historical themes are dealt with in the first section of this book. The first chapter, ‘Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–​ 2015)’ is not a catalogue of film production, nor is it an encyclopaedic text. Its objectives are to historically locate the various stages of film production

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The Cinema of Cuba in Cuba and to identify and characterise prominent social and historical themes reflected in major feature films produced by the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) from its inception up until 2015. In addition, it valorises​ ​the relationship between different social topics and historical junctures of the cultural policy of the state. Thus, it seeks to place the role of Cuban cinema within the structures of the cultural hegemony of the revolutionary system. Finally, using an historical perspective, the article proposes a characterisation of the work undertaken by younger filmmakers in recent years. This opening text, therefore, presents the reader with a guide to precede the various other aspects of Cuban cinema discussed throughout the book. Chapter 2 by British academic Guy Baron draws on a number of films from the early part of the new millennium to illustrate how, at the turn of the century, Cuban cinema represented the continuous struggles of ordinary Cubans to survive. The films focused on are all produced after the supposed ‘Special Period’ has come to an end and yet the levels of dysfunction, discontent and isolation presented are as great as at any time in Cuban film history. In films such as Lista de espera (Waiting List), Miradas (Glances), Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún), Suite Habana (Havana Suite), Entre ciclones (Between Cyclones), Perfecto amor equivocado (Perfect Mistaken Love), Barrio Cuba (Cuba Neighbourhood), Doble juego (Double Play) and Viva Cuba (Long Live Cuba), the panorama of Cuban cinema becomes ever more critical and Baron proposes that, during this period, Cuban cinema becomes increasingly inward looking in a process of self-​examination, in a fraught and anxious way. A number of these films expose dysfunctionality in families, relationships and society in general and, by voicing and envisioning such a strong critique of a malfunctioning society, these films question the very idea of Cuban revolutionary national identity. Cuba is a country without the regional, geographic and cultural diversity of other Latin American and European countries. From one end of the island to the other, we speak the same language. Generally we eat the same type of food and we dress the same without differences across traditions. Music features heavily as part of our national culture. Our material culture is practically a singular one. Essentially, the transculturation of 6

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History of Cuban Cinema Spanish and African cultures is what defines the visible unity of Cuban culture without denying other contributions and external components. However, there do exist distinct physical and cultural spaces on the island that illustrate the different ways of life for diverse communities, both urban and rural, which are reservoirs of a common Cuban culture. In Chapter 3, ‘Community Film and Audiovisual Production’, the Cuban anthropologist and ethnologist Jesús Guanche presents an interesting study that analyses the approaches that cinema has taken to illustrate these diverse communities across the island. The article takes an anthropological look at how film has dealt with these communities, paying particular attention to rural areas. The lives of these people and their relationship with nature is seen as an intellectual concern that has produced about 500 documentaries in the country. Guanche takes a detailed look at the audiovisual production company Televisión Serrana based in the Sierra Maestra mountains and discusses how, through a generous network of connections with national and international institutions, this audiovisual community has gained considerable space in the cinema of the Revolution. Chapter 4, ‘Cinema, Race and Revolution: Dialogue and Disagreements of a Cuban Trilogy’, by Cuban scholar Alejandro L. Fernández Calderón reflects on how racism and racial identity in Cuba have been depicted in its revolutionary cinema. He presents the notion of two competing realities: the conflicts of racism and racial identity, and the different mutations that both have experienced in Cuban society from 1959 to the present. According to Calderón, revolutionary cinema has illustrated Cuban racial complexity through visions of social and moral dilemmas, strategies that at one time disappeared but later re-​emerged in the 1990s with so-​called ‘negrometrajes’ (fiction films with racial themes starring mostly black actors). Finally, via analyses of several films, the author explains that racism is still a pending issue in Cuban society, even when at various times in the history of the Revolution, it has been claimed that the issue has been overcome. For Calderón, cinema has been an important cultural tool that has continued to debate one of the most sensitive issues in Cuban revolutionary society. This section deals with some thoughts from a group of historians and anthropologists. To think of cinematography from the point of view of 7

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The Cinema of Cuba historical science is something relatively new in Cuba. To place film within the complex dynamics of an atypical Cuban reality is the focus of this part of the book. Despite not having vast financial resources, contemporary Cuban national cinema has for years been a visual and ideological reference point for the whole of Latin America and still today it is recognised as a major cultural project in the region, providing a beautiful painted window of images and sounds that gets close to reflecting one of the most unique societies in the world.

Note 1. There have been a number of excellent studies on Cuban cinema written from outside the island, such as Michael Chanan’s Cuban Cinema, Ann Marie Stock’s On Location in Cuba (recently translated into Spanish as Rodar en Cuba), Guy Baron’s Gender and Cuban Cinema and Enrique García’s Cuban Cinema After the Cold War.

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1 Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–​2015) ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ PITALUGA Translated by Guy Baron

It is very difficult to study a revolution from a single concept or theoretical definition. The intellectual confluence of a variety of theoretical assumptions is the key to understanding the totality of any revolutionary process; its social complexity demands this approach. Sometimes not even living within a revolution guarantees an understanding of it. The binomial cycle of reason-​irrationality becomes a constant within its quotidian and epic discourse. Some people assume that a revolution is a point of arrival, when political power is seized and control of past institutions is achieved. However, a real revolution is something quite different. The point of arrival is only a starting point, a new beginning after the seizure of power that turns into a permanent social transformation to articulate a new logic of reality. A revolution is an important cultural event during its time. It is a process of the cultural subversion of all representations of reality and of the powers that both the state and common subjects construct and reproduce in order to create a new system of social relations in which national culture, the essential pillar of cultural hegemony, is re-​cast and re-​claimed. 9

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The Cinema of Cuba When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959 what came before it was regarded as the basis for change. The depth of this historical turn meant the end of the old state and emergence of the new. The projected path was possible because the Revolution acted immediately on the most important element for every citizen, their subjectivity; more important than their origin or social status. It was necessary to deeply subvert many of the attitudes of the Cuban people in order to dismantle the system of values ​​that had previously dominated. The victorious sectors projected the process as an ideological crusade for the purposes of ‘mental decolonisation’, within which cinema played an essential role. It was to contribute to the creation of a counter hegemony from an audiovisual perspective in order to transform a world bound by centuries of colonisation. That is why just eighty days after 1 January 1959, Act 169 of the new revolutionary government led to the founding of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry –​ICAIC). The universe of picture and sound was privileged as a platform for the initial process of cultural subversion. This Act was an early recognition that by itself explains the value and role of cinema in this new historical context. In the first ‘Whereas’ of the law it is stated that ‘cinema is an art form’ and that first definition was not accidental; the emerging Cuban cinema stood on the edge of its new role and place in society, not only as an entity of artistic production, but also as a producer of modern art and creator of ideology –​an instrument of power for the construction of a cultural hegemony. This was an attempt to create a cinema of profound national character distanced from traditional patterns of commercial filmmaking. The magnitude of that undertaking was so massive that even today there remains in good measure the largely conceptual basis of this creative matrix, supporting the present and future continuity of Cuba’s national cinema, helping to determine its own destiny. From the triumph of 1959 this idea became the ideological compass at the highest levels of revolutionary leadership and since then culture has become an important protagonist in the history of the Revolution; the foundation of the ICAIC putting cinema as the first cultural link in the new ideological chain. To understand the relationship between revolution, 10

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) film and hegemony over the course of half a century, two questions can help us briefly journey through the history of cinema in the Revolution: has Cuban cinema been a source of subversion in each of its stages of development? And was it and is it still the creative focus of a national culture?

A Brief Look at Cuban Cinema from 1959 On 24 March 1959 in Havana a group of young intellectuals got together. Led by Alfredo Guevara, Santiago Álvarez, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Saul Yellin, they were the founding fathers of the ICAIC. Along with other young enthusiasts they began the awesome task of reshaping Cuban cinema. Experimentation was the keyword for all the projects they devised, and from that moment feature films and documentaries would reflect in the most visual way possible the changes and transformations in Cuban society. The big screen could now give a powerful voice and a social space to the previously marginalised: workers, women, farmers and the black population, together with the social heroes of the moment such as the fighters of the Rebel Army, the Mambí (fighters in the national wars of independence of the nineteenth century) and the militia, thus legitimising the emerging revolutionary situation. With Cinema Novo from Brazil, 1950s English Free Cinema, the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, international aesthetic pillars would serve as markers that would influence new Cuban film production.1 In more than one film, cinema served as an instrument of criticism of the Cuban Republic (1902–​58) and its moral decay; and at the same time as an expressive instrument to project a new reality. Throughout the experimental decade of the 1960s the work of director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea stands out above all others. Historias de la Revolución (Stories of the Revolution), Las doce sillas (Twelve Chairs), La muerte de un burócrata (The Death of a Bureaucrat) and Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) exemplify this aesthetic relationship, which extended even beyond the 1960s. Other films like Las aventuras de Juan Quinquín (The Adventures of Juan Quinquín) by Julio García Espinosa, La primera carga al machete (The First Charge of the Machete) by Manuel Octavio 11

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The Cinema of Cuba Gómez and Lucía by Humberto Solás synthesise the best filmmaking from those initial extravagant years.2 In 1969 the first decade of this new Cuban cinema ended. Up until then, through aesthetic experimentation, the new themes and new protagonists had legitimised the existence of the Revolution. This first decade saw film as a basic instrument of subversion of the past and creation of the new. But from the beginning of the 1970s new aesthetic perspectives emerged on the island. With the failure of the attempted 10 million ton sugar harvest of 1969–​70, the socio-​political awakening of the 1970s began in Cuba. Experimentation as a permanent norm in the search for a model of Cuban socialism of the previous decade was besieged by a new historical juncture that began to eschew experimentation in favour of severe ideological reaffirmation. The case of poet Heberto Padilla and the First National Congress on Education and Culture –​both between March and April 1971 –​opened an unhappy road for national culture. The parameters set by Congress to develop and conduct national culture left experimentation behind. Aesthetic codes in film were induced to favour a rigid legitimation of the system rather than any type of creative subversion. It was an attempt to reaffirm a desired reality using influences of Socialist Realism, leaving aside the necessary social interrogation that all national cinema contains. Cuban cinema took the path of introspection, firstly to examine Cuba’s colonial period of history (1510–​1898), to address previous struggles of social groups, and secondly to probe daily life at the beginning of the new decade. However, the production in those years did not always achieve aesthetic and artistic richness. Although the quality of some films was enhanced by a distinctive socio-​historical treatment, social criticism, experimentation and polemical issues were considerably reduced and a social and political reaffirmation of the system became predominant, leading to an impoverished canon. This distinctive socio-​historical treatment can be seen for example in the bold sociological register of De cierta manera (One Way or Another) by Sara Gómez, which reflected the results of certain revolutionary social transformations. El hombre de Maisinicú (The Man of Maisinicú) by 12

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) Manuel Pérez was at pains to show the armed confrontation of the people in the shape of a member of the State Security struggling against counterrevolutionary gangs that operated on the island, as did Paty Candela by Rogelio París. These are representative of films illustrating the class struggle in the early years of the Revolution. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s work grew with films that sealed his rise as the best known Cuban film director, even today.3 Like many filmmakers of his generation he also delved into areas of social confrontation with colonial themes in order to validate the present using the historical origins of the nation. Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (A Cuban Fight Against the Demons) and La última cena (The Last Supper) are classic illustrations of this. Other filmmakers reflected this historic confrontation through a slaver vs slave vision as was the case with the trilogy of Sergio Giral, which included El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco), Rancheador (Slavehunter) and Maluala. Before the end of the 1970s, Alea decided to tackle the subject of the decline of the wealthy classes from the Republic upon being immersed into revolution. So it was that in Los sobrevivientes (The Survivors) he resumed his neorealist vision to visualise the decline of the Cuban bourgeoisie in the face of the triumph of the Revolution. In Los días de agua (Days of Water) Manuel Octavio Gómez visualised rural life and its myths in the first half of the century; La brigadista by Manuel Octavio Gómez ventured into one of the great landmarks of revolutionary change, the Literacy Campaign, while Pastor Vega was responsible for one of the most popular films of the time, Retrato de Teresa (Portrait of Teresa), in which the social inclusion of women confronting national sexist stereotyping marked a milestone in Cuban cinematography, contributing to a national and not even yet conclusive discussion on the subject.4 An ideological connection with extra-​national nuances sewed the ties between Latin American independence and the roots of anti-​colonial Cuban ideology with the inauguration in December 1979 of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. This represented a grand, Latin American, cinematic challenge to the might of Hollywood in order to show the realities of Latin America through the lenses of its own film​makers, to create a permanent space for the vision of the historically 13

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The Cinema of Cuba dominated. Subverting the story of an independent but not liberated Latin America, the Festival focused its objective on the attempt to reaffirm the possibilities of liberation for all, exemplified by Cuba’s own revolution. During the 1970s then, Cuban cinema passed through the ‘historicist stage’ so-​called due to the strong presence of historical productions, many located in the colonial era. In this manner, and using some of the diverse codes and aesthetic language of experimentation from the previous decade, cinema continued to play a key role as an ideological cog within the hegemonic machinery of the state in order to legitimise various aspects of social reality. The class struggle, political confrontation, the discussion of previously held taboos and the social work of the Revolution were all reflected in the film of the moment, more concerned with making a cinema of reaffirmation than with aesthetic perfection. The exercising of social criticism notably diminished in the films of these years as the cultural bureaucracy of the time did not believe that this was a politically favourable area to explore at a notable historic juncture that began with the failure of the sugar harvest of 1970 and concluded (formally at least) with the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1976. In this way Cuban cinema negotiated the infamous ‘Quinquenio gris’ (Grey Five Years) from 1971 to 1976, as dubbed by Cuban intellectual Ambrosio Fornet.

A Truncated Rebirth Fortunately the beginning of the 1980s saw a return to social criticism and inquiry in cinema. From the creation of the Ministry of Culture and the Instituto Superior de Arte (University of the Arts  –​ISA), both in 1976, Cuba officially left behind the difficult ‘grey period’ in Cuban culture. Now it invited a reunion with the public, not only through a critique of Cuba at the time, but also with the reflection and discussion of national issues that, despite having had twenty years of socialist construction, still had not been resolved or had not achieved the expected results. Industrialisation, the development of rural co-​operatives in several mountainous regions, the social integration of women, the historical and revolutionary epic, the problems of a not so flattering bureaucracy, fraud, 14

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) double standards, sexism, corruption, human conflicts and emigration provided the thematic basis of an abundant cinematic production almost always contextualised in urban settings. Cecilia by Humberto Solás opened the 1980s for Cuban film. Maybe its controversial reception was the necessary pretext for the thematic and aesthetic change from the previous decade, something that was being called for from the end of the 1970s. The particular way that Solás interpreted, both historically and aesthetically, the principal Cuban novel of the nineteenth century (Cecilia Valdés o la loma del ángel, 1882 by Cirilio Valdés) generated a profound aesthetic and conceptual debate that unleashed a real questioning of national cinema. In fact, after that controversial moment, the President of the ICAIC, Alfredo Guevara, ceded direction of the Institute to film-​maker Julio García Espinosa, who assumed responsibility throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Soon the results of this conceptual change were seen with the arrival of a good number of contemporary urban comedies peppered with Cuban national traits and customs. Films such as Se permuta (House Swap), Los pájaros tirándole a la escopeta (Tables Turned), Sueño tropical (Tropical Dream), Vals de La Habana Vieja (Waltz in Old Havana), ¡Plaf! o demasiado miedo a la vida (Plaf! Or Too Afraid of Life) and Adorables mentiras (Adorable Lies) illustrate this move towards self-​effacing comedy, while problems relating to the development of the Cuban social model and the various human conflicts this caused were discussed in Techo de vidrio (Glass Ceiling), Polvo rojo (Red Dust), Tiempo de amar (Time to Love), Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Point), Habaneras (Havana Girls), Como la vida misma (As Life Itself), Venir al mundo (Come to the World), Una novia para David (A Girlfriend for David), En tres y dos (In Three and Two), Bajo presión (Under Pressure) and Papeles secundarios (Secondary Roles). After the massive Mariel boatlift in 1981, emigration became a wrenching social reality and the sensitive issue of migration was dealt with for the first time as a central plot of a feature film in Lejanía (Distance). But historical and revolutionary epics continued with titles such as Guardafronteras (Border Patrol), Los refugiados de la cueva del muerto (The Refugees of the Cave of Death), and Clandestinos (Living Dangerously). The film Plácido marked the final throw of so-​called historicist cinema that had been 15

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The Cinema of Cuba prevalent in the previous decade while Pataquín and La Bella del Alhambra (The Beauty of the Alhambra) represent to this day the best of the musical theatre genre of the Revolution. Directors such as Miguel Pineda Barnet, Rolando Díaz, Gerardo Chijona, Orlando Rojas, Daniel Díaz, Fernando Pérez, Rogelio París, José Massip, Víctor Cassaus, Sergio Giral, all made their names in this decade while others such as Solás, García Espinosa and Gutiérrez Alea, cemented their places as legends in the world of Latin American cinema. An important step in the development of Cuban cinema was then made with the opening in 1986 of the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (International School of Film and Television –​EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, created to develop film and television with a Latin American and Third World perspective. Nearly thirty years after its opening many of its graduates have produced work that shows the aesthetic marks of Cuban cinema. The 1980s recast the role and place of Cuban cinema in the hegemonic framework of the nation through a social critique that was harmonised with the cultural politics of the time, using as its politico-​cultural reference point the speech by Fidel Castro in 1961, Palabras a los intelectuales (Words to the Intellectuals). Throughout the 1980s there was a national political crusade for the revision and improvement of the Cuban social model. Cinema did not stand outside of this national campaign that was articulated through various national events during the decade, the most obvious of these being the Third National Congress of the Communist Party. One of the most beneficial results of this struggle to improve for the ICAIC was the birth, at the end of the decade, of the Creative Groups (1988). Directed by Gutiérrez Alea, Manuel Pérez and Humberto Solás, the establishment of these three creative groups within the ICAIC allowed for more decentralised collective discussion processes that helped to shape future films. However, the beginning of the so-​called Special Period (the economic and social crisis), at the beginning of the 1990s, truncated a true cultural revival that had been developing over the previous ten years. Culture like the rest of society would be subject to the demands, possibilities and consequences of this sudden national dilemma. At this historic juncture 16

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) censorship emerged with new justifications for the sake of national defence, and the world of film was again marked because of it.

Crisis and Coproductions At the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, the film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown) symbolically ended the preceding social criticism. Its hyperbolised vision of Cuban reality did not fit an atypical national situation, where Cuba lost, in a very short time, its economic base and its international political allies. The role of criticism as a protagonist quickly faded against a desired ‘national unity’ that left little space for it and cinema itself generated a new controversy that questioned the very existence of the ICAIC. Some cultural technocrats spoke of the dissolution of the Institute or of its possible merger with other cultural institutions. Fortunately, intellectual sanity prevailed and within this new context the return of Alfredo Guevara as President of the ICAIC illuminated the beginning of a new phase in Cuban cinema.5 The political and social situation truncated the level of criticism in feature films in the name of greater ‘national unity’ in a world where Cuba lost its socialist allies and suffered both increased aggressiveness from the United States and an economic crisis with no end in sight. This situation quickly conditioned film productions drastically reducing the number of films made. The ICAIC was left with practically no funds for their productions to such an extent that in 1993 the Institute could not afford to produce a single movie by itself. So coproductions with international producers and institutions became Cuban cinema’s lifeline. While in previous years the ICAIC had made some films in coproduction, such were the severe limitations that now the foreign partners had the decisive say in the development of scripts and in the production processes. Thus, in some cases, the foreign influence impinged greatly on the film content and the image produced did not reflect the social reality of Cuba and Cubans. Under this dilemma many mediocre films were created during the decade. In some coproductions Cubans were often presented as marginal characters, prone to prostitution and ravaged by a material poverty that diminished their moral and social principles; such films also lacked aesthetic 17

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The Cinema of Cuba value. The best example of these was a series of comedies that exacerbated the real and harsh conditions of survival not only of Cuban society and of Cubans, but of the very existence of cinema itself. It led to a type of social hyperrealism that left behind any search for an artistic aesthetic. In some of these coproductions marginalisation and its various social expressions were the means and the ends of almost every character, from dancers to university students; everyone was doomed to be ‘marginalised’. The lapidary phrase by José Martí, ‘el pueblo que paga manda’ (He who pays, demands) was apt for several productions where Cubans were presented as foreigners wished to see them. Three films come to mind here to remind us of the price paid: Hacerse el sueco (Playing Swede), Kleiness Tropicana (Little Tropicana) and Un paraíso bajo las estrellas (A Paradise Under the Stars). Fortunately other coproductions were a lot more successful. Gutiérrez Alea began the decade in 1993 with his memorable Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate). This was not the first film to approach the theme of homosexuality but it was a film that caused people to rethink the achievements, spaces and social possibilities of homosexuality in a country with a certain level of intolerance. Two years later Guantanamera was the final chapter in the work of the most outstanding Cuban film-​maker of the twentieth century. In 1992 Humberto Solás made El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral), the film versión of Carpentier’s novel and considered by many to be a daring artistic experiment. The novel is considered as one of the greatest in the Hispanic world in the twentieth century, a work in which Carpentier’s literary theory known as Magical Realism is expounded. Solás had already dabbled in cinema history but the film was met with many unfavourable critiques, the spirit and splendour of the novel not being translated to the big screen. But the most urgent contemporary themes were those generated by the crisis of the 1990s. Migration, housing, increasing material poverty, bureaucracy, the impressive rise of African and Catholic religiosity, corruption, existentialism and conflicts of identity in times of difficulty, arrived via introspective and interrogative films such as Hello Hemingway (1990), Madagascar (1994), El elefante y la bicicleta (The Elephant and the Bicycle, 18

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) 1994), Reina y rey (Queen and King, 1994), Pon tu pensamiento en mí (Put your Thoughts on Me, 1995), Amor vertical (Vertical Love, 1997), La vida es silbar (Life is to Whistle, 1998), and Las profecías de Amanda (Amanda’s Prophecies, 1999). However, the crisis also generated some positive elements. In the absence of abundant state subsidy this allowed for a greater creative freedom as the film​makers were required and able to seek funding outside the ICAIC, thus giving them more space within the films to propose their own views on the complex social dynamics of the time, without being subject to official versions. This conditioned freedom was a step forward in terms of the capacity and diversity of individual judgments that directors could insert into their films. The limits of censorship were widened and Cuban filmmakers were able to express their social reality more openly. They began to question the illusion of the ‘heroic revolution’ that had been proposed up until the early 1990s and this was often done from a sense of despondency, where the vision of the nation and society in general acquired an individual nuance; in other words, the personal vision of the citizen was imposed onto the collective epic.

Cuban Cinema of Today and Tomorrow Aesthetically speaking, the twenty-​first century really began for Cuban cinema in 2003 with Suite Habana (Havana Suite) by Fernando Pérez. It is a film which inaugurated a particular ‘aesthetics of ugliness’ that deeply shocked the national audience.6 Since the previous decade Pérez had begun addressing complex human existential problems caused by the economic crisis of the 1990s, and his work illustrates a special ability and the necessary sensitivity to narrate contemporary Cuba through visual drama in a unique way. Suite Habana examined with chilling drama the ‘terror of the nightmare’, in the words of Michael Chanan, caused by the crisis of the 1990s.7 The film was the result of an international project called Cities of the World and Pérez presents a stark image of Havana through the personal stories of eight residents. Reactions to the film were acute and varied; some would not believe the realities that the film portrayed. Through tears, 19

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The Cinema of Cuba admiration, surprise or silence, Cubans could see that hopelessness had become the meaning of life for many due to the biggest economic crisis in Cuba’s history. Pérez has made a number of films that justifiably make him Cuba’s most acclaimed director, after Gutiérrez Alea. His film Madrigal (2007) is a highly experimental piece. Classified as an abstract work, it immerses the viewer into the conflicting lives of several young Cubans using a variety of film language and visual symbols. In 2012 he returned to the genre of historical film with José Martí, el ojo del canario (José Martí, the Eye of the Canary), probably the best period reconstruction (mid-​nineteenth century) of Cuban cinema in the last twenty-​five years. With few resources the film manages to create an authentic historical atmosphere that depicts the deep social contradictions in which colonialism and slavery in Cuba were developed. But it is not just Pérez’s cinematic direction that is put on show; his personal experience of pain and the human condition led him to premiere in 2014 the film La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words). Without hiding an autobiographical tinge the film invites us to reflect on the indecipherable world of the human mind when mental illness depletes any possibility of understanding and coexistence between the family and the individual. It is a film of psychological insight that makes us think deeply about our social existence. Cuban cinema from 2000 has continued to explore the complex panorama of national identity, generational conflicts, religious expression and the social and human effects caused by the crisis of the 1990s. The dilemmas of everyday existence in a country of atypical social logic, where migration and tourism have conditioned a substantial part of daily life can be seen in works such as Lista de espera (Waiting List, 2000), Nada (Nothing, 2001) Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún, 2001), Perfecto amor equivocado (Perfect Mistaken Love, 2004), Habana Blues (2005) and Viva Cuba (2005), the latter being an enormous popular success. We can add to this list, Personal belongings and El cuerno de la abundancia (The Horn of Plenty), both from 2008. From the perspective of social reflection, Barrio Cuba (2005), Mañana (Tomorrow), La pared (The Wall) and Páginas del diario de Mauricio (Pages 20

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) from Mauricio’s Diary), all from 2006, present a questioning of Cubans’ social existence and of the everyday reality that they are forced to confront; poverty and its consequences, spiritual marginalisation and the individual price of the persistence of a national ideological utopia are the respective themes of these three films. Other films cast their gaze on the presence of people of colour both in historical and contemporary society through examinations of their presence in national identity and culture. In 2003 Jorge Luis Sánchez delivered Roble de olor (The Smell of Oak), a tragic story of interracial love at the height of Cuban slavery during the first half of the nineteenth century, a story based on real events. In 2006 he made Benny, an artistic biography of the greatest popular musician of the twentieth century in Cuba, Benny Moré. Irremediablemente juntos (Inevitably Together, 2012), is another interracial love story set in the present, which closes this creative triptych of Sánchez (this film is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4). Very unique viewpoints of Cuba’s Republican past (1902–​58) were created in these years in four interesting productions:  La edad de la peseta (The Silly Age, 2006), Omertá (2008), El viajero inmóvil (The Immobile Traveler, 2008) and Ciudad en rojo (City in Red, 2009). The first was under the direction of Pavel Giroud and tells a story set in Havana in the fifties in which two conflicting stories reveal the views of a film-​maker belonging to the newest generation of directors. For Giroud it was possible to find storylines that were different from the traditional approach to this era, an era that has been mostly identified with an armed and popular resistance to the government of Fulgencio Batista. Tomás Piard directed El viajero inmóvil. It was a difficult and daring artistic experiment, using the audiovisual format to bring out the most important aspects of the novel Paradiso by Cuban José Lezama Lima, one of greatest works of Hispanic writing of the twentieth century. Finally, Rebeca Chávez extrapolated another Cuban novel, Bertillón 166 by José Soler Puig in her film Ciudad en rojo. True to the long tradition of socio-​ historical tendencies being reflected in national art and literature, cinema has recently witnessed a number of new social dynamics. Thus, an un-​prejudiced viewpoint of sexuality and the increasing emergence of issues of homosexuality and 21

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The Cinema of Cuba transsexuality have been seen in for example Suite Habana, Boleto al paraíso (Ticket to Paradise) by Gerardo Chijona, Afinidades (Affinities) by Vladimir Cruz and Jorge Perugorría (the last two from 2010), Verde verde (Green Green) by Enrique Pineda Barnet (2012), Fátima o el parque de la Fraternidad (Fatima or the Park of Fraternity) and Vestido de novia (Wedding Dress, 2014), both from 2014. Treatment of such issues has been so prevalent in these works that there is the danger of reaching a saturation point. In the twenty-​first century the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the Film Critics’ Festival, the Festival of Young Filmmakers (La Muestra Joven) and the Festival of Low Budget Cinema (Cine Pobre), are the main events of a national cinema now interwoven with new digital techniques that offer greater participation to emerging young Cuban film​makers. These festivals showcase the works of the most celebrated directors such as Fernando Pérez, Tomás Piard, Juan Carlos Tabío, Gerardo Chijona, Enrique Pineda Barnet and Rogelio Paris, alongside younger artists such as Arturo Soto, Ernesto Darana, Pavel Giroud, Lester Hamlet, Juan Carlos Cremata and others. Young talent from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) and from the University of Havana also submit proposals to these festivals presenting diverse realities that have boosted the aesthetic language of our cinema, including the making of films on mobile phones. There is an evident new group of filmmakers in Cuban cinema now, concerned with developing a more universal aesthetic, i.e. the search for and shaping of issues that are less local and more akin to an international language allowing for greater acceptance of our cinema in international media. Directors such as Pavel Giroud, Léster Hamlet, Esteban Insausti and Alejandro Brugués. The first three intertwined their debut through three stories that make the same film Tres veces dos (Three by Two, 2004). The film realises three different situations in similar contexts, joined together thematically by the search for a partner. Part of this same generation, Ian Padrón directed one of the most popular films of the second decade of the century, Habanastation (2011). With an outcome so simple as to be questionable, the argument develops the friendship of two children in the midst of Cuba’s increasing social differences, something not always openly acknowledged by the official media. 22

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) Alejandro Brugués was the director of Juan de los muertos (Juan of the Dead, 2011), a black, zombie comedy where the surrealism of Havana leads to irrationalities in a story with political and social nuances. It is currently the Cuban film with the most external financing ever and shows the aspirations and acceptance among the younger generation for the continued development of an independent cinema outside the auspices of the ICAIC (this film is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7). It appears that Cuban filmmakers today wish to show that it is possible to make films outside the traditional boundaries of the ICAIC, unleashing themselves from its norms and regulations. This challenge to the rule is a logical one that happens whenever a new generation of artists and intellectuals takes the reins of the national art of a country. Perhaps their democratic vision of a cinema derived from new technological possibilities such as the internet, mobile phones, high-​definition systems and 3-​D, together with the search for a more universal film form, cements its social and artistic principles. These are the aspects that have contributed to the latest period in which Cuban cinema finds itself, a period that most people agree began in 2003, with the premiere of Suite Habana. Many of these artists have a wealth of experience in audiovisual media, especially in the production of music videos, and this aesthetic mark is visible in a number of their films where visual and dramatic art are constructed from strong and steady rhythms of images and sound to articulate their narratives. The aesthetic intent is as valid and logical as any for a new generation that seeks its own way, particularly in a world where cultural identities are increasingly diluted with each other; the re-​thinking of lo cubano then an essential element. Lisanka (2009), Larga distancia (Long Distance), Casa vieja (Old House), both from 2010, Fábula (Fable) and La guarida del topo (The Mole’s Den), from 2011, all take significantly from that aesthetic influence. However, like any group of young people who like to create their own codes and expressive markers, they face the challenge of not completely selling out to commercial filmmaking and straying too far from the path that gave Cuban film its own identity and international renown from 1959. They need to be careful to continue to produce Cuban cinema. Retaining a sense of the local means maintaining an individual cultural identity in the face of an increasingly empty commercial uniformity. 23

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The Cinema of Cuba We must not forget the lesson of Italian cinema. With neorealism it was original and international, but when it had to look to the Other, it lost its national quality and dived headlong towards commercial filmmaking that little by little diluted it to become like so many other national film industries. The issue between cultural and commercial cinema is today the question that largely conditions the future of Cuban cinema. It is this dilemma that produces insipid films like Omega 3, Cuba’s first sci-​fi film directed by Eduardo del Llano. This bold experiment in filmmaking from a poor and underdeveloped country with no tradition of this kind was not accepted nor understood by the public. Although it presents a futuristic reflection from a current dilemma (the use of ‘natural’ foods vs. genetically modified foods), its intellectual stance failed to attract an audience accustomed to the potent trade mark of Hollywood science fiction. On the other hand Conducta (Conduct, 2014), directed by Ernesto Daranas, was well received by the public and has become one of the most popular films in recent years. It tells the difficult story of everyday survival for a child in a completely dysfunctional family in contemporary Havana. Amidst harsh poverty only the spiritual values of his teacher can save the boy from the urban jungle in which he lives. From an anthropological stance the film manages to reconstruct the social reality of the majority of ordinary Cubans, a reality that is not always made visible by the media. In 2015 Jorge Luis Sánchez released Cuba Libre, with a script written in 1998 but only approved in 2012. Set in the East of the island, it tells of the last moments of the Spanish-​Cuban-​North American War in 1898. With claims of historical innovation, the film returns to a theme already tried in Cuban cinema (Mambí, 1998), but with a redistribution of roles and historical responsibilities within the Spanish, American and Cuban armies. To try to create new heroes and villains of these historical figures did not make much of an impact on the Cuban public, nor did the performances help. While the film is audacious in its re-​working of an essential aspect of national history, the existing historical sources such as newspaper reports, documents, letters, etc. have already identified who were the winners and losers of the war and the film cannot change that. 24

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) With the help of French capital, the film Regreso a Ítaca (Return to Ithaca) appeared early in 2015, a production of unique courage. Scripted by renowned novelist Leonardo Padura and directed by Laurent Cantet, the argument takes us to a Havana rooftop where a group of friends who are nearly 60 years old are having an all-​night gathering. The long conversation becomes a journey into the past of all of them, and as the night progresses the collective dialogue reveals personal and social wounds that they thought they had forgotten. They all gradually discover that censorship and intolerance were the main causes of this shared pain, and by the end they conclude that their present and future lives have been marked by those two sensitive issues that significantly affected Cuban culture and society in the recent past. The film was received in silence by official bureaucracy but is perhaps one of the most intellectually stimulating Cuban films of the recent past. The questioning of our past and of our present and the process of re-​ invention of the country’s national identity is one of the best features of Cuban cinema being made today, and one of the biggest tests of its present and future prospects. To give some sense of order to this sociological and historical perspective, it is possible to see a distinct set of themes and characteristics emerging in the films and the way they are produced from new, young filmmakers that largely embody current Cuban cinema: 1. The balance between the economic and ‘spiritual’ success or failure of Cubans inside and outside the island. Official ideology has often seen these two things as in direct opposition and so the challenge has been to reflect this opposition of rejection and love in which migration is seen as moral failure (rejection) while remaining in Cuba is seen as social victory (love). But according to the filmmakers’ criteria it is possible both to win and lose within or outside the island. Larga distancia by Esteban Insausti is one the best examples of this reality, his experimental approach being an unusual way of addressing migration and the difficult uprooting it generates. 2. The reflection of the impact of the economic crisis that began in the 1990s leads them to reflect on and question the difficulties of the present climate in Cuba and its complex social consequences, where it is 25

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The Cinema of Cuba sometimes not possible to determine the boundary between social realism and hyperrealism. There is an already established tradition of this in the social criticism of the 1980s and in contemporary novels that deal with the local and/​or regional (so-​called neo-​costumbrismo) as well as in the ‘dirty realism’ of the last decade of the last century. It is a stark vision that attempts to capture the new social dynamics in Cuba by looking directly at the daily lives of average Cubans. 3. They look for spaces and styles to express what in other public spheres is usually more constrained: personal failure, existentialism, the dynamism of city life, prostitution, migration and other sensitive issues. 4. They have arrived at an inevitable juncture; the dilemma between the old and the new, the different social and psychological viewpoints of parents and children, of different generations. Casa Vieja, by Léster Hamlet is an excellent example of this. 5. In turn, they worry about the crossroads of the local and the universal and there is a tendency to insert Cuban daily life into universal human problems, in this way looking to avoid being accused of provincialism, an accusation that was directed at a number of films before 2000. 6. Beyond their individual and group interests, they find themselves imbued with the dilemma of producing a commercial or a cultural cinema. At first glance it would appear to represent a distinction between sales and acceptance in international circuits or the maintenance of artistic values. However, it is really much more than this as it is necessary to reformulate the role of national cinema within the complex web of ideological production and reproduction of cultural hegemony in the light of the new century. 7. This also generates a dual problem: to produce from within the ICAIC or immerse oneself in the fledgling independent cinema movement. For some of the new young filmmakers the ICAIC is antiquated, paternalistic, using old concepts and a tired cultural argument as its method or weapon of hegemonic construction that hinders the search for alternative aesthetics and forms. 8. This ‘independent’ cinema places the artist outside the hegemonic canon. One of the intentions is to show that productions are more efficient and of higher quality than those within the ICAIC, that still makes 26

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) movies with the same bureaucratic mechanisms and style of the 1960s. However, the simple fact of receiving finance, even though it does not come from traditional sources, helps to condition the interests of the work. Therefore, it can be only be understood as ‘independent’ as it is not associated with the traditional norms, mechanisms or social networks of the ICAIC but it becomes part of the group network generated outside the Institute. 9. The new filmmakers readily identify with new technology and consider themselves part of the Information Age, the communication revolution; using mobile phones, 3D, etc and thus have waved goodbye to 35mm film. 10. They are not interested in any interdisciplinary production between film, visual arts, video art and other genres. In this sense, the productions so far do not show any cross-​disciplinary tendencies between art and literature. 11. There is a notable influence of the musical ‘Video Clip’ genre. 12. Emigration –​to stay or to leave –​is a recurring theme and a hangover from the 1990s. 13. The reflection of Cuba from a more individual rather than a group experience is an important element and a symptom of social fragmentation. This vision is the result of a gradual decline from the crisis of the 1990s in the capacity of the state to take care of the interests of its citizens. This vision does not reflect a single Cuba but many ‘Cubas’. This visual plurality is not however disconnected from its social commitment; on the contrary, it is a direct reflection of the diverse social contrasts and contradictions that have reformulated Cuban society since the 1990s. Without giving a definite conclusion, the important thing for this generation will not be to mark the difference between the past and the present, the old and the new, but to comment on, to propose and to justify a new creative aesthetic, to highlight in its own era a new vision of it; the period of a generation that one day, like all historical and generational cycles will also be old and thus destroyed by what comes next. It is one of the essences of human existence: to start again, to always start again to discover the new 27

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The Cinema of Cuba because history progresses through the cycle of generations. For Cuban cinema today and tomorrow the words utopia, imagination, technology and identity of a country still dreaming will be the key to moving on. Young filmmakers can contribute enormously to the construction of the next interpretation of our national reality, where the logical passing of time increasingly makes 1959 seem like a distant national epic just as today will also be for future generations.

Notes 1. These four aesthetic concepts of cinema production were in vogue in Cuban cinema at the start of the 1960s. There was much debate about the viability of each within the context and social realities of the new Cuba at a time of revolution. The aesthetics and design of Italian Neorealism had a greater influence and impact on the filmmakers and the authorities of the ICAIC, and the influence of Italian Neorealism in Cuban cinema of that decade is well recognised today. 2. Although this article deals primarily with fiction films, it is worth noting here that the documentaries and newsreels of Santiago Álvarez are critical to an understanding of these first steps. The innovative nature of his now famous documentaries was based on the harmonic recreation of images and sound in order to achieve a defined political objective to illustrate and pass judgement on complex domestic and international situations at that time. We must also add to the initial path of Cuban documentary filmmaking the project of the Popular Encyclopaedia Department (Departamento de Enciclopedia Popular). This was organised to rethink the role and place of popular culture and those sectors that had been traditionally marginalised in Cuba’s national history. New social themes emerged within these popular sectors such as African religions, the black population and other new ideological values pertinent to the construction of a new social model. José Massip’s Historia de un ballet (Story of a Ballet) was one of these early works, as was the work of film director Rogelio París. Two other names that stand out as exceptional contributors to the construction of a new anthropological aesthetic vision through documentary filmmaking from the end of the 1960s into the start of the 1970s are Nicholas Landrián and Sara Gómez. 3. The importance of Gutiérrez Alea and his thoughts regarding cinema and art in general are reflected in:  Ibarra, Mirta, Volver sobre mis pasos. La Habana, Ediciones Unión, 2008. 4. For a detailed analysis of gender relations in Cuban cinema during the 1970s and 1980s see: Guy Baron (2011), Gender in Cuba Cinema (1974–​1990): From the Modern to the Postmodern. Peter Lang, Bern.

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Brief Notes on a History of Cuban Cinema (1959–2015) 5. To better understand the history of Cuban cinema in the Revolution, the intellectual processes and the various aspects of the management of the ICAIC by Alfredo Guevara, please consult:  Guevara, Alfredo:  Revolución es lucidez. La Habana, Ediciones ICAIC, 1998; and ¿Y si fuera una huella? España, Ediciones Autor, 2008. 6. The so-​called ‘aesthetics of ugliness’ in Cuban cinema is the exposure and development of a visual drama that reflects the beauty, sensitivity and complexity of human existence in the midst of a remarkable material deterioration. For the author of this essay, Fernando Pérez is the best exponent of this visual code in current Cuban cinema, with his contextual reference being the city of Havana. 7. Michael Chanan is the author of the thesis of narrative realism of the cinema of Fernando Pérez and his essay on the director can be read in Chapter 6 of this volume.

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2 Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium: Dysfunction, Isolation and the Struggle for Identity GUY BARON

[I]nstead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished historical fact, which the new cinematic discourses then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation.1

In his article on Caribbean cinema and cultural identity, Stuart Hall stresses the fluidity of identity and the constant changing nature of it; cultural identity being a complex arena and Hall defines it in two ways –​firstly he sees it as: one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self ’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people with a shared history or ancestry hold in common. Within the terms of this definition, our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people’, with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning,

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history.2

He goes on to say that it is this identity that Caribbean cinema must excavate and bring to light through cinematic expression. The struggle for identity is crucial to all the post​colonial struggles that have ‘reshaped our world’ as he says. For Cuba, the post​colonial struggle has been just this –​a struggle to find a Cuban identity beyond the space of the neo-​colonial oppression suffered at the hands of the USA. Hence the turn in the 1950s onwards towards radical nationalism and the revolutionary ideas of José Martí for example; ideas that have continued to form a significant part of the dimension of the Revolution. Hall asks if the nature of this struggle for identity is merely an unearthing of experiences buried by colonialism or something more complex and more profound –​the ‘production of identity’. An identity ‘grounded […] in the re-​telling of the past.’3 In Cuba there has certainly been a good deal of re-​telling of the past as Cuban cinema dove headlong into historical reconstruction in some of the films from the 1960s and 1970s for example: Historias de la Revolución (Stories of the Revolution, 1960), Manuela (1966), Girón (1972), Lucía (1968), Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (A Cuban Fight Against the Demons, 1972), and Cantata de Chile (Song of Chile, 1976). But, according to Hall, there is a related view of cultural identity ‘which qualifies, even if it does not replace, the first […] there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute “what we really are”: or rather –​since history has intervened –​“what we have become”.’4 It is the ‘differences and discontinuities’ that constitute the uniqueness of cultural identity. So ‘cultural identity […] is a matter of “becoming” as well as “being”. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture.’5 Cultural identity is not a fixed essence at all, lying unchanged outside history and culture. It is not some universal and transcendental spirit inside us on which history has made no fundamental mark. It is not once-​and-​for-​all. It is not a fixed origin to

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The Cinema of Cuba which we can make some final and absolute Return. Of course, it is not a mere phantasm, either. It is something, not a mere trick of the imagination. It has its histories –​and histories have their real, material and symbolic effects. The past continues to speak to us. But this is no longer a simple factual “past” […] It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourses of history and culture.6

So there are two possible different vectors of identity –​1. Similarity and continuity and 2. Difference and rupture –​the identity being formed as the ‘dialogic relationship between these two axes.’7 This can easily be applied to Cuba because we have both continuity and rupture within the revolutionary process. The continuity comes in the form of the fundamental revolutionary values of radical nationalism, Martí etc. and the rupture comes in the form of departures and changes within those values. These departures and changes come at different times throughout the revolutionary process, the most significant in recent times being the departure as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Fidel Castro, being replaced, formerly, by his brother Raúl at the 6th Communist Party Congress in April 2011, in which it was maintained that the Cuban economy would remain planned and centralised but that the government could loosen its tight control over small businesses. Other, cultural ruptures have been part and parcel of the ebbing and flowing of the Cuban revolutionary process since its inception; the recent thawing of relations between the USA and Cuba and the visit of President Obama in March 2016 are prime examples of this. Within the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) itself, it is evident how important dialogue and change rather than stasis really are in the process of producing and disseminating a revolutionary culture. In 1982, for example, Alfredo Guevara lost his job as head of the ICAIC in a disastrous moment for the institute when the film Cecilia (1981, Humberto Solás) flopped at the box office and received very negative criticism; or in 1986 when the ICAIC went through a dramatic reconstruction as the entire production process was uprooted in an attempt to create

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium a more democratic and streamlined system of production as the number of films being made increased; or in 1991 ‘when ICAIC was thrown into political crisis’8 by the film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown, 1991, Daniel Díaz Torres) that was banned by the authorities after only a few days release.9 So rupture and dialogue have been essential to the continuing efficiency of the institute (and, it must be argued, to the Revolution itself), and cinema in Cuba has always both produced and illustrated such discontinuity and change, thus forming part of the process of subjective identity formation. As Hall says, paraphrasing Benedict Anderson, cinema should be seen: ‘not as a second-​order mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but as that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover who we are […] Communities are to be distinguished […] by the style in which they are imagined’. This is the construction of ‘positionalities we call a “cultural identity”.’10 All this begs the question, what is a national culture and how can cinema form part of it? Work by Frantz Fanon is enlightening here. ‘A national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover a people’s true nature […] A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.’11 For Cuba, perhaps we can replace the word ‘national’ with the term ‘revolutionary’ and the word ‘people’ with the word ‘nation’ and the sense for the island is evident, as the Cuban film institute has strived at every moment to ‘describe, justify and praise’ the actions of its people in keeping the Revolution ‘in existence’. But a part of that description also recognises that the construction of a revolutionary Cuban identity lies partly in the presentation of many of the problems and difficulties associated with the attempt to develop such a process under the constant strain of attack from outside influences. Cuban cinema has never shied away from expressing doubt and uncertainty about certain aspects of the revolutionary process and films such as Mujer transparente (Transparent Woman, 1990), Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, Adorables mentiras (Adorable Lies, 1991), Fresa

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The Cinema of Cuba y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate, 1993), Guantanamera (1995), and Lista de espera (Waiting List, 2000) demonstrate perfectly well how the film institute during the 1990s and early 2000s was prepared to open up on the world stage some of Cuba’s national and extremely personal dilemmas, at a time of great difficulty during and emerging out of the Special Period. These films deal with the problems inherent in the revolutionary process (sexism, bureaucracy, corruption, power, intolerance and a lack of resources) and yet are widely debated across the island at all levels of society. As Sujatha Fernandes asks in her 2006 work:  In Cuba something curious has happened over the last 15 years. The government has allowed vocal criticism of its policies to be expressed within the arts. Filmmakers, rappers and visual and performance artists have addressed sensitive issues including bureaucracy, racial and gender discrimination, emigration, and alienation. How can this vibrant body of work be reconciled with the standard representations of a repressive, authoritarian cultural apparatus?12

She argues convincingly, using a Gramscian framework, that state and civil society cannot be entirely separated in Cuba; that the movement from state authoritarian rule to civilian government in Latin American nations, for example, should not be applied to Cuba where the two collaborate and integrate. This, she says, is reflected in the cultural sphere where state institutions (such as the ICAIC) have had to open up to the global economy and embrace coproductions. This is important as it reduces state power and control over that institution in a community where culture is seen as a commodity in order to sell abroad (she cites examples such as the foreign licensing of Cuban music, overseas contracts for Cuban musicians, coproductions in film, and foreign sales of Cuban art).13 So perhaps there is a link between the economic necessity of coproductions and the level of state criticism that appears in those Cuban films (partly produced or at least supported by the ICAIC) that have foreign coproducers. A look at a list of films released between 2000–​2005 illustrates the number of coproductions in films during this period: 34

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium 2000 Hacerse el sueco. Dir: Daniel Díaz Torres. Prod: ICAIC; Igeldo Komunikazioa (Esp); Impala (Esp); Kinowelt Filmproduktion (Ger); TVE (Esp); Gluckauf Film (Ger). Lista de espera. Dir:  Juan Carlos Tabío. Prod:  Tornasol Films S.A (Esp); ICAIC Canal + (Esp); Ibermedia (Esp). 2001 Al atardecer. Dir: Tomás Piard. Prod: ICAIC; ICRT (Cuba). Miradas. Dir: Enrique Álvarez. Prod: ICAIC; El Paso Producciones (Esp); Ibermedia (Esp). Nada+. Dir:  Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti. Prod:  ICAIC; DMVB Films (Fr); PHF Films (Esp); Marvel Movies (It); Canal + (Esp). Miel para Oshún. Dir: Humberto Solás. Prod: ICAIC; El Paso Producciones (Esp); Canal + (Esp); RTVE (Esp). Las noches de Constantinopla. Dir: Orlando Rojas. Prod: ICAIC; Fundación Autor de la SGAE (Esp). 2002 Doble Juego. Dir: Rudy Mora. Prod: ICRT (Cuba). Santa Camila de la Habana Vieja. Dir:  Belkis Vega Belmonte. Prod: Televisión Cubana. El sueño y un día. Dir: Tomás Piard. Prod: ICRT; ICAIC. Video de familia. Dir: Humberto Padrón. Prod: ICAIC. 2003 Roble de olor. Dir: Rigoberto López. Prod: ICAIC. Aunque estés lejos. Dir: Juan Carlos Tabío. Prod: ICAIC; Tornasol (Esp). Entre ciclones. Dir: Enrique Colina. Prod: ICAIC; Canal + (Esp); Les Filmes Du Village (Fr); Fond Sud (Fr). Suite Habana. Dir: Fernando Pérez. Prod: ICAIC; Wanda Visión (Esp). 2004 Hormigas en la boca. Dir: Prod: CARTEL (Esp). 35

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The Cinema of Cuba Tres veces dos. Dir: Pavel Giroud, Lester Hamlet, Esteban Insausti. Prod:  CAIC. Perfecto amor equivocado. Dir:  Gerardo Chijona. Prod:  ICAIC, Wanda Vision (Esp), Fénix PC (Esp). 2005 Viva Cuba. Dir: Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti. Prod: ICAIC; Quad (Fr); ICRT (Cuba); DDC Films (US); TVC Casa Productora (Cuba); La Colmenita (Cuba); El Ingenio (Cuba). Espectros. Dir: Tomás Piard. Prod: Televisión Cubana. La memoria de los árboles. Dir: Tomás Piard. Prod: ICAIC. Barrio Cuba. Dir: Humberto Solás. Prod: ICAIC. Bailando Cha cha cha. Dir: Manuel Herrera. Prod: Castelao Producciones (Esp); ICAIC.14 Whether the films are coproductions or not, the fact is that many of them express direct and often vehement criticism of aspects of the revolutionary process. As Fernandes says, the arts in general have become an important forum for debate to ‘rethink the basic values of the revolution, and reformulate visions for the future.’15 This implies, therefore, a re-​shaping of Cuba’s cultural identity; a continuous, fluid process that mirrors Hall’s ‘critical points of deep and significant difference,’ his second vector of cultural identity that is important in qualifying any notion of the stability or transcendent nature of identity.16 At times in Cuba there have been attempts to ‘fix’ notions of national or cultural identity but these attempts have been resisted in more recent times, particularly in the cultural sphere where: ‘ordinary citizens find that the rhetoric and slogans that issue from official media and political speeches do not always speak to them in a compelling way.’17 As such, it is through aspects of Cuban culture where questions of socialism and politics are debated. ‘Particularly during the 1990s and the early twenty-​first century, the arts have taken on a vital role in formulating, articulating and making sense of everyday life.’18 Fernandes calls these critical spaces within the arts ‘artistic public spheres’; spaces where Cuban artists and intellectuals can express themselves freely in a dialogue with the state, an apparatus that, as Fernandes 36

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium says, is not ‘a repressive centralised apparatus that enforces its dictates on citizens from the top down’ but that is ‘a permeable entity that both shapes and is constituted by the activities of various social actors. Moreover, incorporation entails some degree of dialogue, which gives a public profile to the critical issues raised by artists.’ These ‘artistic public spheres’ are ‘sites of interaction and discussion among ordinary citizens generated through the media of art and popular culture.’19 Fernandes sees public spheres as ‘both critical of and shaped by state institutions, local relations of production, and global market forces,’20 and this applies perfectly well to cinema in Cuba, the ICAIC being constantly shaped by the necessity of coproductions and by the changing nature of film production generally, in which the institute’s monopoly of production is gradually being eroded by advances in new technology and the ability of filmmakers to make independent low budget digital productions with few resources.21 The support of these young, independent filmmakers by the ICAIC is an example of how state institutions absorb elements of dissent and discussion. The revolution has not survived so long by being entirely dogmatic and intransigent –​it has precisely survived due to its ability to know how much and when to relieve the pressure through the incorporation of critical discourses. As Fernandes says, in Cuba there is not the same division between state and society as in other parts of Latin America where there has been a strict movement from state authoritarian rule to civilian government. In Cuba, state and society integrate and collaborate in a Gramscian model, where the state withdraws from aspects of civil society allowing more space for it to function.22 Catherine Davies had already seen this happening in Cuba in the late 1990s. In her essay of 2000 she shows that, at the base of it all is the ‘progressive autonomy of the cultural and political spheres’, leading to ‘a deregulation of national–​revolutionary discourse and the emergence of heterodoxy, self-​reflection and dispersion.’23 This is certainly true of Cuban cinema at this time and through the early years of the 2000s, although I believe Davies is mistaken when she argues that this implies a ‘loss of faith in the state and the Revolution.’24 Perhaps for some filmmakers this is the case, but many new, independent filmmakers often seek approval from the state institution precisely because they are supportive of both the 37

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The Cinema of Cuba ICAIC as an institution and the state itself. This state, however, and the processes through which it develops and maintains the revolutionary project, are constantly being re-​imagined and re-​worked. It is probably more correct to say, as Fernandes argues, that the state withdraws from aspects of civil society than vice-​versa as Davies would suggest. Part of this distance between state and civil society comes, of course, out of the necessity to follow global market forces, often at the expense of ideological considerations, in order to bring hard currency to the institutions that suffered during the Special Period. An increasing radicalism, as Fernandes suggests, is the product of this global appeal as international markets seek a different type of Cuban product, and the state allows this to happen, even though, at times, this proves problematic. The Cuban state tolerates counter-​hegemonic cultural practices such as critical art because they can be reincorporated in official institutions, traditions and discourses in ways that bolster the state’s popularity […] and promote national unity in the face of increasing ideological polarization and growing racial and economic disparities in Cuban society during the Special Period. But new modes of incorporation are incomplete and partial, as critical art can also give rise to ideas, strategies, and agendas that do not coincide with those of the Cuban state.25

This work examines some of the cinematic representations of Cuban cultural identity in films in the first five years of the new millennium enlightened by Hall’s comments on the fluidity of identity, and by Fernandes’ ideas on the incorporation of critical art into the institutional process of revolution.26 The idea that, through artistic endeavours, the Revolution has sought to constantly adjust its own position vis-​à-​vis the notion of producing and projecting images of cultural identity has been acknowledged in recent films in Cuba, particularly since the end of the 1980s. For example in the portmanteau film Mujer transparente (1990), female identity is reconsidered; an identity ‘fractured not only by division between insular and exile experience but also by a postmodern aesthetic which was beginning to site individual women’s lives outside the paradigm of the Cuban national collective.’27 The film makes pointed remarks about the role of women 38

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium and the breakdown of older, but still revolutionary, notions of femininity as constituting a vital part of the regeneration of the Revolution post-​1990. But there have always been certain fixed parameters concerning the presentation of Cuban identity to do with the essence of José Martí, radical nationalism, social liberation, independence, and equality for example. Antoni Kapcia describes this essence as the ideology of ‘cubanía rebelde’, ‘an essentially oppositional ideology of dissent’ that has at its heart a sense of economic independence and social cohesion.28 But it is precisely this cohesion that was threatened during the Special Period and the economic crisis that ensued. This led to a questioning of the notion of ‘cubanía’ developed in the 1960s but at the same time, and paradoxically, this questioning illustrates the continuation of the ‘rebelde’ part of the equation; the kind of dissent fostered in the 1920s and 1930s against the Batista dictatorship continues but in a modified (and perhaps less radical) form through the production of (perhaps postmodern) images of dysfunction within Cuban society, reflecting the enormous difficulties of the Special Period. In the new century the panorama of Cuban cinema becomes ever more critical and here I would like to propose that during this period Cuban cinema is inward-​looking in a process of self-​examination in an increasingly fraught and anxious way with films like Lista de espera (Waiting List, 2000), Miradas (Looks, 2001), Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún, 2001), Suite Habana (Havana Suite, 2003), Entre ciclones (Between Cyclones, 2003) Perfecto amor equivocado (Perfect Mistaken Love, 2004), Barrio Cuba (Cuba Neighbourhood, 2005), Doble juego (Double Game, 2002) and Viva Cuba (Long Live Cuba, 2005) to name some of them. A number of these films expose dysfunctionality in families, relationships and society in general. This presentation of societal malfunction is perhaps a way of voicing criticism of the way that society is structured, although it remains to be seen if these films provide any answers. So, by voicing and envisioning a critique of a malfunctioning society these films question ideas of Cuban revolutionary national identity. The new millennium starts off with comedy in the form of Hacerse el sueco (Making Swede, 2000) and Lista de espera although still with explicitly Cuban themes that play with the notion of national identity. Comedy 39

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The Cinema of Cuba can be highly critical of social situations using farcical and grotesque exaggerations. For example Hacerse el sueco develops a series of characters that live through illegal activity and/​or are dissatisfied with their meagre existence in a difficult Havana neighbourhood run by criminals. Lista de espera deals with the themes of intolerance and the critique of bureaucracy. The pretexts of both these films are singularly Cuban and they create a sense of idealistic isolation and implosion in their struggle to find a sense of Cuban national identity amongst the crisis.29 Then in 2001, four films came out of the ICAIC: Miradas (Enrique Alvarez), Nada (Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti), Miel para Ochún (Humberto Solás), and Las noches de Constantinopla (Nights of Constantinople, Orlando Rojas), that all illustrate a sense of existential angst and uncertainty. According to del Río 2001 was a key year in Cuban cinema: ‘Miradas, Miel para Ochún, Nada y Las noches de Constantinopla representan algo así como el final de un período o, más bien, la inauguración de otra etapa para la cinematografía nacional, en la cual tal vez se descubra la vía para sostener el rigor, la profundidad y la renovación sin renunciar a la gracia, la comunicación y el buen empaque.’30 [Miradas, Miel para Oshún, Nada y Las noches de Constantinopla represent something like the end of a period or, more likely, the inauguration of another stage for national cinema, in which, perhaps, it is possible to discover a road to sustain the vigour, profundity and renovation without renouncing the wit, the ability to communicate and a well-​packaged product.] Of these four films he says: ‘Las cuatro películas están pobladas por personajes singularísimos que al mismo tiempo se las arreglan para representar, lo más dimensionadamente posible, algunos de los característicos conflictos de la compleja realidad cubana en estos últimos años.’31 [The four films contain very singular characters but at the same time they manage to represent, in as many dimensions as is possible, some of the characteristic conflicts of the complexity of Cuban reality in recent years.] These were followed in 2002 by Doble juego (Rudy Mora) which is a socialist realist examination of dysfunctional families in difficult times, exploring the old themes of exile and hope for the future. Similarly, from the same year the multi-​award winning Video de familia (Family Video) by Humberto Padrón develops this sense of family dysfunction along with Santa Camila 40

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium de la Habana Vieja (Saint Camila of Old Havana) by Belkis Vega in the same year. At this time, a level of dysfunction is present in the production of a negative image of self in some Cuban films. As Rafael Hernández says there also seems to be an obsession with leaving the country in many of the films of this period and a fascination with capitalism. The reality of Cuba is seen as operating on the margins of regular society as Cuba becomes synonymous with Havana that in turn is synonymous with Centro Habana and the solares (inner city mazes of often crumbling apartments and patios) where marginal characters traffic everything on the black market. The idea of a marginal culture predominates, with physical or verbal violence governing the relations between people (thus highlighting familial dysfunction) and this marginal culture centres the drama. So in this climate emerges delinquency and crime, with a high incidence of drugs, the black market and theft. The revolution and the old revolutionary values of solidarity and community are seen only to refer to old people –​the only ones who want to stay and who value what it has achieved, it is not relevant to most other characters and often serves as an ‘ironic contrast’ to the action.32 Jineterismo (the illegal profiteering from tourists, including pimping, prostitution and the sale of black market goods) is a style of life in many of these films; the black market and the desire to leave are central to the plots –​all illustrating this dysfunction. ‘la jinetera y el jinetero ocupan un importante espacio narrativo como protagonistas o figures secundarias, pero omnipresentes en estos filmes.’33 [The jinetera and jinetero occupy an important narrative space as protagonists or secondary, but omnipresent figures in these films.] Sex is seen as a way of getting ahead, a way of surviving and the Cubans are seen to believe that they are great lovers and that the world sees them that way. Cuba is a paradise of sexual freedom and Cubans are seen as superficial and reject work unless it is fun or has some physical pleasure attached. This is explained as a result of the difficulties they face or due to the impenetrability of the system or the fact that many of them seem to live off remittances from abroad. Foreigners or émigrés are often deceived by Cubans who take advantage of them. Foreigners are generous, pragmatic, and realist in contrast to the Cubans who are carefree and irresponsible. They take as much as possible 41

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The Cinema of Cuba

Fig. 2.1  Carla (Thaís Valdés) in Nada 

from the foreigners without any scruples and live ‘luchando en la calle […] traficando con todo tipo de cosas […] son parasitarios.’34 [struggling in the street […] trafficking whatever they can […] they are parasites’. But all this is done in a comedic way, and makes them seem mischievous rather than bad, imaginative and inventive. A few more specific examples serve to illustrate how this level of societal dysfunction is represented. For example, Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti’s Nada (2001) is a combination of exaggerated satire, grotesque humour and crazy farce (fig. 2.1). It is a film that tries to violate some of the rigid generic structures and develops a pastiche and a satire that is often grotesque, while also having moments of melodrama. In its homage to filmmaking, it assimilates elements of silent comedy in an eclectic style with phrases that remind the viewer of Fellini, Almodóvar and others.35 According to del Río, Nada is a comedy but absolutely atypical in that it tries to rescue the comedy of silent cinema and the experimental freshness of Cuban cinema of the 1970s. It is the story of another solitary being, a young postal worker (Thais Valdés –​who played Alicia in Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, and Clarita in the 1989 comedy ¡Plaf!), who must choose between leaving for the USA (where her parents are) or staying as

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium she is and struggling to get by. Mostly in black and white and with a debt to documentary filmmaking, the director proposes something very difficult and that is to try and make the public laugh and cry at the same scene.36 Carla is a bored young woman who has been working at the same post office for five years where all she does is put the franking mark on letters. She lives a solitary life in her family apartment as her parents left for Miami when she was 15. She receives regular postcards from them telling her that they have entered her into the visa lottery to enable her to join them in the USA, although she is not sure if she wishes to go. To alleviate her boredom she begins to read the letters she stamps with a postmark and then decides to re-​ write them, replacing the mundane facts that are written with more poetic, emotional and sentimental comments that we see has a great effect upon the recipients. She embarks on a relationship with a co-​worker at the post office but suddenly receives her visa to leave the island. As she has her passport stamped to leave at the airport and a plane departs for Miami it appears that she has left but she changes her mind and re-​unites with her boyfriend. This film makes a bold statement about life in Havana at the turn of the new millennium, often seen by outsiders at least as a place where, despite the material difficulties, people are united in adversity and a sense of togetherness and a spirit of belonging and friendship predominate. However, this film develops a vision of existential angst and loneliness in the midst of a city that doesn’t care. Carla has worked in the same place for five years and yet says she knows nothing about anyone and they know nothing about her. No-​one even bids her good morning. She lives alone, has no social life and no friends to speak of. Cuban society is not depicted favourably. Many of the characters are presented as absurdly grotesque, selfish or authoritarian and spiteful. Certainly most appear to be unhappy. In one scene Carla wants to open one of the letters she stamps but reads from the penal code that tells her that if anyone opens a letter that is not for them it is punishable with three to nine months in prison. She opens the letter anyway; it is the only letter received for a television presenter whose psychology programme she watches at home. The presenter had previously come to the office enraged that there were no letters for him from viewers, blaming the post office for its organisational ineptitude. When Carla finally

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The Cinema of Cuba does open the letter it simply says: ‘tu programa es una mierda.’ [your programme is shit.] As she writes one letter the camera moves from her fictional apartment to show us the tired and saddened faces of Cubans on the streets of Havana going about their daily lives, some looking directly at the camera, as she dictates in a whisper: ‘¿Has sentido una vez el abandono, depresión, incertidumbre, miedo, vergüenza o repugnancia? Solo él que ha llorado comprende el llanto ajeno. Solo él que sufre sabe de la angustia, de la agonía, de la tristeza. La pena no es una etiqueta que se arranca.’ [Have you ever felt abandonment, depression, uncertainty, fear, shame or disgust? Only he who has cried can understand the cry of another. Only he who suffers knows anguish, agony, sorrow. Pain is not a label that can be ripped off.] The direct reference to the suffering of the Cuban people is obvious and makes a marked contrast with the absurd moments in the film, pulling the spectator into a level of realism that feels a little uncomfortable at times. The contrast is deliberately displayed in the largely black and white photography interspersed with bold flashes of colour, like a yellow butterfly that flits across the scene or the bright yellow taxi that seems to glow against the black and white of the street scene. Conflict and contrast dominate the film; Carla’s old neighbour, Concha, talks non-​stop about the lack of respect people have nowadays and then steals coffee from Carla when her back is turned. She asks about Carla’s mother and says she was right to leave, as she wants to leave too. In one absurd sequence, reminiscent of old silent movies and set to music like a bad opera, Carla watches the apartments across the road and reads one of the letters she has written as if from one of the residents to his female neighbour. We then see the couple having sex on a balcony as the woman’s husband goes through his weight training routine on the roof above. But he discovers the two lovers and a fight develops between them. All is done with slapstick and a sense of comic irreverence, the absurdity of the scenario made clear in its presentation. But it is an absurdity that is grounded in realism –​perhaps a sense of the magical realism in cinema here. The comic irreverence continues as we see a line of T-​shirts hanging on one of the balconies. Everything is in black and white apart from the Che Guevara shirt in striking red but noticeably hanging upside down. 44

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium It is a film about the necessity of finding some humanity in a place that appears to have lost it. Carla reads a letter that she has stolen from work by hiding it in her radio. It’s from a woman called Caridad who lives in Spain, written to her father in Havana. The letter complains of her life living in Cádiz and talks about the mundane issues of life and asks him why he is living with another man, but Carla throws it away and writes a more spiritual, emotional letter to the father about how much the woman misses him, the passing of time, memories, and saying how much she would like him to be with her to hold her. The old man receives the letter and cries while reading it, Carla’s job as poetic messenger fulfilled. Many parts of the film illustrate the lack of humanity, of human emotion in a city of many different problems. Cesar’s parents were divorced when he was four years old and he never sees his father. One character in the post office always finishes her conversations with the phrase, ‘no somos nada, no somos nada,’ [we are nothing, we are nothing] two of the managers at the office are arrested for stealing and another is castigated for carrying out scientific experiments in his office, which he has turned into a perfume factory for personal gain. In Miel para Ochún (2002, Humberto Solás) Roberto returns to Cuba after 32 years after being taken to the USA by his father. His fundamental goal is to be reunited with his mother, even though he believes she had abandoned him years before. A cousin of his, Pilar, reveals a very different reality to him, but above all Roberto embarks on a type of road movie that allows him to get to know his country and, finally, his mother. As del Río says, Solás hadn’t released a film for ten years and this was an attempt to redeem Cuban cinema from a period of setbacks.37 It is evident that a lot was riding on the four films of 2001 (Miradas, Miel para Ochún, Nada, Las noches de Constantinopla). As del Río says, of these films ‘el 2001 será recordado como un año clave en la historia del cine Cubano.’38 [2001 will be recorded as a key year in the history of Cuban cinema.] Miel para Ochún exposes the conflicts of the characters, but manages to maintain their authenticity. As Roberto attempts to find his mother, to try and understand why they separated, his cousin, Pilar, finds herself alone after the death of her family, frustrated and hurt by the rejections she has had for her paintings. The emblem of the film is unification amongst the 45

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The Cinema of Cuba diversity of experience as families are reunited from exile. The film illustrates the repetitive nature of human experience as Pilar comments on why Roberto’s parents behaved as they did years before: ‘nosotros somos ahora lo que ellos fueron hace treinta años, no nos equivoquemos nosotros, o al menos intentémoslo.’ [we are now what they were thirty years ago, we mustn’t kid ourselves, or at least try to.] Does this illustrate that little has changed, or that everything has changed but some things remain the same –​i.e. human nature? There is a repetitious nature to the film that highlights this continuous struggle as if little changes. The film develops into a road movie as Roberto searches for his mother and presents the viewer with another version of Cuba, the Cuba outside of Havana, an authentic vision of Camagüey, Gibara and Baracoa. It is a plural vision of contemporary Cuba with authenticity, the image of another species in extinction –​the peasant (guajiro) still not contaminated by the excesses and egos of the urban man. But within this sense of the continuous, the stable and the unifying lies a drama of uprooting, exile and family breakdown –​the typical themes of dysfunction that appear in many films at this time. Roberto suffers a breakdown in his journey as he rails against the community of Gibara, giving rise to a difficult scene in which Roberto curses and complains of his misfortune before the entire public of the town that has come out to witness the spectacle. Politically motivated, the scene attempts to illustrate the differences in attitude and temperament of the Cuban and the Cuban-​American as Roberto cries out: ¿Qué es lo que quieren ustedes que ha sido mi vida? ¿Qué he tenido una vida feliz? Pues no, no he tenido una vida feliz, ¡no! No sé quién soy coño, no sé quién soy, si cubano, americano si el uno, el otro. Compórtate como un americano pa’ que te respeten, cásate con una americana, ten hijo americano, pa’ que no te traten como un latino de mierda. ¿Eso es vida? ¡Dime! Ustedes por lo menos saben quiénes son aunque esto esté malo aunque tengan problemas ustedes se entienden pero yo no, yo soy la nada, coño mira que más ilusión venir aquí a la tierra donde nací, a Cuba a encontrarme yo a encontrar mis raíces a encontrar mi madre coño, y nada, lo que he encontrado, nada. [What do you want my life to have been like? Have I had a happy life? No, I haven’t had a happy life, no! I don’t know

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium who the fuck I am, I don’t know if I’m Cuban, American, one or the other. Behave like an American to be respected, marry an American, have an American child so that no-​one treats you like a shitty latino. Is that a life? Tell me! At least you know who you are, even though things aren’t good, even though you’ve got problems, you understand who you are but I don’t, I’m nothing, fuck I’m deluding myself, coming here to the land where I was born, to Cuba to find myself, to find my roots to find my mother, fuck, and nothing, what have I found? Nothing.]

The film contains a series of misfortunes that hammer home, often sentimentally, the dysfunctional state of Cuban external relations using large doses of melodrama overplayed for dramatic effect. This highlights the state of dysfunctionality of the material aspects of the Cuban Revolution (nothing works, everything is broken), and yet this melodrama heightens the message –​that these things are not important when friendship, unity, struggle and survival are considered alongside them. Miel para Ochún (2001) was the first digital film in Cuba and a return for Solás, but not with a great historical spectacle like Lucía (1968), Cecilia (1981) or El siglo de las luces (1992) for example, but with a low budget film with a severely reduced technical team. It deals with a theme that touches many people in Cuba (a returning émigré). It has a documental spirit, especially as the camera must be handheld so the scenes can’t be too elaborate. Solás said that he wanted to make a truly national film, without intereferences or concessions ‘que rescatara de alguna forma las intenciones que tenía nuestra cinematografía a finales de los ochenta.’39 [That would somehow rescue the intentions that our film industry had at the end of the 1980s.] The film itself represents this nostalgic journey, as if searching for a lost world, both thematically and cinematically. The fact of it being digital did not mean that the filmic language needed to change according to Solás: ‘Uno siempre tiene un encuadre; uno siempre filma con su caligrafía personal de acuerdo con el género y el estilo de cada película o el estilo tuyo personal, si eres autor, y uno lo mismo lo hace en 35 que en 70 mm, que en video digital.’40 [You always have a frame; you always film with your own touch according to the genre and style of each film or your own personal style, if you are an auteur, and you do the same whether it’s in 35 or 70 mm, or in digital video.] 47

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The Cinema of Cuba The film attempts the delicate balance of portraying instability and dysfunction within a search for a coherent identity as Roberto battles with his physical experience of émigré and his desired experience as ‘cubano’. His search for his personal ‘cubanía’, his struggle to discover who he really is, is perhaps what defines Cuban identity –​a never fully resolved tension between internal struggle/​difference and a desire for coherence and unity.41 As Ortiz ‘locates the fullest form of Cubanness in a kind of longing,’42 national identity becomes personal for Roberto. Another film that illustrates the instability of identity and what it means to be Cuban is the tragic comedy Entre ciclones (2003, Enrique Colina). It is a film that gives a panoramic view of Havana and its inhabitants (like Suite Habana by Fernando Pérez, 2003) and an honest perception of contemporary reality. It has a sense of the creole humour –​el choteo [kidding around] and, as Joel del Río says, it speaks to the average Cuban.43 Tomás (Mijail Mulkay) is a trainee telephone engineer without a home, with a crisis at work and a conflict of loyalties. His house has collapsed during a cyclone and he is forced to go and live in a solar as he says: ‘sin materia, sin casa, sin ropa.’ [without anything, without a house, without clothes.] He meets a man in a similar position who deals with the privations of life using yoga and meditation. Known by the name ‘Yoga’ (Alexis González) he tells Tomás that, ‘en la vida nada es imprescindible; aquí lo tenemos todo porque no tenemos nada, pues hay que aprender hacer la vida de otra manera.’ [nothing in life is essential; here we have everything because we have nothing, you just have to learn to live differently.] But Tomás is not convinced and strides out to try and make the best of his difficult circumstances. However, he has a habit of getting himself into trouble and involved in a series of situations that illustrate just how difficult life for the ordinary Cuban can be. The film opens up avenues of debate on a number of problems of daily life in Havana, from generational differences, to corruption, gang violence, gender differences, housing shortages, communication problems and many more. But, unlike Suite Habana, where the expressions of hope and possibility are singularly voiced by the protagonists at the end, here the final scene of the film literally sticks a finger up at the tone of humanistic optimism of many other Cuban films and tries to tell it as (it believes) it really is. 48

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium The negative tone of a dysfunctional society desperately hanging on by their fingernails to whatever crumbs of comfort they can get pervades the film, and the contrast between how two generations deal with their difficulties is made evident with the differences between Tomás and his mentor at work, Conde (Mario Balmaseda), a strict, ageing, partially deaf telephone engineer who does not trust nor understand the youth of Havana. The generational divide is made obvious as Tomás calls him ‘abuelo’ [grandad] only to be aggressively corrected by Conde who insists on being called ‘compañero’ [comrade]. Conde is not impressed with Tomás’ disrespectful manner, this generational divide being a source of much of the humour in the film. When Conde gives Tomás his tools to do his job he warns him not to sell them. Conde strictly adheres to revolutionary boundaries but for Tomás the revolutionary values of honesty and decency are not important; he just wants to live his life and profit where he can, whereas for Conde there is a strict moral code that must be obeyed at all times. The generational differences are not subtle. Conde’s sexually provocative daughter, Elisa (Yalma Torres), explores the marginal side of Cuban youth culture, listening to heavy metal music in underground ad hoc venues, her body full of tattoos, her distaste for the traditional side of Cuban culture made obvious as she says to Tomás: ‘Si te gusta la salsa no tienes nada que ver conmigo.’ [If you like salsa, you’ll have nothing to do with me.] The film is notable for its sense of dysfunction at the level of individual morality, with very few of the characters maintaining any sense of dignity or possessing any redeeming qualities. Tomás himself is a philanderer, playing with the affections of part-​time girlfriend Mónica (Indira Valdés) and sleeping with Adriana for material gain. His cheeky, jocular nature is an attempt to hide his lack of moral fortitude, albeit in the face of extreme difficulty. He succumbs at every turn to the temptations offered, including hiding a gun for his brother Miguel (Renny Arozarena), a small-​time crook. Tomás wants to avoid trouble but finds it at every turn, illegally fixing up a phone line for Mónica to make life easier for himself and lying to her persistently when he is seen with Adriana. Of course some sympathy is attached to Tomás: homeless and constantly getting into trouble he could represent a crystallised and condensed image of the average habanero and his misfortunes in a city that rarely has the 49

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The Cinema of Cuba time to care –​a vision that is the polar opposite of Fernando Pérez’s in Suite Habana. Concessions to human decency are few and far between in a film littered with negative character portrayals and dysfunctional relationships. Mónica, for example, is painted as a thoroughly nasty character, almost as a pantomime figure. With a child from a previous relationship she uses her sexuality to good effect with Tomás and persuades him to get her an illegal phone line, eventually becoming pregnant with his child. Jealous to the point of paranoia she is depicted as a sexually provocative, wild mulata who practices Santería (popular religious practice with African origins) as a way of guiding her fortunes. Often becoming angry at those around her, including Tomás and her close circle of friends, she warns Tomás not to stray, grabbing his testicles and telling him that they are hers and no one else’s. But Mónica is only one of several negative character depictions in the film. Miguel is an African-​Cuban who is fed up of the difficulties of life in an impoverished Havana, at one point asking Tomás: ‘¿tú piensas vivir en esta miseria por toda la vida?’ [are you thinking of living in this misery for the rest of your life?] He says he has a plan to better himself and is involved with a gang of criminals to whom he owes money. He and Tomás frequently argue as Tomás does want to get involved in Miguel’s criminal activities. But Tomás is weak and eventually agrees to harbour the gun that Miguel says would be too difficult for him to hide. Much of the film is spent detailing many of the material problems in a run-​down Havana such as the inequalities between rich foreigners living in luxury apartments and the overwhelming poverty of daily life for Cubans; the lack of basic infrastructure to live decently; the problems of communication, transport and bureaucracy. But it also presents us with a level of moral degeneration uncommon in Cuban films. The film is an obvious metaphor for a world on the edge of disaster, struggling to cope in tremendous difficulty, barely clinging on to some semblance of decent life. As Tomás is thrown from a rooftop by a gang of criminals he manages to hang on to an iron girder, his grip symbolic of a country clinging on to bare survival. He loses his grip and later, as his friend Yoga wheels him into the television room of the solar he now lives in, the metaphor of a broken society being helped along cannot be ignored. In this final scene the television brings news of another cyclone descending 50

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium on Cuba causing widespread damage and heading towards Havana as Yoga says to Tomás: Esta es la calma, Tomasito, y la única manera de oír la calma es encontrando tu nirvana, tu nirvana personal […] la unión con todo, con el universo, con la naturaleza, con el espíritu. No importa si vives en un palacio o en un albergue, si tienes fula o está escachado, el nirvana es una dimensión personal que está muy adentro, y tienes que encontrarla. [This is the calm, Tomasito, and the only way to hear the calm is by finding your nirvana, your personal nirvana…a marriage with everything, with the universe, with nature, with your spirit. Whether you live in a palace or in a shelter, if you have money or if you’re broke, your nirvana is a personal dimension that is deep inside, and you have to find it.]

As the cyclone news report ends with the message from the news reader: ‘a pesar de todo amigos, yo como siempre le deseo lo mejor,’ [despite everything my friends, I wish you, as always, the best] a battered and severely injured Tomás in close-​up defiantly raises a bandaged middle finger at the camera and at us the viewer. Typically, Cuban films that have staged a vision of tremendous difficulty and strife: Fresa y chocolate, Lista de espera, Suite Habana, Miel para Ochún for example, have at least offered a strong, positive message of hope alongside. But the final scene of Entre ciclones is telling in its lack of a similar message. Many of the films from the first few years of the 2000s were obviously written and developed during the Special Period of hardship in Cuba, and they reflect some of the material and existential difficulties of this time. They tell us that when all around is broken, spiritually, materially and morally, when even the traditional spirit of Cuban humanity is destroyed by the circumstances that prevail, the only way to look is inward. This exposes a tension that arises in these films between two different ways of thinking about cultural identity, as Stuart Hall has registered in his analysis of cultural identity and cinematic representation in Caribbean cinema. The tension here is between a shared revolutionary history; the common historical experiences and ‘shared cultural codes’44 associated with over forty years of revolution (the essence of revolutionary ‘cubanness’), and a second view of 51

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The Cinema of Cuba cultural identity that qualifies the first: the differences that constitute ‘what we have become’; cultural identity as constantly developing rather than simply (historically) ‘being’. As Hall says, ‘Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation.’45

Notes 1. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, in R.  Stam and T. Miller (eds), Film and Theory. An Anthology (Oxford, 2000), pp. 704–​14. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., p. 705. 4. Ibid., p. 706. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 707. 7. To capture the idea of difference in a more subtle way, Hall goes further and uses Derrida’s play on words to do with ‘difference’ (differance –​the insertion of the a used ‘as a marker which sets up a disturbance in our settled understanding or translation of the concept’). His sense of difference is thus suspended between the two French verbs “to differ” and “to defer” (postpone). Language depends on difference as Saussure demonstrated. Here Hall quotes Christopher Norris (1982: 32), Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York): ‘the idea that meaning is always deferred, perhaps to the point of an endless supplementary, by the play of signification’. So meaning is never finished or completed but carries on moving to encompass other meanings. There has to be relations of difference for representation to occur at all. ‘But what is then constituted within representation is always open to being deferred, staggered, serialized’ (Hall, 2000: 709). In this sense, in films meaning always has to be deferred –​ it always moves towards other significations. It is an ‘infinite postponement of meaning’ (ibid.). He is critical of Derrida’s playfulness that evacuates his theory of any political meaning, because meaning, in any specific instance, depends on ‘the contingent and arbitrary stop –​the necessary and temporary “break” in the infinite semiosis of language’ (ibid.). This cut of identity, this stop, makes meaning possible and is a strategic positioning but a necessary one in order for it to have any political significance. 8. Michael Chanan, ‘The Changing Shape of Cuban Cinema’. Paper delivered at the Cuba Research Forum annual conference, 8–​10 September (2014), University of Nottingham, UK.

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Cuban Cinema at the Start of the New Millennium 9. For more on the film institute in general around the period of the 1980s-​ 90s see Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minneapolis and London, 2004), pp. 395–​43, and on this film in particular see pp. 457–​61. 10. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, p. 714. 11. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London, 1967/​2001), p. 138. 12. Sujatha Fernandes, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power and the making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Durham and London, 2006), back cover. 13. Fernandes is not without criticism and Geoffrey Baker’s excellent article on Cuba’s underground music scene contests the ‘top down’ approach by Fernandes in her rationalisation of Cuba’s cultural apparatus, arguing that, in music at least, cultural contestation works the other way, from the bottom up. This article does not seek to justify all of Fernandes’ work but, in the cinematic sphere at least, sees her Gramscian approach to cultural contestation as a useful one with which to analyse Cuba’s recent situation vis-​à-​vis its film industry. 14. List re-​produced from the official website of the ICAIC, at www.cubacine.cult.cu/​ (2 August 2011). 15. Fernandes, Cuba Represent!, p. 3. 16. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, p. 707. 17. Fernandes, Cuba Represent!, p. 1. 18. Ibid., p. 2. 19. Ibid., p. 3. 20. Ibid. 21. In an interview with the ICAIC former Vice-​President Pablo Pacheco (Havana, July 2011) it was made clear that many films made in the 2000s were achieved in this way. New, young filmmakers, not officially affiliated to the film institute would seek the support and approval of the ICAIC, even though the film was not produced by the institute. Such films would then still be considered part of the canon of ‘cine cubano.’ 22. Fernandes, Cuba Represent!, p. 7 quotes Gramsci when he talks about the state as ‘ “an entire complex of practical and theoretical activities” that enable it to maintain its dominance’. See A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York, 1971), p. 244. 23. Catherine Davies, ‘Surviving (on) the Soup of Signs: Postmodernism, Politics and Culture in Cuba’, in Latin American Perspectives 27 (2000), pp. 103–​21. 24. Ibid. 25. Fernandes, Cuba Represent!, p. 12. 26. These first five years of the new millennium represent, I  believe, a type of transition from the peculiarities and difficulties of the Special Period to what could be considered as the ‘new Cuban revolutionary cinema’ from around 2005 onwards, in which independent producers and directors begin to flourish

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The Cinema of Cuba to the point, in 2015 where, according to Chanan (2014) there are up to 100 independent producers of audiovisual material operating in Cuba on the margins of legality. All this has led to the meetings, in 2015, of the so-​called ‘g20’ group of filmmakers who are (at the time of writing) calling for a new Ley de Cine in Cuba that would recognise the independents and give them support and a legal platform on which to work. For more on the more recent developments within Cuban national cinema see Chanan (2014), García Borrero (2013 and 2015). 27. R. Prout and T.  Altenberg, Seeing in Spanish:  From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee. 22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures (Newcastle-​Upon-​Tyne, 2001), p. xxi. 28. Antoni Kapcia, Cuba in Revolution. A History Since the Fifties (London, 2008), pp. 90–​3. 29. F. Padrón, ‘Lo que bien abunda nunca sobra’, in Revista Cine Cubano (online) No. 13 (2009), at www.cubacine.cu/​revistacinecubano/​digital13/​cap02.htm (7 July 2010). 30. Joel del Río, ‘Cuatro nuevas embajadoras del cine cubano’, in La Jiribilla (2001), at www.lajiribilla.cu/​2001/​n30_​diciembre/​832_​30.html (24 June 2010). 31. Ibid. 32. Rafael Hernández, ‘La imagen de Cuba en el cine. El making de un canon’, in Revista Cine Cubano (online) No. 2 (2005), at www.cubacine.cult.cu/​revistacinecubano/​digital02/​cap06.htm (13 February 2009). 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. del Río, ‘Cuatro nuevas embajadoras del cine cubano’. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. For this particular insight I  am indebted to Dunja Fehimovic, whose 2011 Masters thesis deals with contemporary Cuban documentary film and themes of national identity. 42. Gustavo Pérez-​Firmat, ‘A Willingness of the Heart:  Cubanidad, Cubaneo, Cubanía’, in Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series, 2 (7) (1997), pp. 1–​11 (7). 43. Joel del Río, ‘Cine cubano del siglo XXI. Tenue autoría, se imponen los géneros’, in Revista Cine Cubano (online) No. 9, at www.cubacine.cu/​revistacinecubano/​digital09/​cap02.htm (7 July 2010). 44. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, p. 705. 45. Ibid., p. 706.

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3 Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba JESÚS GUANCHE Translated by Dunja Fehimovic

Historical Precedents Audiovisual production on community themes in Cuba and the subsequent onscreen presence of communities had its precedents towards the end of the 1920s, when a certain degree of stability was achieved with regards to cinematographic production. These were the early years during which Ramón Peón, one of the founders of a strictly Cuban cinematography, made La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity, 1930), considered by some historians to be one of the most important Latin American films of the period. In January of 1897, Cuba, specifically Havana, became one of the first places in Latin America where the technological novelty of the cinematograph was introduced. Gabriel Veyre, then a representative of the Lumière brothers, was the first to introduce the invention and to make, in Havana, the first film set in Cuba of which we have records: Simulacro de incendio (Fire Drill, 1897). 55

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The Cinema of Cuba In terms of nationalist and patriotic content, there is the silent production of the first two decades of the twentieth century, particularly the works of Enrique Díaz Quesada, such as El capitán mambí or Libertadores y guerrilleros (The Mambí Captain or Liberators and Guerrilla Fighters, 1914), La manigua or La mujer cubana (The Swamp or The Cuban Woman, 1915), and El rescate del brigadier Sanguily (The Rescue of Brigadier Sanguily, 1916), which allude to the then recent achievement of independence from colonial power. Community themes during the first decades of the twentieth century can be found in the documentaries El cabildo de Ña Romualda (The Council of Madam Romualda) –​one of the first popular religious ceremonies of African origin filmed in the country, and Los festejos de la Caridad en la ciudad de Camagüey (The Celebrations of Our Lady of Charity in the City of Camagüey), both from 1908. The national imaginary is addressed in La leyenda del charco del güije (The Legend of the Güije’s Pool) from 1909, filmed in Sagua La Grande, then part of Las Villas province. Another mixture of legend and reality, this time related to the history of banditry and its impact on communities, can be seen in Manuel García or El Rey de los campos de Cuba (Manuel García or The King of the Fields of Cuba) from 1913. Propaganda spread by the press and other institutions against popular, non-​Catholic religions can be observed in the fiction feature La hija del policía or El poder de los ñáñigos (The Policeman’s Daughter or The Power of the Ñáñigos) from 1917, which complements the film La brujería en acción (Witchcraft in Action, 1919), a reconstruction of rites and invocations of the forces of nature still charged with prejudice in its depiction and assessment of the phenomenon. The period between 1937 and 1958 saw the popularisation of radio melodrama and the production of the first Cuban sound film; Serpiente Roja (Red Serpent, 1937), which was directed by Ernesto Caparrós and based on the radio novel by Félix B.  Caignet (1892–​1976), narrates the adventures of a Chinese detective named Chan Li Po.1 The decades of the 1940s and 1950s saw many coproductions with Mexico –​but these were low-​budget films with little artistic value. The films Siete muertes a plazo fijo (Six Deaths at an Appointed Time, 1950) and Casta de roble (Caste of Oak, 1953), both directed by Manuel Alonso, stand out 56

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba from this generalised mediocrity. Alonso succeeded in bringing together almost all the resources of the incipient Cuban filmmaking industry with intentions that were neither altruistic nor artistic. In 1951 the cultural society ‘Nuestro Tiempo’ (Our Time) was created; it included various left-​wing artists and intellectuals such as Alfredo Guevara, Julio García Espinosa, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and José Massip, who went on to found the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry –​ICAIC) after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Due to the growing commercial nature of cinema and the conditions of its exhibition, few films linked to community themes were made during this period. But there were some: a new version of Manuel García, el Rey de los campos de Cuba, from 1940, which took advantage of the virtues of sound cinema; Un desalojo campesino (The Peasant Eviction, 1944), denounces the vulnerability of the peasants in the face of the greed of the plantation owner, and El Mégano (The Charcoal Worker, 1955) reveals the terrible living and working conditions, isolation, and neglect of the charcoal workers of the Zapata Swamp in Cuba before 1959. It is this documentary that is considered to be the most representative precedent for revolutionary Cuban cinema later made by the ICAIC. Other fictional works such as Yambaó, from 1956, which is based on the story ¡Ecue-​Yamba-​O! (1934) by Alejo Carpentier (1904–​80) and Tahimí or La hija del pescador (Tahimí or The Fisherman’s Daughter), from 1958, tackle community issues such as the presence of men’s Abakuá societies (African-​Cuban men’s secret fraternities) in urban neighbourhoods and the difficult living conditions of fishermen, respectively. With the founding of the ICAIC under the direction of Alfredo Guevara, it became possible to make a new kind of cinema, identified as ‘the most powerful and provocative form of artistic expression, and the most direct and extensive vehicle for education and the public dissemination of ideas’, as the founding law of the Institute states. During a first phase from 1959 to 1969, Cuban cinema was divided into three working groups: didactic, documentary and fiction, together with the department of animation, created in 1960, and the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano (the ICAIC newsreels), directed by Santiago Álvarez (1919–​98). 57

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The Cinema of Cuba A number of worthy early examples are linked specifically with themes and situations relevant to communities:  Esta tierra nuestra (This Land of Ours, 1959)2 by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, about the tragedy of the eviction of the peasantry before the triumph of the Revolution. Realengo 18 (Commune 18, 1961)3 by Oscar Torres y Eduardo, where a peasant community confronts Yankee plantation owners over their land rights. El maestro de El Cilantro (The Teacher at El Cilantro, 1962) by José Massip, which tells the story of a young teacher sent to a small rural community by the revolutionary government, and his encounter with the area’s general underdevelopment, and Aventuras de Juan Quinquín (The Adventures of Juan Quinquín, 1967)4 by Julio García Espinosa, based on the eponymous novel by Samuel Feijóo (1914–​92), which takes an entertaining look at rural community life, telling the adventures of a wandering peasant who never gives up. Various Cuban critics have called the period between 1971 and 1976, before the creation of the Ministry of Culture, the ‘grey five years’.5 During this period, only a few films were made relating to community experiences. Amongst them Los días del agua (The Days of Water, 1971) stands out; it is a film based on real events that occurred in 1936 in the Viñales Valley, Pinar del Río, where the witch doctor Antoñica Izquierdo exerted her healing powers using water. The situation of various urban communities also emerges in De cierta manera (One Way or Another, 1974) by Sara Gómez, which shows the conflict between the habits created by marginality –​what is popularly referred to as ‘el ambiente’ (the environment), and the moral attitude of and desire for renovation following the beginning of the Revolution. Another aspect of national community life can be observed in Luis Felipe Bernaza’s Pedro cero por ciento (Pedro, Zero Per Cent, 1980), this time in a cattle breeding context, which is combined with everyday life, ranch culture and family situations that facilitate or impede people from maintaining revolutionary achievements. In a similar vein, the documentary Madera (Wood, 1980), by Daniel Díaz Torres, depicts the itinerant labour of forest workers in the remote mountains of Baracoa, the Eastern-​most region of Cuba, where trees, men and machines merge and blend together.

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba During the first half of the 1980s, Cuban film production decreased to an average of three feature-​length fiction films per year due, in part, to the prolonged and costly production of the feature film Cecilia (1981–​ 82), directed by Humberto Solás.6 Afterwards, production became more dynamic and contact with large audiences was re-​established by a series of comedies that adopted a critical stance towards contemporary reality. In this way, cinema regained its mass popularity, since a few of the aforementioned films feature among the biggest Cuban box office draws of all time.7 Between 1980 and 1989, the ICAIC participated in the creation of sixty fiction features, 44 of which were directed by Cubans. Among this group of films, a number stand out for their depiction of community life from different perspectives, such as the documentary Jíbaro (Wild Dogs, 1982)  by Daniel Díaz Torres, which investigates the hunting of wild dogs that roam the mountains of Cuba, in order to prevent the damage they inflict on livestock and domestic animals. This work serves as a point of reference for a fiction film of the same name made by the same director in 1984. Vaqueros de montaña (Mountain Cowboys, 1982), also by the same director, was dedicated to dignifying the difficult and risky work of those who work with cattle in the Escambray mountains, in the centre of the island. El corazón sobre la tierra (Heart on the Earth, 1982) by Constante (Rapi) Diego, uses Carlos Almenares’ life story and role as president of a mountain-​based cooperative in order to bring to light the everyday problems faced by those living in these areas of Cuba. As before, this work serves as a reference point for a fiction film of the same name by the same director in 1985. Guillermo Centeno’s Mientras el río pasa (As the River Flows, 1986) narrates the efforts and willpower of a young rural teacher and his students, as a song of hope for the future of a very remote, inaccessible area in the mountains of Baracoa. Ella vendía coquitos (She Sold Candy, 1986) by Gerardo Chijona presents the testimony of a young black woman, qualified as a foundry technician, which shows the discrimination that Cuban women still faced in certain fields of work, and how the individual can overcome obstacles that impede personal fulfilment, and El viaje más largo (The Longest Journey, 1987)8 by Rigoberto López, which sets out to show the process of Chinese emigration in Cuba, the formation

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The Cinema of Cuba of Havana’s China Town and to value the presence of the Chinese population as part of national culture. On the other hand, Biografía de un carnaval (Biography of a Carnival, 1983) by Santiago Álvarez and Lázaro Buría shows images of the biggest popular celebration in Santiago de Cuba, and briefly tells the story of this manifestation through its protagonists, going back to the nineteenth century when the growth of musical and dance groups and their processions began. In this context, the fiction film Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Certain Point, 1983) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea also delves into the everyday issues of urban communities; the character Oscar is a scriptwriter who is preparing a film about machismo and starts a romance with a single mother who works in Havana’s port. In an analogous way, the fiction film De tal Pedro tal astilla (Like Father, Like Son, 1985)  by Luis Felipe Bernaza was also inspired by the documentary Pedro cero por ciento, by the same director; here the story becomes a comedy about the rivalry between two peasants who compete in cattle rearing, which leads to a series of misunderstandings when their children fall in love. Towards the end of the 1980s, profound international changes generated a severe structural crisis in Cuba, following the fall of the politico-​economic model of Eastern Europe, which was then referred to as ‘real socialism’. Amongst the films that deal with community themes in this period we find Arte y desechos (Art and Waste, 1994) by Marisol Trujillo, based on the experience of a creative workshop in a Havana neighbourhood, where the objects that are made are constructed from waste products recovered from bins, and La Caridad del Cobre (1994)9 by Félix de la Nuez, which collects testimonies and accounts during the celebration of the saint day of Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s patron saint, celebrated in the town of El Cobre, near Santiago de Cuba. The beginning of the twenty-​first century was characterised by the flourishing of an independent, mainly young Cuban cinema, with a very varied critical approach, addressing contemporary issues and making use of new technologies, together with the support of coproductions, mainly with Spain. Gradually, the production levels that had abruptly plummeted with the crisis of the 1990s began to recover.

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba Following the ICAIC’s fiftieth anniversary, the decade 2001–​ 2010 started with a change in management. Whilst Alfredo Guevara took on the leadership of the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine (Festival of New Latin American Cinema), Omar González took over direction of the ICAIC, developing a double strategy: facilitating the transition of a group of filmmakers who had already proven themselves in documentary to the direction of feature films, and supporting the continuity interrupted by the paralysis that the crisis of the 1990s brought on by engaging young filmmakers from film schools, television or independent cinema. Para caracterizar el audiovisual generado en la Isla, ya sea documental o ficción, durante los primeros años del siglo XXI, es imprescindible hacer referencia a tres eventos: la Muestra Joven ICAIC, el Festival Internacional de Documentales Santiago Álvarez in Memoriam y el Festival Internacional del Cine Pobre en Gibara. Concebidos para estimular el conocimiento y la reflexión alrededor de la obra audiovisual de los jóvenes y potenciar el diálogo entre las diversas generaciones de creadores.10 [To characterise the island’s audiovisual production, whether documentary or fiction, during the first years of the twenty-first century, it is essential to refer to three events: the Young Filmmakers Showcase from the ICAIC, the Santiago Álvarez International Festival of Documentary, and the International Festival of Low Budget Cinema in Gibara. These were all conceived to stimulate knowledge of and thinking around the audiovisual work of young people and to facilitate dialogue between different generations of creators.]

These events allow us to evaluate films and audiovisual productions particularly concerned with themes relevant to both urban and rural communities.

Testimonies from the Interior More recently, critics have spoken about the favourable impact of the Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre (International Festival of Self-​Funded Cinema) on the community of Gibara. It has now been more than a decade

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The Cinema of Cuba since the Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solás (1942–​2008) chose this small city when he organised his first festival. With this project, which has been promoting the use of digital technology to make low-​budget cinema of high artistic quality since 2003, a noticeable change came over the well-​known ‘Villa blanca de los cangrejos’ [White town of crabs], located in the province of Holguín, about 775km east of the capital. As Elia Solás, the sister of the famous filmmaker, recalls in a recent conversation with the author: Cuando surgió la idea, no pocos le decían que era una utopía, pero Humberto tenía una visión larga y amaba el lugar, donde consideraba existía una magia especial, no solo por la belleza del entorno, sino también por sus personas. [When the idea came up, there were plenty of people who said that it was a pipe dream, but Humberto had a long-​term vision and he loved the place, where he thought there was a special magic, not just because of the beauty of the setting, but also because of the people.]

Humberto Solás had filmed in Gibara twice, first with Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún, 2001) and then with Barrio Cuba (Cuba Neighbourhood, 2005), though there was initially wariness towards the arrival of filmmakers from elsewhere in Cuba and other countries. In contrast to its title –​Cine pobre –​which relates to a lack of financial resources; in terms of creativity, the quality of the festival, its social impact on the community and particularly on the people who participate in the event and make it their own, it is truly a ‘Festival de la riqueza’ (Festival of wealth), since poverty is primarily mental and this fades away when a community assumes its own condition fully. Another experience of great interest is Daniel Diez’s contribution to the Televisión Serrana (Mountain Television) project.11 In terms of the relationship between TV Serrana’s audiovisual collection and community issues, Daniel explains that: La TV Serrana es una Comunidad Audiovisual que se halla en San Pablo de Yao, del municipio Buey Arriba en la provincia Granma y desde sus inicios su producción está relacionada

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba directamente con la vida de los habitantes de las montañas y sus relaciones con la naturaleza. Su objetivo entre otros era mostrar y demostrar la importancia de estas zonas desde el punto de vista cultural y económico y que ello sirviera para elevar la autoestima de sus pobladores y fueran conocidos por el resto del país, por tanto, toda su obra se encuentra ligada a temas comunitarios.12 [TV Serrana is an audiovisual community located in San Pablo de Yao, in the municipality of Buey Arriba in the province of Granma, and since its beginnings its production has been directly related to the life of the people who live in the mountains and their relationship with nature. Its goal, amongst others, was to show and demonstrate the importance of these areas from a cultural and economic point of view, in the hope that this would help to increase the self-​confidence of its inhabitants and make them known to the rest of the country; as a result, all of TV Serrana’s work is linked to community themes.]

All of the productions from TV Serrana (TVS) are documentaries and Diez explains how this is divided into both professional productions and community initiatives. En la TVS todos los que trabajan en ella, tanto realizadores como de servicio y administrativo, son habitantes de las comunidades serranas (excepto uno) y fueron formados en ella. Además existen los Grupos de Creación Alternativos que son jóvenes formados en nuestro Centro de Estudios para la Comunicación Comunitaria y que una vez terminado el curso de instrucción sobre el lenguaje y las técnicas cinematográficas regresan a sus municipios y aunque trabajan en otros menesteres cuando tienen una idea la llevan como proyecto a la TVS y al ser aprobados reciben el apoyo para su realización.13 [Almost everyone who works on TVS, from the filmmakers to the administrators, lives in the mountain communities, and was trained there. In addition, there are Alternative Creative Groups, which are made up of young people trained in our Centre for Community Communication Studies who, once they have finished the training course on film language and technique, come back to their areas and, although they

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The Cinema of Cuba might work in other jobs, when they have an idea they take the proposal to TVS and when it is approved they receive support to produce it.]

An interesting initiative derived from TVS is the ‘Proyecto audiovisual comunitario Picacho’ (Little Peak Community Audiovisual Project) in Guisa, Granma province, dedicated to the production of documentaries in mountain communities.14 The group is made up of several young people and some older farmers who aim to make documentaries based on their reality, with the influence and support of TVS, which, from that point on, becomes the godmother and guide of the group, allowing its members to participate in audiovisual production workshops that take place annually at the headquarters of the production company. It also allows the group to make documentaries with the support of its own filmmakers and technology. The project was founded on 15 June 2005 with its base in the Casa de Cultura Olga Alonso (Olga Alonso Cultural Centre), and the name Picacho (Little Peak) is due to its location in an area of the Plan Turquino and its scope of activity in an area that spans from the plains to the mountains. Amongst the group’s productions are the documentaries San Juan Bautista (St John the Baptist) and Aguateros (Water Carriers); they have also participated in various events such as the Festival de Invierno (Winter Festival), in Santa Clara, the Festival de cine clubes Yumurí (The Yumurí Film Club Festival), in Matanzas, the Festival del Caribe (The Festival of the Caribbean), in Santiago de Cuba, the Encuentro Territorial del audiovisual del Centro Provincial de Casas de Cultura (The Audiovisual Meeting of Community Cultural Centres of the Province), in Santiago de Cuba, and the Taller Nacional de Dibujos Animados (National Animation Workshop) in Sagua La Grande. Another experience derived from TVS is Visión Común (Common Vision), a community film and video programme located in El Cobre, Santiago de Cuba. Its precedents date back to 2004 when, at the Festival del Caribe, Julio Corbea, the town’s historian, met Diana Coryat, the president of the Global Action Project (GAP), telling her about a group of young people in El Cobre who made videos and who wanted to make a project with a wider reach and impact. Diana suggested that she could 64

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba come and visit the community at El Cobre in order to exchange ideas with the young people and implement an audiovisual project with the help and sponsorship of her organisation. During her stay in the community, she met up with young people interested in gaining skills in audiovisual production. Although Global Action Project’s initiative was approved by both interested parties (the Casa del Caribe on the Cuban side and Global Action Project itself), it could not be completed due to the refusal of the United States government to give visas to the young Americans who would have been the facilitators, or to provide the technical materials that would, after completion, be donated to the community for the continuation of the project. Another valid precedent was the meeting with Daniela Arias Rodríguez and Fabiola Saudí Cano, both from Costa Rica; in conversation with these young women, the idea for the creation of a meeting or festival of visual arts started to emerge, and this became the most concrete and immediate origin for Visión Común. Although the goal of an audiovisual project in El Cobre could not be fulfilled, it remained latent until 2008, when the minimum material conditions required to implement the project in the community were met. El Cobre has an institutional infrastructure that allows for the exhibition of audiovisual material, which is presented in the different communities that form part of its area. Amongst them are the Joven Club de Computación El Cobre (El Cobre Youth Computer Club), the Turquino cinema, the Casa de Cultura Luisa Pérez de Zambrana (Luisa Pérez de Zambrana Cultural Centre), a children’s video club and six television viewing rooms that belong to the Plan Turquino (the geographical area that the exhibitions aim to cover), as well as public neighbourhood screenings. There is also the direct support of the Casa del Caribe. El Cobre also possesses the necessary human resources to carry out this project, since it has sixteen artistic promoters, a community journalist, a journalism student, an arts graduate, a history graduate, specialised personnel who work in the institutions participating in the project, as well as community artists, other collaborators and the local town historian. The activities are aimed directly at the children, teenagers and young people 65

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The Cinema of Cuba of the communities involved in the project, and indirectly at the general population of the communities and the Popular Council as a whole.

Communities in their Multiple Images (2000–​10) Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores Omar González himself, the president of the ICAIC, plays with words in his article ‘Una muestra que demuestra mostrándose’ (A Showcase that Shows by Showing Itself), commenting on the Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores and how important it has become to the future of Cuban cinema: Que si esto o lo otro, tú o aquel, mañana y después; en fin, la mala conciencia. No hay misterio, señores, simplemente se trata de la fascinación del deber. Lo que el ICAIC se propone con el auspicio de la Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores es, ni más ni menos, lo que le corresponde:  establecer un espacio permanente para el diálogo y la confrontación artística y, por consiguiente, sentar las bases para una recuperación otra, que nada detendrá. Sin el peso terrible de la mala nostalgia, sin obviar lo mejor de un pasado que parece remoto, y al que no renunciamos. No es fácil; las dificultades abundan. Sin embargo, el trabajo nos salva. Por eso, a los tristes rumiantes, oídos sordos, y a los seres perfectos, ni siquiera el altar. Olvidemos a Lot, sigamos en el camino. Poco hay que explicar, la muestra lo demuestra. A juzgar por la vehemencia de sus organizadores y las novedades que contiene, el impulso no cesa. Nadie debe estorbarla. Los que tuvimos algo que ver con esta idea, que es un imperativo y no una elección de circunstancia, podemos sentirnos medianamente complacidos, y digo medianamente porque apenas si ha empezado el despegue. Todavía recuperar el cine cubano semeja una utopía. Los responsables directos de estas muestras han hecho de sus preparativos una verdadera religión de inconformes. Los resultados centenares de materiales exhibidos, el Taller de Guionistas, la producción de Tres veces dos (o Mil veces Uno, como nos gustaría que fuera, por lo que simboliza), la utilización del Archivo Fílmico como fuente viva de magisterio e inquietud, el reconocimiento a figuras de nuestra cinematografía

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba (algo que ha de ampliarse mucho más), los desprejuiciados intercambios generacionales (que deberán incluir otros temas y no sólo el cine), la asesoría y participación en diferentes proyectos (que abarcan la producción y otras zonas vitales), la entrega y el compromiso con una institución que pronto cumplirá 45 años y que inicia sus celebraciones, precisamente, con esta fiesta de amigos; los resultados, decía, resultan resueltamente convincentes. Aún más, diría que son alentadores. Pensémoslo bien, sin la Muestra algunas cosas serían diferentes, al menos en el ICAIC. Para no parecer pretenciosos. Ahora falta no creernos que todo marcha bien, cuando sabemos que la vida es el sueño. Adiós a los paternalistas; bienvenidos los rebeldes y cómplices. Cuidemos este espacio y hagámoslo crecer.15 [This or that, you or him, tomorrow or the day after; in short, guilt. There is no mystery, ladies and gentlemen  –​it’s just the draw of duty. What the ICAIC is trying to do with the Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores is no more nor less than what it must do: establish a permanent space for dialogue and artistic confrontation, and, therefore, create the foundation for a new recovery that nothing will detain. Without the terrible weight of bad nostalgia, without forgetting the best of what now seems to be a distant past, and which we do not renounce. It is not easy; there are many difficulties. However, the work itself saves us. For this reason, we must turn a deaf ear to sad ruminants, and a sceptical eye to apparently perfect beings. Let us forget Lot, let us follow our path. There is little to explain:  the showcase shows it. […] judging by the passion of its organisers and the novelties it contains, the momentum shows no signs of diminishing. Nobody should interfere with it. Those of us who were involved with this idea, which is a necessity rather than a choice, can feel moderately pleased, and I say moderately because the take-​off has barely begun. Recovering Cuban cinema still seems like a utopia. Those directly responsible for these showcases have made their preparation a true religion of nonconformity. The results –​ hundreds of works screened, the scriptwriters’ workshop, the production of Tres veces dos (Three Times Two) (or ‘One thousand

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The Cinema of Cuba times one’, as we would like it to be, because of what it symbolises), the use of the film archive as a living source of education and curiosity, the recognition of figures from our cinematography (something that needs to expand much more), the unprejudiced intergenerational exchanges (which should cover other areas and not just cinema), the advising on and participation in different projects (which covers production and other key areas), the dedication and commitment to an institution that will soon hold its forty-​fifth anniversary and that starts its commemoration with precisely this celebration among friends; the results, as I was saying, are decidedly convincing. More than that –​I would say that they are encouraging. Let us consider it carefully, without the showcase some things would be different, at least within the ICAIC; without wishing to sound arrogant. Now we just need to avoid thinking that everything is working well, when we know that life is but a dream. Goodbye paternalists; welcome, rebels and accomplices. Let us protect this space and make it grow.]

In this sense, the existence of audiovisual production in the most recent decade has been evident in different spaces of exhibition, reflection, debate and social recognition. Some of the themes that come out of the Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores include: the current situation of rural areas (difficult access, historical memory, the sense of belonging and continuity, urban migration and its conflicts, new settlements, the challenge of adaptability and invention), countryside customs (distances, domestication of animals, collective activities, transportation and cargo), life on the coast and the sea (isolation, labour-​associated risks, migration towards more protected zones), memories of the literacy campaign and its cultural impact, the role of audiovisual material in social change (especially in Gibara and the Sierra Maestra), young filmmakers and their communities (autobiographical and institutional references), contemporary sexual diversity (transsexuality, homosexuality, homophobia), urban and suburban marginality and poverty (homeless people, poorly paid work, illegal settlements, poor sanitation and hygiene, pollution, urban decay, everyday life in tenement buildings); community solidarity in the neighbourhood, different religious groups 68

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba within communities, and community culture work (mobile cinema, TV Serrana); all of these bring a wide variety of interpretations of urban and rural reality in the most recent decade. A thematic analysis of the Muestra for example, makes it possible for us to evaluate the multiple projects exploring different areas of interest of mostly young people who, to varying degrees, represent the continuation of the memory addressed by the founders of the ICAIC in terms of the critical aspect of their visual work, though they explore this in light of new video and digital technologies, where different production companies such as TVS come together with others such as the Insituto Superior de Arte [The University of Arts of Cuba –​ISA], the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión [The International Film and TV School –​EICTV], the Asociación Hermanos Saíz [The Saíz Brothers Association –​AHS], the Fundación Ludwig de Cuba [The Ludwig Foundation of Cuba], and Caminos [Pathways] at the Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Centre, together with those who contribute their personal resources and knowledge.

Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre, Gibara The Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre, in Gibara (2003–​10) is a space where different audiovisual works come together on themes linked to Cuban urban and rural communities. Some of these productions have been later presented at the Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores. The 2003 Festival featured works such as Todo por ella (Anything for Her) by Pavel Giroud (Guagua & Co Films), in which an ordinary man finds himself facing a flood that only affects his apartment in an old building. With his daily routine disrupted, he tries to solve this domestic catastrophe by all possible means. It represents the permanent challenge of everyday life in difficult conditions, as can be seen in many urban neighbourhoods. At the 2005 Festival, we saw how Alina Teodorescu’s Paraíso (Paradise) revealed the creativity of a group of young people from Guantánamo who used old plastic bottles and driftwood to create musical instruments, a practice carried out over the course of centuries using the most diverse objects. The band, Madera Limpia (Pure Wood), has emerged from this need to make music within the community itself. 69

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The Cinema of Cuba In the 2006 Festival, 25km by Jeffrey Puente García (ICAIC) stands out; the director uses one ­example –​that of two sisters who walk 25km every week to the nearest town –​to investigate the theme of the inaccessibility of different parts of the country. This strongly marks the cultural differences of living in the city, which benefits from certain forms of communication, and the role of large distances between people who live isolated and dispersed throughout rural areas. The 2007 Festival put forward, amongst others, the film Pequeña Habana (Little Havana) by Rolando Pardo, about certain, very particular life experiences. In the film, a group of people with restricted growth tell us about their lives, and magically reveal that they do not die but rather, disappear. The film highlights the fact that people of restricted growth can form part of any community and they have family lives, emotional lives and working lives, like everyone else, regardless of their small stature, and despite the fact that many objects are not designed with their needs in mind. In 2008, the Festival featured very particular themes addressed in productions such as El fin de nuestros afanes (The End of Our Efforts) by Heiking Hernández Velázquez, in which five men talk about themselves and their work as gravediggers. In this way, we see that death and the customs surrounding it form part of human culture, as this job only exists because of the tradition of burial, and now with the process of cremation there are a variety of other, different traditions and procedures. The 2009 Festival exhibited Los dioses rotos (Broken Gods, 2007) by Ernesto Daranas Serrano (ICAIC), a feature-​length fiction film that deals with the subject of prostitution in contemporary Havana by telling the story of the infamous pimp Yarini Ponce de León at the beginning of the twentieth century. Another interesting theme can be seen in Raza (Race, 2008) by Eric M. Corvalán Pellé, which addresses different perspectives on contemporary Cuba’s racial problems, through the voices of researchers, civil servants, musicians, painters and the general population. Its goal was to reflect on the issue and, at the same time, to develop socio-​historical and cultural recognition of the role of the population identified as black and mulato in the formation and consolidation of Cuban identity. The 2010 Festival, although it took place in Havana and Regla, as the eighth Festival del Cine Pobre Humberto Solás, served as a space for 70

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba community topics like the one addressed in El premio flaco (The Booby Prize, 2009), by Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti and Iraida Malberti. A screen adaptation of a play of the same name, set in a poor Cuban neighbourhood in 1958, it tells the story of Iluminada Pacheco, who wins a house in a lottery run by the soap company, Rina, and gives away almost all her belongings. Months later, her life takes a tragic turn, but this does not make her give up her faith in people. The work is significant in the contemporary moment, not just because of the characters’ behaviour, but in particular because of the community environment in which they act in the narrative. Finally, the most popular site of religious pilgrimage is shown in Más allá de la fe (Beyond Faith, 2009) by Grisell Concepción Timor, which provides an ethical, aesthetic and anthropological perspective on the events that take place in the parish of El Rincón on 16th and 17th December, during the anniversary of Saint Lazarus, who the believers imagine in different ways according to their various worldviews.16

Other projects: CREART and MEPLA The group CREART, part of the Ministry of Culture and the Centro de Investigaciones de la Memoria Popular Latinoamericana (Research Centre on Latin American Popular Memory –​MEPLA) represent particular projects which, though less prolific in their productions, offer great hope for social recognition and change. In the first case, the documentary series about traditional popular culture includes De mis raíces, una tradición (A Tradition from My Roots, 2007), by Nomar González Pastrana, which focuses on the traditional Cuban décima  –​an oral, improvised ten-​line poem, from the point of view of the rural population, revealing it to be one of the most authentic manifestations of living cultural heritage. El niño de Bauta (The Child of Bauta, 2008), by the same director, is about the life of Adalberto Rabeiro Baquet, winner of the national prize for community culture, promoter, musician and leader of small cultural collectives, through community work in the municipality of Bauta, and A parrandear y bien adelante (Join the Parade!, 2009), by Patricia Tápanes Suárez, about two groups and their activities: La Parranda de Arrollo Blanco ‘Los Sánchez’ from Arrollo Blanco in Sancti Spíritus and La Parranda de Florencia in 71

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The Cinema of Cuba the Ciego de Ávila province. The piece describes the characteristics of the punto de parranda (a carnival-​like street party, parade or musical procession), as well as its precedents as a genre and an expression of rural Cuban music.17 In the second example, that of MEPLA, one can observe various community experiences through the videos directed by Luis Acevedo Fals, such as El barrio echó a andar (And the Neighbourhood Got Up and Started Walking), about the community work of a group led by the then-​delegate of the Poder Popular (National Assembly of People’s Power) in a marginal neighbourhood in one of the districts of La Lisa, a neighbourhood in Havana. Cómo ha podido ser (How it Has Come to Be) is dedicated to a community experience that takes place in the two most run-​down blocks of Condado, a neighbourhood in the outskirts of Santa Clara in the Villa Clara province, and how the community transforms itself physically and spiritually through a social micro-​brigade. Floreciendo en invierno (Flowering in Winter) addresses the many activities carried out by a group of elderly citizens located in the seaside neighbourhood of Santa Fe, on the outskirts of the city, while Fraguando porvenir (Forging a Future) addresses the story of the transformation of the Hermanos Cruz suburb in Pinar del Río, a settlement in which the lack of a sense of belonging and rootedness meant that two out of three inhabitants wanted to move to another area. El aula en el museo (The Classroom in the Museum) shows the creation of an original educational experience: the classroom museum, developed through the reconstruction of Plaza Vieja in Havana’s historical centre. Buscando el camino (Searching for the Path) takes place in Guadalupe, a poor, rural community which has many social problems such as alcoholism, smoking, teenage pregnancies and others, but which also has an exceptional leader, the president of the People’s Council, whose hard work and dedication has won the whole town’s admiration and respect. Although these productions evidence the many different interests of the directors, the production groups, and the local projects that show different ways of engaging in community audiovisual production, there is no explicit policy that encourages, finances or promotes this. Different film-​ makers have approached the topics relevant to the communities from different angles –​though more because of aesthetic interests, social critique, 72

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Community Film and Audiovisual Production in Cuba or a desire to comment on specific situations, than from the point of view of the communities themselves.

Conclusion Community film in Cuba is fundamentally different from that made in countries that can rely on the financial support and necessary equipment to facilitate projects in which the community itself engages in filmmaking about its own issues. However, these differences also enrich the community and audiovisual spheres of our countries in multiple ways: • through the presence of professional creators interested in reflecting on themes inherent to everyday life in rural and urban communities • through the presence of young filmmakers coming from particular communities that reach a professional level and take on the topics relevant to their own communities, such as graduates of ISA, EICTV and others with their own resources • through the work of children and young people, properly advised, who contribute their concerns and aspirations from the community context through their own audiovisual projects • via multiple spaces at different levels, from those within communities, neighbourhoods and remote areas themselves, to festivals and showcases with international reach, which give visibility to community topics, within events that cover a wider thematic range • through the screening of audiovisual experiences for education and reflexive purposes in community contexts such as Televisión Serrana, the Proyecto Audiovisual Comunitario Picacho, the Visión Común project and the MEPLA, for example, which directly link audiovisual production to participation and the solution of problems identified by the specific community itself. All of the preceding has generated a great diversity of themes which, in one way or another, address everyday life in urban and rural communities, as well as demonstrating the possibility of using audiovisual production in educational and socially transformative projects. 73

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Notes 1. Reynaldo González, El más humano de los autores (La Habana, 2009). 2. Awarded the Certificate of Merit at the International Festival of Agrarian Cinema, West Germany, 1960, as well as a Special Mention from the Jury of the International Festival of Short films at Oberhausen, RFA, in 1961. 3. Copa Cineforum at the Catholic Film Club. Festival de Sestri Levante, Italy, 1962. 4. Awarded Honourable Mention at the Second International Meeting of IberoAmerican Cinema. Barcelona, Spain, 1968. Special Mention at the Selección Anual de la Crítica (Annual Critics’ Selection), Havana 1968, Gold Aspara Award (best director) at the Second International Film Festival in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1969, and Certificado al Mérito, at the First International Film Festival in Guyana, 1976. 5. Eduardo Heras León, ‘El Quinquenio gris:  testimonio de una lealtad’ and Ambrosio Fornet ‘El quinquenio gris: revisitando el término’. Papers given on 15th May 2007, at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), in Havana, as part of the conference ‘La política cultural del período revolucionario: memoria y reflexión’, organised by the Centro Teórico-​Cultural Criterios. 6. Because of its very ‘free’ interpretation of the novel and its spirit that did not accord with that of the period of the novel, according to the harsh popular humour, the film was renamed Cecilia Solás or Cecilia Talvez (Cecilia Perhaps) instead of Valdés. 7. www.cubacine.cult.cu/​filmo/​index.htm (11 May 2015). 8. Chosen as one of the most significant documentaries of the year at the Selección Anual de la Crítica, la Habana, Cuba, 1988. Received the second Coral award at the Festival Internacional de Nuevo cine latinoamericano, Havana, Cuba, 1988. 9. Caracol award for editing; OCIC award. Festival Nacional UNEAC de Cine, Radio y Televisión. Havana, Cuba, 1995. 10. www.cubacine.cult.cu/​filmo/​index.htm (11 May 2016). 11. Discussed more fully in Chapter 12 in this volume. 12. Interview with Daniel Diez by Jesús Guanche and Idania Licea, October 2011, Havana. 13. Ibid. 14. Proyecto Picacho at www.ecured.cu/​index.php/​Proecto_​Audiovisual_​Comunitario_​ Picacho_​(Guisa) (11 February 2016). 15. www.lajiribilla.co.cu/​2004/​n147_​02/​147_​07.html (11 May 2016). 16. Jesús Guanche, ‘San Lázaro, uno y múltiple’, in Excelencias Américas &Caribe, no. 54, (2004), at www.excelencias.com/​articulo.asp?rev=ex&edc=54&art=882 (3 June 2015). 17. Yenia Castañeda, CREART, email correspondence, 6 October 2011.

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4 Cinema, Race and Revolution: Dialogue and Disagreements of a Cuban Trilogy ALEJANDRO L. FERNÁNDEZ CALDERÓN Translated by Jessica Gibbs

In the summer of 2012 Irremediablemente juntos (Hopelessly Together), a film which openly discussed the issues of racism and prejudice in contemporary society, was released in Cuba (fig. 4.1). Its director, Jorge Luís Sánchez, reflected on a complex theme that is currently being debated among intellectuals and artists.1 The visibility of racism and discrimination, accentuated by the economic crisis of the 1990s, was viewed by some political figures as a process stemming from social inequalities. Consequently, the film would allow for reflection and raise consciousness among the public about the social situation.2 However, the outcome of the love conflict of the characters Liz and Alexander is played out in controversial fashion: the interracial couple end up happily together, but in squalid and high-​risk conditions. The outcome offers a reading that love conquers prejudice, but also that racial mixing has a high price and so here it is worth asking: ‘why send a message to the public that minimises the Cuban project’s contributions to equality in a society that has an historical stamp of racism?’ 75

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Fig. 4.1  Irremediablemente juntos 

Perhaps that was the aim of the filmmaker with this film: to reveal the extent to which prejudices have survived in today’s Cuba. In this respect, cinema has been a cultural space which has reflected a process of dialogues and disagreements with interracial relationships, influenced by the different historical contexts of a nation which made great efforts to eliminate inequality based upon skin colour. Films can be connected to the various moments of idealism, silence, absence and interpretations of the racial theme in Cuba, becoming active historical witnesses to it. Regarding this, the vast trove of fiction films has revealed two trends: the first is for films that reflect the recesses of racism, a reflection of the different combinations and formulations among Cuban society. Stereotypes and the boundaries of racial groups are at the centre of such films whether subliminally or directly, simplifying in seconds the spiritual wealth of Cuban identity. Common themes have been religion and the marginality of black and mixed race Cubans. The second trend is for films that have offered suggestive readings arising from the topic, 76

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Cinema, Race and Revolution and which demonstrate the complex nature of interracial relationships and the way in which they converge with other social problems. The subjects related to race have on the one hand focused upon historic and pre-​revolutionary events, and on the other hand, more subtly, been set in the present where the dominant image is of an inclusive Cuba despite differences arising from skin colour. Since the 1962 Second Declaration of Havana, the absence of a specific political-​cultural strategy regarding race has determined the different interpretations in film.3 My reflections stem from the thesis that fiction film, as a cultural agent of the Cuban social equality project, has expressed the conflictive and changing nature of racism in Cuban society. Filmmakers reflect the various contradictions of the racialised universe which is conditioned by political relations and social practices.4 In this way they have moved from the idealistic vision of the beginning of the 1970s to the current discourse of racial mixing. The influence of the political–​ideological framework can be seen at the heart of their films.

Subversion of the Old Bourgeois Order In 1959 a radical process of subversion of the old order and the social hierarchies established during the first half of the twentieth century began. The actors and leading figures of these revolutionary changes took on the huge task of building a new world in response to the political project of inclusion and social equality. This reconfiguration, achieved by the pronouncement of a series of decrees, measures and laws, could count on the full backing of the man on the street, the principal actor in this subversion. The positive impact of these transformations was reflected in rates of infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy and education. Revolutionary identity was reunited with the aspirations of the nation. The defence of Cuban sovereignty and nationalism became the corner stone of its subsequent historical destiny. The achievement of these aspirations required modified thought processes of the human participants acting out these transformations, whose approval would lend legitimacy to the changes that took place.5 Thus there was a need for a revolution at the level of ideas and the development of a discourse in the cultural field. 77

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The Cinema of Cuba On the ideological-​political scene, culture has maintained an important space because of its role in creating and reinforcing the spiritual nationalism of the revolutionary process. In order to ensure ownership of the transformations which had taken place, the participants, the actors, were given the necessary weapons that would validate their incorporation and support. The building of a narrative allowed for the uprooting of the old bourgeois society’s values and the creation of a new set of codes belonging to the society which was being constructed. In this way, with the creation of various spaces that carried with them revolutionary sociability, this mythic moment was introduced in songs, poems, stories and books. In this regard, the basic principle was reinforced by the aphorism ‘within the Revolution, everything, against the Revolution nothing’, a concept which gradually came to be the central argument in the relationship between the state and national culture, becoming the cornerstone of cultural policy. It allowed the state to assure revolutionary writers that they had freedom of expression, as long as they did not compromise the national interest. At the same time, it guided people’s thinking towards the creation of a new spiritual vision now that the cultural agenda had to contribute to eliminating past evils. As Díaz says, race was one of those stigmas.6 The complete subversion of society was accompanied by a reinterpretation of its spiritual heritage, and so a discourse that would accommodate what had been achieved in terms of the inclusion of all participants was designed. For this to happen the old regime, racist and exclusionary, was shaken to its foundations and the social evils of the republican era immediately attacked. Racism, with its hierarchical ordering of people according to the colour of their skin, was condemned at the revolutionary pulpit and socially undermined. The contributions of Cubans of African heritage were not neglected in this integration strategy. A series of intellectuals, journalists and political figures became involved in studies and research projects that emphasised the value of black and mixed race Cubans in the Cuban nation. The result of these studies, scientifically endorsed in the work of Fernando Ortiz, Argelia León and Rogelio Martínez Furé, gave an aesthetic and humanist sheen to the racial debate. In just a few years the racial reality of the old regime was officially determined to have been reconfigured. The old 78

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Cinema, Race and Revolution problema negro (black problem) was declared over in 1962, according to the authorities. As it was now off limits, its presence was minimised for decades in the national debate and in spaces dedicated to spreading and communicating culture.7 The early invisibility of the racial debate was justified by the later development of multiracial generations with the same opportunities and activities, and any social practice not related to socialist principles was interpreted as damaging to the political system. Despite this, the silence left room for a new type of racism, able to mutate and adapt to the environments in which it reproduced. Once the theme of race had lost its intensity, the legacy of the black population became once again folklore, artistic value and historical memory. Like racism itself, magical/​religious and associative components of this kind were deemed counterproductive. Some specialists argued that religious elements should be interpreted as trappings of the past and obscurantism. The archetypal ‘New Man’ of Marxist–​Leninist ideology was neither religious nor racist.8 Cinema, as a form of cultural training, was soon linked to this unyielding process. Its institutional infrastructure, the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), developed the function of artistic transmission within a humanist environment. The ICAIC projects supported a series of proposals for the transformation, reflection and change of historical consciousness. Only a few months after the Revolution, the new government declared that the duty of cinema was consciousness raising, the elimination of ignorance, the elucidation of problems, the creation of solutions and the examination of the great conflicts of man and of humanity. Objectives guidelines were laid down for lo colectivo (the collective), which connected the individual to his environment, influenced by his social participation and commitment to the new values of equality and justice. With this effort, the experimental modern cinema of that period revealed its creative capacity in legitimising the revolutionary project. Under the direction of Alfredo Guevara, cinema acted as a tool to inform, instruct and spread the word about the achievements of the Revolution. During this period the social injustices that were recorded in feature films were the racial and class hierarchies that divided blacks, whites and mixed 79

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The Cinema of Cuba race Cubans. The plots of La decision (The Decision, 1964), directed by José Massip and Cumbite (1964), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, reflected inequalities, discrimination and prejudice.9 The first has a closer connection to the 1960s as the action takes place in Santiago de Cuba, in the east of the island, in 1956. In the plot Pablo, a young mulatto poet, loves María, but in spite of the elevated position of his parents he is not accepted in high society because of his skin colour. Cumbite deals with the situation of two families in a Haitian village in the 1940s. Both directors reconstructed earlier periods in order to vindicate the progress made by the young revolutionary project. The triumphalist way in which the project looked back on the past reveals the meanings and conceptions of those early moments. Interpretations of yesterday’s racism received more attention in the 1970s, a period characterised at the highest levels as the quinquenio gris (grey five years) which led to highly politicised cultural guidelines.10 History served as an ideal arsenal for the reaffirmation of political discourse because feature films reinforced conceptions of Cubans of African descent as victims of former times. One exception to this rule was De cierta manera (One Way or Another, 1974), directed by Sara Gómez, a black woman among male filmmakers.11 This film, even though it drew upon the pre-​revolutionary past, can be regarded as pioneering because it tackled racial problems arising from Afro-​Cuban spiritual values and their clashes with the historical process after 1959. With its use of close-​ups, scarce technical resources, and mix of fiction and documentary reality, it revealed the counterpoint between two periods: the legacy of the solar (tenement house) of the Republican period (in the neighbourhoods of Las Yaguas and Llega y Pon) and the Revolution’s battle against marginal culture, as it was then defined. The film had a didactic and investigative aim, in tune with the Marxist methodology of the period, and it reconfigured historical space and time. It illustrates that within some of the older customs in certain social environments predominantly populated historically by black and mixed race Cubans, there is a social psychology of resistance and adaptation in which the inhabitants are active agents in the transmission of traditional cultural values. The dir­ ector reflects upon the new revolutionary world that is opposed to some of 80

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Cinema, Race and Revolution the spiritual manifestations of African heritage and that attempts to rebuild part of the ‘history of the people without history’.12 The character of Mario, played by Mario Balmaseda, is constructed to draw attention to a figure within the male-​dominated, African Abakuá culture, popularly known as a ñáñigo, as the film delivers archival material from a swearing-​in ceremony, dances and animal sacrifice. The film categorises these events, which serve as the cultural expression of the group, as counterproductive to modern and revolutionary life, as they contain an exaggerated masculinity and male chauvinism. The actress and character of Yolanda represents the independent woman, teacher and product of the impact of social change. The relationship between the two symbolises the diverse contradictions of the society that is being built, and the complex universe of social relationships where surviving customs cannot easily be erased in just a few decades. The thesis of marginalism confronted by the category of the new Marxist man is qualified by the capacity for spiritual–​ religious adaptation in the context of social and educational integration. In this light, and following the lead of Sara Gómez, there is also Santa Camila de la Habana Vieja (Saint Camila of Old Havana, 2002), directed by another female director, Belkis Vega Belmonte. The film has a historical setting and investigates the impact of the Revolution among the poor. The principal characters Camila (played by Luisa María Jiménez) and Ñico (Luis Alberto García), had also been subjected to subversive conditioning, reflecting the clash of mentalities. The interracial life of the solar is again combined with Santería (Afro-​Cuban religion) and the strife-​ridden evolution of the characters, caught between old values and new times, demonstrates that behind romantic love lies the firm path offered by the young Revolution. Historic films about slavery were privileged during the 1970s. The trilogy of films El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco, 1974), Rancheador (Slaverunner, 1976) and Maluala (1979) was developed under the directorship of Sergio Giral. Another example is La última cena (The Last Supper, 1976), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. In their discursive essence, the inhumanity of colonialism is contrasted with liberty and escape. Generally, the tragedy of the slave Franciso and the anti-​slavery resistance reflected in Maluala are not distinguished from the intermediate groups in colonial society such as the free black craftsmen or black landholders. Furthermore, the 81

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The Cinema of Cuba interpretation of class struggle reflected the period of their production and the radicalisation of the socialist project. Marxist ideology had filtered into the recesses of culture, so that what dominated was a narrow vision of the contradictions between the exploitative bourgeois and the exploited slaves. This type of treatment allowed black and mixed race actors a space for representation and an outlet. Sergio Giral himself declared at one point that his interest lay in rehabilitating black people within the history of Cuba, to put them at the centre of his characters and to reclaim them from cinematic neglect. Years afterwards he would define his identification with the topic as a product of his racial conscience. In one interview, he argued that white directors often had experience of racial coding, in which blackness denoted little participation, lack of prominence, or incidental detail. In this way, the artist reflected in his creative activity an element of his personality.13 Despite this, these films established the basis for a type of film which would lead people mentally to limit the roles of blacks in Cuban cinematography. The so-​called Negrometrajes, in which black and mixed-​race actors predominated, opened a path within cinema which remained centred discursively on two essential aspects: the vindication of characters who struggled against social injustice, and the highlighting of the Revolution’s differences from the capitalist past. Both these elements were inherent in the foundational political myth post-​1959, precepts renewed with the saga of the internationalist missions. Cuban international aid found filmic expression in Caravana (1990), directed by Rogelio París and Julio Cesar Rodríguez, and Cangamba (2008), also by Rogelio París, productions in which black actors stood out, in keeping with their African setting. This historical trend supplied the connection between the Cuban feature-​length film and race. It was reflected in the 1980s with the excellent period dramas Cecilia (1981), directed by Humberto Solás, a classic of filmography, and Plácido (1986), by Sergio Giral. Both films recreated the nineteenth-century period with a depth, richness of dialogue, and central per­ formances from Daisy Granados and Jorge Villazón, respectively, together with other actors such as Rosa (Rosita) Fornés and Miguel Benavides. Patakín (1982), directed by Manuel Octavio Gómez, is also worth mentioning for its treatment of religion. In recent years this historical current 82

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Cinema, Race and Revolution has been brought up-​to-​date by the films Roble de olor (Scent of an Oak, 2003), directed by Rigoberto López, with its sublime message of respect for the Other in a stratified society, and José Martí: el ojo del canario (José Martí: the Eye of the Canary, 2010), directed by Fernando Pérez, where the old slave Tomás teaches Pepe the secrets of the mountain and the ceiba (silk cotton) tree. Nevertheless, within this historical trend there was an imbalance regarding critical moments in the evolution of the black population. The colonial period is richly represented on film, but the decades of the Republic have been neglected. With the exception of the film María Antonia (1990), directed by Sergio Giral, there has been little coverage of social mobility among black and mixed race Cubans after Cuban independence or in the post-​emancipation period. Thus little is known about the strategies and activism with which they created alternative models of citizenship and social prestige. The silence in respect of ciudadano negro (black citizen) models has been interrupted by two films twenty years apart: Baraguá (1986), directed by José Massip, and El Benny (2006), by Jorge Luis Sánchez. The brilliant performances of actors Mario Balmaseda and Renny Arozarena, embodying Antonio Maceo and Benny Moré, afford an additional lesson since both constituted legendary and important figures in the unique history of the black population. Beyond their distinct periods and historical roles both functioned as channels for group satisfaction and became symbols of the struggle for an ideal, since they represented individuals who currently form part of the mythic arsenal of the Cuban nation. Another trend in Cuban films is satire and social criticism, which in the 1980s reflected upon the socialist project’s limits and upon social norms. In keeping with the discourse of a Cuba without race, interracial relationships were masked by the socialist ideal. In Se permuta (House Swap, 1983), Juan Carlos Tabío used the categories of ‘comrade’ and ‘revolutionary’ for his critical report on housing problems, the social differences between a room in a solar in Central Havana and a house in Vedado, and emigration to the capital. Although the racial theme is not explicit it slips out in keeping with the characters’ human flaws, whether it be in the face of Gloria (played by Rosita Fornés), when she is asked by Guillermo, in reference to the colour 83

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The Cinema of Cuba of telephones, ‘Do you like blacks?’, or the sensuality of the mulatta, the object of the peeping Tom neighbour. Then again the interracial relationship of Isabel Santos and Mario Limonta, the actors who played the roles of Yolanda (white, architecture student) and Pepe (mixed race, civil engineer), is contrasted with the ideal man Guillermo (white, from Vedado, a sophisticated civil servant with a car). The scene in which Yolanda visits Pepe’s home and they talk about cost-​savings in his building project is noteworthy. The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of his father, a black dockworker, who invites them to celebrate their work with a drink. Immediately he speaks about the difficulties of living in the crowded solar with just one bathroom for everyone in contrast to what the Revolution has achieved for his children who now have new apartments. He finishes his speech by referring to the sincerity and caring atmosphere of the new society. At the end of the film, the couple marry and live together on the Isle of Youth, symbolising a viable future with neither regional nor racial differences. ¡Plaf! (o demasiado miedo a la vida) (Plaf! or Too Afraid of Life, 1988), also directed by Juan Carlos Tabío, has similar overtones. Here the couple (José, played by Luis Alberto García, and Clarita, played by Thais Valdés) confront the internal fears of Concha (Daysi Granados), who ultimately dies from a heart attack. The film also demonstrates the prejudices of Clarita’s white mother when she shouts that she is not racist, but that ‘blacks, if they don’t do it on the way in, do it on the way out’. The couple come together to face these problems and end up united and happy.14 The young couples of both films symbolise the fellowship of new generations of Cubans. Nonetheless, the notable outcome of the interracial ‘Happy Ending’ has not been common in Cuban cinema.

Mestizaje versus Racism: Two Faces of Cuban Feature Films The changes that took place in the well documented Special Period in the 1990s increased the complexity of Cuban filmmaking. The abrupt economic transformations that allowed for the revolutionary project’s survival had a high social cost and the agenda of racial equality had to wait until the 84

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Cinema, Race and Revolution end of the decade for official pronouncements. One immediate effect of the changes arising from the crisis was the increased visibility of social inequality, which showed up the fact that after more than forty years of revolution racism had not really been eliminated. Behind the enormous revolutionary efforts lurked prejudiced, conservative and ignorant mind-​ sets regarding race. Intellectuals and activists demanded greater attention to the rights of representation for black and mixed race Cubans, and demanded that institutions respond actively to discrimination on the basis of skin colour.15 As a result of the impact of those years, the world of Cuban filmmakers was reconfigured. They widened their horizons, as well as their economic, spiritual and creative strategies and needs, looking for opportunities both within and outside the island. Themes such as emigration, tourism and life on the margins of legality became staples of the big screen. In keeping with the social and political changes, ideas of racial mixing, religion and performance were reclaimed in pursuit of the reaffirmation of the resistance of the socialist project. The dialogue that is suggested by the films produced reflects the social crisis and the presence of racist clichés and aesthetic criteria. At times we see the absence of a united identity and the prevalence of the reproduction of common sense and attitudes that go beyond the collective will of the state. This scenario reflects the impact of the crisis, the slowness of the recovery and institutional suffocation trying to dictate a cultural policy in favour of the Revolution’s values. In this regard, the discourse of a mixed race nation, in the midst of prejudice and discrimination, was then an escape from high social and economic tensions. The components of Afro-​Cuban culture made two essential contributions: • Its spiritual fabric (religious, musical, choreographic) became the representation of an important part of Cuban identity and sovereignty. From the 1990s until today, these various cultural expressions have been manifestations of the legacy of a traditional and popular culture in which ordinary people have been active participants and guardians of the most sacred part of the nation. In this way, they preserved the indigenous ideals of the people, embodied in the revolutionary discourse of the state, the entity which had made possible the recognition and reclamation of 85

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The Cinema of Cuba such components. Within the strategy of the Battle of Ideas the field of culture was again an essential objective of high politics.16 • These arrangements operated as a cordon sanitaire against contact with the outside world and the opening to tourism. In this regard, an effort was made to minimise and counteract the influence of the values of consumerism and the market, maintaining the essence of the humanistic character of the socialist project. Cinema revealed the ways in which the laws of the market imposed conditions on our social reality, demonstrating a tendency to recreate representations and stereotypes of what was ‘Cuban’. At times, in an unfortunate way, the spirit of the nation was represented with Manichean figures. Spanish and Italian coproductions promoted an image of tropical humour and tendentious racial images which reduced the national wealth to a superficial community in general, and one which suggested racist conditions. Race was related to patterns of poverty, prostitution, crime, violence and religion. In the sights of filmmakers, Cuba appeared as a model of a mixed race nation permeated by different interpretations and concepts. Despite certain conservative considerations in the patterns of selection and representation of the films of this period there is an attempt at balance, though this is not always achieved. In this respect, we can see two principal elements being used:  references to Afro-​Cuban religious practices and the social life of the black population. Given the proliferation of the religious outlet, Afro-​Cuban rites received constant attention, following their shunning at the end of the 1980s. But at times this produced demeaning, vulgar and simplistic visions founded on crude religious, social and racial jokes and stereotypes. There are a number of films combining interracial relationships with the cult of the foreigner on various pretexts (sex, expediency, exoticism), demonstrating the loosening of social norms and values. While these directors may be intending social criticism the images have a powerful racial content which reproduces conservative racial patterns. For example, Un paraíso bajo las estrellas (A Paradise Under the Stars, 1999), directed by Gerardo Chijona, which highlights the sparkling night life of the cabaret. 86

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Cinema, Race and Revolution The racial overtones are evident in the dialogues between the characters of Cándido and Promedio when they discuss their perceptions of the colour black (cats, moles, black men); and also in the main character, Sissy (Thais Valdés), who dreams of dancing at the Tropicana night club, surrounded by black dancers, but as a white cabaret queen. In contrast black criminality predominates in Kleines Tropicana (Little Tropicana, 1997), and Hacerse el sueco (Playing the Swede, 2000), both directed by Daniel Díaz Torres, the latter with the character of Angelito, the black boss in charge of the solar, who stages a mass fight for a foreign criminal in the midst of a Santería ceremony worshipping the Orishas (Afro-​Cuban deities). Another example is Entre ciclones (Between Cyclones, 2003), directed by Enrique Colina, which portrays the relationship between the white brother, Tomás (played by Mijail Mulkay), and the black brother Miguel, demonstrating common sexual, religious and stereotypical racism. The marginality of Miguel (played by Renny Arozarena) is found in the archetype of the criminal and amoral black. We might also mention Aunque estés lejos (Although You Are Far Away, 2003), directed by Juan Carlos Tabío, that contains the sensual folklore of the myth of the mulatta and the Spaniard. Within these films the racial variable is linked with the solar, rumba, the marginal, the ugly and the urban decadence of people trapped by their own realities. In the cityscape Havana ceases to be a source of pride and becomes instead a tumbledown city, ravaged by natural disasters, with no street lighting, demonstrating its despair and discouragement, accompanying the crisis with its spiritual contradictions.17 Dialogues among different generations are evidence as much of longing for the past as of its frustrations. A recurrent image is of the Cuban mulatta, generally naked, presented in her sensual and lascivious potential, as reflected in the character of Mónica, the girlfriend of Tomás in Entre ciclones, or Sandra, in Los dioses rotos (Fallen Gods, 2008). These women are presented as always exuberant and lustful, always prepared to defend their white male partner. Scenes of the solar, of vulgarity, and the religious and sexual ‘evil eye’ are combined with scenarios of racial whitening. Racial inequalities are accompanied by social differences and vulnerable sectors in contemporary Cuba. 87

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The Cinema of Cuba The film Los dioses rotos, directed by Ernesto Daranas, connects race to the social drama surrounding prostitution and pimping. The background to the tragic and dramatic love affair of Alberto and Sandra is an underground Havana of the sex trade. This critical and realistic appraisal reveals racial diversity among those who live on the margins of legality where whites, blacks and mixed race Cubans share ambitions and dreams on a daily basis. Afro-​Cuban racial–​religious conceptions are visible in the character of Sandra, a daughter of Yemayá (the orisha of the sea in the Santería religion), bound up in the myth of the mulatta, a tradition dating back to the nineteenth century in the work of the painter Víctor Andaluces. In addition there are the characters of the black Cuban, Lázaro, played by Mario Limonta, a son of Oggúns, the orisha of iron, and the white Cuban, Rosendo, played by Héctor Noas, owner of the Yarini handkerchief, a priest of Ifá and son of Changó, the orisha of manliness and women. Rosendo has high status in this religiously, socially and locally marginal world and this distinguishes him from his group, mostly blacks and mixed race Cubans like his bodyguard Basilio, played by Eman Xor Oña. The characters of Rosendo and Alberto (Carlos Ever Fonseca) symbolise the lower class whites who have prestige in the present-​day Cuban underworld. The racial theme may also be found in the depiction of the University of Havana, whitened in the characters of the academics Laura, Román and Isabel, and in the character of the businesswoman Rosa (Amarilis Núñes). All of these interact with the life of the San Isidro quarter as outsiders in contact with the marginal nature of the environment in a struggle for survival. The director, Ernesto Daranas, like Jorge Luís Sánchez in Irremediablemente juntos, offers a vision of interracial love as tragic and full of risk. The death of Alberto at the hands of Rosendo because of his jealousy over Sandra shows that happiness is fleeting and comes at a high price. It is worth underlining that the film offers a vision that reclaims Afro-​ Cuban rituals, removing them from the traditional clichés of witchcraft and demonstrating that the path of belief can lead to social recovery and purification. The violin worship of Yemayá, on her throne, the use of traditional music in Rosendo’s house, and the nakedness of the actor Ania Bu Maure, in the midst of a religious ceremony on the seashore, subtly leads

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Cinema, Race and Revolution us to concentrate on the performance of the religion, removed from superficial criteria. In the last decade the renewed attention paid to the Cuban family on screen should be emphasised. In this context, the black and mixed race family is a theme that has been treated with certain diversity and openness. In recent years, the film Larga distancia (Long Distance, 2010), directed by Esteban Insausti, has examined the conflicts of Ricardo, in the midst of those who left Cuba and those who stayed, and Habanastation (2011), directed by Ian Padrón, has focused upon the relationship between the two children Mayito (played by Ernesto Escalona) and Carlos (played by Andy Fornaris), highlighting different ‘Cubas’ (rumba-​loving versus refined, popular versus elitist) but also the different classes and objects of adulation in the Havana neighbourhoods of La Tinta and Miramar. Diversity is emphasised in the cultural, social and educational differences between Carlos’s impoverished black family and Mayito’s well-​off mixed race family, which is benefitting from the market in Cuban music, though both are linked to the political commitment symbolised by the May Day march. There is a different reading of private lives in Botero (Boatman, 2012), directed and acted by Alberto Yoél García, which reflects the tribulations of a university teacher who gives up his dreams and becomes an unlicensed taxi driver to cope with his precarious position as a Cuban professional. The Cuban family, in its wide racial diversity and social stratification, may be found at the centre of this present-​day Cuban cinema, which has come closer to a contemporary reality with language which is more explicit, less confused regarding the rethinking of our identity, and more defined in the social context of today. Black, white and mixed race Cubans live together among the challenging reality of everyday life and the spirituality of the nation feeds off its racial stock, and gains new structure from criticism and praise. Despite this, the discursive development of racial mixing in Cuban feature films today does not yet suggest, as was the case in the revolutionary films of previous decades, the varied complexity and possible solutions to the latent problem of racism. The reasons for this can be linked to the slow steps with which the Cuban authorities are currently tackling prejudice

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The Cinema of Cuba and manifestations of discrimination. Cuban feature films show that racism mutates in different combinations, terms and expressions, and may be found at every level and in every scenario of Cuban life. The historical variables of race and inequality, in the midst of the difficult Cuban context, condition the capacity to trace effective government and group policies and actions. Critical thinking and the intervention of the media play an active role in terms of reproducing, questioning, or provoking reflections among the wider public regarding the successes and limitations of interracial relationships. In Cuban feature films, beyond the reflection of the lens, there is rarely a direct or timely critique but rather one that is masked in a dense social network of racial and spiritual representations. In the broad audiovisual world in Cuba, the theme of race still awaits its moment of realisation and filmic treatment; the same strength and intensity with which Tomás Gutiérrez Alea once tackled machismo and the status of women in Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Certain Point, 1983), the way that Fernando Pérez reflected inequality in Suite Habana (Havana Suite, 2003), and the way that Verde verde (Green Green, 2012), directed by Enrique Pineda, criticised prejudice against homosexuality and homophobia. Perhaps it comes close with the film Conducta (Conduct, 2014), directed by Ernesto Daranas, a film which puts race under the spotlight in a washed-​out Havana. From the beginning, the character of the teacher Carmela emphasises her family roots in slavery, celebrating social progress in spite of her skin colour. It creates a blurred vision of a universe of colours and differences where the new generations represent, as in any social process, the possibility of a new society. But this is only one film and more are needed to reflect and inform on Cuba’s racial issue. This would contribute to cultural thinking on the island, allowing it to become more mixed and in the end more Cuban.

Notes 1. Since the end of the twentieth century there has been an intense debate among a group of intellectuals and artists about the theme of racism and racial discrimination in Cuba. Many of the discussions have taken place within the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC). Those who have participated in a systematic basis include Elvira Cervera, Tomás Fernández Robaina, Alden Knight, Leyda Oquendo, Esteban Morales, Lázara Menéndez, among others.

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Cinema, Race and Revolution The same period has seen the creation of the working groups Cofradia de la Negritud (the Negritude Brotherhood), in 1998 by Norberto Mesa Carbonell, and Color Cubano (Cuban Colour) in 2001, directed by Gisela Arandia. For details, see De la Fuente, 2012. 2. Even though there is a debate about racism in Cuba, it has not been articulated at a national level. The media play an important role in the reproduction of a racist culture. Fiction films have not managed to establish a discourse of critical and reflective thinking about the impact of racial boundaries. The potential for this has not yet been achieved. Regarding this point, Alfredo Guiso considers that cinema is a teaching tool based upon five key ethical–​pedagogical points: dialogue, recognition and reinversion, critical humanism, hopeful realism, and act of knowledge. See Guiso, 1996. 3. This work is limited to treating racial relations in Cuban fiction films. Therefore, it will not discuss other types of visual media (documentaries, newscasts, etc.), produced by important directors interested in the topic of race. Among the most noteworthy are the work of Juan José Grado, Playas del pueblo (Town Beaches,1960), Santiago Álvarez, and his classic Now (1965), Sara Gómez, Guanabacoa: crónica de mi familia (Guanabacoa: A Family Chronicle, 1966), and Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Coffea Arábiga (1968). More recently, there is the work of Erick Corvalán, Raza (Race, 2008), Gloria Rolando, Raíces de me corazón (Roots of My Heart, 2001), and Voces para un silencio (Voices for a Silence, 2012). 4. Racism is a mechanism of oppression expressed in terms of difference. It includes a series of attitudes inherent in the dominant culture and is expressed in practices that are produced, reproduced, debated and censured in social attitudes, valued in many forms and with diverse effects. It can be displayed from an anti-​black prism (focusing on skin colour), romantic, scientific and/​or pseudo-​scientific that changes over time, modified by interests, strategies and interactions among individuals and groups. See Rebecca J. Scott, 1995. 5. For an analysis of the Revolution in its early years, see Castañón, 2001. 6. Duanel Díaz, ‘Desventuras de la conciencia crítica en la Cuba del sí’, in El Puente 5, May (2007), pp. 1–​13. 7. See Pedro Serviat, El problema negro en Cuba y su solución definitiva (Havana, 1986). 8. See Alejandro De La Fuente, Una nación para todos. Raza, desigualdad y política en Cuba 1900–​2000 (Madrid, 2000). 9. As well as these, it is worth mentioning Eduardo Manet’s interesting documentary El Negro (1960), which focused upon the racial prejudices of those years. In 1968 the director went into exile in France. 10. The term el quinquenio gris (1971–​75) was coined by the Cuban intellectual Ambrosio Fornet to describe the complicated cultural period in the 1970s in

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The Cinema of Cuba which an ideological position that marginalised a group of intellectuals which included Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera was developed, and there was an attempt to install Socialist Realism as the official cultural line. It generated cases of censorship that involved such luminaries as Luis Pavón Tamayo and Jorge Serguera, the directors of the National Council for Culture and the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television respectively. 11. Sara Gómez died while filming, and the film was completed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa. 12. The term ‘the history of the people without history’ has been a trend in Cuban historiography since 1970, developed by the researchers Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux and Juan Pérez de la Riva (1974). These scholars concentrated on the less visible elements of Cuban history (black women, the black and mixed race middle classes, Haitian migrants, Galicians, slaves) producing valuable work. Currently scholars such as María del Carmen Barcia, Oilda Hevia Lanier, María de los Ángeles Meriños, among others, are advancing this line of research. 13. For Sergio Giral’s comments, see the interview in Pérez Sarduy and Stubbs, 1998. 14. For an analysis of this film see Baron, 2012. 15. For details on this topic see Alvarado Ramos, 1996; Morales, 2007; Colectivo de autores, 2011. 16. In the 1992 constitutional reform, articles 8, 42, and 55, the Cuban state rejected the religious obscurantist thesis of earlier decades, distanced itself from the previous atheist position and declared its secular character and the right to religious freedom. During this period there were important contacts and visits such as that of the Oni de Ifé (Nigeria) and Pope John Paul II in 1998. See Ramírez Calzadilla, 1999. 17. For more details on Cuban cinema during this period see Del Río, 2008a.

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Part Two

Zoom /​ Text /​ Auteur

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Introduction to Part Two

Cuban Cinema: Crisis or Transition? GUY BARON

As Ann Marie Stock says in her introduction to the third section of this volume, filmmaking in Cuba has changed markedly over the last few years via a process of decentralisation away from the Cuban national film institute (ICAIC). Stock is right to focus on the shared values that still exist within the cultural complexity that now envelopes Cuba’s cinema industry. Those shared values come in the form of coproductions with other countries, connections formed between artists from Cuba and abroad (including the United States) and a sense that the era of the Cuban émigré, of eternal displacement and uprooting, of never returning, of always longing, is coming to an end. New laws in Cuba are affecting these changes to people’s lives; new relationships between the USA and Cuba are being developed. At the time of writing President Obama had become the first US President to visit Cuba in over eighty years, trade and travel restrictions had been eased and a number of airlines were given licences to operate charter flights between the two countries. In January 2013 the law came into effect allowing Cubans to freely travel abroad without the much-hated exit visa and foreign invitation, and stay for two years without losing their citizenship status. Other laws are affecting changes to the economy that have seen the growth, albeit minimal at the moment, of new business ventures that are undoubtedly creating a dilemma for Cuba’s socialist government as economic inequalities are becoming increasingly evident.

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The Cinema of Cuba In cinema however there has been a sense for the last few years that change is not happening quickly enough, that the ICAIC is lagging behind in its attempts to keep up with the changes happening around it and 2013 was a sanguine year for Cuba’s film industry. On 4 May of that year a number of filmmakers decided to get together to informally discuss the future of the industry and of the ICAIC. As Cuban writer and film critic Juan Antonio García Borrero points out, the filmmakers stated that the ICAIC should no longer be the sole arbiter and representative of Cuban cinema in a changing world. Reconocemos […] al ICAIC como el organismo estatal rector de la actividad cinematográfica cubana; nació con la Revolución y su larga trayectoria es un legado que pertenece a todos los cineastas. Al propio tiempo, consideramos que los problemas y las proyecciones del cine cubano en la actualidad no atañen sólo al ICAIC, sino también a otras instituciones y grupos que de manera institucional o independiente están implicados en su producción, y sin cuyo concurso y compromiso no es posible alcanzar soluciones válidas y duraderas. Por esa razón, su reorganización y fomento no puede hacerse sólo en el marco de este organismo.1 [We recognise […] the ICAIC as the state governing body of the Cuban film industry; it was born with the Revolution and its long history is a legacy that belongs to all filmmakers. At the same time, we believe that the problems and the importance of Cuban cinema today do not only concern the ICAIC, they also concern other institutions and groups whether they be governmental or independent that are involved in its production, without whose help and commitment meaningful and lasting solutions are not possible. For that reason, the reorganisation and development of the Cuban film industry cannot be done solely within the framework of this organisation.]

This statement reflects the rebellious nature of Cuba’s filmmakers; often staunch supporters of the Revolution but also critical when necessary. One only has to consider the many instances of conflict between the state and individual filmmakers over the last fifty-five years to see how tensions have always been at the heart of film production in Cuba.2 In July of the 96

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Crisis or Transition? same year, Guatemalan filmmaker Rafael Rosal Paz y Paz was dismissed as director of the international film school outside Havana, the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV), a school that was inaugurated in 1986 by founders Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Argentinean film​maker and poet Fernando Birri and Cuban film​maker Julio García Espinosa, under the auspices of the Fundación del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (Foundation of New Latin American Cinema, FNCL). Rosal Paz y Paz was made director of the school in 2011, taking over from Tanya Vallette, who had been the director since 2007. But the school suffered a crisis when allegations of corruption and illegal beer sales in 2013 caused the dismissal of Rosal and the imprisonment of three workers connected to the school. According to Yinett Polanco in 2014, Deputy Culture Minister Fernando Rojas revealed that the employees were caught with ‘large sums of money in various currencies, virtual warehouses of beverages in their homes, cars bought with illegal income, and even a house completely renovated with the profits from the criminal activity.’3 Very little has been said of the crisis in the EICTV in Cuba itself, other than in some unofficial blogs, although it is well known that Raúl Castro has highlighted the importance of combating corruption in the drive to push forward the revolutionary agenda. A visit to Cuba in July 2015 enabled me to question a number of filmmakers, none of whom were aware of the minutiae of the issue surrounding the school although they were aware of the dismissal of Rosal Paz y Paz. The consensus seemed to be that the former director of the school must have been dismissed for being part of the illicit activity, but he was never accused by the Cuban government of committing any offence, and in an interview with him in the UK in 2014 his declaration of innocence was highly convincing. The real reason for his dismissal remains a mystery then but what is certain is that, combined with the calls for a new Ley de Cine by Cuban filmmakers themselves and the agitation by them within the cultural enclave of the Cuban Revolution, Cuban cinema is passing through difficult times that, depending on your position could be described as times of crisis or transition. According to García Borrero4, although recent events would appear to signal a new start in Cuban cinema, this change has been happening for a while due to a number of factors, not least the use of new digital technologies 97

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The Cinema of Cuba that have democratised production and have allowed many young people to make films away from the ICAIC when previously the institution had a very tight rein on both production and distribution. As Rosal Paz y Paz commented in 2014 when asked about the delicate relationship between the film school and the institute: ‘el ICAIC, que es la empresa monopólica del Estado, no aceptó que la escuela produjera’.5 [The ICAIC, the state entity with the monopoly, would not accept the school producing anything.] In recent times the ICAIC has been trimmed down. According to a colleague who worked for some years at the institute, at one time it employed up to 5,000 people. As García Borrero comments6, former President Alfredo Guevara thought the institution had in the region of 600 too many employees and according to Michael Chanan, Cuba’s cultural minister also has said that it should be ‘restructured, i.e. slimmed down’.7 If Cuban cinema is in crisis rather than transition then according to Chanan it is a different one from those of 1961, 1981, 1991 and indeed 1995. This time the difficulties have less to do with politics or ideology and the contingent control of filmic content and more to do with finance and the growth of new technology. Tough economic times and new realities faced by the Cuban government have meant, Chanan argues,8 that the state needs to reduce the cost of the public sector and increase investment from the private sector. In Cuba the markets are shouting louder than ever before in all areas of life including in the cultural arena. Capital is entering the country from China, Brazil, and via remittances from abroad, or ‘diaspora capital’ as Chanan calls it, and this, he says, is what the film industry, independent from the ICAIC is using to fund production.9 On the 4th May 2013, a meeting was held by some sixty filmmakers in the Fresa y Chocolate café opposite the ICAIC headquarters where an action committee was elected, dubbed the ‘g20’. This was not an officially sanctioned ICAIC meeting, but as Fernando Pérez said, a rebellious act but not one of rupture.10 Pérez is currently Cuba’s most celebrated filmmaker, but no longer works within the ICAIC. His credits include Madagascar, Suite Habana (Havana Suite), and most recently a film that was not funded at all by Cuba’s film institute, La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words). When a nation’s leading filmmaker no longer wishes to work within the confines of his own film institute, the signal is not a 98

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Crisis or Transition? positive one about the state of the management of the country’s national cinema. That is not to say that the quality of films coming out of Cuba at the moment is poor, far from it as examples from this section of the volume demonstrate. But the meeting held on 4 May 2013 focused, as Chanan says ‘on the anomalous state of the independent filmmakers who are neither legal but tolerated.’11 The ICAIC had, for many years, a monopoly on filmmaking and distribution on the island until the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent economic implosion made it impossible for the institute to make films without using money from foreign coproducers. This control was largely maintained until the beginning of the twenty-first century when new digital technologies became more common in Cuba that made it easier for individuals to make films. Control of Cuba’s cultural output is seen as crucial to the revolutionary project. The monopoly held by the ICAIC over cinema until recently and the incidences of censorship over the years are evidence of this. Cultural rights then are at the heart of the current debate within the Cuban film industry and, as García Borrero points out this is something new for the Revolution to deal with: el fenómeno de los derechos culturales es un asunto relativamente nuevo, y entre nosotros apenas se ha debatido. Es decir, como se da por sentado que hay una política cultural respaldada por un ministerio de Cultura, y un sistema de instituciones que, en teoría, cubre todas las expectativas culturales de la comunidad, se piensa que no es necesario discutir posibles actualizaciones de los marcos legales en que operan esas prácticas. El problema es que en la actualidad, entre nosotros muchas de las prácticas van por un lado y las instituciones por otro, y esa suerte de anomia cultural trae como consecuencia parálisis, diálogos de sordos, incomprensiones del momento histórico en que se vive.12 [the phenomenon of cultural rights is a relatively new issue, and barely discussed between us. That is, as it is assumed that there is a cultural policy supported by a Ministry of Culture, and a system of institutions which, in theory, covers all the cultural expectations of the community, it is thought that it is not necessary to discuss possible updates to legal frameworks in which these practices operate. The problem is that today, many

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The Cinema of Cuba of the practices are on one side and the institutions are on the other, and that kind of cultural anomie results in paralysis, dialogue falling on deaf ears, and misunderstandings of the historical moment in which we live.]

In the Cuban film industry these misunderstandings have created a situation whereby many independent film production houses exist (up to 100 according to Chanan)13 but are not strictly legal. As Chanan says many of these operate from bedroom studios, using digital cameras obtained from abroad, the editing done on laptop computers and even the distribution being done in an ad hoc way via flash drives that are passed around between individuals. These flash drives can easily find their way abroad and the films subsequently uploaded to Youtube, Vimeo etc, thus bypassing the ICAIC’s entire production and distribution monopoly. But it is not as if the ICAIC has simply ignored the changes that have been happening in the Cuban film industry. When Omar González became President in 2000 one of the first things that he did was to set up the Muestra Joven –​a platform for the promotion and exhibition of new films from young filmmakers, many of whom were not part of the institute. In the first Muestra in 2001, some 178 titles were presented, covering all types of filmmaking from pop video clips to documentary shorts and full length fiction features.14 The state of Cuba’s film industry is of enormous concern to artists and intellectuals both inside and outside Cuba but opinion differs as to the severity of the problem. Manuel Pérez believes that there are still people in the Ministry of Culture who believe in the cultural importance of film and so will not turn the ICAIC into a purely money making body without artistic licence. As Chanan says, Manuel Pérez still thinks that the principle of the ‘cultural exception’ is still holding. Fernando Pérez is not so sure, which is why he no longer works within the institute. According to Chanan he is highly critical of the bureaucrats who cannot understand the atypical nature of the film industry and the necessity to promote it as an art form and not simply a business.15 With the recent slow-thawing of relations between the USA and Cuba, it may be that the world’s most powerful film industry, and the one that has been constantly held up as the ideological counterpoint to Cuba’s 100

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Crisis or Transition? revolutionary cinema since the early 1960s, becomes its saviour. In a recent article by Randy Astle, it was suggested that funding for independent filmmaking would become more readily available from Cuba’s rich and powerful neighbour that would prevent the absurdity of cases such as that of the unnamed Cuban filmmaker who funded his project on IndieGoGo (a global fundraising site) only to have funds from American donors confiscated by the Office of Foreign Asset Controls.16 Funding then is a major issue for Cuban filmmakers; a prime example of the difficulties in obtaining financing to make films is described by Rob Stone in Chapter 5, the first in this section, as he analyses Miguel Coyula’s Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment). As Stone says Coyula (former student of the EICTV) worked hard to make the necessary connections and raise the finance needed to make his films. He is a product of Cuba’s cultural conveyor belt that somehow manages to churn out the most creative, resourceful and ingenious artists that can produce something great out of very little. Stone details Coyula’s artistic self-​sufficiency and demonstrates how his film presents a collage of sound and images in a cubist style that nods towards the experimentalism associated with Modernist artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And yet Memorias del desarrollo is, both in its production and content, decidedly contemporary, representing as it does the current condition of a new digitally motivated Cuban cinema seeking to break out of the mainstream and the control of the ICAIC. Stone asserts that Memorias del desarrollo forgoes a linear narrative in favour of a cubist collage that presents an alienated landscape of advertising, photographs and pornography as the lead character, Sergio, grapples with the process of being and not being as a university professor in the USA. As Coyula himself says, the film is like an open-​ended puzzle, not unlike the state of Cuban national cinema at the moment. Michael Chanan’s Chapter 6 on Fernando Pérez, Cuba’s most widely celebrated filmmaker at the moment, is a straightforward study of a director whose route may be somewhat more traditional (within the narrative of Cuban national cinema) than Coyula’s but whose work is no less experimental in content and ingenious in its production. Chanan analyses Madagascar (1995), La vida es silbar (Life is to Whistle, 1998), Suite Habana (2003) 101

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The Cinema of Cuba and Madrigal (2007), four films that Pérez made while working within the ICAIC, but that are also steeped in metaphors that leave the viewer with more questions than answers. All Pérez’s films contain deeply meaningful commentaries on contemporary life in Cuba, even when the narrative is somewhat more linear as in, for example Hello Hemingway (1990) or José Martí: el ojo del canario (José Martí: the Eye of the Canary, 2010). Chanan emphasises the humanity embedded in all of Pérez’s films and makes it clear that Pérez has so much talent as a director that he can turn his hand to ‘well-​behaved narrative realism’ as much as to an experimental and avant-​garde narrative, and still make us understand the nature of the human psyche and the depth of the human soul. In Dunja Fehimovic’s Chapter 7, there is more evidence that the state no longer dominates Cuban cinematic production with her analysis of Alejandro Brugués’s Juan de los muertos (Juan of the Dead, 2012), a co-​ production between the ICAIC and Televisión España (TVE). In her close analysis Fehimovic illustrates the link between past and present Cuban films, making comparisons with Juan Padrón’s Vampiros cartoons of 1985 and 2003. But the internationalist flavour of Juan de los muertos adds another dimension that speaks to the evident change in how film in Cuba is now realised. The influences of this film are obvious and it illustrates the emerging capitalist nature of film production in Cuba with its high production values and a flashy website as part of the promotion package. That is not to say that the film is vapid and worthless, on the contrary, Fehimovic aptly demonstrates, through a close Lacanian analysis, how it exposes some of the anxieties of a nation always trying to come to terms with itself. In Chapter 8, Jessica Gibbs focuses on the role of Cuban film directors as social critics and in particular how the films Barrio Cuba (Cuba Neighbourhood, 2005) by Humberto Solás and Guantanamera (1995), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío can be used as historical documents for the study of Cuba and can provide ‘uncomfortable insights into phenomena neglected and even stigmatised in the Cuban print media.’ Gibbs argues that the lack of open

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Crisis or Transition? debate in Cuban media over certain social issues is one of the reasons that Cuban cinema (with its relative autonomy over the years) takes on the role of social critic. Certainly there is evidence that Gutiérrez Alea carried with him a burden of expectation that he should provide such a window on to Cuba’s reality and his corpus of films and theoretical writings demonstrates his desire to open up avenues of thought and discussion that were otherwise taboo across Cuban media. Guantanamera was criticised by Fidel Castro for painting a negative image of Cuba during the Special Period in the 1990s in its wry look at some of the difficulties and contradictions encountered; and while Solás was perhaps less inclined to make direct social commentary through some of his earlier films, Barrio Cuba dwells on the particular privations in Cuba at this time and asks pertinent questions regarding sex tourism, food shortages, housing problems and attitudes in Cuba towards homosexuality. The essence of Gibbs’ essay, however, (and perhaps of many essays in this volume) is not that Cuban directors make films in order to try to buck the system or make direct criticisms of the Revolution per se, but that criticism is part and parcel of the system itself, that it should always be constructive, and come from within. Cinema in Cuba has an incredible power to do just that. The final contribution in this section, Chapter 9 by Ryan Prout, focuses both on Ian Padrón, a Cuban filmmaker (born in Havana in 1976 but now living in the USA), and on the audiovisual representation of Cuban pop duo Buena Fe. Padrón and Buena Fe have worked together often and the beauty of Prout’s argument is in the conjunction of sound and visuals ‘as a common and collaborative oeuvre’ when looked at simultaneously. Prout’s argument is a bold and original one and lies in the development of what he calls a ‘register of obliquity’ in both the music of Buena Fe and the films of Padrón. This obliquity is evident in the way that the unsayable is said and the un-​represented is represented. It is not dissimilar to the argument of a number of essays in this volume that criticism should come from within (even when the makers of that criticism are outside) and that the films can be studied as historical and social evidence of a society seemingly always in transition.

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Notes 1. Juan Antonio García Borrero, ‘Notas sobre el audiovisual contemporáneo cubano’, in Luis Duno-​Gottberg & Michael J. Horswell (eds), Sumergido: Cine Alternativo Cubano (Texas, 2013), pp. 15–​26 (16). 2. In 1961 the film PM by Saba Cabrera Infante was banned for being too negative about Cuba at the time; in 1981 Alfredo Guevara lost his job as head of the ICAIC over the film Cecilia by Humberto Solas; in 1991 the institute was nearly disbanded over the production of Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, by Daniel Díaz Torres, a film that was seen as too pessimistic during difficult times and in 1995 Fidel Castro was extremely critical of the film Guantanamera by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, again due to the criticism of the Revolution depicted in the film during a sensitive political moment. 3. Yinett Polanco, ‘Entrevista con Fernando Rojas, Viceministro de Cultura. El Estado cubano seguirá respaldando y estimulando a la Escuela que fundaron Fidel y García Márquez, orgullo de Cuba y Latinoamérica’, in La Jiribilla: revista de cultura cubana (2014), at www.lajiribilla.cu/​articulo/​5154/​el-​estado-​ cubano-​s eguira-​respaldando- ​y-​estimulando- ​a-​la-​escuela- ​que-​f undaron-​ fidel-​y-​g (7 December 2014). 4. Juan Antonio García Borrero, ‘La ley de cine no es un capricho de los cineastas’, in Cine cubano. La pupila insomne (2015), at www.cinecubanolapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/​2015/​06/​18/​sobre-​la-​ley-​de-​cine-​en-​cuba/​#more-​3707 (20 June 2015). 5. Rafael Rosal Paz y Paz, Interview with the author, December 2014, Nottingham, U.K. 6. García Borrero, ‘La ley de cine no es un capricho de los cineastas’. 7. Michael Chanan, ‘The Changing Shape of Cuban Cinema’, paper delivered at the Cuba Research Forum annual conference, 8–​10 September (2014), University of Nottingham, U.K. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. García Borrero, ‘La ley de cine no es un capricho de los cineastas’. 13. Chanan, ‘The Changing Shape of Cuban Cinema’. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Randy Astle, ‘What Revised U.S.-​Cuba Relations Could Mean for Film’ (2015), at www.filmmakermagazine.com/​88757-​what-​revised-​u-​s-​cuba-​relations-​could-​ mean-​for-​film/​#.VWRCN_​zF91Y (28 February 2015).

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5 Cubist Cuba: Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010) ROB STONE

Stop/​Start Making films with grants and scholarships, on VHS, then digital camcorders and PCs, striving to gain invitations from festivals and so prizes that, though rarely monetary, might result in contacts and collaboration, remains the learning curve for many Cuban filmmakers. The career of Miguel Coyula is exemplary in this respect. Having gained entry to the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV) with a short film made on VHS, he graduated to a piecemeal career of low-​budget digital filmmaking via successive lifebelts thrown by various festivals, the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, which gave him a scholarship to study acting, $2,000 from executive producer Steve Pieczenik to make Red Cockroaches (2003), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation that awarded him a fellowship to make Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010). As a sequel-​of-​sorts to Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968), Coyula’s film is charged with both a look back at the last three decades of Cuban history and a tentative view of its future. It offers a portrait 105

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The Cinema of Cuba of a rheumy-​eyed Cuban intellectual Sergio Garcet (Ron Blair), who suffers alienation and depression in the USA and offers an illustration of exile and ageing as twin causes of memory loss. Striving to overcome irrelevance, Garcet searches his memories but is assailed by hallucinations, flashbacks, advertising, newsreel, animation and a plethora of simulacra, which dismantle his own subjectivity at the same time as they point out his consequent lack of empathy. Correlatively, the film is constructed as a collage of aural and visual stimuli that assail the protagonist on his physical journey away from Cuba and his mental wanderings back to it. The film is partly a digital diary, which incorporates the first scenes in a Cuban feature to be shot in the USA, but mostly an investigation of memory, its disintegration, manipulation and loss, that recalls the work of Chris Marker, particularly Sans Soleil (Sunless, 1983). As such, the past, present and future overlap in Memorias del desarrollo as the film comes to resemble a Cubist work in which linear time and any rigid perspective attached to the history of Cuba is dismissed, and simultaneity, the idea that distinct realities can exist in one eternal ongoing moment, is foregrounded.1

Artist/​Statement All recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship are required to provide an artist’s statement and Coyula’s duly captures the mix of need and ambition that drives Cuban filmmakers who assume the limitations and challenges of working independently. ‘The stories, characters, and narrative devices that interest me generally depart greatly from the mainstream, so it was very clear to me from early on that I had to work as an independent filmmaker if I wanted to get anything done. This has gone to the extreme, though.’2 This kind of self-​sufficiency does not denote the moneyed indulgence of the self-​proclaimed artist. Instead, it prompts necessarily minimalist, introspective projects created at the low-​to-​no budget level, the kind of filmmaking that is defined by its limitations, but also by the ingenuity of filmmakers like Coyula who professes to work at the limits of his art, ‘without the structure interference of an industry or even a full film crew, and while keeping high production values at a very low cost.’3 Working, therefore, in the developing field of digital media in which he states, ‘my 106

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Cubist Cuba goal is to create films with complete artistic freedom of experimenting with language’,4 his endeavour resembles the Modernist artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, railing against perspective, linearity and aesthetic traditions via the new forms and tools offered by Expressionism, Surrealism, Fauvism and Cubism. In Memorias del desarrollo, for example, Coyula represents the fragmentation of deteriorating memory via digital collage, thereby confirming Andrew J. Webber’s view that the Cubist artist ‘dismantles the conventional view of a stationary object by opening up perspectives that could only be experienced as a succession over time.’5 In his experimentation with digital collage, Coyula resembles a Cubist artist who engages in ‘research into the emergent nature of reality, which is constantly transforming itself into multiple appearances.’6 This emergent reality is that of post-​revolution Cuba, which Coyula renders subject to the digital revolution, by which ‘the camera becomes an extension of your arm, and post-production allows you to create anything you sometimes don’t have the means to create on location.’7 The shortcuts, side-​steps and leaps of faith involved in making a micro-​budget, digital work like Memorias del desarrollo therefore also illustrate how such films exalt the vision of the impoverished yet autonomous filmmaker, whose recourse to digital media enables a means to challenge dogmatic, perspectivally limited views of subjects such as the history of Cuba and the psychological condition of exile.

Film/​Digital The evolution of the audiovisual sphere in Cuba since the privations of the Special Period following the breakup of the Soviet Union coincided with dire economic conditions that destabilised the Cuban film industry. Nevertheless, as Ann Marie Stock has observed, ‘the cultural project that began in the late 1950s, wielding a camera to help construct a new nation, continued into the twenty-​first century –​but with significant changes.’8 These were the digital transformations that saved the potential, democratised the practice and extended the liberties of audiovisual production in Cuba. Just as the blogosphere in Cuba allowed for the relatively unregulated dissemination of ideas beyond authoritarian control, however, so the 107

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The Cinema of Cuba way that independent Cuban filmmakers saw themselves and the world, and increasingly how the world saw Cuba, was transformed by new screen technologies. Although the cultural project of constructing the nation was irretrievably fractured by the acute austerity of the post-​Soviet era, inexpensive DV cameras, laptop editing and flash drives prompted new forms of production and distribution. As a consequence, innovative audiovisual cultural practices emerged that enabled autonomy in an authoritarian state and challenged the vertical control of official media, at least in terms of what might be attempted. As Cristina Venegas has analysed, Cuba’s independent audiovisual production is a key part of the social realignment that has ensured debate on a whole range of previously taboo subjects in a widening plurality of media that allows for challenges to dominant state discourse.9 Nevertheless, in 1996 Cuba became the last country in the Americas to join the internet and, seen from the outside, controlled and limited individual access to new media in Cuba has seemed to leave it lagging behind other Caribbean and Latin American countries in its use. As Anna Cristina Pertierra has shown, digital technologies have also allowed Latin Americans in general to create a flourishing informal media economy based on the exchange and commerce of material technologies and digital content.10 In Cuba this process has been strengthened by the cautious reforms introduced in 2008 enabling citizens to purchase mobile phones, home computers and DVD players, which contributed to the rapid, widespread circulation of foreign entertainment as well as the exchange of user-​generated content between the island and the Cuban diaspora that called into question both the effectiveness of the US economic blockade and the vertical control on the island. One further result of this was that a new generation of Cuban filmmakers that included Coyula turned to filmmaking based on digital equipment that was outside the official structures of production, even to the extent of moving between Cuba and the USA as restrictions were lifted and grants and fellowships became available.

Spaces/​Surfaces Prolific discussion of the aesthetics of digital media appears to have reached a consensus in recent years suggesting that there is a symbiotic relati108

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Cubist Cuba onship between methods of production and output. Writing on the music video, Michael Chion remarked that film art is based on ‘contradiction between the container (the borders of the frame, but also the temporal limits of the shot) and the content. While in video we might say that the image is that which it contains, that it is modelled on its content.’11 Memorias del desarrollo certainly seems to respond to Chion’s description of the music video as ‘a joyous rhetoric of images [in which] the rapid succession of shots creates a sense of visual polyphony and even of simultaneity, even as we see only a single image at a time’.12 This is nothing new, however, for Cubism had already resulted in what Chion calls ‘visual fluttering’ by which ‘the image loses its quality of a relatively stable surface’.13 Like Cubist artists such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, filmmakers who work in digital video tend not to perceive of the screen as a window through which depth, single-​point perspective and order must be recreated, but use it instead as a surface upon which simultaneous images of an object or theme from numerous angles may be arrayed. Memorias del desarrollo duly resembles numerous music videos that deploy the screen like a specimen slide under a microscope on which the imagery buds and crystallises, thereby transforming the old space of Cuba into a new surface that corresponds to Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter’s definition of acoustic space as being ‘not pictorial space, boxed in, but dynamic, always in flux, creating its own dimensions moment by moment.’14 This Cubist representation of post-​revolutionary Cuba thus evokes a moment when all the conventional modes of understanding the world are ineffectual and all an artist can do is experience wonder and awe for the real subject of a Cubist work, which ‘is the functioning of sight itself.’15 Memorias del desarrollo might even be considered as a relational space that is conquered by associative links between the sight of images and the hearing of sounds in a way that results in the continual extension of its territory. These links thus correspond to the synaptic connections that enable memory to unfurl in a manner akin to Chion’s ‘joyous rhetoric’ in the main part of Memorias del desarrollo, while, as shall be seen, their deterioration in the final section results in a threadbare, elliptical narrative that resembles the onset of dementia. For the most part, however, Memorias del desarrollo illustrates Chion’s conclusion that ‘rather than serving to advance 109

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The Cinema of Cuba action, the editing of music videos turns the prism to show its facets.’16 It also exemplifies Steven Shaviro’s description of digital videos in which: Sonic and visual material is continually being worked and reworked: in the physical spaces before the camera and sound recorder, in these mechanisms’ own processes of capture and transmission, in the digital transformations accomplished through the computer, and in our own subjective acts of perception, reception, and synthesis. All of these are equally ‘real’: they are best thought of as particular stages in the never-​ending adventure of materials. Thanks to the recent digital technologies epitomised by workflow, these diverse stages of actuality now interpenetrate one another more than ever before.17

Digital manipulation of this kind can result in an identity that is unstable, even volatile, which suits Coyula’s film about the passive disintegration and active destruction of memories. When the visual space in which these memories are displayed rejects the depth that comes from a single historical perspective, then it becomes a surface that offers instead, ‘a discontinuous and resonant mosaic of dynamic figure/​ground relationships.’18 For the most part, Memorias del desarrollo duly rejects narrative conventions in order to foster this mosaic, at least until they are introduced with the aim of stalling the ‘perpetual motion’ machine. Until then, Memorias del desarrollo is a work in which interpenetrative images and sounds rise to the surface of the screen and make of it a Cubist representation of Cuba in which rupture and renewal exist in perpetual evolution and extend beyond any single, rigid, historical perspective.

Revolution/​Art Digital technology provides new tools for a filmmaker such as Coyula, whose exploration of what might be termed digital Cubism in the rendering of Memorias del desarrollo entails the breakage and reassemblage of objects such as memories, ideas and symbols of Cuba, women and the Self in order to represent them from numerous, simultaneous points of view, thereby allowing an understanding of their interaction to evolve in relation to each other and in a far greater context. Indeed, Cubism guards a 110

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Cubist Cuba remarkable parallel with Cuba as both emerged as independent entities at the end of the nineteenth century, countering the dogmatism and linearity of hegemonic histories of empire. It did this by dismissing the rules of single-​point perspective that were central to Western art, finding inspiration in African sculpture, for example, while Cuba simultaneously secured freedom for its nation of African slaves at the close of the Cuban War of Independence (1895–​1898). Cubism therefore presents itself as appropriate to the representation of revolution, anti-​empirical and post​colonial feeling and ideology because it denies any hegemonic rule designed to locate and limit the object in time and space. Instead it obliges the beholder of a work such as Memorias del desarrollo to search for meaning in numerous fragments of a subject such as Cuba, which include remnants of its past and suggestions of its future, which are all contained in its ongoing present. At the same time, Cubism never dissolves into abstraction because it remains tethered to a theme or subject that may be termed the hypostasis, which is an underlying reality that demands a revolution in the manner of seeing that incorporates awareness of the filmmaking process, especially when the film’s structure is elusive and puzzling. In the works of Braque or Picasso, hypostases were such things as the number on a playing card or the bridge of a violin, which emerged from out of the multitude of simultaneous viewpoints from limitless angles on these objects to claim a semblance of cohesion and prompt the search for meaning in the work. Furthermore, the idea of simultaneity, that all these angles on an object may be represented as occurring at the very same time, relates to the philosophy of Henri Bergson, whose talks and writings also coincided at the end of the nineteenth century with the advent of Cubism, the invention of the cinema and the independence of Cuba. Bergson writes in The Creative Mind (1992) of the infinite possibilities of an eternal, ongoing moment, recognising that unending points of view on an object constitute its perpetual evolution, which he called its durée. Whereas an object or theme would previously have been fixed in time and space –​and therefore perception and understanding –​by representational tactics such as fixed-​point perspective and shading in accordance with a single light source, Cubism allowed for an empathetic experience of it that was fostered by intuition, which revealed the true nature of reality to be crystalline instead of linear. Just as moving 111

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The Cinema of Cuba from fragment to fragment in a Cubist work provokes the acceleration of thought in the beholder that steers the mind towards a seeming, but eternally elusive unity, so, as we shall see, in Memorias del desarrollo Garcet’s mind wanders in search of a coherent identity that might emanate from the hypostasis of his exile.

Practicality/​Methodology The common aim of Cubist artists and digital filmmakers who forego linear narrative in favour of collage is the communication of a sense of eternal becoming or élan vital that is expressed by changing patterns, colours, lines and textures. These works are informed by contradictions between geometric and freestyle representations and divergent rhythms in the deconstruction and reconstruction of an object. Defined by Bergson as a vital force that assimilates spontaneity into an evolving consciousness and results in an immediate and eternal sense of morphogenesis that is ongoing and incomplete, the élan vital of Cubist works is expressed by the representation of the object from multiple angles resulting in its eternal fragmentation. Bergson celebrates the energy and infinite possibilities of this ongoing present moment as a ‘becoming’ made visible in Cubist art, seeing within it an urgent call for new angles and new points of view that will contribute to the evolution of the object in this eternal process. Coyula seeks this free-​form creativity in his own work, claiming to ‘simultaneously work on preproduction, production, and post-production of my films, because each stage influences all the others; for example, while I’m editing I can get an idea for a new scene and go out and do it. It’s a way of working that eliminates many of the traditional obstacles that exist when translating your thoughts into moving images.’19 Consequently, this strategy of simultaneity in the work process extends to the Cubist aesthetics of his features, which are composed of intersecting angles and juxtaposed planes, because, as Coyula admits: ‘First of all, I don’t want to repeat a shot in a movie. Every time I frame a shot, and cut, the next shot has to be from a different angle [and] every shot must express a different idea, and it must have a different value, frame and angle.’20 As a result, the similarities between Cubist collage, the way that memory functions by following associative links, and the 112

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Cubist Cuba multitude of different yet intersecting shots are all evident in Memorias del desarrollo, which Coyula describes as ‘worked up as a montage of associative links, which makes narrative fragmentation inevitable. It reflects the language of memory. Sometimes you just recall a fragment of something. A way of experiencing this fragmentation, which is truly how the mind works, is organised chaos.’21 Thus, the ‘exploded’ tables and ‘splintered’ musical instruments of Braque and the ‘broken’ torsos and ‘melted’ faces of Picasso find their equivalent in Memorias del desarrollo in the ‘shattered’ reflections of Cuba.

Book/​Film The international distribution of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memorias del subdesarrollo coincided with the dissemination of the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in 1969. This Latin American movement opposed neocolonialism and capitalism (Hollywood’s mainstream entertainment model as ‘first’ cinema) and personal expression (Europe’s elitist auteurist type as ‘second’ cinema) and demanded instead a commitment to socialist ideals in the collective enterprise of filmmaking. Gutiérrez Alea based his film on the 1965 novel by Havana-​born Edmund Desnoes, who returned from the USA to Cuba after the beginning of the Revolution but grew disillusioned with Castro’s regime and relocated to New York in 1979. The novel describes the frustration of the intellectual class in revolutionary Cuba and focusses on the melancholic Sergio Garcet, whose contempt for dogmatism finds expression in his own political ambiguity but means that he succumbs to irrelevancy at a time of taking sides. His obsoletion is expressed in the fragmentary filmstyle, which resembles an aural and visual collage that juxtaposes subjective and objective observations of fact and fiction, newsreel, film clips, long takes, rapid montage, recorded speeches from political figures and Garcet’s stream-​ of-​consciousness. Desnoes’s sequel, Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2008) contends with a history of exile from a place that was a time that was also the youth of the protagonist. The novel catches up 113

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The Cinema of Cuba with Garcet as an ageing member of the Cuban diaspora in the USA and as ill-​defined by his subjective, emotional memories of the Cuban revolution as he is by the experiences of American life that he observes in an objective, academic manner. Striving to compile a coherent identity, Garcet constructs endless collages of photographs, advertisements and pornography, which inspires Coyula to adopt this process as the basis for the aural and visual texture of the film itself. Edward Saïd condemns the trivialisation of exile in the art and literature that looks back on hardship from a position of comfort and privilege, albeit in a foreign land. However, he reserves compassion for those who see the entire world as a foreign land because ‘this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that –​to borrow a phrase from music –​is contrapuntal.’22 Contrapuntal awareness is based on dislocation from any fixed point in time or space, which lends itself to representation by the aesthetic equivalent in Cubism and underscores why Garcet and the film that represents his mindset stray from physical/​empirical experiences into a virtual/​psychological environment that is infused with longing but at the same time contrapuntal, de-​fined by alienation from both the home (Cuba) and host (USA). The obsessive integration of fragments of pornographic images in Garcet’s collages of Cuban iconography (fig. 5.1–​5.2) also suggests that he is unable to treat real females such as his American wife and young student lover as anything more than body parts, which allows him to both fetishise and dismantle their power in these creations that resonate with a Cubist mindset and extrapolate the representation of his psychosis to an extent that determines the structure of the film. Like sculpting Auguste Rodin in marble or rendering a portrait of Henri Matisse in cutouts of coloured paper, Memorias del desarrollo thereby effects a meaningful fusion of form and content in its portrait of the artist as an old man that is at the same time a diagnosis of dementia and an epitaph to the loss of ideals.

Fracture/​Suture The first victim of Cubism in Memorias del desarrollo is linearity in relation to history and its representation by narrative, which is shuffled, disjointed, 114

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Fig. 5.1–​5.2  Collages of sex and revolution 

discontinuous and open-​ended. As Coyula contends, ‘I’ve always been interested in open-​ended cinema, so that the film continues in the mind of the audience even after the credits, which can be mentally structured in different ways. It’s like a puzzle you have to rebuild, a language for gathering information.’23 This strategy, which clearly echoes Cubist construction, 115

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Fig. 5.3–​5.4  Collages of power and surrender 

opposes generic conventions and conventional, linear narratives of mainstream cinema as well as any accumulative triumphalism that they might represent. Some of Garcet’s collages (fig. 5.3–​5.4) are simplistic juxtapositions of symbols of power; others are so haphazard as to seem out of control. Cubism therefore emerges as a potent vehicle for revolution because 116

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Cubist Cuba it is both directly oppositional and anarchic. Instead of accepting the rule of any hegemony, Cubism contends that meaning or truth is dispersed and must be discovered amongst numerous fragments. Correlatively, as Coyula declares, ‘if you are going to make independent films, you have to take advantage of the opportunity and look for new ways of doing things, because you can’t do that in the industry because it’s very difficult to try something new in a more traditional structure.’24 Memorias del desarrollo courts abstraction by combining psychological, political, sexual and historical elements via associative links aided by digital manipulation including green screen, composite work, double exposures, split screen and all manner of trickery, but it remains sutured to the hypostasis of contrapuntal awareness of exile. Nevertheless, Garcet and the film collage that describes him increasingly fails to make distinctions between reality, fiction, hallucinations, memories and fantasies as if enduring early-​onset Alzheimer’s disease, which Bérénice Reynaud correctly diagnoses as an instability in both the form and content of the film caused by Coyula ‘over-​compositing the image and saturating the colours, creating a complex kaleidoscope, which in turn dictates the editing of the sequences in a kinetic, non-​linear way.’25 Indeed, Coyula risks celebrating the artificiality of the entire process, while suggesting that this is a deliberate tactic because Garcet’s construction of his persona as a narcissistic simulacra of a tortured intellectual actually embodies this self-​deception. At one point, when musing upon the character of New York City to the precocious young Deirdre, Garcet resembles Isaac (Woody Allen) trying to impress Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) in Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) and his postmodern endeavour is thereby revealed as a delusory act played by ageing Lotharios on themselves as much as on their compliant Lolitas. These techniques and layers, which include intertextuality, allow Coyula to further destabilise his character, to create tension between the film and the novel on which it is based as well as many other texts that are sucked into the digital collage, including those of Allen, Vladimir Nabokov and the latest issue of College Cunts that Garcet picks up at a news stand, while also integrating the artistry of its director in such a way that the film cannot avoid becoming, at least in part, ‘the multi-​coloured prism through which Coyula can look at his own fractured history.’26 117

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Memory/​Forgetting Funded by the novelist Steve Piecznik and Suzana Dejkanovic, who married Coyula in 2004, produced by David W. Leitner, an innovative cinematographer in his own right, and aided by independent investors and associate producers Juan Martínez, Michael Ferris Gibson and Yukiko Niigata, who plays three minor roles in the film, Coyula began work on Memorias del desarrollo in 2005 and took until 2010 to complete it. Simultaneously writing, filming and editing prompted associative links with other memories and pieces of film and led to the incorporation of shots from Coyula’s travels to Paris, London and Tokyo while attending film festivals with Red Cockroaches. As its title befits, Memorias del desarrollo was thus constructed in a piecemeal fashion over five years until the screenspace and running time of the feature reached saturation. This accumulative, intuitive methodology draws attention to new angles in its Cubist representation of exile relative to Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula’s own distance from contemporary Cuba, such as footage of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Centre in September 2001. Unsurprisingly, self-​pity emerges from so much morbid introspection: ‘I’ve reached a point in my life where the best thing I can do for humanity is to be as far away from it as possible’ says Garcet, thereby undermining the ideals of Third Cinema by underlining the auteurist nature of the work: ‘I am a loser, I am lost. Only now, after my cruelty with women, my disastrous embrace of socialism, of having written and said an incredible amount of bullshit, now I understand the humiliating pleasures of loserdom.’ The solipsism of the protagonist and the film that crystallises around him therefore evoke significant distance from a revolutionary Cuban ideal, which still haunts the overlapping subjectivities of three generations of exiles from Cuba: the old Desnoes, the ageing Garcet and the still-​youthful Coyula who collide therein. In this Cubist layering of subjectivities, Memorias del desarrollo recalls Sans soleil (Sunless, Chris Marker, 1983), which is an essay film in the form of collage that is constructed according to the associative processes of memory in which Marker contends that ‘the function of remembering […] is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.’ Time, place, memory, 118

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Cubist Cuba history and subjectivity are all fluid in Sans soleil, which exists in a state of constant digression, spiralling off into philosophical enquiry, anecdote, archive footage, travelogue and the reflections in voiceover of a female narrator who both reads and remembers her correspondence with the fictional filmmaker Sandor Krasna that Marker simultaneously is, pretends to be, and appears to have forgotten. Like Sans soleil, Memorias del desarrollo also offers an existential contemplation of being and nothingness, its peripatetic and invisible protagonist searching the world and his mind for meaning. And just as Narrator/​Krasna/​Marker is prompted to construct a film collage that might stabilise the elusive hypostasis of a memory of happiness, which is herein represented by a shot of three girls on a road in Iceland in 1965, and thereby enable a structure to be built around it that might contextualise a relative understanding of everything else, so Desnoes/​Garcet/​ Coyula is charged by the melancholy of the exile to take up typewriter, craft knife, and the digital filmmaking apparatus respectively in order to make sense of happiness lost.

Symptoms/​Diagnosis Running to one hour and fifty-​four minutes, Memorias del desarrollo delivers a semblance of story indicated by the crystallisation of pictorial and acoustic rumination on exile rather than progression in any narrative sense. The film begins with an image that encapsulates the experience of the Cuban exile, whose symbolism appears contrived, but is also a product of chance resulting from the haphazard way the work was filmed and constructed. Garcet is dwarfed by a forest of flag poles, each of them bare except for the one displaying the Stars and Stripes, a symbol of the singularly triumphant empire. In response to such blatant, though apparently accidental symbolism, Garcet opens his laptop in search of the meaning of his life in exile and spells out the film’s title in single letters that fill the screen. As individual symbols, each letter is a fragment of the hypostasis that is the word they spell together, although in isolation they could be part of any word, sentence, book or story. This reduction of meaning to its smallest, most malleable fragments or memes intersects with Garcet’s simultaneous dissection of naked female figures from pornographic 119

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The Cinema of Cuba magazines, thereby suggesting that the laborious construction of the male subjectivity is concurrent with the destruction of that of the female. Garcet is certainly an indulgent chronicler of his own condition, demonising and symbolically punishing women for their sexual power, which he conspires to blame for the emotional exile that is actually defined by his own self-​pity and self-​gratification. Already, this portrait is biased and unreliable, prone to distractions and subject to unpredictable stimuli that are indicated by the soundtrack’s infection by the sounds of buzzing wasps, train horns, a lion’s roar, and snatches of speeches by J.F.K., Ronald Reagan and Malcolm X. This sense of continual, feverish digression adds multiple layers to the Cubist work until an associative link with a photograph of a woman emerges from the literal multitude of out-of-focus faces on a New York street. The photograph is in black and white and styled as antique, as is its formally-​dressed subject; but the monochrome contrast of the image is simultaneously too extreme and the youthfulness of her features suggests a pretence. Garcet duly diagnoses his own ailment in confessional voiceover: ‘Increasingly, everything that happens in my head is as real as the physical world. Sometimes I don’t even notice the difference. Sometimes I don’t care.’ Thus it would appear that Garcet is trapped within a Cubist self-​portrait of his own making, which is actually just one alter ego that Desnoes has constructed for himself as author of the original novel, which is also just one aspect of Cuban identity in exile that Coyula explores in his film.

Reality/​Unreality At first it seems as if the accumulation of aural layers and visual planes that intersect in this Cubist work might be organised by rational associative connections that function as synaptic links between objects and memories, such as a snatch of a Cuban song prompting a shot of an old-​fashioned record player. This cliché is immediately contradicted by another associative link, however, this time to a shot of an old radio, thereby rendering the memories unstable. Nevertheless, Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula continues to indulge the stream of consciousness as the film stages reenactments of the death of a beloved aunt, which are cautiously validated by close-​ups of details of the experience such as a fly on her dead hand and the ochre 120

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Cubist Cuba colour of her urine. The slow dissolve from the eyes of the boy to those of Garcet as an ageing man indicates that the ruse may have worked, for the dissolve suggests disparities have been tamed and a linear narrative has been imposed. However, the film destroys this assumption by reminding the extrinsic audience via its intrinsic simulacra of students in Garcet’s lecture room that, for many Cubans and non-​Cubans alike, the Revolution that began in 1959 is continuing in a Bergsonian sense as one eternal moment of becoming. It takes heckling students to rouse Garcet from introspection by challenging his assertion of this ongoing revolution, though his initial defence is to decry the American revolution in a verbal attack on their privilege that sets off a frantic montage of images of slavery and its continuance in present-day Capitalist America. Garcet protests that he rejected the Cuban Revolution because it ‘told me what to do’ and fails to recognise that this disguise of exile that he has bartered into an academic career is oxymoronic because a revolutionary who revolts against the revolution only exalts the status quo. He then compares the fantastic disguise of his intellectualism to that of the action-​man Che Guevara, who he derides as ‘neither Argentine, nor Cuban’, whose own contrapuntal awareness of exile erased his relevance as a person at the same time as his symbolic function was booming. Shoring up his credentials as exile, intellectual and male, Garcet beds the young student named Deirdre, who appears to be drawn to his persona on account of her own naive political correctiveness, thereby exposing his true nature of egotistical opportunist. Garcet complains that ‘it is increasingly difficult to find something authentic’ but he is a hypocrite who sleeps with the similarly self-​seeking student anyway, comforting both their egos by describing her as his muse and promising her an A-​grade in return for the temporary panacea of her body. The collage then delves further into Garcet’s problematic relationships with women, revealing his American ‘green card’ wife named Carole and an abandoned daughter called Claudia that he both remembers as a child in an old photograph and imagines as a young woman on a rooftop in Havana (fig. 5.5–​5.6). Yet the filmmaking apparatus that drives the collage remains indulgent and defensive, budding an animated halo on a photograph of Carole when she correctly diagnoses that ‘you write because you have an ideal of yourself [but] can’t create anything real or authentic because you’re trying too hard.’ 121

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Fig. 5.5–​5.6  Claudia, real and imagined 

The problem is that the Cuba that sustains Garcet and his appetites is no longer a place or a time or even a comprehensible idea. Like chemotherapy, what sustains Garcet is also what is killing him, for, as he admits in his self-​ diagnosis of contrapuntal awareness in regard to his condition as exile and

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Cubist Cuba resultant fragmentation, ‘I survive repeating the same old lecture on Cuba. That increasingly abstract island.’

Treatment/​Cure Despite imbibing the illusion of the American dream, Garcet is compelled to destroy the facade of success and respectability that he has built around himself by what appear to be subconsciously motivated transgressive acts. He constructs a collage with Deirdre’s head atop the voluptuous body of a pornographic model that he adorns with the cartucheras (bullet-​belts) of a guerrilla fighter (fig. 5.7–​5.8). ‘One can explore a fantasy only up to a point,’ he admits in this moment of self-​awareness, which is followed by the necessary shock treatment of his being fired from his academic post following discovery of the incriminating collage, whereupon he surrenders any claim to status and respectability. Yet Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula turns on American hypocrisy when his departure from the USA is scored to President Bill Clinton’s declarations of blamelessness in his relations with Monica Lewinsky. Adrift without work, wage or any meaningful relationship to structure his life, Garcet declares ‘intensity is what counts’ as Memorias del desarrollo turns into an exuberant pop video made from flash cuts, rapid editing, pop art animation, split screen juxtapositions and animated collages; but the allusions conjured by these associative links grow ever more banal. He takes his craft knife to the Berlin Wall and a statue of Lenin as well as a succession of images from the Vietnam War that fill the frames of the reflective sunglasses of a comicstrip G.I. Joe. Yet just as the blizzard of a painting by Braque may be calmed by intense focus on the hypostasis that anchors the painting to something real, such as the number of a playing card, so the rampant imagery of Memorias del desarrollo is calmed by Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula confronting the condition of exile. Entangled in the interaction of the real and the virtual, Garcet realises that ‘I have to try something new’ and therefore enters into the creative process by revisiting the Havana of his youth and attempting to reboot history in a way that might realign the perception of his life as a failure. Memories of wrong-​doing, which includes the abandonment of his daughter Claudia and withholding support for his estranged filmmaker brother, who

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Fig. 5.7–​5.8  The fragmented Deirdre, contemplated 

would die of AIDS in exile, is now encountered anew in this Cubist film, in memories so immediate and realistic that they effectively proffer substitutes or simulacra for what happened in the alternative but discarded, linear narrative of the past. Consequently, Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula perceives an opportunity for revising the past by consciously manipulating the eternal becoming of the present. 124

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Man/​Machine This dismantling of history via engagement with simulacra responds to the essay Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (1995), which explores the simultaneous existences of symbols and signs and posits the substitution of a simulation of reality for reality itself. This simulacra, which saturates our perception of existence, makes existence legible but ultimately meaningless. The absence of an underlying reality becomes irrelevant to the ongoing evolution of signs and images that crystallise like the planes of a Cubist work that has lost or concealed its hypostasis. Reaching a state of pure simulation, in which the hypostasis is lost and the Cubist work merely reflects itself in its own planes, results in the collage of Memorias del desarrollo representing an artificial existence for Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula, one of pure simulation that is ‘simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game –​total operationality, hyperreality [and the] aim of total control.’27 This unreal utopia does not oppose the real, it replaces it. The simulacra constructed by Desnoes in his novel and Coyula in his digital collage is actively sought by Garcet, who thereby resembles Augusto Pérez, the protagonist who questions his own agency and even existence in Miguel de Unamuno’s novel Niebla (Mist, 1914). Seeking simulacra, Garcet imagines a conversation with ‘Fiddle’ Castro, who he identifies as an imitation of a revolutionary ‘once dangerous, now a celebrity.’ Emboldened, he then embarks upon a process of collecting substitutes that begins with shots of Hiroshima standing in for the alternative history of a Havana that was not destroyed by nuclear weapons during the missile crisis. It continues with Garcet’s visit to a sex shop in which an array of dildos and rubber vaginas displace flesh and contact with other humans. Yet, as the substitutes become banal, even puerile, moving from a shot of President George W. Bush to a ‘bush’ of female pubic hair, to a glimpse of Gustave Courbet’s painting L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World, 1866) and a final settling (in both a monetary and obtainable sense) on the body of a mature model who ‘doesn’t pose like that’ but does so for a specific amount of time and money, so the intensity of the associative links in the montage weakens (fig. 5.9–​5.10). As Baudrillard contends, fiction now replaces reality to the extent that Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula is empowered to engage in what is literally spelled 125

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Fig. 5.9–​5.10  The exchange of human contact for simulacra 

out onscreen as ‘licencia melodrámatica’ (melodramatic licence), which functions as a kind of deus ex machina that engineers narrative development of soap-​opera proportions. To this end, just as Garcet hears the judge in his divorce case declare his American wife to be undeserving of alimony because she is motivated solely by revenge, the World Trade Center is hit by two hijacked planes. Crucially, the suggestion that the attack of 9/​11 follows 126

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Cubist Cuba the verdict attests to a switch from associative collage to Eisensteinian montage that results in immediate narrative cliché. Deliberately crass, the integration of the infamous newsreel footage provides a simulacrum of shock and grief that replaces Garcet’s inability to respond emotionally to his divorce. The images of the destruction are also so familiar by now that they underline the fact that by repetition, looping, reductive symbolism and even commoditisation that which Jean Baudrillard called ‘the pure event which is the essence of all the events that never happened’28 has become banal, synonymous with the repetitiveness of ‘breaking news’ and the ‘money-​shot’ of disaster movies. The consequence for Memorias del desarrollo is that Garcet/​ Desnoes/​Coyula is released from the Cubist collage by a process of substitution and narrativisation.

Story/​Life Narrativisation involves the selection, deletion, adaptation and ordering of the events that make up the simulation of a life. Garcet/​Desnoes/​Coyula resorting to the simulacrum of a narrative order as substitute for a chaotic life indicates an exuberant existentialism in the compilation of autobiography, whether first-​person or channelled through the simulated life of an alter-​ego, that operates with the same freedom as fiction. Enthused by the promise of the simulacra and the possibilities of its narrative, Garcet simply deletes the name of the daughter he abandoned from the screen, continually pressing the return key on his computer until the word Claudia disappears (fig. 5.11–5.12). The word Claudia in Baudrillardean terms is no longer merely a lingual symbol of the actual person as surmised by the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure but a simulacrum that replaces the real Claudia. As such this ‘Claudia’ can be deleted from the text that is also a simulacrum because it replaces Garcet’s real life. Embracing the substitute existence, Garcet deletes his daughter, brother and ex-​wife from the simulation and stalls the Cubist work, thereby shifting perception of his life to a linear narrative instead. Celebrating this as a creative act and following the new linear trajectory it establishes for Memorias del desarrollo, Garcet heads out on a road trip to Southern Utah and a landscape that is highly reminscent of Utah’s Monument Valley, which functions as a well-​worn 127

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Fig. 5.11–​5.12  Simulacrum that replaces the real Claudia

cliché of American cinema that he embraces by driving down the middle of a straight road through the kind of rock formations that formed the backdrop to so many tales of male heroism in westerns directed by John Ford. Seeking proof of the redemption that might pass for a resolution in a film that now resembles the self-​indulgent narrative of a mid-​life crisis, Garcet drives until his car breaks down, whereupon he meets another 128

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Fig. 5.13–​5.14  Narrativisation and the spectacle of the self 

middle-​aged male exile from civilisation, a man in a space suit living in the desert, who nonetheless resembles a simulation of Garcet that is adrift in the fantasy of his own making and consequently provides the ultimate simulacrum that is the spectacle of the self (fig. 5.13–​5.14). The long static shots that now frame Garcet suggest that a linear, narrativised life is only possible if one is cut off from reality and any alternative point of view. The 129

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The Cinema of Cuba consequence for Cuba, meanwhile, is that it and those it concerns can either accept the rigid, fixed perspective on its history as stalled in 1959, or allow it to advance into a present ‘becoming’ in which all angles on the fragments that make up its identity are valid. The challenge and choice is one that faces hardline revolutionaries, their opponents and observers in all areas alike. Having chosen to escape the Cubist puzzle of his previous experience via narrativisation, Garcet is a retrograde revolutionary whose conclusion that ‘art is useless masturbation’ is somehow uttered without irony as he settles into the self-​indulgent delusion of his self-​made happy ending. Rejecting eternal becoming in favour of the rigid devolution of his identity, he supposes that ‘Einstein was right, only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity’, before admitting to his spaceman alter ego that ‘it’s comforting to discover that I’m not as mad as I thought.’

Epilogue/​Prologue Memorias del desarrollo was screened at several universities and film festivals, including the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, the 2011 Malaga Film Festival in Spain, the 2010 Dallas Video Fest and the 2010 Havana Film Festival in New York as well as the Havana New Filmmakers Film Festival in Cuba in 2011, where it won several awards. Coyula has since attempted to find funding for a new project called Blue Heart by uploading the first five minutes of this science fiction feature to YouTube.29 This snippet zaps through a multitude of American television channels until settling on images of a public demonstration against genetic experimentation that are shot with a hand-​held camera until such subjectivity is abandoned and objectivity on the events onscreen is claimed by the camera pulling back to reveal that a shot of Fidel Castro explaining to the crowd that ‘the planet’s current social order will not last’ is actually a clip playing on YouTube. Coyula then appears at his editing desk in order to deliver a pitch to camera: ‘I believe in transmedia story-​telling which involves fiction from a variety of genres, documentary, newscasts, animation, webbrowsing, commercials. I intend to use the digital medium to full advantage by manipulating every single image.’ He explains a few of the digital effects in the previous footage before concluding with a plea for funding; but the opportunity to 130

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Cubist Cuba contribute to Blue Heart via the crowd-​funding site Indiegogo has been stymied because the donations were frozen when it was discovered that transferring the money to Cuba would be illegal without a special licence from the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.30 Dissolution applies to Memorias del desarrollo too because, as a digital work denied conventional distribution, it tends to be seen, when possible, by a single spectator on a computer screen, where its form and content is malleable, liable to be interrupted and paused, re-​ordered and seeded with ellipses by a spectator who is likely to be distracted, doing several things at once, and probably prone to a short attention span. Moreover, several online links to it are now dead, leaving only a trailer on Vimeo for a film that is difficult to see.31 Nevertheless, for a digital film about memory it is perhaps fitting that links to it have disintegrated, its connective tissue has dissolved and the images it once united by association have disbanded into the white noise of the internet because, like the mind of a person afflicted with dementia, this Cubist film offers only temporary cohesion for memories of its own development.

Notes 1. My thanks to Miguel Coyula for his comments on this chapter. 2. Miguel Coyula, ‘Miguel Coyula Aquino: 2009 –​Latin America and Caribbean Competition Creative Arts –​Film and Video’, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2009), at www.gf.org/​fellows/​16657-​miguel-​coyula-​ aquino (16 July 2015). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Andrew J. Webber, The European Avant-​Garde 1900–​1940 (London, 2004), p. 62. 6. Wylie Sypher, Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature (New York, 1960), p. 270. 7. Coyula, ‘Miguel Coyula Aquino:  2009  –​Latin America and Caribbean Competition Creative Arts –​Film and Video’. 8. Ann Marie Stock, On Location in Cuba:  Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (Chapel Hill, 2009), p. 330. 9. Cristina Venegas, Digital Dilemmas:  The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba (New Jersey, 2010). 10. Ann Cristina Pertierra, ‘Understanding Consumer Culture in Latin America: An Introduction’, in Anna Cristina Pertierra and John Sinclair (eds), Latin American Consumer Culture (New York, 2012), pp. 1–​13.

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The Cinema of Cuba 11. Michel Chion, Audio-​Vision: Sound on Screen (New York & Chichester, 1994), p. 164. 12. Ibid., p. 166. 13. Ibid., p. 163. 14. Marshall McLuhan & Edmund Carpenter, Explorations in Communication (Boston, 1960), p. 41. 15. John Berger, Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing (London, 1969), p. 12. 16. Chion, Audio-​Vision: Sound on Screen, p. 166. 17. Steven Shaviro, ‘Workflow/​Rihanna, The Pinocchio Theory’, at www.shaviro. com/​Blog/​?p=1215 (16 July 2015). 18. Marshall McLuhan & Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science (Toronto, 1988), p. 40. 19. Coyula, ‘Miguel Coyula Aquino:  2009  –​Latin America and Caribbean Competition Creative Arts –​Film and Video’. 20. Carlos Velazco, ‘Miguel Coyula y Carlos Velazco hablando sobre Memorias del desarrollo’, in Juan Antonio García Borrero (ed.), Cine cubano:  la pupila insomne (2010), at www.cinecubanolapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/​2010/​ 07/​29/​miguel-​coyula-​y-​carlos-​velazco-​hablan-​sobre-​%E2%80%9Cmemorias-​ del-​desarrollo%E2%80%9D/​ (17 July 2015). 21. Ibid. 22. Edward Saïd, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge MA, 2000), p. 186. 23. Velazco, ‘Miguel Coyula y Carlos Velazco hablando sobre Memorias del desarrollo’. 24. Ibid. 25. Bérénice Reynaud, ‘The Image and its Discontent:  The 29th Sundance Film Festival and the 18th Pan African Film and Arts Festival’, in Senses of Cinema (2010), at www.sensesofcinema.com/​2010/​festival-​reports/​the-​image-​and-​its-​ discontent-​the-​29th-​sundance-​film-​festival-​and-​the-​18th-​pan-​african-​film-​ and-​arts-​festival/​ (18 July 2015). 26. Ibid. 27. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, 1995), p. 121. 28. Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Spirit of Terrorism’, 2 November 2001, Le Monde, at www.egs.edu/​faculty/​jean-​baudrillard/​articles/​the-​spirit-​of-​terrorism/​ (trans. Rachel Bloul) (16 July 2015). 29. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=RazeRhxxFbg (2 July 2015). 30. Victoria Burnett, ‘Struggling to Film in America’s Chokehold:  Cuban Moviemakers Feeling Burden of U.S. Embargo’, The New York Times, 4 April 2014, at www.nytimes.com/​2014/​04/​06/​movies/​cuban-​moviemakers-​feeling-​ burden-​of-​us-​embargo.html?_​r=1 (20 July 2015). 31. www.vimeo.com/​11716185 (3 July 2015).

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6 Then Came the Special Period: Cinema of Fernando Pérez MICHAEL CHANAN

‘Siempre digo que soy cineasta, pero que también soy un cinéfilo.’1 [I always say that I’m a filmmaker but I’m also a cinephile.]

To speak about the films of Fernando Pérez is, first of all, to talk of a director who has kept faith with a concept of cinema that goes back to the days of the cinephilia whose loss was lamented by Susan Sontag: the idea of cinema as ‘an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral –​all at the same time.’2 Against a cinema dominated by escapist fantasy and macho violence, bloated budgets and all beefed up by a cornucopia of digital effects; where style is governed by what Sontag described as ‘assaultive images’ –​against all this the cinema of Fernando Pérez calmly asserts Sontag’s ‘idea of film as, first of all, a poetic object.’3 Pérez takes full advantage of poetic licence to deviate from manifest reality and digress from simple linear narrative, yet his cinema remains firmly rooted in the contemporary world and the multiple narratives that make up ordinary individual lives. As a result, his films touch on a variety of themes whose hidden relationships are always more subtle than is usually acknowledged in public discourse. I shall try to pick out a few of them here. 133

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The Cinema of Cuba One of these themes is the generation gap that is manifest in contemporary Cuban society, not in terms of open conflict but rather of cultural remove, an historical separation of experience. Pérez sees this with the eyes of someone who was fifteen in the year the Revolution took power, and who felt (as he puts it in the conversation with fellow Cuban director Daniel Díaz Torres) the synchronicity of the times between ‘what was happening in the country and what you yourself lived everyday;’4 that kind of synchronicity penetrating all aspects of Cuban reality in the 1960s and ‘70s does not exist for today’s youth, whose reality is that of the shattered utopian dream called the Special Period. After his first two features, all Pérez’s films from Madagascar in 1995 to Madrigal in 2007 are contemporary stories of everyday life during the Special Period, the time following the collapse of the Communist bloc when the island was plunged into economic disaster, material scarcity and sheer disorganisation, with inevitable effects in the domain of the psyche. As Pérez told an interviewer in the year of Madrigal, the economic crisis generated a crisis of values. Many young Cubans lost their illusions, and ideology, once converted into doctrine and reiterated, lost its meaning.5 It is this loss of meaning that draws his attention, as he told Díaz Torres: he became ‘obsessed with giving expression to what was happening within each of us, the subjective laceration, how the crisis began to pierce our souls, the spiritual erosion that would forever mark all of us who lived through this moment.’6 These films enter the domain of the psyche through the doorway of dream, to give an oneiric representation of contemporary Havana not previously found much in Cuban cinema, but profoundly apt as an aesthetic expression of the collective nightmare (or perhaps the recollection of the nightmare after waking up and discovering that you’re still there). And yet the tenor of what we see is never defeatist, since Pérez is always drawn to the human qualities of resilience, desire, and hope, and treats our tendency to delude ourselves with tenderness. Another way of putting it: these four films –​Madagascar (1995), La vida es silbar (Life is to Whistle, 1998), Suite Habana (Havana Suite, 2003) and Madrigal (2007) –​are like magnetic resonance images of the social body of Cuba after the end of the Cold War, the resulting loss of illusions, crisis of values, emptying out of ideology. Yet the Revolution remains an elusive 134

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Then Came the Special Period presence in collective consciousness as the foundational moment in which dreams of both national self-​determination and individual self-​fulfilment became reality. Only that this once-​real reality has been smashed into myriad fragments which now flit across the screen and provoke ambiguous thoughts. Ambiguity is another constant theme in Pérez’s cinema, even sometimes ambivalence or uncertainty. Pérez occupies a special position in twenty-​first century Cuban cinema partly because he belongs to the formative period of the state film institute, the ICAIC, which he joined in 1962, around the moment of the October Crisis. He’d started learning Russian and there was such a need for interpreters that he was put to work after a mere six months. An avid movie-​ goer as a child, he managed to get himself attached to the ICAIC, where his first job was as a runner on a coproduction with Czechoslovakia. In short, he learned his craft on the job, working his way up from production assistant to assistant director and beyond. He is thus a fully-​fledged product of the system of internal apprenticeship which the institute adopted to hatch new filmmakers. Before directing his first documentaries in 1975, Pérez worked as Assistant Director on some of the most experimental feature films made in the early ‘heroic’ period of the film institute’s history, including Gutiérrez. Alea’s Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (A Cuban Fight Against the Demons, 1971) –​films that eschewed the conventions of the crowd-​pleaser and challenged audiences with a new conception of revolutionary cinema. This experience, and this conception of the work of the screen, left its mark, and finds expression in the pull of Pérez’s cinema towards narrative experiment, to which he has added his own special elements and predilections. Before his first feature in 1987, he made some 16 documentaries over ten years, which deserve more than just the mention I can give them here, not to mention more than two dozen newsreels. Clandestinos (The Hidden Ones) was a very decent feature debut, but gave no indication of the riches to come. Like other first features during the 1980s –​including Polvo Rojo (Red Dust) by Jesús Díaz, who collaborated on the script –​it plays safe by recounting an episode in the revolutionary struggle of the 1950s in a conventional narrative realist style. It departs from the genre requirements of an action-​movie-​with-​youth-​appeal mainly in the space 135

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The Cinema of Cuba it gives its female characters. His second feature takes this a bit further. While Hello Hemingway (1990) is also cast in the form of a conventional and well-​behaved narrative, it shifts entirely to a feminine point of view, that of Larita, a girl from an ordinary family coming of age in Cuba on the eve of the Revolution. Indeed this is a family where female characters predominate, and men occupy a merely secondary role. The female perspective is another constant theme in Pérez’s cinema, whose fullest expression will come in Madagascar. On the face of it, Hello Hemingway is a coming-​of-​age story which allegorises the nation as a young woman seeking to take control of her destiny, a familiar genre in Latin American cinema. But Larita’s situation is conflicted by both dream and reality. Her ambition of getting a scholarship to study in the USA is out of step with the patriotic sentiments of her revolutionary classmates, and in any case, despite her intelligence, she comes from the wrong social class. Two things lift the film out of its genre. The first is the choice of the protagonist: not the expectable revolutionary subject, but an outsider. The second is the literary conceit of the eponymous Hemingway, who happens to be Larita’s neighbour, though he’s seldom there and never more than glimpsed in the distance, but who becomes a cipher for Larita’s longings through her reading of The Old Man and the Sea. But Hello Hemingway does more than allude to the novel; it stages Larita’s reading of it as an act of self-​discovery that comes through the encounter with the artistic text. The sense of the aesthetic text as essentially open to the reader’s self-​ knowledge, its openness to interpretation, is an inherent quality in Pérez’s cinema that returns in the composition of the eloquently ambiguous films which follow. There is a secret sign of what is yet to come in a scene on the porch one evening, in which Larita reads the passage from The Old Man and the Sea where Santiago dreams of Africa. In retrospect, it becomes a pre-​echo of Pérez’s next film, five years later, Madagascar: another dream of Africa, which moves us into an altogether new space, more psychological, concerned with internal landscapes, but in a way that links the interior life of the subject to the Havana cityscape onto which these psychic projections are mapped. Touching the surreal, this is a wholly new departure, in style and in film language, for Pérez himself and perhaps for Cuban 136

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Then Came the Special Period cinema. What happened in the long gap between Hello Hemingway and Madagascar that might explain such a striking shift in aesthetic register? Pérez offers a simple explanation in his conversation with Díaz Torres: ‘and then came the Special Period, when we thought we’d never make a film again, remember?’7 He added that it wasn’t just an economic crisis in which the economy and social structures deteriorated, but a spiritual crisis, which ripped through several generations, and tore asunder the possibility of balance between external and internal life, a disequilibrium that for Pérez demands a radical response. Madagascar evokes another classic Cuban film of the 1960s, Lucía, in which Humberto Solás told the stories of three women at three different historical moments. Madagascar paints a wistful portrait of three generations of women living under the same roof in contemporary Cuba. Since the youngest of them is a teenager, the narrative territory is still close to the coming-​of-​age story, and again, the allegory of the nation as woman; and like Hello Hemingway, in this purportedly ordinary Cuban family it happens that men are marginal or wholly absent. This is not necessarily to say that Madagascar should be seen primarily as a feminist film, but that as Solás said of Lucía, it chooses female protagonists because ‘the woman’s role always lays bare the contradictions of a period and makes them explicit.’8 Laura, a physics lecturer, twice divorced, tells her doctor that she has problems dreaming:  she dreams what she lives, the same thing 24 hours a day, and she’d like to dream something else; Larita, her daughter, day-​dreams of going to Madagascar, quits school and discovers religion; her boyfriend, a silent and irreverent painter, plays Monopoly with her grandmother, who delights in putting the little red hotels on her property. Madagascar is an authentic expression of the effect of the arrival of the Special Period, above all, the way the moment impacted on people, especially the relation between the generations. But why Madagascar? Perhaps because it’s a kind of mirror image of Cuba, a poor island separated from a nearby continent, somewhere practically impossible to get to. It is no accident that Larita reads Rimbaud and conceives an imaginary journey as a means of escape. She looks out towards the sea and says, ‘I’m going to Madagascar. It’s not stupid, it’s what I don’t know.’ But of course, it’s more a 137

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The Cinema of Cuba state of mind than a place. From the beginning, the film presents a series of images which evoke states of transition or movement towards an unknown or unreal destination. In the opening sequence, which is unlike anything previously seen in Cuban cinema, a series of shots of torsos in movement are revealed as a sea of cyclists on their way to work; the daily effort just to keep going. At the end, mother and daughter are left pushing their bikes through a tunnel; the picture cuts to a train clanking along the tracks past dilapidated buildings in a stark industrial landscape, while the soundtrack has the legendary Omara Portuondo singing about the impossibility of living apart. The old love song becomes an existential lament. Frustration, lack of communication between the generations, silence about the degeneration of the Revolution, Havana here is a city of disillusion, disappointment, discouragement, bathed in a strange timeless beauty, and of meditation on the entanglement of the lost promises of youth and revolutionary hopes. The symbolic resonance of urban spaces is something Pérez draws on in every one of his films. It is already there in Clandestinos, for example, in the disruption of the baseball match by the demonstrators. In Hello Hemingway, the fence that separates Larita’s home from Hemingway’s finca is like the boundary to another world that she’s unable to cross. In Madagascar, as Laura Podalsky remarks, the vacant, decaying spaces of the city register the deterioration of material conditions, but these conditions also function as metaphors for the psychic state of its inhabitants.9 Perhaps the most poignant moment is the scene where Larita stands on one of Havana’s flat roofs, chanting ‘Madagascar, Madagascar, Madagascar,’ arms outstretched, forming a cross, or perhaps an embrace, or as if she was about to launch herself in flight over the city, and the camera pulls back to reveal similar figures on similar roofs, T-​shaped forms interrupting the uniform urban skyline, like a series of antennae receiving and transmitting, ‘a blend of multiple voices all chanting in unison.’10 The sequence exemplifies one of the crucial qualities of Pérez’s artistry: the internal world of the subject projected onto the city in a surreal collective gesture of psychic solidarity. La vida es silbar (1998) goes further than Madagascar in de-​centring the narrative, by moving outside the family sphere onto the streets where disparate lives sometimes cross. The split narrative, divided into parallel strands with unconnected characters, is one of the characteristic tropes of 138

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Then Came the Special Period international art cinema of the 1990s. Here the result is an elaborate and symbolically highly coded film, a tender and slyly critical social comedy in which the different characters represent split-​off facets of Cuba’s cultural identity, full of absurdist elements and surreal imagery, beautifully shot by Raúl Pérez Ureta. The polysemic complexity of the film is far too great for a brief commentary such as this, and these remarks are only pointers. Julia is a carer in an old people’s home, Mariana a ballerina, Elpidio a ne’er-​do-​ well (in his own words, ‘un marginal, un vago, un vicioso’). Telling the story is a magical but unreliable narrator, the mysterious figure of Bebé, a face which always appears underwater, who narrates the film and sometimes intervenes to alter the details –​is she telling or inventing it? The plot lines are fanciful, especially Elpidio’s story about the mother who abandoned him whose name is Cuba. This simple conceit produces a string of ambiguities, like a running gag from start to end of the film, whenever Elpidio speaks of Cuba, which could be either his mother or his homeland (or both). Elpidio’s Cuba, however, is not the Revolution’s Cuba, but the spirit of cubanidad to be heard in its music. Elpidio loves his mother, despite feeling abandoned, but his conscience speaks through the figure of Bola de Nieve, who admonishes him if he strays from the proper path. The outside world is represented for Elpidio by Chrissy, a foreigner in Cuba on a research mission, literally descending from the skies in a balloon, who becomes Elpidio’s lover but cannot tempt him to go with her when she leaves. As they float over the city in Chrissy’s balloon, she offers to take him off to her own world, to discover other sensations, other feelings. ‘This is freedom!’ she says, ‘Do you know freedom?’ and Elpidio answers ‘I don’t know, I feel dizzy.’ Julia’s case is explicitly psychological, yet here the comic absurdity turns into a sociological critique of official language. She suffers from a strange illness which her psychiatrist demonstrates to her is not unusual, in fact many Habaneros suffer from it  –​they collapse in a feint when certain words are pronounced in their hearing. The words responsible are terms like ‘free’, ‘double morality’, ‘opportunism’, and ‘truth’. The narrative context implies that these refer to personal problems, but metaphorically, this is all about the evacuation of meaning from political speech. In fact, nothing could be clearer. 139

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The Cinema of Cuba Even a brief account, like this one, cannot fail to mention that one of the central themes of La vida es silbar is sex, the word that makes Julia faint. Mariana, who is about to dance her first Giselle (a role identified in Cuba with the legendary Alicia Alonso), get lots of it but in her desperate anxiety to succeed she promises God to give sex up. But this is an ambiguous world where sex is both a zone of free exchange between individuals, and a space of escape from everyday preoccupations into a kind of fantasy land, beyond the domain of the state. The theme of sex will return to centre stage in Madrigal, a strange tale about the Empire of Eros. First, however, comes a full-​scale return to the reality of documentary, the result of an invitation from the Spanish producer José María Morales to contribute to a documentary series for European television. Suite Habana is a city symphony in the great tradition that goes back to Ruttmann and Vertov in the 1920s, a visual tapestry with neither dialogue nor commentary, but here with an extraordinary soundtrack of music, urban sounds, a few incidental fragments of speech. This is not the first time Pérez has done imaginative work with the soundtrack –​Madagascar and La vida es silbar both depend on it to create their internal worlds  –​but Suite Habana is exceptional as a sustained piece of audio composition or musique concrète, and the musical allusion is in the film’s title. Visually, on the other hand, the film is shot in a classical style –​the shots are very largely set up and lit, their composition controlled, there’s no shooting off the hip, no handheld wobbles. The montage, unlike the two preceding films, is not surreal but associative. At the same time, the film’s wordlessness allows the image to recover the ambiguity of the real and open it up to interpretation. Capturing the melancholy mood of Havana at the start of the twenty-first century through wordless portraits of a cross-​ section of characters, Suite Habana goes even further than La vida es silbar in distributing the narrative among disparate characters, unconnected except as citizens of the capital city –​a schoolboy with Down’s syndrome, a cobbler, a railway worker, a nurse, an elderly woman who sells peanuts on the street to make ends meet. The camera introduces itself into their homes and follows them around to portray the daily grind of existence after more than a decade of the Special Period, but they also have their dreams –​a day labourer performs ballet in the evening, another is a drag artist, a doctor 140

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Then Came the Special Period doubles up as a children’s clown (while day and night, come rain or shine, a team of volunteers guard the recently erected statue of John Lennon, to prevent anyone stealing his spectacles again). The reception of the film in Cuba was curious, beginning with the bizarre decision of the Havana Film Festival that because the film used lights, and included tracking shots, even a crane, it wasn’t a documentary. So they put it in the fiction section –​where it took the top award (no matter, but for the record, Pérez told Díaz Torres that he worked without a script, only a skeleton structure, and the film took shape at the editing desk; and that of course is the characteristic of documentary). Reports indicated that many Cubans were surprised that such a bleak film was allowed to be shown, but the newspaper Trabajadores praised it, saying that Pérez’s images ‘speak of the daily feat of existence, of how one can live in poverty without losing dignity or renouncing one’s dreams.’11 The newspaper also noted how it avoided the traditional iconic images of Havana as a tropical paradise, opting instead for a panorama of jackhammers, blaring car horns, factory whistles and the hiss of a steam cooker on an aged stove. In fact in many respects this could be a portrait of daily life among the common people in any big city, especially the megacities, of what we used to call the third world, and responses are likely to differ depending where the viewer is situated. The Miami Herald wrote that Suite Habana ‘can be read as both a love letter to the optimism and resourcefulness of Habaneros,’12 and although it avoids any direct mention of politics, ‘a mournful critique of Castro’s revolution.’ Perhaps it is. The absence of dialogue or spoken narrative leaves the film wide open for interpretation. One British newspaper reviewer noted that the only one who smiles in the film is a ten-​year-​old boy with Downs syndrome, and felt the only appetising food in the film was being packaged ‘with hygienic care’ in a factory for foreign airline passengers.13 The most eloquent review is that of the Cuban film critic Juan Antonio García Borrero, who remarks that Pérez’s films capture what is so often missed by historians: ‘All of his characters inhabit the least illuminated house of that imposing mansion known as History. They are beings submerged in the lateral shadows of historiography, whose range of expectations often fails to go beyond daily survival.’14 141

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The Cinema of Cuba Like any such city, there is always the lure of emigration in search of better conditions of living, and this is also pictured in Suite Habana, but at this point we are firmly back in Cuba, with its own special history of emigration, which has made many incursions into Cuban cinema. The figure queuing up at the airport to leave inevitably echoes the opening of Memorias del subdesarrollo, but also contrasts with it, because here the mood is not one of pride, resentment and anger, but of sadness at parting. Moreover, any mention of the topic acts like a meme that easily mutates to invoke thoughts about diaspora, displacement, and the imagined community of nationhood in a country that has been split into fractured moieties. Suffice it here to say that the meme of migration as escape crops up in Hello Hemingway, Madagascar and La vida es silbar, and then again in Madrigal. With Madrigal we are back in hermetic internal worlds, watching a fanciful and visually stunning love story which again turns away from realism only to remind us, through continual interplay between reality and appearance, of a problematic and alienated reality; a world thoroughly abstracted through its own metaphorical discourse of the empire of Eros, which happens to be Havana, although hardly recognisable, but sometimes feels like one of Terry Gilliam’s parallel other worlds (on a rather smaller budget), or in its darker moments, a kind of Kafkaesque tropicalism; especially in the parody of the American immigration lottery, which serves as the strongest reminder in the film of the political reality of contemporary Cuba. Madrigal tells a double story. The first is a contemporary tale of an infatuation between an actor and would-​be writer, and a religious and romantic overweight teenager who comes to watch him. The second, set in the future, is the story which Javier is writing in the first, in which the same characters play out a kind of parallel fate. A review in the Hollywood trade journal Variety complains that ‘We are left with the (tiresomely threadbare) doubt about which part of pic is “real”, which adds to pic’s slightly stifling airlessness,’15 but this is to miss the point. What the futuristic fantasy version of the second part is telling us is that the story in the first part is already a fantasy, because storytelling is already the imaginative rendering of the author’s experience. Pérez provides us with two clues at the start of the film. The first is a quotation: ‘We see things not as they are, but as we are.’ The second is a dedication to the French filmmaker René Clair ‘for the 142

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Then Came the Special Period ending he was not allowed to make’ –​the unfilmed original ending of his 1955 film Les Grandes Manœuvres, which the producers considered too tragic, but which Pérez here rescues. He leaves it entirely up to the viewer, however, to decipher the enigma. More than one Cuban critic likened the effect to Borges, but other readings are possible. Perhaps Madrigal is not what it seems, an ingenious fable about the existential labyrinth of life, but rather, a bad dream in the face of a reality which was built on dreams but now leaves little space for them. After that, José Martí: El ojo del canario (José Martí: the Eye of the Canary, 2010) comes as a surprise, as Pérez returns to well-​behaved narrative realism in a historical biopic, which he handles with consummate mastery. The idea came from his Spanish producer, who this time wanted a film for a series about national heroes. At first, Pérez told me, he was uncertain about it, but reluctant to let the opportunity go, began to ask himself what he could do with such a subject. José Martí (1853–​1895), dubbed The Apostle, was an intellectual who died on the battlefield in the Cuban wars of independence against Spain, who was considered by Fidel Castro and his followers as the ideological co-​author of the Cuban Revolution. This didn’t stop Pérez’s mentor, Tomás Gutierrez Alea, satirising the mass production of busts of The Apostle which appeared in the 1960s, in his hilarious La muerte de un burócrata (Death of a Bureaucrat), but a serious biopic is another matter, especially given that Martí presents an ideological minefield, a figure idolised and put to use by contrary political tendencies, in Havana and Miami, to legitimise their own positions. Asking himself (he tells Díaz Torres) who the film should address, to whom should he be speaking of Martí, he immediately thought of today’s youth, what Martí represents for them, which led him to conceive it as a film about the childhood and adolescence of the future hero which would de-​mythify the statue and give it back its humanity. Martí represents the aspirations of national independence with social justice in opposition to imperialism, and is imbued with a thoroughly Latin American cultural identity. To avoid the risk of falling into apologia and romanticisation, on the one hand, and giving succour to counter-​revolutionaries on the other, the solution Pérez finds is to give us Martí before Martí. He reinvents Martí‘s early years, before he was sent into exile for 143

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The Cinema of Cuba political sedition at the age of seventeen, about which little is known. This gives him ample room to reimagine the boy without sinking beneath the weight of official hagiography. Returning to a classic but highly poetic narrative style, the story is presented as a bildungsroman in four chapters. The portrait he paints is imaginary but rooted in both socio-​historical and psychological truths, while avoiding the pitfalls of costume drama by insisting on a restrained realism (provided, as ever, by the terrific cinematography by Raúl Pérez Ureta). We start with a studious and nervous prepubescent schoolboy bullied by his classmates, faced at home with an authoritarian Spanish-​born father with an obstinate belief in justice: opposing illegal slave-​traders costs him his job. Yet he still treats Old Tomás appallingly when he thinks he’s been crossed, calling him ‘negro brujo’ (black sorcerer) and beating him. Young José cannot endure to see the way Tomás kneels for pardon, and later asks him to promise that he’ll ‘never again kneel before anyone.’ His political education has begun. Tomás takes responsibility for his education in nature, taking him at night –​in one of the film’s most beautiful sequences –​to become acquainted with the life of the woods, the birds that nest there in flocks, the wisdom of the trees, the creepy-​crawlies you can hear when you put your ear to the ground. A  friend teaches him to masturbate. A  glimpse of the bare female breast of a slave arouses adolescent lust. Back in the city his education advances, despite his father’s insistence that he go to work to bring some money into the house. He gets a job keeping the books for a local barkeeper, who turns out to have radical sympathies. If the viewer who knows something about Martí will draw pleasure from the imaginative re-​ creation of his possible childhood –​always suggested, Pérez has said, by Martí‘s own writings –​the film is addressed more particularly to Cuban youth, to whom it presents a Martí who is not taught in school but with whom, however, they might more readily identify. And it doesn’t patronise them in the least. It’s a film full of moments of great natural beauty, family intimacy, dramatic incidents and moments of quiet epiphany. The young Martí is taciturn and introspective and hardly speaks throughout the film, but he sees everything  (through the eyes of two subtle young actors, Damián Rodríguez and Daniel Romero, as the 144

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Then Came the Special Period child and the boy); a film of looking and watching. He is also ready to stare his father out when it comes to confrontation. For this is a story of oedipal rebellion, against the authoritarianism of both the boy’s father and the colonial state. The moral comes into focus in a pivotal scene later in the film, a classroom discussion about the kind of freedom and democracy that Cuba’s youth in those times aspired to. It is here perhaps that the film most closely touches contemporary sensibility, and the animated political debate of a class of Cuban schoolboys in the 1860s might seem to the youthful audience of the early twenty-​first century as a reflection of their own preoccupations; and indeed for Cubans of all ages. There are already more films from Pérez which this writer hasn’t yet been able to see because they’ve come out since my last trip to Cuba, and despite the momentous rapprochement with Washington, foreign availability of Cuban films remains elusive (especially in the cinematic backwater of London), even when they have a foreign coproducer. Cuba’s continuing cinematic isolation has critical implications for the island’s filmmakers which the new opening is unlikely to mitigate significantly, because it’s not a matter of political goodwill but economics and the segregation of niche markets by the major distributors. One of the problems with coproduction is the need to accommodate the predilection of coproducers for suitably exotic content. Pérez, like his mentor Gutiérrez Alea, is one of the few Cuban directors who have been able to pursue their own artistic vision while working with a producer in Spain. More recently, he retired from the ICAIC’s staff in order to mount an independent production, La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words), funded by a backer in Miami. This move reflects the extraordinary flowering of independent feature production in Cuba over the last few years, initiated perhaps when Humberto Solás made Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún) on digital video with a tiny budget in 2001. What Pérez has in common with Solás is that both remain faithful to one of the guiding principles of the ICAIC from the beginning; that Cuban films are made for Cuban audiences, and not with an eye on the foreign market. In fact, this is the very quality that enables the foreign viewer to find in the films surveyed in these paragraphs the expression of the gen­ erational divides in Madagascar, the internal dislocation of Madrigal, the 145

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The Cinema of Cuba undercurrents of eros in La vida es silbar, the feel of the everyday in Suite Habana and the rest, in short, to communicate the undercurrents at play in Cuban society as the inevitable happens and the revolutionary imaginary recedes. That these films are not depressing or defeatist is due to Pérez’s strong and deeply humanist aesthetic sensibility, which may disturb and question but never betray the subjects with whom the films engage.

Notes 1. Fernando Pérez, ‘El cine es la diversidad. Entrevista a Fernando Pérez por Daniel Díaz Torres’, (Primera parte), Revista Cine Cubano No.20 (2011), at www.cubacine.cult.cu/​sitios/​revistacinecubano/​digital20/​articulo11.htm (18 June 2014). 2. Susan Sontag, ‘The Decay of Cinema’, New York Times, 25 February (1996), at www.nytimes.com/​books/​00/​03/​12/​specials/​sontag-​cinema.html (15 June 2014). 3. Ibid. 4. Pérez, ‘El cine es la diversidad’. 5. Ann Marie Stock, ‘Imagining the Future in Revolutionary Cuba, An Interview with Fernando Pérez’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 60, Number 3 (2007), pp. 68–​75 (70). 6. Pérez, ‘El cine es la diversidad’. 7. Ibid. 8. Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minnesota, 2004), p. 276. 9. Laura Podalsky, The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (London, 2011), p. 96. 10. Ibid. 11. Cited in Anthony Boadle, ‘Cuban Film Shows Raw Side of Life in Havana’, Washington Post, 29 July (2003). 12. Rene Rodríguez, ‘Love Letter or Critique…Or Maybe Both?’, Miami Herald, 4 February (2004). 13. A. Boadle, ‘A Not So Suite Side of Havana’, Birmingham Post, 2 August (2003). 14. Juan Antonio Garcia Borrero, ‘Las iniciales de la ciudad (La libertad expresiva en el cine de Fernando Pérez)’, Revista Temas 36 (January–​March 2004), at www.temas.cult.cu/​revistas/​36/​10.html (3 March 2011). 15. J. Holland, ‘Review: “Madrigal” ’, in Variety, 15 February (2007), at www.variety. com/​2007/​film/​markets-​festivals/​madrigal-​1200510276 (3 March 2011).

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7 Zombie Nation: Monstrous Identities in Three Cuban Films DUNJA FEHIMOVIC

In 2012, Cuba’s very first zombie film shambled onto the international screen. A coproduction with Spain involving both the Cuban film institute (ICAIC) and Televisión Española (TVE), Juan de los muertos (Juan of the Dead, fig. 7.1) has been widely interpreted as hailing a new era of ‘indie’ production on the island,1 proving that filmmaking in Cuba was no longer dominated by the state.2 The film has toured extensively on the international festival circuit; not only did it win the Award for Best Iberoamerican Production at the 2013 Goya Spanish Film Academy awards, but it also topped audience polls at both the 2011 Havana Film Festival and the 2012 Miami International Film Festival. This kind of recognition indicates the film’s transnational and ‘trans-​political’ appeal as well as showing its importance as a ‘representative’ of the island nation. This representativeness comes despite much media insistence on its ‘independent’ status and satirical overtones, suggesting that this is based more on its presentation of Cuban identity than official politics. Its complex and contradictory interpretations indicate the way in which Juan de los muertos has attracted attention as a ‘cinematic oddity’3 –​a kind of monster in its own right. Added to its giant 147

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The Cinema of Cuba scale and atypical production values is the film’s status as ‘a zom-​com shot on location in Havana,’4 which is both supported by and seems to critique official Cuban institutions. Like Frankenstein’s monster, it is composed of different elements grafted together –​comedy and horror –​and like a zombie it involves the reanimation of several traditions: the Haitian Vodou zombie and its presentation in cinema, the zombie film genre as epitomised by directors such as George Romero, and finally the subgenre of zombie comedies, perhaps best exemplified by Shaun of the Dead (2004). It is particularly interesting that such a seemingly exceptional film should be taken to be representative of Cuba –​as indicated by the media’s insistence on this aspect of its provenance  –​given that in a statement published on the film’s slickly-​produced website,5 the director Alejandro Brugués states his admiration of Sam Raimi’s classic Evil Dead as one of his main motivations for making Juan de los muertos.6 In doing so, he explicitly situates the film within a transnational cinematic and cultural tradition, seemingly confirming the enthusiastic claims of some critics that Cuban film is entering a new, transnational phase in which questions of the nation and national identity hold diminished importance.7 Nevertheless, that audiences continue to expect films made in Cuba to represent the country in some way is abundantly clear from press coverage of Juan de los muertos. Brugués both justifies and plays up to this expectation by claiming in interviews that his aim was to explore ‘cómo somos los cubanos’, [the way we Cubans are] creating a ‘bien cubana’ [very Cuban]8 version of the familiar zombie scenario. Although he identifies Evil Dead as his primary inspiration, Brugués does not dissociate his work entirely from Cuban cinematography, explaining that Vampiros en La Habana (Vampires in Havana), Juan Padrón’s 1985 classic, was his only national filmic referent in making Juan de los muertos.9 Whilst Juan de los muertos follows the adventures of a group of survivors of a zombie ‘epidemic’ in present-​day Cuba, vampiros en La Habana and its 2003 sequel Más vampiros en La Habana (More Vampires in Havana) are cartoons that follow a Cuban vampire called Pepe in different historical periods –​during the Machado dictatorship and World War II, respectively. By establishing a link between his own work and that of Padrón, Brugués draws attention to the films’ similarities over and 148

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Zombie Nation above their different settings, styles and contents. Though they may feature different kinds of monsters, all three films utilise figures rarely associated with the nation and so, true to dominant cultural discourses on the Caribbean and Cuba, cannibalise foreign cultural products to create something idiosyncratic and new. We are nevertheless provoked to consider why these specific monsters raise their ugly heads, and particularly at these specific points in time. After all, as Carpentier pointed out –​albeit in reference to architecture –​Cuba skipped the gothic phase in order to advance straight to its ‘natural’ baroque mode.10 Brugués himself gives an indication as to the reason for his unusual choice of genre when he claims that he was inspired by what he saw around him,11 suggesting that this monstrous figure expresses something about contemporary Cubanness. Both recognisable and radically different to us, monsters such as zombies and vampires provoke hysteria –​calling on protagonists and viewers to question the very notion of identity as well as their own specific sense of self. Derived from the Latin root ‘monere’ meaning to ‘warn’, the monster can be seen as a symptom of some wider, underlying reality, indicating the way in which these figures of the undead ‘[exist] only to be read.’12 El Pais’ explicit interpretation of the film as ‘una metáfora de la reacción del país hacia la crisis’ [a metaphor for the country’s reaction to crisis]13 shows the monster to be ‘a social and cultural metaphor, a creature that comments on the society that produced it by confronting audiences with fantastic narratives of excesses and extremes.’14 The extreme situations of a zombie epidemic in Juan de los muertos and the international vampire conflicts staged in the Vampiros films produce an excess of possible meanings. As typically Cuban as these three films’ monsters, characters and settings may be, their gothic referents, used furthermore in an explicitly comic mode, inevitably enrich the filmic texts with a messy multiplicity of seemingly contradictory significations. Rather than seeing this over-​determination as problematic, I will suggest that it is in fact expressive of that which it attempts to cover up: a central anxiety over national identity and meaning. This analysis of the aforementioned films, like all other acts of ‘monstrous interpretation’, will necessarily be ‘a work that must content itself with fragments.’15 By reading the films’ fragmented bodies and fragments of meaning, I will 149

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The Cinema of Cuba follow Althusser16 in proposing that the exception gestures towards the rule: these monsters may stand out as rare gothic specimens in Cuban culture and distorted versions of humanity, but ultimately, they express something fundamental to Cubanness. A consideration of the films’ contexts of production will illuminate the way in which both vampires and zombies can be compared with Derrida’s spectres,17 expressing some of the anxieties that haunt Cuba and Cubanness through their contradictory associations. Taking up the interpretation of the monster as a symptom, I examine how Žižek’s take on Lacanian psychoanalysis can be seen to shed light on the films’ different reflections of Cubanness, arguing that whilst Padrón’s films present us with a symbolic order and its transgression, Brugués both admits and fights against the intrusion of the Real into the nation and its identity.

There is a Spectre Haunting Cuba The monster may die many times but it will always reappear,18 either reanimated like a zombie or rejuvenated by fresh blood in the same way as an undead vampire. The monsters chosen and reanimated by Padrón and Brugués have rich, complex histories and associations. Like the spectre, the monster is thus always a revenant of some kind,19 conjured by specific actors, and manifesting itself in a way that expresses something about the context of its conjuration. Juan Padrón’s original and unlikely Cuban cartoon heroes emerged in the wake of the 1980 boatlift which saw over 100,000 Cubans leave from Mariel harbour for the United States. Those who had left were often referred to in the media as ‘escoria’ [scum] or ‘gusanos’ [worms], evoking a subhuman stratum of society that had been purged through the exodus. This implicitly reinforced a sense of a now-​ purified nation of ‘true’ Cubans, those who, beyond their cubanidad or official Cuban status, possessed cubanía as truly desired and felt national identity.20 The 1984 return to the island of those immigrants not deemed refugees by the USA may have troubled this distinction, but it also constituted an unexpected bolstering of Cuba’s sense of national sovereignty. The agreement involved compromise and discussion necessarily based on the premise that Cuba was an independent, sovereign country. Furthermore, 150

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Zombie Nation by sending some ‘marielitos’ back, the USA implicitly recognised that only a minority of Cuban immigrants qualified as refugees, and that communism in itself did not represent a threat.21 The vampiric protagonists of Padrón’s first film, which was released in 1985, were thus conjured into a space and time of complex renegotiations of national identity and unstable definitions of what constituted a ‘true’ Cuban. The problematic discourse of the nation and Cubanness created by Mariel and its aftermath also occurred in the midst of a gradual introduction of market policies that began in the 1970s and continued through the early 1980s. Although the Third Party Congress, which was to effect thoroughgoing changes to the country’s entire economic approach and administration, would not take place until 1986, there would almost certainly already have been some unease about the ideological compromises that the aforementioned policies entailed. As Fidel was to point out in 1986, the budget had been promoting ‘improper social consumption,’22 threatening to turn Cubans into insatiable, vampiric consumers. At the same time, the rise of tourism on the island started to transform Cuba into a site of consumption, as foreigners feasted on the best the country had to offer and made Cubans into ‘embodied commodities’ through practices such as sex tourism.23 Through their own acts of consumption, these vampiric foreigners also threatened to infect the island, bringing not only hard currency but also goods and capitalist aspirations. Anxieties associated with tourism and consumption were even more prominent by the time Padrón’s sequel was released in 2003, as the government had embarked on the massive promotion of tourism in order to help the country survive in the economic wastelands of the Special Period. Since then, ‘[c]‌onsuming Cuba has become a bonanza,’24 both inside and outside the island, and issues surrounding the effects of foreign tourist presence and consumption have even greater relevance to Juan de los muertos in 2011. The decision to make Más vampiros en La Habana in the early 2000s can also be seen as a response, unconscious or otherwise, to anxieties over national sovereignty and identity. Padrón’s creation of a sequel to Vampiros en La Habana doubtless involved a desire to capitalise on the popularity of the original cartoon. However, the revival of a past cinematic success constitutes a conjuration in itself –​evoking a time before the difficulties 151

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The Cinema of Cuba of the Special Period, the specific spectral uncertainties that haunted Cuba in the 1980s as well as those that have always haunted the nation. Padrón’s project suggests that Cuban cinema did not die during the barren years of the late 1990s; rather, like the vampire, it had merely lain dormant due to the practical and financial constraints of the time. In 2003, as the country seemed to be edging its way uncertainly out of the Special Period, Más vampiros en La Habana represented old anxieties as well as a tentative new beginning. If the events and policies of the 1980s lead contemporary commentators to conclude that ‘There is a specter haunting Cuba […] the specter of capitalism,’25 then this is equally, if not more relevant during the 2000s. The fact that Más vampiros en La Habana was coproduced with foreign companies such as TVE and Canal+ reveals how much had changed in both the film industry and country as a whole since 1985. With the ICAIC no longer able to fund all of the island’s production since the Special Period, filmmakers have found themselves increasingly obliged to rely on coproductions, as is clearly also the case with Juan. Though the collapse of the Soviet Bloc further isolated the island nation politically, it has paradoxically meant that Cuba has had to establish itself within the global network of cultural consumption. Thus, this specific change in film production methods can be seen as symptomatic of the broader pattern of Cuban interaction with outside, capitalist forces and the importance of the latter to its survival. Whilst this interaction may have always existed, the financial hardship of the Special Period and its aftermath has rendered foreign input in and consumption of Cuba’s cultural products significantly more visible. Padrón’s sequel may attempt a straightforward reanimation of a 1980s hit, but in resurrecting Pepe and the other vampires, he also resurrects the uncomfortable spectres that haunted 1980s Cuba and the first film. The Vampiros films thus demonstrate how, with so many previous lives and incarnations, once a monster is summoned or evoked, it cannot be entirely controlled. Rather than corresponding specifically to its conjurers’ desires, as implied by the Derridean interpretation of the spectre, the spectre manifests itself multiply, in contradictory and unintended ways, and therefore emerges as an overdetermined figure. 152

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Zombie Nation This spectre of capitalism is not only visible in the Vampiros films’ production, but is also present in the narrative. When Pepe’s uncle decides to move to Cuba in the first film, a voiceover that accompanies the image of a boat crossing the world map tells us that he is motivated by the supply of ‘grandes cantidades de ron y piña colada’ [large quantities of rum and piña colada] available on the island. This explanation produces laughter through the jarring juxtaposition of the seriousness of the scientific experiment with the drunken leisure associated with the items required. However, it also identifies this vampiric scientist with the tourists that would have been arriving around this time, attracted by related visions of a tipsy, tropical holiday. Despite the fact that he goes on to insist on Vampisol’s free distribution, the product of Werner Amadeus von Dracula’s experiments remains irremediably linked to such commercial, tourist fare, as is indicated by the sequence in which he prepares his nephew’s monthly dose in a cocktail shaker. After all, it is this formula that allows and encourages vampires who had previously limited themselves to local, underground beaches to visit Cuba, acting as a magnet for tourism and creating a concentrated capitalist presence on the island. The parallel between tourists and vampires is highlighted in a scene in which two Cubans comment on Johnny Terrori and his mafiosos who, having just taken Vampisol, can now stand in the sunlight for the first time. Propped nonchalantly against a bar in the shade, one cubano assumes that the Americans are just another group of holiday-​makers: ‘los turistas aquí siempre están achicharrándose en la acera de los bobos.’ [the tourists here are always burning themselves to a crisp on the stupid side of the street.] However, scenes such as the one in which the European group of vampires feast on drunken tourists in the iconic Plaza de la Catedral suggest that the vampires represent more than foreign visitors. Rather, they stand for something higher up the scale, something that feeds off touristic consumption: the capitalist system or capital itself. This sequence whereby tourists consume Havana’s sights and alcohol, and are in turn consumed by the vampires, reflects the way in which tourism in Cuba is linked to the vampiric global system of capital. During the vampires’ feast, one of the European group encounters a hyper-​sexualised black woman who propositions him, evoking the consumption of Cuban bodies through sex tourism 153

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The Cinema of Cuba and the corrupting threat of capitalist vampiric ‘infection’ brought by tourists. However, given Pepe’s ambivalent identity, these uncomfortable meanings are not limited to foreigners but also haunt the text through its central character. Whilst representing stereotypical Cubanness in his manner and speech as well as his profession as a musician, Pepe is nonetheless a vampire and cannot avoid the spectral associations of his fellow non-​Cuban vampires. Haunted by the spectre of capitalism, this character’s club in Más vampiros en La Habana recalls the decadence of Club Tropicana as well as representing a kind of ownership that hardly squares unproblematically with socialist ideals of the ‘hombre nuevo’ [New Man]. Rather, it draws attention to the kinds of compromises and returns to market policy that the leadership has had to make in order to survive the aftermath of the Special Period. The connection between vampires and capital is far from new, finding one of its best-​known expressions in Moretti’s essay on Frankenstein and Dracula. For Moretti, Stoker’s Count Dracula represents not aristocracy but capital, in its unwavering impetus for unlimited expansion.26 The fact that Pepe is a musician further associates him with this idea of expansion through consumption given the popularity of ‘catchy’ Cuban music around the world. This exchange, whereby Cuba is consumed by others through its music whilst in turn consuming the world through the spread of its contagious culture perfectly expresses the parallel between the vampire and the spectre of capitalism. Similarly, the zombie can be seen as both consumer and consumed. On the one hand, its sole purpose is to consume others, creating an ever-​growing horde of ‘living dead’ and evoking a consumer himself consumed by the insatiable desire for consumption. Thus the zombies of Juan de los muertos evoke the culmination of fears of ‘improper’ consumption expressed in 1986, fears which are far more relevant in the present moment, with the reintroduction of certain market policies, the rise of tourism and associated effects of inequality. On the other hand, the zombie also resembles the master of Haitian vodou, who would create zombies to use as slaves –​‘a soulless greedy consumer with no regard for the humanity of those whom he or she exploits.’27 In reproducing the zombie figure as both consumer and consumed, the film situates itself within the critical tradition of George Romero, whose Dawn of the Dead (1978) 154

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Zombie Nation

Fig. 7.1  Juan de los muertos

staged a critique of capitalism in which humans hiding in a shopping mall are besieged by zombies, who then start to shop because that is all they know. Given that it is defined in great part by its grotesque physicality, the zombie evokes the paradoxical incorporation that distinguishes the spectre from the spirit.28 Literally embodying both sides of the capitalist exchange, therefore, the zombie lumbers through Juan as a spectre of capital. Juan de los muertos’ reception, promotion and distribution play out the link between form and content in the zombie genre:29 its contagious spread troubles borders and boundaries and suggests the way in which the country is inserted into transnational movements of capital and culture which disturb its sense of self. Given the cult popularity of zombie films and their proven ability to generate considerable box office income, the very decision to work in this genre evokes the spectre of capital which has haunted Cuban cinema since the Special Period. Through its big budget and international distribution, Brugués’ film places itself ostentatiously within the emerging category of transnational coproductions. Its flashy website details the production’s various foreign partners, as well as proudly dedicating sections to its numerous international accolades and press coverage. However, as the director himself points out, the conjuration of the transnational spectre of the zombie at this particular time is also a deliberate attempt to express the 155

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The Cinema of Cuba national context of the film’s production. As well as suggesting that Cubans have turned into zombies, he explains his decision to use this monster with reference to a desire to show how the nation typically responds to crisis.30 More specifically, he humorously explains that Cubans make recourse to three strategies: to try and carry on as normal, to profit from the situation, and, failing all else, to leave the island on a boat.31 Whilst the first response is evident in Juan and Lázaro’s decision to keep their sighting of a corpse at sea a secret, and the third through the departure of all the characters’ but Juan at the film’s end, the second response is the source of much of the film’s humour. This attempt to profit from crisis is displayed by Juan’s creation of the business that gives the film its name, as well as in scenes which trouble the distinction between zombies, tourist consumers and Cuban human consumers (such as the one in which Lázaro’s son tries to steal a zombie tourist’s camera and sunglasses). The parallel between zombie and Cuban consumption is expressed in the recurring comments about how little people and their behaviour have changed after their transition to undead status. This suggests how pervasively the spectre of capital embodied by the zombie haunts Cubans and their identity. However, the zombie is an inherently ambivalent figure, defined by overdetermination and acquiring new associations with every new manifestation:  ‘if they derive from folk memory and age old fears of death and enslavement, they add to them modern anxieties about the effects of consumerism, over-​population and dependency upon machines with the consequent loss of humanity, community and self-​determination this involves.’32 The zombie can thus be seen to embody multiple, contradictory meanings, evoking both ‘a vision of capitalism’s fulfilment in the form of a stasis of perpetual desire, as well as a model of proletarian revolution, depicting the emergence of a new classless society.’33 As the visual representation of ultimate socialist equality as homogeneity, the zombie therefore also comes to represent the spectre of Marx. Similarly, Padrón’s vampires become ambivalent and overdetermined as they acquire different meanings through contrasting characters; whilst the European and American vampires are most clearly associated with the spectre of capital, Pepe’s anti-​ totalitarian struggles and his uncle’s internationalist, socialist desire to distribute Vampisol around the world for free recall the spectre of Marx –​an 156

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Zombie Nation unacknowledged but nevertheless pervasive presence throughout both Vampiros films. The way in which all three films evoke both these spectres, making different models of consumption central to their narratives, suggests how Cubanness is defined by contradiction and conflict. If Žižek argues that the ever-​present potential for breakdown within capitalism is precisely what keeps it going,34 the films’ endings show that, in the constant struggle between socialism and capitalism, Cuba paradoxically survives thanks precisely to this dynamic, rather than despite it.

Vampiros en La Habana and Más Vampiros en La Habana: Symbolic Order and its Transgression As a Cuban vampire and hero of Padrón’s two animated films, Pepe is a highly ambivalent character when read within the context of ideas about Cuba and its culture. On the one hand, his national identity is clearly declared in the montage of stills used at the beginning of Vampiros en La Habana to prove that the young Pepe ‘creció bajo el sol tropical’ [grew up beneath the tropical sun], marking him with typical signs of Cubanness such as baseball and music. Furthermore, he is one of the key exponents of the Vampiros films’ humour; he signals his Cubanness by practicing choteo, which is associated with characteristics of independence and rejection of authority.35 On the other hand, as the biographical explanation also makes clear, he is a vampire and technically, just as foreign as his uncle. In the same way that Stoker’s Dracula is associated with the ‘feudal, oriental, tyrannical’ and ‘cannot be the product of that very society he wants to defend,’36 Padrón’s vampire fits uncomfortably into the mould of representative Cuban hero. Although the other and the foreign are partially nationalised through Pepe, recalling key concepts of Cubanness relating to the assimilation of difference through transculturation,37 this process is never complete. Just as the ajiaco (Ortiz’s famous metaphor of the Cuban stew) is not a perfect blend, there is always a remnant –​what Žižek or Lacan might refer to as a kernel of the Real that cannot be incorporated or understood. This is made clear in both films, as Pepe is seen to be able to resurrect his vampiric identity when needed. Pepe’s ambivalent overdetermination as vampire shows the way in which cultural identities are endangered by 157

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The Cinema of Cuba difference, and yet his role as protagonist places this very problematic at the centre of the director’s depiction of Cuba. That vampiric difference is associated with threat is made clear through the negative associations brought by Johnny Terrori, the European vampires and Hitler, who wants to enlist vampires to strengthen his fascist army. By literally bringing vampires out into the light with his potion, Vampisol, Pepe’s uncle shows a desire to neutralise threat, incorporating these creatures of the night into the lawful, symbolic order and the realm of the knowable. If night-time can be seen to stand for the ultimate impenetrability of the Other, and therefore a constitutive part of its monstrosity, Pepe’s uncle attempts to fight that monstrosity by trying to turn the vampires into virtual creatures. As two-​dimensional creations, the genre of these films reflects the fact that they present a virtual reality, that is, ‘reality itself divested of its substance, the resisting hard kernel of the Real,’38 attenuating with their humorous caricatures the fear that might be aroused by the monsters presented. Similarly, Vampisol makes the vampire outwardly resemble a human, turning them from Other to other –​a specular image in which the human subject can recognise itself. Furthermore, the way in which Vampisol and Vampiyaba involve several very typically Cuban elements –​piña colada, sun and guava –​enacts a domestification of the difference represented by the vampire. As the original user of Vampisol, Pepe becomes associated with Cubanness that is demonstrated in his behaviour, accent and mannerisms as well as his political activity, and identified as a representative of the human, national symbolic order. This is particularly true of Más vampiros en La Habana, in which Pepe’s family recalls the importance of the Walton family in Frankenstein, which allowed for the ‘symbolic reunification’39 of society. Pepe’s key role in the maintenance of this nuclear family unit and therefore of the symbolic order through which it is defined is demonstrated in the wake of a scene in which Lola is almost forced to drink her son’s blood. This vampiric transposition of the incest taboo is intercepted, as Pepe reinforces the law of the father and the symbolic order. If ‘one of the institutions most threatened by the monsters is the family,’40 then Pepe acts as its champion, reasserting through it the wider symbolic order of the nation.41

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Zombie Nation However, as is demonstrated by the protagonist’s fear that a second child may turn out to be a vampire, Pepe is far from a straightforward defender and representative of the symbolic order of the (human) nation. Although he dismisses talk of vampires at the beginning of Más vampiros en La Habana, he also shows awareness of his own ambivalence. His desire to forget his vampire status whilst embracing humanness recalls the role of the desire for coherent completeness in Cuban identity. As Pérez Firmat points out, for Ortiz the most complete form of Cubanness is to be found ‘in a kind of longing: to desire cubanía is already to possess it.’42 Like the author himself, the Cuban is ‘haunted by a yearning for wholeness’43 as a very part of his or her national identity. Rather than simply embodying the name of the father and the symbolic order, Pepe also shows how the national subject is always yearning and incomplete, incorporating an element of non-​identity or difference. In this sense it is significant that his uncle moderates Pepe’s dosage of Vampisol to ensure that he is never fully transformed into a human, but always maintains his hidden vampire potential. The uncle himself never takes the potion, preferring instead to remain in his dark, damp quarters and reminisce, as he does at the beginning of Vampiros en la Habana, about his castle in Düsseldorf. Furthermore, whilst the Chicago and European groups and Nazis may represent the vampire’s desire for ‘continuous growth’ and ‘unlimited expansion’44 through their capitalist enterprise or plan for world domination, Pepe and his uncle are hardly free of this association. By working to allow vampires unlimited access to the daylight world of humans, they show a vampiric desire for expansion. This recalls the operation of the logic of fetishism in Cuban culture, whereby the disavowal of one’s own lack by identifying part of the self on another’s body ‘permits the subject to visualise the other as an extension of the self and, then, appropriate the other’s cultures into insular space.’45 Pepe and his uncle enact this through their promotion of Vampisol and their desire to incorporate the vampire as other into the symbolic order of the island space. Vampiros en La Habana ends with a narrator who tells us to watch out, as the person next to us on the beach may just be a vampire. This warning suggests the insidiousness of difference. Thanks to Vampisol, difference, figured as capital most visibly through depictions of tourists

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The Cinema of Cuba and the respective foreign groups that come to the island, is incorporated into the nation itself. The persistent presence of difference is shown through Pepe’s son, Pepín, who is irresistibly drawn towards vampirism and wants to become a vampire. His fascination with it suggests that the Other is ‘the site of an unfathomable desire’46 that draws us towards it. Vampirism, as a manifestation of such Otherness, can be seen as ‘an excellent example of the identity of desire and fear.’47 If it is true that every repressed feeling turns into anxiety, then Pepe’s fear of having vampire children and his anxiety about his vampiric status result from the repression of his desire to assume part of his identity. The act of repression transfigures emotion, creating a kind of monster that ‘expresses the unconscious content and at the same time hides it.’48 The monstrous figure of the vampire thus comes to embody repressed difference, and Pepe can be seen to represent identity as affirmed by the symbolic order –​identity that necessarily involves the disavowal of difference as such or its repression to create a coherent whole. However, Más vampiros en La Habana also demonstrates the way in which the repressed returns in the very act of repression.49 It is precisely when Pepe decides to destroy his uncle’s lab and remains to protect his son from the lure of vampirism that he discovers Pepín has already discovered them. Not only does the protagonist see that his son wants to be a vampire, but he is forced to admit his own vampiric nature. Moreover, Pepe chooses to augment this difference by taking Vampiyaba and thereby become even more vampiric than before. In itself, his son’s invention is far from a better, stronger formula of Vampisol. Rather, its ability to turn people into ‘bichos’ [creatures] or vampires suggests the inevitability of the return of difference. Such a return is not only inevitable but also necessary. To help invent an antidote to Vampiyaba and thereby neutralise the threat to humans and his country, Pepe is obliged to resurrect the difference  –​in the form of his uncle –​that he was about to destroy. Combined with his adoption of exaggerated vampiric traits through Vampiyaba, this marks him out as a representative not only of the symbolic order, but also of its transgression. Thanks to Pepe, Werner Amadeus von Dracula, who had previously manifested himself as an animated pen, assumes full ghostly but bodily form, recalling the paradoxically corporeal nature of the spectre.50 The uncle thus 160

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Zombie Nation comes to embody the spectre of difference that haunts any claim to coherent identity. This haunting is not necessarily negative, as the sequence of events that follows demonstrates the way in which order is maintained by its periodic transgression and coherent identity, by difference. Not only does the vampiric ghost uncle help to save the day, but Pepe’s Vampiyaba-​ induced ultra-​vampiric state contributes to the successful resolution of the battle. Though it may prove troublesome, monstrosity or difference clearly serves to support the symbolic order that creates unified meaning. This recalls Žižek’s argument that it is not the Law that holds a community together so much as a specific transgression of that Law.51 That the Cuba depicted in Padrón’s cartoons needs Pepe and his uncle in order to avert the schemes of Johnny Terrori, the European group, the Nazis and the nation’s own dictators suggests the way in which the nation relies on the presence of difference. Not only that, but given Pepe’s ‘cubanisation’, national identity itself involves an element of unresolved difference, a kernel of the Real that cannot be assimilated. Taken as a symbolic order, national identity cannot survive without the presence of difference, without its transgression.

Juan de los Muertos: Real versus Symbolic Order Pepe’s complex signification in the Vampiros films is echoed in the overdetermination of the zombies in Juan. Whereas generic conventions tend towards depicting zombie invasions, in which the monsters come from the outside, Brugués presents us with an insular space that becomes infected from within. This set-​up highlights the way in which zombie films respond ‘more to a fear of what is the same (our own bodies, our neighbours, the government) than to any threat from without.’52 That zombies reflect a distorted version of the self is further suggested by the difficulty of distinguishing between them and the survivors. The frequent jokes about how little people have changed once they become zombies serve to highlight this, as well as evoking the Cuban pattern of incorporating difference through disavowal.53 In this sense, the zombie can be said to represent what is known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as the little other: that which is not truly different but coupled with the ego –​a specular image with which the subject can identify. However, zombies complicate our ideas of otherness and identity 161

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The Cinema of Cuba because, whilst they may resemble us from afar, up close they prove unsettlingly difficult to explain or comprehend.54 This is demonstrated at the very beginning of the outbreak, where the protagonists are summoned by Juan’s elderly neighbour, whose husband has just died. When he suddenly reanimates, the group struggle to understand what is happening, humorously running through a series of superstitions in an attempt to stop the zombie. Having tried methods relating to vampires and evil spirits, Juan’s group only establish what the zombie is not, showing the way in which the monster ‘is always described by negation.’55 Even later, the only thing that Juan can state for certain is that the zombies are not ‘disidentes’ [dissidents], as the official media repeatedly claims. The specularity of the zombie as little other thus gives way to reveal a more disturbing Otherness at its heart: unknowability. The elderly neighbour’s belief that her husband has simply revived and the friends’ uncertainty as to the monster’s nature show this problematic identity of the zombie. This sequence is a comically literal demonstration of the way in which ‘the monstrosity of the neighbour’ consists of an ‘alien traumatic kernel’ that resists interpretation and ‘hystericises’ the subject,56 causing them to question both its and their own identity. Lacan’s use of the term Thing (das Ding) in relation to this incomprehensible kernel is significant, as it carries ‘all the connotations of horror fiction.’57 Such associations go some way towards explaining the ease with which questions of identity and difference can be mapped onto horror fiction monsters of all kinds. In Juan de los muertos, the neighbours literally become Things from horror fiction. Neither dead nor alive but undead, the zombies occupy a space between the human and not human –​what Žižek describes as Hegel’s third category.58 Their ambivalence and overdetermination present ‘a terrifying excess which, although it negates what we understand as humanity, is inherent to being human,’59 recalling the way in which the Real can manifest itself both as absence and worrying excess.60 By making the neighbour into a zombie, the director inserts an element of radical alterity into a familiar, specular image, investing it with a ‘resisting hard kernel of the Real.’61 The zombies retain recognisable elements of the people they used to be as suggested by Juan’s slogan –​‘matamos a sus seres queridos’ [we kill your loved ones] –​but they also make literal the monstrous element of unknowability 162

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Zombie Nation of the neighbour. This results in their acquisition of qualities of the Other, as they become radically different and ultimately incomprehensible to the human survivors. As an externalisation of the monstrous unknowability of the neighbour, that which resists comprehension and signification, the zombie becomes associated with the Lacanian Real. With the outbreak of the zombie epidemic, a fissure in the symbolic order is created and the country enters a new state of exception. Through this fissure, the zombies present their hideous heads, manifestations of the unbearable Real62 that threaten the virtual reality of Cuban society. For Žižek, this is defined as a reality divested of the incomprehensible, the unassimilable ultimate non-​identity of the Real,63 so that we can see Cuba’s contemporary virtual reality to consist of its claim to coherent nationhood and identity, in which supposed difference is celebrated but true Otherness is excluded. As the zombies reappear, so too does ‘the monstrous Thing behind the veil of appearances’64 –​ the void behind identity. However, the idea that this gap in the symbolic order, this state of exception or crisis is a constitutive part of Cubanness itself is suggested by the fact that the apocalyptic space of the zombie epidemic is not too different from the many crises that have shaped Cuban identity. It is compared to the Special Period, and Juan incorporates the epidemic into his list of other Cuban ‘special periods’ that he has survived. This suggests that Cuba’s continuous state of crisis constantly forces it to confront unsettling manifestations of the Real, recalling the way in which Lacan describes the Real as being ‘stuck to the sole of [our] shoe.’65 If the zombie is associated with emptiness, non-​identity and void, then the survivors of the epidemic are often depicted as conventional and unthinking,66 recalling the unsettling similarities between monster and human. Ample evidence of this is provided to comic effect by Juan’s friend Lázaro and his slow, marijuana-​smoking son California. Characters in zombie films are ‘bland, ordinary (heimlich) citizens,’67 tending to conform to or represent certain types. The monster’s antagonist ‘automatically becomes the representative of the species, of the whole of society,’68 and Brugués assigns the eponymous protagonist with this role of representative of the species. In his struggle against the zombies, Juan becomes associated with the preservation of the virtual reality of the symbolic order. An 163

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The Cinema of Cuba ingenious scene in which Juan dances salsa with the zombified la China in an attempt to defend himself provides a particularly funny demonstration of the assertion identity as a defence against the consuming void of the Real. Through his resistance, Juan demonstrates certain characteristics of Cubanness:  ingenuity, lucha [struggle], survival. His struggle against and attitude towards the zombies unwittingly reassert recognisable models of Cubanness, so that the monster indirectly ‘serves to reconstruct a universality, a social cohesion.’69 The extreme situation forces Juan to adopt cubanía –​ ‘cubanidad plena, sentida, consciente y deseada,’ [full Cubanness, felt, responsible, conscious and desired]70 expressed most clearly in his decision to remain on the island. This act of nationalist loyalty recalls Žižek’s discussion of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia.71 The way in which nationalist over-​identification as the transgression of socialist law served to hold the community together in the contexts discussed by Žižek72 is reflected in the importance of Juan’s assertions of Cubanness to his own and his friends’ survival, and, implicitly, the continued survival of the island itself. We are never shown the decisive defeat of the zombies and the fact that the fighting continues throughout the credits implies the struggle will be ongoing. The sense that this crisis or state of exception will continue and become the norm suggests that the constant conflictive interplay between the Real and the symbolic order is actually central to Cuban national identity. Whether read as Bakhtin’s centripetal and centrifugal forces73 or Ortiz’s formation of identity and longing as cubanidad and cubanía,74 Cubanness can be more accurately described as a tension rather than an essence. This perhaps explains the fact that some of the characters leave whilst Juan stays, externalising the way in which the self is divided and pulled in different directions. That the zombies are not exterminated suggests the stubborn presence of indomesticatable difference within the nation, and also recalls Žižek’s Lacanian reinterpretation of the Hegelian dialectic as an incomplete process with no finished product.75 Rather than exterminating the undead, which would result in synthesis, the eradication of difference, and ultimately, totalitarianism, Cubans have learnt to live with the undead –​manifestations of the Real that trouble coherent identity. However, given that cinematic zombies can only ever be Imaginary representations of the unrepresentable real, the film also functions as a screen 164

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Zombie Nation of fantasy protecting us from the traumatic presence of this threat to the dissolution of identity. If apocalyptic narratives such as this one provide temporary, cathartic enjoyment, then it is more accurate to say that they maintain order by providing periodic opportunities for release76 rather than subverting or undermining it. In this sense, though Brugués’ film may admit the unsettling presence of difference, non-​identity and void within the nation, it also attempts to neutralise and repress it, recalling the way in which the monster both expresses and hides unconscious content.77

Kernel of Enjoyment This idea of the monster as screening –​showing and hiding –​unconscious content suggests how these cultural artefacts distort reality by displacing anxieties regarding identity onto fantastical narratives of excess.78 As I have suggested, this excess is partly characterised by the way in which these vampires and zombies function as overdetermined metaphors. Such overdetermination may go some way towards explaining the fact that, as viewers of these films, we cannot entirely rationalise their monsters but must instead accept them as literal beings that affect us with ‘a “material force” ’,79 making us laugh and tremble. Running amok through the films, these vampires and zombies may escape viewers’ complete comprehension and other characters’ control, but they nonetheless gesture towards the relationship between Cuba’s symbolic and imaginary reality and the Real of unsettling, unknowable difference. As I have argued, the interdependent relationship between Cubanness (the symbolic order of the nation) and difference (its Other, or the Real) in these films is characterised, as in gothic literature, by ‘opposites [… which,] instead of separating and entering into conflict, exist in function of one another, reinforce one other.’80 Just as Juan only becomes a representative hero in response to the zombies’ unsettling non-​ identity, Pepe becomes defender of the symbolic order precisely because of who he is –​an outsider to that order: a vampire. These contradictions are never resolved, suggesting that any conception of Cubanness must involve not synthesis and sameness but the internalisation of difference, an identity that must necessarily ‘at the same time, [include] an element of non-​identity.’81 165

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The Cinema of Cuba The depictions of Cubanness in Juan de los muertos, Vampiros en La Habana and Más vampiros en La Habana thus also include elements of non-​identity, anxious remnants that reveal the presence of what might be termed ‘Real difference’ within the nation. Monsters such as zombies and vampires are metaphors because they combine different sources of fear, but they also exist to transform these fears in such a way as to allow ‘the social consciousness [to] admit its own fears without laying itself open to stigma.’82 This transformation is crucial, since the full admission of these anxieties of non-​identity and difference would cause the symbolic orders of both the film and the nation to fall apart. Although they ultimately maintain their internal consistency as miniature versions of the wider symbolic order of the nation, the films suggest that Cubanness is inherently troubled by difference, and each one transmits a specific sinthome that triggers the spectator’s enjoyment. Defined as ‘a signifying formulation beyond analysis, a kernel of enjoyment immune to the efficacy of the symbolic,’83 the sinthome frustrates totalising attempts at dissection and instead suggests the presence of ‘the thrill of the real.’84 It is the sinthome, therefore, that paradoxically names the ineffable element that makes these films so enjoyable: their ultimate resistance to analysis and full comprehension.

Notes 1. John Hopewell, and Emilio Mayorga, ‘Cuba, Spain Fight Zombies’, in Variety (2012), at http://​variety.com/​2010/​film/​news/​cuba-​spain-​fight-​zombies-​1118019273/​ (20 November 2012). 2. Indeed, Cuban film critic Joel del Río (2012) has written astutely on the tactical use of the ‘independent’ label in the film’s promotion ‘porque confiere prestigio de extraoficial y contracorriente’. [because it confers the prestige of the unofficial and non-​mainstream] As he rightly points out, such a label is misleading since production in fact involved collaboration with state-​based technicians and filmmakers. 3. Katie Walsh, ‘L.A. Film Fest Review: Juan of the Dead Is a Uniquely Cuban Take on the Zomb Com & a Hell of a Good Time’, (2012) at http://​blogs.indiewire. com/​theplaylist/​l-​a-​film-​fest-​review-​juan-​of-​the-​dead-​is-​a-​uniquely-​cuban-​ take-​on-​the-​zom-​com-​and-​a-​hell-​of-​a-​good-​time-​20120620 (1 June 2014). 4. Ibid. 5. Juan of the Dead Movie (2011), at http://​www.Juanofthedeadmovie.com/​Lang/​ en (19 November 2012).

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Zombie Nation 6. In other interviews, he has cited other films, including Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) as inspirations. 7. Ann Marie Stock, On Location in Cuba:  Street Filmmaking During Times of Transition (Chapel Hill, 2009). 8. Álvaro P.  Ruiz de Elvira, ‘Revolución Zombi en Cuba’, in El País (2011), at http://​elpais.com/​diario/​2011/​01/​28/​tentaciones/​1296242575_​850215.html (1 June 2014). 9. Ibid. 1 0. Alejo Carpentier and Joaquín Soler Serrano, Alejo Carpentier: a Fondo (Interview 1977), at http://​vimeo.com/​71857886 (1 June 2014). 11. Juan of the Dead Movie. (2011). 12. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.), Monster Theory:  Reading Culture (Minneapolis, 1996), p. 4. 13. Ruiz de Elvira, ‘Revolución Zombi en Cuba’. 14. Kyle William Bishop, American Zombie Gothic: the Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, N.C, 2010), p. 31. 15. Cohen: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, p. 6. 16. Louis Althusser, ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’, in Carl Oglesby (ed.), The New Left Reader (New York, 1969). 17. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (New York, 1994). 18. Cohen: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, p. 4. 19. Derrida: Specters of Marx. 20. Fernando Ortiz, ‘Los Factores Humanos De La Cubanidad’, in Perfiles de la cultura cubana, at http://​www.perfiles.cult.cu/​articulos/​factores_​cubanidad. pdf?article_​id=172 (1 June 2014). 2 1. Jorge I.  Domínguez, ‘Cuba in the 1980s’, in Foreign Affairs 65 (1), pp. 118–​135 (128). 22. Ibid., p. 122. 23. Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (London, 2003). 24. Ibid., p. 164. 25. Domínguez, ‘Cuba in the 1980s’, p. 122. 26. Franco Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, in Signs Taken for Wonders:  on the Sociology of Literary Forms, trans. Susan Fischer (New York, 1983), p. 73. 27. Zachary Graves, Zombies:  the Complete Guide to the World of the Living Dead(London, 2010), p. 11. 28. Derrida: Specters of Marx, p. 157. 29. Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz (eds.), Generation Zombie:  Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture, (Jefferson, N.C, 2011), p. 3.

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The Cinema of Cuba 30. BBC News, ‘Cuba Shoots Its First Zombie Movie Juan of the Dead’ (2011), at http://​www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​world-​latin-​america-​11867532 (15 November 2012). 31. Juan of the Dead Movie (2011). 32. Michael Richardson, Otherness in Hollywood Cinema (New York, 2010), p. 28. 33. Boluk and Lenz:  Generation Zombie:  Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture, p. 7. 34. Sarah Kay, Žižek: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 2003), p. 131. 35. Jorge Mañach, ‘Indagación Del Choteo’ (2009), at http://​www.perfiles.cult.cu/​ articulos/​factores_​cubanidad.pdf?article_​id=172 (1 June 2014). 36. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 76. 37. Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint:  Tobacco and Sugar, transl. Harriet de Onís (Durham and London, 1995). 38. Slavoj Žižek and Simon Critchley, How to Read Lacan (New York and London, 2007), p. 38. 39. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear,’ p. 72. 40. Ibid., p. 78. 41. Although the metonymic link between family and nation is often broken down in communist thought, particularly given Marx and Engels’ discussion of the issue in The Holy Family (1844), once again Cuba establishes itself as a somewhat different case. This is indicated by the national importance of the custody battle over Elián González in 2000 and the Código de la Familia [Family Code], of 1975 to name just two examples. 42. Gustavo Pérez Firmat, ‘A Willingness of the Heart:  Cubanidad, Cubaneo Cubanía’, in Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series, 2:7, Paper 8 (1997), at http://​scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/​csa/​8/​ (1 June 2014), p. 7. 43. Ibid., p. 2. 44. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 73. 45. James Pancrazio, The Logic of Fetishism:  Alejo Carpentier and the Cuban Tradition (Lewisburg, [PA], 2004), p. 12. 46. Žižek and Critchley, How to Read Lacan, p. 42. 47. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 79. 48. Ibid., p. 81. 49. Žižek and Critchley, How to Read Lacan, p. 19. 50. Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 157. 51. Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment (London, 2005/​1994), p. 55. 52. Kim Paffenroth, ‘Zombies as Internal Fear or Threat’, in Boluk and Lenz (eds.). Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture, pp. 18–​26 (24). 53. Pancrazio:  The Logic of Fetishism:  Alejo Carpentier and the Cuban Tradition,  p. 13.

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Zombie Nation 54. Jeff May, ‘Zombie Geographies and the Undead City’, in Social & Cultural Geography 11 (3), p. 289. 55. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 70. 56. Žižek and Critchley: How to Read Lacan, p. 43. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., p. 47. 59. Ibid. 60. Kay: Žižek: A Critical Introduction, p. 8. 61. Žižek and Critchley: How to Read Lacan, p. 38. 62. If the Real is defined ‘not [as] an external thing that resists being caught in the symbolic network, but the fissure within the symbolic network itself ’ (Žižek 2007: 72), then the zombies –​cultural artefacts and therefore part of the symbolic network –​can never directly represent the Real. Instead, they recall certain characteristics of Lacan’s lamella, which inhabits the intersection between the Imaginary and the Real. Žižek describes it as ‘the undead-​indestructible object, Life deprived of support in the symbolic order’ (Žižek 1999: 159). Since the zombie is ‘simply the hulk, the rude stuff of generic humanity, the bare canvas’ (Dendle 2001: 12), it is stripped of consciousness and identity, and evokes the Real as experienced through ‘the realm of biology and the body in its brute physicality’ (Evans 1996: 163) –​like the lamella, the zombie represents life in its most basic form. Since the zombie horde is a homogenous ‘bulk’ without consciousness, it recalls the anxiety of the loss of differentiated identity which is associated with the lamella as ‘the primordial abyss that swallows everything, dissolving all identities’ (Žižek 2007: 64). 63. Žižek and Critchley: How to Read Lacan, p. 38. 64. Ibid., p. 72. 65. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: the First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink (New York and London 2006), p. 17. 66. Erin Kealey, ‘Who Would You Be in a Zombie Apocalypse?’, in Film & Philosophy 16 (2012), p. 35. 67. Kyle Bishop, ‘Raising the Dead’, in Journal of Popular Film and Television 33 (6) (2006), p. 202. 68. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 68. 69. Ibid. 70. Ortiz, ‘Los factores humanos de la cubanidad’, p. 3. 71. Slavoj Žižek, ‘Eastern European Liberalism and Its Discontents’, New German Critique 57 (1992), pp. 25–​49. 72. Ibid., p. 47. 73. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, 1984). 74. Ortiz, ‘Los factores humanos de la cubanidad’. 75. Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment, p. 13.

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The Cinema of Cuba 76. Ibid., p. 55. 77. Moretti, ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 81. 78. Ibid., p. 83. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., p. 85. 81. Kay, Žižek: A Critical Introduction, p. 26. 82. Moretti: ‘The Dialectic of Fear’, p. 83. 83. Dylan Evans, Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London, 1996), p. 191. 84. Kay, Žižek: A Critical Introduction, p. 4.

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8 Director as Social Critic: Guantanamera and Barrio Cuba JESSICA GIBBS

This chapter focuses on Cuban filmmakers as social critics, a role adopted sporadically by certain Cuban directors since 1959, but taken on more systematically since the late 1980s. The films selected for analysis are Guantanamera (1995), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, and Barrio Cuba (Cuba Neighbourhood, 2005), directed by Humberto Solás (fig. 8.1). As the swansongs of two of the most celebrated Cuban cineastes, and as films that engage seriously with topical social issues such as economic hardship, family separation and rupture, emigration and tolerance of difference, they merit attention not only as works of art but also as documents for the study of contemporary Cuba. In their sympathetic treatment of personal responses to Cuba’s profound economic crisis, referred to in short hand as the Special Period, these directors provide some uncomfortable insights into phenomena neglected and even stigmatised in the Cuban print media. Unsurprisingly, there is a connection between the absence of open, multi-​voiced debate in Cuban newspapers and magazines and the abundance of coverage of social issues in Cuban film. In a late interview, first published shortly after his death in 1996, Gutiérrez Alea cited the abdication 171

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The Cinema of Cuba of journalism from what he called its ‘mission of social criticism’ as the reason for his assumption of the role. His anguished tone suggested that he perceived a moral imperative for filmmakers to offer constructive criticism at a time of crisis.1 The situation was urgent: as he put it to his interviewer, the documentarist and film scholar Michael Chanan, there had to be ‘new economic mechanisms, intelligent mechanisms, so that people feel motivated to react in the most coherent way to the goals of human coexistence. You can’t act solely on the basis of exhortations and sermons and calls for love, because love flourishes where people can love each other, not in sewers.’2 What should be criticised was the ‘ambitious idea of maintaining ideological purity, of avoiding contamination from abroad, and of transforming people based on their consciousness and not on material incentives.’3 Although Chanan offered Gutiérrez Alea the chance to blame Cuba’s economic difficulties on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the director rejected this get-​out, pointing out that Cuba had been living on subsidies and the end of socialist support ‘left us naked.’4 Solás, though less outspoken than Gutiérrez Alea on the topic, also alluded to the need for a critical national cinema, even at a time when Cuban film production relied increasingly on foreign funding.5 Although the moving image is well into its second century, the use of feature films as a resource for the study of history is still relatively new, since historians were slow to realise that such materials might be taken seriously. In 1973, Martin Jackson noted that although fiction films ‘may lack the authenticity of newsreel and documentary footage […] they provide a glimpse of the cultural or intellectual atmosphere of a period and cannot be disregarded by the historian.’6 A few years later, Nicholas Pronay argued persuasively for the importance of the study of film for a wider purpose. In Britain, the public had adopted a regular film-​going habit just when the attitudes and outlook of working people became of greater significance to the government owing to concern about possible revolutionary tendencies of young working class men. Thus, film history was not ‘a self-​contained speciality like the history of painting which provides for the general twentieth century historian only what the paintings, drawings and illustrations give to historians of earlier periods, albeit on a vastly more bountiful scale,’ but instead formed part of ‘the general, political and social history of the twentieth century.’ Furthermore, Pronay noted that, while 172

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Director as Social Critic a historian might draw a clear line between ‘factual’ film (film taken of real events) and ‘fiction’, the expectation being that the historian concerned with film evidence should be primarily interested in ‘factual’ film, ‘this is a distinction which does not fit in with the nature of the medium. The photographic element in film is the essence of its illusion-​creating power: the images on the screen are always a compound of reality and fiction as far as the audience, particularly an uneducated audience, is concerned.’7 An examination of the Cuban context strengthens the argument for using feature film as a historical source, since it is clear that the government which took over in 1959 set much store by cinema’s capacity to promote revolutionary ideas. Founding documents for the Cuban national film institute (ICAIC) were drawn up only weeks after the new government came to power. While relatively few Cuban films had been made previously, the period from 1959 to 1983 saw the production of 112 full-​ length films (both feature and documentary), around 900 short films and more than 1,300 newsreels.8 There were also considerable efforts to bring cinema to new audiences by using mobile projection units, as depicted in Octavio Cortázar’s self-​reflexive short Por Primera Vez (For the First Time, 1967).9 Chanan notes that in 1972, when the Cuban population was around 10 million, there were almost 100 million admissions and 25 million attendees at mobile projections. While the bulk of the films were foreign made, and cinema attendance dropped off over the 1970s and 1980s, individual Cuban films had enormous public appeal. Twenty-​two Cuban films released between 1960 and 1987 achieved viewing figures of at least one million, with 3.2 million admissions for the most popular, Las aventuras de Juan Quin Quin (The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin), directed by Julio García Espinosa and released in 1967.10 The government recognised film as an effective way to explain necessary political, economic and social changes, to inculcate revolutionary values, and to reclaim the past by creating historical narratives in which Cubans were protagonists and the Revolution part of a larger movement towards self-​determination and liberation. As Julianne Burton has pointed out, however, Cubans also regarded film, in particular feature film, as ‘a most effective means of exposing unexamined assumptions and sharpening critical awareness.’11 The targets of such ‘awareness’ varied, but went 173

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The Cinema of Cuba beyond personal inadequacies, outmoded thinking and shortcomings in revolutionary consciousness to encompass bureaucratic niceties and the tyranny of officialdom, for example in Gutiérrez Alea’s 1966 film La muerte de un burócrata (Death of a Bureaucrat), a film which can be regarded as a precursor to Guantanamera. Although censorship was not as rigid as for the print media, Cuban filmmakers operated within ill-​defined and fluctuating limits. The first famous case involved the distribution ban on the short film P.M. (1961), which depicted nightlife in Havana and was directed by Sabá Cabrera Infante, brother of the novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante. The adverse reaction to the ban led to Fidel Castro’s famous ‘Palabras a los intelectuales’ (Words to the Intellectuals), in the course of which he coined the aphorism ‘dentro de la Revolución todo; contra la Revolución, nada.’12 [within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.] The 1970s, which opened with the disgrace and imprisonment of dissident Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, saw a reorganisation within the ICAIC that led to its incorporation under the newly established Ministry of Culture, thus reducing its autonomy and also to a decline in the experimentalism that had characterised the ICAIC’s first decade. In the following decade, the film Techo de Vidrio (Glass Ceiling), directed by one of the handful of black Cuban directors, Sergio Giral, and examining racism and corruption in the workplace, was not exhibited for several years.13 Another Gutiérrez Alea film, Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Certain Point, 1983), which took sexism, class difference and workplace democracy as its themes, was cut substantially before release (the final version is only 68 minutes long). The film centres upon a scriptwriter and director making a film that will expose residual machismo among working-​class men, and the romantic relationship that develops between the married scriptwriter and a single mother dockworker is interspersed by unscripted interviews Gutiérrez Alea and Oscar Álvarez conducted with dockworkers. A persuasive link may be drawn between the words of one interviewee (‘if things can be done better, more efficiently, then I will say so, even if this is taken as criticism by some people, who will resent it’), and Gutiérrez Alea’s intentions with Hasta cierto punto.14 However, the critique of workplace paternalism is ultimately underplayed. Gutiérrez Alea later explained that in his original, 174

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Director as Social Critic ‘Some things didn’t come out well; they were not effective dramatically, and, at the same time, they were politically polemical. This made the film more vulnerable, and so I preferred to take these things out […] Criticism has to be made in a very effective way in order to be indisputable.’15 Further targets of film criticism in the 1980s included opportunism, snobbery and class distinctions in the very popular Se Permuta (House Swap, Juan Carlos Tabío, 1983), the materialism and racism of exiles, and the venality of their island relatives in Lejanía (Long Distance, Jesús Díaz, 1985), and bureaucracy and parental interference in ¡Plaf! o demasiado miedo a la vida (Plaf! or Too Afraid of Life, Juan Carlos Tabío, 1988). In the early 1990s, the removal of state subsidy from the film industry exposed Cuban directors to market forces for the first time, and led not only to a reduction in the number of newsreel, documentaries and feature films that were produced but also to a dependence on financing from abroad. The government continued to exercise influence over the making of films and control over their exhibition, and, in fact, it has been argued that, in the embattled circumstances of the early 1990s, the bounds of the politically permissible became even more difficult for directors to navigate. In commentary on the controversy over Daniel Díaz Torres’s film Alicia en el Pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown,1990), a film that was withdrawn four days after its first showing, Chanan notes that Alicia had been in the works for three years and the 1988 script had been read by people both within and without the ICAIC. Yet it was released in a different world, and a film which ‘had doubtless always been a risky project now emerged as a gloating satire on the cavernicola, or caveman attitudes of the party orthodoxy, at the very moment when everything seemed to be collapsing around them.’16 While high-​profile Cuban filmmakers united in their condemnation of the orchestrated protests against the film, the Alicia controversy almost resulted in the merger of the ICAIC with Cuban television and the Armed Forces film section.17 The much increased foreign involvement had countervailing tendencies for the creative independence of Cuban directors, potentially strengthening their position vis-​à-​vis the state while encouraging the choice of themes that would appeal to foreign audiences. Diana Soles observed that directors had moved ‘from asking the question “What do I  want to say 175

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The Cinema of Cuba about Cuban society to Cubans?” to “What do I want to say about Cuban society to the rest of the world?” ’18 Although she conceded that, as Cuban film critics suggested, directors might be drawn to controversial issues in the 1990s, such as ‘disintegration of the family, exile, the loss of values, institutionalised double morality, and repressed religions, among others,’ these ‘must be packaged in a manner both tolerable by the current regime and attractive to the international market.’ At the time of writing, Soles concluded that ‘the theme of social critique’ had ‘not come to occupy a pivotal place in the discourse among the ICAIC directors.’19 While Soles appears to overlook films that disprove her case, she certainly found directors vocal about the difficulties of working with foreign funders.20 Similarly, in a piece based upon interviews he gave to Michael T. Martin and Bruce Paddington in 1993 and 1999, Humberto Solás observed that ‘Foreign investors in co-​ productions want to either impose their conception of our reality or promote themes and narratives that are openly critical of Cuba […] With a few notable exceptions, it is very difficult to find a producer who wants to invest in a film about the Cuban reality and not tell the director what to do or what point of view to take.’21 While both the films I have chosen are Cuban/​Spanish coproductions they focus on Cuban idiosyncrasies rather than the transnational themes that can be found in several 1990s Cuban-​foreign coproductions.22 Solás commented in 1994 that while he did make films for those beyond Cuba’s borders, it was specifically exiles he had in mind. As he put it: ‘I can’t imagine myself making films with a universal public in mind. We live here. The content is connected with us […] If a message transcends the island, that’s perfect.’23 As well-​established directors, Gutiérrez Alea and Solás may have found it easier to interest external sponsors in the kind of films they wanted to make, though it is worth noting that a decade passed between the release of Solás’s film El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral, 1992), a very expensive coproduction, and his much lower budget 2002 coproduction Miel para Ochún (Honey for Ochún). Filming Miel para Ochún convinced Solás that he could take the budget even lower for Barrio Cuba, and in fact the entire filming took place with Cuban resources, including the unpaid contributions of well-​known actors and musicians, before a Spanish coproducer was found for the post-production phase (the 176

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Director as Social Critic expensive transfer of digital film to 35 millimetre film for exhibition).24 As Solás noted, digital technology had liberated him from previous cost pressures and the necessity of compromise.25 The two films dwell on the responses of the characters to the everyday difficulties of the Special Period, portraying their situations, and their decisions sympathetically, even when they participate in activities not sanctioned by the Cuban government. Participation in the black market is depicted as widespread and largely survival-​driven, rather than criminal or deviant and, in Barrio Cuba, sex/​romance tourism, a phenomenon regarded by the government as deeply undesirable, is portrayed in a number of ways, including as a reasonable and altruistic response to family breakdown, romantic disappointment and economic hardship. By presenting stigmatised activities in such a light, these films challenge the discourse of Cuban officialdom, and their positive audience reception in Cuba suggests a gulf between the government line, and the popular understanding of Special Period conditions and responses.26 I feel a personal connection with Guantanamera because I first arrived in Cuba in 1994, the year in which the script, first drafted in 1989, went into production.27 While teaching in Havana, I hitchhiked or used public transport to explore Cuba, travelling on trailers and in the cabins of trucks, relying on the men in yellow uniform for a ride or using the ‘waiting list’ at bus and train stations. In the film, Adolfo, a bureaucrat who, following some unspecified disgrace has been demoted to managing funeral services in Guantánamo province, seizes upon the opportunity presented by the death of his wife’s aunt Yoyita, an internationally renowned singer, to try out his new system for sharing the burden of transporting bodies for burial. The journey from Guantánamo to Havana, which traces the route taken by the triumphant revolutionaries in January 1959, reveals much about Adolfo and his wife Gina, a former economics lecturer, the musician Cándido, who was Yoyita’s childhood sweetheart, and Tony, the taxi-​ driving black marketer. The funeral cortege crosses paths several times with a pair of truck drivers: Mariano, a womaniser who had developed a crush on Gina when he attended her evening classes, and his partner Ramón, a wry commentator on Mariano’s various entanglements and Cuba’s future. As they meet again, and again, and again, and as Adolfo’s 177

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The Cinema of Cuba behaviour becomes increasingly offensive, Mariano and Gina are drawn to each other. Mariano extricates himself, with more or less grace, from his simultaneous relationships with other women, and Gina abandons Adolfo as he delivers a vainglorious valedictory to both Yoyita and Cándido in Colón Cemetery. Cándido had died of shock upon realising that Yoyita’s coffin had been switched accidentally for that of a black male centenarian, a mistake Adolfo had discovered but chosen not to rectify this because it would have marred the apparent success of his plan. Guantanamera dwells upon the shortages of the early Special Period. It is a black, not to say bleak, comedy. It depicts Cubans squabbling over funeral parlour refreshments and state-​run cafeterias where the only products for sale are cigarettes and tobacco and the workers are more interested in flirting with each other than in serving the public. It alludes to modern day tourism obliquely, not only as a potential route to economic recovery but also as a means by which new ideas might penetrate Cuba. As the tour guide explains to a group of foreigners visiting the capital city of the province of Granma: During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Bayamo was the most important smuggling centre on the island. In this way they made a mockery of restrictions and the rigid trade monopoly of the Spanish Crown which stifled economic growth. Illegal trade with the English, French, and Dutch was practised by all the locals, including the administrative, military and religious authorities. Their dealings with the Protestants, branded as heretics, not only influenced economic growth, but also affected cultural and political life. Through this channel, the doors were opened for books banned by the Inquisition and the liberal and progressive ideas of the time. It was no coincidence that Bayamo was the first city to rise in arms against the colonial domination which was stifling the development of the country.

The Cuban government’s handling of the rapid expansion of foreign tourism after 1989 was intended to reduce this kind of contagion. As Julie Mazzei has argued, while many Cubans regarded their pre-​2008 exclusion from tourist resorts, except as workers, as a form of discrimination, a ‘tourist apartheid’, the policy was designed as an ‘economic firewall’, permitting 178

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Director as Social Critic Cuba to engage with international capitalism while maintaining socialism at home.28 Nonetheless, other scholars argue that despite these efforts, Cuban tourist development ‘has created conditions that subvert the goals of the Revolution’ and resulted ‘in material, ideological, and socio-​emotional dissonance for Cubans across all social strata.’29 The melodramatic and ultra-​low-​budget Barrio Cuba was released ten years later, in 2005. Like Solás’s breakthrough Lucía (1968), it is a tripartite film, though the three unrelated narratives are intercut rather than told consecutively, and it was based upon stories written by Solás in his 1990s hiatus from filmmaking (a final heartrending story, of an elderly woman holding on to the presence of her son who died as a soldier on one of Cuba’s internationalist missions, was cut from the film, and released separately as a short).30 The stories of Magalis, a mulatta nurse brought up by a single father who casts out his own son because he is gay, who receives the attentions of a much older Cuban admirer; her former partner, a younger mulatto hustler; of Vivian and Chino, a couple who become estranged as a result of family pressures and their own fertility problems; and of Santo, who goes off the rails after losing his wife Maria in childbirth, leaving an extended family to bring up their son, are about love: unrequited love, romantic love and lost love. They are about parenthood; rejected, frustrated

Fig. 8.1  Barrio Cuba

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The Cinema of Cuba and interrupted. But the film is also about poverty, a theme that is clear from the first shots of Magalis, played by Luisa María Jiménez, bathing with a pail of water. Both Guantanamera and Barrio Cuba were the last features of their directors (the making of Guantanamera, like that of Fresa y chocolate, was only possible because of the selfless co-​direction of Juan Carlos Tabío), and this perhaps allowed for a certain freedom in touching upon delicate topics. Gutiérrez Alea was dying of cancer and his wife Mirtha Ibarra describes him as ‘giving his last breath to Guantanamera.’31 The film did not fail to stir controversy. In an early 1998 speech, an episode that functioned as the hook for Chanan’s Cuban Cinema, Fidel Castro criticised it even though he had not seen it himself. When Castro was informed that Gutiérrez Alea had been the director, he apologised to Ibarra.32 In the early 1990s, the Cuban economy suffered a severe crisis as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Official figures reveal that between 1989 and 1993 Cuba’s gross domestic product contracted by 35 per cent, exports fell by an enormous 79 per cent and imports by 76 per cent.33 Imports of Russian oil, vital for the Cuban economy, declined from 13.3 million tons in 1989 to 1.8 million tons in 1992.34 In conditions of scarcity, the Cuban peso rapidly became devalued (in summer 1994, the unofficial exchange rate reached 120 pesos to one US dollar). Simultaneously, the United States enacted legislation (the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992) which was intended to increase pressure on Cuba by, among other measures, prohibiting the burgeoning trade between Cuba and US subsidiaries abroad, a loophole in the longstanding US economic embargo. Havana’s response to these immense problems can be viewed from a glass half full or glass half empty perspective, and one of the difficulties in understanding the Cuban experience during this period is the different premises from which observers begin.35 Yet it is clear that Castro’s 26 July, 1993 announcement that it would no longer be illegal for Cubans to hold US dollars was an important step. Visits and remittances from Cubans living overseas would be encouraged and special hard currency shops selling otherwise unavailable goods would be established alongside the existing

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Director as Social Critic tourist store network. Castro also promised that a convertible Cuban peso would be introduced.36 In quick succession, more than a hundred forms of self-​employment were authorised and, in an effort to increase food production, the earlier Special Period mass mobilisation of urban residents for agriculture were abandoned in favour of breaking up state farms into units which operated with more autonomy.37 Foreign investment increased in profitable sectors of the economy such as tourism and nickel mining, and the government brought in incentives, such as convertible currency bonuses, to retain skilled workers.38 Further reforms tackled Cuba’s fiscal deficit by ending rationing of certain items, such as cigarettes and rum, reducing subsidies to state enterprises, and introducing a new tax system, which fell heavily upon the self-​employed.39 Following disturbances in Havana during the July/​August 1994 rafter (migration) crisis, farmers were permitted to sell surplus produce at free market prices, providing a legal, if very expensive, way to supplement the inadequate and often poor quality products Cubans continued to receive through the ration book at prices corresponding to peso salaries and pensions. The range and availability of these goods declined dramatically in the early 1990s, and one study based upon interviews with Havana households in 1994–​5 found that the month’s rationed foodstuffs lasted between ten and twenty days.40 The reforms arrested the dramatic economic decline of 1989–​93, at least according to official figures showing economic growth of 0.7 per cent in 1994 and 2.5 per cent in 1995.41 The following year saw the passage of the Helms-​Burton Act, another effort by Washington to complicate Cuba’s reinsertion into the global economy and thereby bring about ‘transition’ to a new form of government.42 Despite some recovery in the purchasing power of the peso and higher salaries in certain sectors, the exchange rate against foreign currency and the convertible Cuban peso (CUC) remained (and remains) very disadvantageous for those paid only in pesos. The 25:1 (to buy CUC) or 24:1 (to sell CUC) rates, which, as of summer 2016 have been maintained for several years, mean that a monthly salary of 525 Cuban pesos (the salary of a doctor in 2000) bought 21 CUC, and a tip or gift of 20 euros from a foreign tourist, or 20 US dollars sent by a relative abroad, represented more than many Cubans earned in a month.43 These

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The Cinema of Cuba circumstances led many state employees in fields such as health and education to seek alternative or supplementary employment in emerging sectors such as tourism. There were no mass layoffs during the first two decades of the Special Period (a big programme was announced in 2010), though many workers at idle plants remained home on full or partial wages, and there were social welfare measures to protect the vulnerable.44 Yet as Jorge F. Pérez-​López explained, in a decidedly ‘glass half empty’ analysis, while reforms had been ‘successful in keeping Cuba’s socialist government in power and permitting it to maintain a tight grip on the polity of the nation,’ they were ‘inadequate to return the population to the already-​meager levels of income and consumption of the late 1980s and to lay the groundwork for sustainable future economic growth.’45 The official discourse in Cuba, though it acknowledged the grave difficulties the country was experiencing, condemned many methods adopted by individuals to solve their own economic problems. A major challenge for Cubans was the absence of a wholesale supply network even for those people who were licensed as self-​employed, leading many small-​time entrepreneurs to rely upon stolen goods. Many other Cubans participated in completely illicit economic activities, either because the activities themselves were not permitted, because, they, as professionals, were not allowed to practice them, or because they were deterred by taxes and regulation on licensed operators. The black market is touched upon in Gutiérrez Alea’s Fresa y chocolate (1993), set in the late 1970s. Nancy, one of the central characters, makes her living dealing in luxury products. In an apparent gesture to the period of its creation, however, we also see indoor pig-​ rearing. By the time Guantanamera went into production, black market dealing was widespread and, as the film made clear, many Cubans used their control of scarce resources, such as transport, to supplement their official salaries, upsetting occupational hierarchies in the process. We see this when Adolfo attempts to buy a bunch of bananas in Cuban pesos from a roadside vendor, only to be shown up by Tony, the taxi driver, who can pay in dollars (and shares with everyone, including Adolfo). The episode unsettles Adolfo, who would previously have outranked Tony, and leads to an attempt to re-​establish his control over the funeral procession by asserting himself in an ill-​mannered way over the music on the car radio. We 182

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Director as Social Critic also see a small private restaurant (in Cuban terminology, a paladar) before they were actually legal. In Barrio Cuba, an extended family, some of whom hail from Oriente (the Eastern part of the island), supplement what would have been a modest meal of rice, beans, and a few boiled potatoes with a ham diverted from a worker cafeteria. Pilfering is a way of life, it seems, though the matriarch of the family, Tia Amparo, played by Adela Legrá of Lucia, warns that those who provided the ham are going to expect significant recompense, such as permission to walk off with a bag of cement or a tool from the construction site on which the men are working. The family live in overcrowded, dilapidated conditions, rather different from those enjoyed by Vivian and Chino, and Amparo, reclaiming the pejorative term ‘Palestino’, given by habaneros to the orientales who live (frequently without government sanction) in Havana, touches upon a prejudice rarely mentioned in academic literature on post-​Soviet Cuba. In 1997, Decree-Law 217 prohibited Cubans from other provinces from taking up residence permanently in the capital without government authorisation, yet the poverty of the East, and the relative economic opportunities of Havana continued (and continue) to fuel internal migration (the restrictions were relaxed in October 2011 for close relatives of Havana householders). Both Guantanamera and Barrio Cuba note the diminishing return on education in the Special Period. In Guantanamera, although lorry driver Mariano, is not actually an engineer, as he pretends to Gina, since he failed to complete his studies, it is entirely plausible that he is making more money from transporting goods to Havana and ferrying desperate Cubans left marooned by the lack of public transport than he would do as a professional. Between 1990 and 1998, the enrolment of Cubans in higher education fell by 58 per cent as young people responded to the incentives in the post-​Soviet period.46 In Barrio Cuba, where the ‘inverted pyramid’ is referred to directly (‘here in Havana engineers have to work in hotels making tips from tourists’), it is an indication of María and Santo’s unworldliness that, in the case of María, she is determined to find work to suit her training as a laboratory technician, and, in the case of Santo, that he continues to study for his degree while in a full-​time post on the railway. We see in this film that other women who followed pre-​Special Period exhortations and studied, like Magalis, 183

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The Cinema of Cuba cannot obtain a decent standard of living on state salaries. With Vivian and Chino, her wages as a pharmacist are unlikely to match his unspecified but remunerative engineering post, a status advertised by the vehicle he drives, or the money her sister sends from the United States. As her mother bluntly puts it, after a conversation in which she laments the absence of her grandchildren, but reproaches Vivian for not writing to her sister Irma, ‘this minced beef that we eat today we owe to her.’ Barrio Cuba is explicit about the relationship of the three families to the state in terms of their food supplies: Magalis and her father rely upon the ration book, Amparo’s extended family, some members of whom may not be entitled to a ration in Havana, use the black market, and Vivian’s family have access to hard currency shops. An official discourse, therefore, that continued to laud Cuba for the high percentage of women among professionals and intermediate level technicians (66.1 per cent in the late 1990s, according to Raisa Pagés, then a staff writer for the Cuban newspaper Granma International), missed the point.47 These posts no longer represented what they once did. In fact, some studies suggest that ‘emerging sources of social status and income generation since the 1990s rely upon gendered notions of womanhood that do not include, and may be hindered by, involvement in waged labour.’48 One obviously gendered response to the economic crisis was sex/​ romance tourism, a key theme in Barrio Cuba. The jinetera phenomenon (jinetera/​o being the Cuban term used for a woman, or less commonly a man, who pursues for interest relationships with foreigners that frequently include sex), had been touched upon briefly by Solás in his previous film, Miel para Ochún (2002). Here the central female character, Pilar, an artist and art restorer, describes as an illusion the rescue that Marta, her younger female neighbour, hopes to gain through a foreign marriage. Although Pilar is friendly and not judgemental, the portrayal of Marta is simplistic and not particularly sympathetic. Solás’s treatment of the theme in Barrio Cuba is much more complex. The resurgence of sex tourism in the context of Special Period scarcity and a reorientation towards the tourist market attracted a great deal of media and academic attention.49 The phenomenon jarred with the heavy emphasis the revolutionary government had put on ending vice and rehabilitating prostitutes and it was a preferred target of foreign critics. In October 2003, for example, President Bush justified a 184

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Director as Social Critic crackdown on Cuba travel on the basis of sex tourism.50 The following year, Bush told a Tampa audience that a recent Johns Hopkins study had found that Cuba had ‘quote “replaced Southeast Asia as a destination for pedophiles and sex tourists,” ’ while Castro had even boasted that ‘Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.’51 In fact, the Johns Hopkins report had simply noted that ‘according to general news accounts’, Cuba was ‘one of many countries’ that had replaced Southeast Asia, and the ‘quotation’ had come from an undergraduate research paper (the paper’s author subsequently explained that his paraphrase of Castro’s 1992 remarks did not support Bush’s allegation, since the Cuban leader had been accentuating the Revolution’s achievements ‘by saying “even our prostitutes are educated” ’).52 Nonetheless, some marketing of Cuba as a tourist destination, including a notorious 1991 Playboy magazine article, did use sexual imagery.53 Yet the official Cuban view on women who pursued sexual relationships with foreigners was extremely negative. In her field research, Megan Daigle encountered what she viewed as a perplexing discourse in the press and from officials of organisations such as the National Centre for Sex Education and the Federation of Cuban Women in which ‘themes of anti-​materialism, moral fortitude, active subjecthood, anti-​discrimination, and emotional well-being were woven through the core narrative of a few benighted women, having lost their way and been rejected by their families and colleagues.’54 Rosa Miriam Elizalde, for instance, a prominent journalist who has written extensively on jineteras in the Cuban print media, has described these young women as pursuing frivolous materialism, and losing their own capacity for love.55 According to Raisa Pagés, the Granma International staff writer cited earlier, ‘Experts in this area agree that behind the return of prostitution in Cuba is the search for easy earnings by young people avoiding work and social and family responsibilities.’56 Barrio Cuba, in contrast, suggests that far from evading family responsibilities, some women turned to sex with foreigners in order to meet them, the ultimate aspiration being to marry a foreigner and maintain the Cuban family from abroad. In only one of the scenes dealing with the phenomenon of sex tourism is the Cuban engaged in it, Magalis’s boyfriend, a mulatto on the make, who we see romancing an older European woman tourist 185

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The Cinema of Cuba in an open-​air bar, portrayed negatively. In contrast, Solás treats Lissette, ‘el bombón de Mayarí’, who meets her old classmate Santo in a bar and speaks of having fallen ill while turning tricks in Havana, with the utmost humanity. In a later scene, Magalis’s dark-​skinned female friend, who has married an Italian and is back in Cuba for a visit, explains that happiness for her is, ‘knowing that Reynaldito [her small son] can have everything he wants, that Mum and Dad can live comfortably, and that all the members of my family –​and there are lots –​have clothes and shoes as God intended.’ Although the friend insists that it was not a question of luck that she bagged a foreigner, since it involved extensive practice of the syncretic Afro-​Cuban religion Santeria, culminating in becoming a priestess, we do not see Magalis kissing numerous frogs to find her prince. Instead, she is presented with an unlooked-​for opportunity, and a simple choice: Will she meet the Italian man who picked her out from all the other girls in the university graduation photograph as the one that fitted his requirements? Magalis has scruples, but her friend clearly believes that she is doing her an enormous favour by arranging the date. The dinner with the elderly suitor is excruciating for the viewer: Magalis appears ill at ease, plagued by moral qualms or simply physical revulsion. However her decision to marry him and leave Cuba, is, like that of her friend, construed as a duty to her family, and even brings as one consequence the reconciliation of her father and his gay son. Emigration is at the heart of both Barrio Cuba and Fresa y chocolate and a subsidiary theme in Guantanamera. In contrast to earlier Cuban films, such as Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, Gutiérrez Alea, 1968), which coldly depicts the middle-​classes abandoning a Cuba which is no longer able to satisfy their material desires, these Special Period films treat the decision to leave sympathetically. In Fresa y chocolate, Diego feels forced to leave because he has stood up for the freedom of artistic expression and will be excluded from work in culture. According to Sujatha Fernandes, this is a representation of exile that changed the perceptions of at least one of the members of her Cuban discussion groups, a true believer in the Revolution who reluctantly acknowledged that it was possible for an émigré to remain committed to the nation.57 In Guantanamera, we hear that Adolfo and Gina’s daughter Niurka has chosen to leave for 186

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Director as Social Critic Miami not so much because her ideas did not fit with the Revolution but because, owing to the dogmatism and dominance of her deeply unpleasant father, she had been forced to explore these ideas secretly. It is not too much of a stretch to read this case as a microcosm of generational discontent in the early Special Period, as the young felt frustrated with their parents’ and grandparents’ insistence on maintaining as much as possible of the status quo, the theme of contemporaneous Cuban songs such as Abuelo Paco, by Pedro Luis Ferrer, and Guillermo Tell, by Carlos Varela. The émigrés of Barrio Cuba, on the other hand, are not depicted as politically disaffected or disconnected to their families. They are ‘seeking happiness’, as Vivian’s mother puts it, or, above all, a way to support their families. The efficacy of emigration as a family survival strategy during this period is demonstrated by Sarah Blue’s 2000 survey of 334 Havana households, which found that 51 per cent identified relatives or close friends abroad, 34 per cent received cash remittances, and ‘remittance income more than doubled the average household earnings’ for these households.58 The film reveals some ambivalence toward émigrés, however, and Solás’s greatest sympathy is reserved for those who are left behind, such as Chino’s father, who blames himself for inspiring his son Abelardo’s departure by his unguarded criticism of the government within his own home. For Vivian and Chino, the emigration of siblings with children not only leaves them bereft, but turns their private grief over her inability to carry a pregnancy to term into a tragedy for the wider family. The treatment of emigration in Barrio Cuba did not, unlike the representations of responses to economic crisis and sex tourism, contrast dramatically with official discourse. By the early 1990s, the Cuban government was building bridges to at least some of the ‘nation abroad’. It had come to the conclusion that contact between émigrés and their Cuban families would benefit Cuba. The level of remittances sent back to Cuba by family members abroad during this period is much disputed, but remittances not only met the economic needs of individuals but also made up a high proportion of the receipts in hard currency shops.59 Financial support from foreign tourists to Cubans ended up in the tills of such shops as well, leading to the argument, made by 28-​year-old Yusleidis in conversation with a foreign researcher, that Cuban women were pushed into jineterismo by 187

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The Cinema of Cuba the state.60 Simultaneously, remittances exacerbated inequality, as Castro acknowledged in March 1995.61 The differential access to remittances was one of several ways in which blacks and mixed race Cubans lost out after 1990.62 Still, in May 2004, when Bush moved to precipitate ‘transition’ in Cuba, by, among other measures, limiting visits by Cuban Americans to one fortnight every three years and restricting such visits, and cash and in-​kind remittances, only to close family members (no aunts or uncles, nieces or nephews, cousins, great-​grandparents or great-​grandchildren), the Cuban government cried shame. Ricardo Alarcón, then the president of the National Assembly, described it as a ‘stupid punishment’ of recent émigrés, demonstrating the contempt felt for them by the Bush administration, an argument given some support by the rhetoric used by Bush appointees such as Daniel Fisk.63 The Cuban magazine Bohemia ran an in-​ depth article condemning this ‘attack on the sacred family.’64 The lament of Chino’s father in Barrio Cuba after Abelardo, Nilda and the twins leave for the United States (‘we’ll have to wait at least five years to see them again. The kids will be like ten years old, and won’t remember me’) reflects not only the sorrow of the recent parting but the particular hardship of Cuban families separated by US government fiat. The final theme for discussion is tolerance. Much has been written about Fresa y chocolate and attitudes towards homosexuality, but Gutiérrez Alea maintained that the film, a smash hit in Cuba, was really about the wider value of tolerance, opening a dialogue ‘with people who, in one way or another, have to do with this situation, who are responsible for this situation, the intolerance, the ostracisation of the person who is different, the non-​acceptance of the person who thinks with his head’ (a line borrowed from Diego’s self-​characterisation in the film).65 Fresa y chocolate is actually much more explicit in its sympathetic depiction of dissident political beliefs, stigmatised religious practices and unconventional livelihoods than in its depiction of Diego’s sexual leanings. Nonetheless, what Fresa y chocolate envisaged, as Johannes Birringer puts it, was ‘a future in which sexual difference or intellectual dissidence can be openly acknowledged and appreciated in the culture.’66 While Cuba in the early 1990s was opening up in terms of the treatment of homosexuals, and has made further progress since then, there was still only limited room for intellectual, not 188

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Director as Social Critic to mention political, dissidence. Tolerance is also a key value in Barrio Cuba, which depicts homophobia at a family and a societal level. Willie, Magalis’s brother, suffers the rejection of his father, who says that he would prefer him to be a criminal or a counter-​revolutionary, and the scorn of Magalis’s boyfriend. A range of religious beliefs, from Vivian’s vow to the virgin to the practice of Santeria by the woman who brings Santo back to life in the sierra, are portrayed positively as well, though Afro-​Cuban religion is more central to the story that was cut from the film. The political content of Barrio Cuba is much more opaque, however. Political matters are hardly mentioned throughout the film, and Solás fended off questions from interviewers about how he saw the problems of contemporary Cuba. As he put it, ‘I am not a political analyst. I have made a testament, a reflection in which I underline, on an intuitive level, unity and family solidarity as a palliative.’67 If Fresa y chocolate asks ‘who is responsible for the mistakes?’ Barrio Cuba seems to ask, but not to answer, the question, ‘who is responsible for the poverty?’ Guantanamera replies simply. It is those who will not get out of the way for a new generation, those who do not recognise the need for reform. In the retelling of the Yoruba creation myth in Guantanamera, the juxtaposition of images and voiceover narrative makes a hardly veiled attack on a Cuban gerontocracy in what is also a dying director’s reflection upon his own mortality. The world has been created, but it is not perfect, since Olofin had omitted to create death: The Earth filled up with people who were thousands of years old. And who still ruled according to their ancient laws. The young people clamoured such that one day their cries reached the ears of Olofin. Olofin saw that the world was not as good as he had planned. He felt that he also was too old and tired to begin again what had turned out so badly. So Olofin called Ikú to take care of the matter. And Ikú saw that it was time to put an end to the era in which people did not die. So Ikú caused it to rain upon the earth for thirty days and thirty nights without end. And all was covered with water. Only the children and the young were able to climb the giant trees and climb the highest mountains. The whole earth became a huge river with no banks. The young people then saw that the Earth was cleaner and more beautiful, and ran to give thanks to Ikú, for putting an end to immortality.

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The Cinema of Cuba The message of this lyrical passage is so evident that it provides support to Joan del Alcázar Garrido and Sergio López Rivero’s otherwise tendentious reading of all Gutiérrez Alea’s post-​1980 films. Their characterisation of the director, ‘from comrade to counter-​revolutionary’, was one that Gutiérrez Alea himself always rejected, claiming the right to criticise constructively from within.

Notes 1. Michael Chanan, ‘We are losing all our values:  an interview with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’, in Boundary 2 29/​3 (2002), pp. 47–​53 (51). 2. Chanan, ‘We are losing all our values’, p. 52. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Michael T Martin and Bruce Paddington, ‘Restoration or Innovation?:  An Interview with Humberto Solás: Post-​Revolutionary Cuban Cinema’, in Film Quarterly 54/​3 (2001), pp. 2–​13 (9). 6. Martin A. Jackson, ‘Film as a source material: some preliminary notes toward a methodology’, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4:1 (1973), pp. 73–​80 (79). 7. Nicholas Pronay, ‘The “Moving Picture” and Historical Research’, in Journal of Contemporary History 18:3 (1983), pp. 365–​395 (367–​8). 8. Julianne Burton, ‘Film and Revolution in Cuba: The First Twenty-​Five Years’, in Michael T. Martin (ed.), New Latin American Cinema: Volume II: Studies of National Cinemas (Detroit, 1997), p. 126. 9. Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minneapolis and London, 2004), pp. 32–​3. 10. Ibid., pp. 356–​9, 382, and tables on pp. 357, 359, 412. 11. Julianne Burton, ‘The Camera as “Gun”: Two Decades of Culture and Resistance in Latin America’, in Latin American Perspectives 5/​1 (1978), pp. 49–​76 (71). 12. An English translation of the 30 June 1961 speech is available at the Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Centre, at http://​ lanic.utexas.edu/​project/​castro/​db/​1961/​19610630.html (May 2016). 13. Chanan, Cuban Cinema, p. 398. 14. James Roy MacBean, and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, ‘A Dialogue with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea on the Dialectics of the Spectator in Hasta cierto punto’, in Film Quarterly 38/​3 (1985), pp. 22–​9 (26–​7). 15. Chanan ‘We are losing all our values’, p. 50. 16. Chanan, Cuban Cinema, p. 459. 17. Chanan, Cuban Cinema, p. 457; Laura Redruello, ‘Algunos reflexiones en torno a la película Alicia en el Pueblo de Maravillas’, in Cuban Studies 38 (2007), pp. 82–​99.

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Director as Social Critic 18. Diana Soles, ‘The Cuban Film Industry: Between a Rock and a Hard Place’, in Eloise Linger and John Cotman (eds), Cuban Transitions at the Millennium (Largo, Maryland, 2000), pp. 125–​6. 19. Soles, ‘The Cuban film industry’, p. 131. 20. Ibid., p. 127. 21. Martin and Paddington, ‘Restoration or Innovation?’, pp. 9–​10. 22. Cristina Venegas, ‘Filmmaking with Foreigners’, in Ariana Hernandez-​Reguant (ed.), Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s (New York, 2009), pp. 42–​4. 23. Karen Shaw, ‘ “We are making films in spite of everything” –​An interview with director Humberto Solás’, in CUBA Update (January/​February 1996), pp. 26, 28, 34 (28). 24. Joel Del Río, ‘Barrio Cuba: con la indiscutible fidelidad de los retratos’, in La Ventana: Portal informativo de la Casa de las Americas, April 3, 2006, at www. laventana.casa.cult.cu/​noticias/​2006/​04/​03/​barrio-​cuba-​con-​la-​indiscutible-​ fidelidad-​de-​los-​retratos/​ (27 May 2016). 25. Del Río, Barrio Cuba: con la indiscutible fidelidad de los retratos’. 26. Michael Chanan, ‘Remembering Titón’, at www.mchanan.com/​wp-​content/​ uploads/​2013/​12/​remembering-​titon.pdf (27 May 2016). 27. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea to Walter Achugar, 2 April 1994, in Tomás Gutiérrez-​ Alea, Volver sobre mis pasos (Madrid, 2007), pp. 355–​6. 28. Julie Mazzei, ‘Negotiating domestic socialism with global capitalism: So-​called tourist apartheid in Cuba’, in Communist and Post-​Communist Studies 45 (2012), pp. 91–​103 (101). 29. Elisa Facio, Maura Toro-​Morn and Anne R. Roschelle, ‘Tourism, Gender, and Globalization: Tourism in Cuba During the Special Period’, in Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 14 (2004–​2005), pp. 119–​142 (141). 30. The 14-​minute film, Adela (2005) starring Aurora Basnuevo, can be viewed at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=WS0qARqLHzE (17 May 2016). 31. Mirtha Ibarra, ‘Su vida en mi memoria’, in Gutiérrez-​Alea, Volver sobre mis pasos, pp. 390–​91. 32. Chanan, Cuban Cinema, pp. 1–​2. 33. William LeoGrande, and Julie M.  Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest for Economic Independence’, in Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (2000), pp.  325–​63 (329–​30). 34. Andrew Zimbalist, ‘Hanging on in Havana’, in Foreign Policy 92 (1993), pp. 151–​67 (153). 35. Outside observers have published many critical accounts of the reform process, for example in the annual proceedings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Cuba in Transition, which now runs to 25 volumes.

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The Cinema of Cuba The complete set is available at www.ascecuba.org/​publications/​annual-​ proceedings/​(12 May 2016). 36. An English translation of the 26 July 1993 speech is available at the Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Centre, at www.lanic. utexas.edu/​project/​castro/​db/​1993/​19930727.html (27 May 2016). 37. LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, pp. 343–​4, 353. 38. Andrew Zimbalist, ‘Whither the Cuban Economy?’ in S.  K. Purcel and D.  Rothkopf (eds), Cuba:  The Contours of Change (Boulder, 2000), p.  2; LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, pp. 351–​2. 39. LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, pp. 353–​4. 40. Ruth Pearson, ‘Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain:  Gender Analysis of Economic Transition in Cuba in the 1990s’, in Development and Change 28 (1997), pp. 671–​705, pp. 683–​5. 41. LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, p. 329. 42. Jessica F.  Gibbs, US Policy Towards Cuba:  Since the Cold War (Abingdon, 2011), pp. 73–​92. 43. Sarah Blue, ‘The Erosion of Racial Equality in the context of Cuba’s Dual Economy’, in Latin American Politics and Society 49/​3 (2007), pp. 35–​68 (46–​9). 44. LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, p.353; Mayra Espina Prieto, ‘La política cubana para el manejo de la desigualdad’, in Cuban Studies 41 (2010), pp. 20–​38. 45. Jorge Pérez-​López, ‘The Cuban Economy in an Unending Special Period’, in Cuba in Transition 12 (2002), pp. 507–​21 (515). 46. LeoGrande and Thomas, ‘Cuba’s Quest’, p. 359. 47. Raisa Pagés, ‘The status of Cuban women:  from economically dependent to independent’, in Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M.  Kirk, and William M.  LeoGrande (eds), A Contemporary Cuba Reader (Lanham, Maryland, 2008), pp. 311–​15 (312). 48. Anna Cristina Pertierra, ‘En Casa: Women and Households in Post-​Soviet Cuba’, in Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (2008), pp. 743–​67 (759). See also Pearson, ‘Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain’. 49. See for example Coco Fusco, ‘Hustling for Dollars: Jineteras in Cuba’ (1996) reprinted in Coco Fusco, The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (New York and London, 2002); Amalia L. Cabezas, Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Philadelphia, 2009); Noelle Stout, ‘Feminists, Queers and Critics: Debating the Cuban Sex Trade’, in Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (2008), pp. 721–​742; Cynthia Pope, ‘The Political Economy of Desire: Geographies of Female Sex Work in Havana’, in Journal of International Women’s Studies 6/​2 (2005), pp. 99–​118; Nadine T. Fernandez, ‘Back to the Future? Women, Race and Tourism in Cuba’, in

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Director as Social Critic Kamala Kempadoo (ed.), Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean (Lanham, 1999). 50. George W. Bush, ‘Remarks on Cuba’, October 10, 2003, at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, at www.presidency.ucsb. edu/​ws/​index.php?pid=63529&st=&st1= (12 April 2016). 51. George W.  Bush, ‘Remarks at the National Training Conference on Human Trafficking in Tampa, Florida, July 16 2004, at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, at http://​www.presidency.ucsb. edu/​ws/​index.php?pid=72696&st=&st1= (12 April 2016). 52. Maura Reynolds, ‘Bush Took Quote Out of Context, Researcher Says’, in Los Angeles Times, 20 July, 2004, A15. 53. Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (New York, 1996), p. 186. 54. Megan Daigle, ‘Sexuality, the Discourse of Prostitution and Governance of Bodies in Post-​Soviet Cuba’. PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2011, p. 131. 55. Rosa Miriam Elizalde, cited in Daigle: ‘Sexuality, the Discourse of Prostitution and Governance of Bodies in Post-​Soviet Cuba’, p. 133. 56. Pagés, ‘The Status of Cuban Women’, p. 314. 57. Sujatha Fernandes, ‘Recasting Ideology, Recreating Hegemony: Critical Debates about Film in Contemporary Cuba’, in Ethnography 7 (2006), pp. 303–​ 27 (315). 58. Sarah A.  Blue, ‘State Policy, Economic Crisis, Gender, and Family Ties: Determinants of Family Remittances to Cuba’, in Economic Geography 80:1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 63–​82. 59. For a discussion of the estimates, see Jorge Pérez-​López and Sergio Díaz-​ Briquets, ‘Remittances to Cuba: A Survey of Methods and Estimates’, in Cuba in Transition 15 (2005), pp. 396–​409. 60. Mette Louise Berg, ‘Sleeping with the Enemy: Jineterismo, ‘Cultural Level’, and ‘Antisocial Behaviour’ in 1990s Cuba’, in Sandra Courtman (ed.), Beyond the Blood, the Beach and the Banana (Jamaica, 2004), p. 198. Similar arguments about the reliance of the Cuban economy on sexual labour were voiced by the young women interviewed for a study on HIV vulnerability at the turn of the century. See Pope, ‘The Political Economy of Desire’, p. 111. 61. An English translation of the 3 March 1995 speech by Fidel Castro to the Women’s Congress is available at the Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Centre, at www.lanic.utexas.edu/​project/​castro/​db/​ 1995/​19950304.html (12 May 2016). 62. Blue, ‘The Erosion of Racial Equality’, pp. 62–​4. 63. Ricardo Alarcón, ‘Sádicas sin riendas ni freno’, in Bohemia Año 96/​No. 11. May 28, 2004, pp. 37–​40. Daniel W. Fisk, ‘Advancing the Day When Cuba Will

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The Cinema of Cuba Be Free’, in Philip Brenner, Philip, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk, and William M. LeoGrande (eds), A Contemporary Cuba Reader (Lanham, Maryland, 2008), pp. 229–​34 (231). 64. Edith Dixie, ‘Atentado a la sagrada familia’, in Bohemia Año 97/​No. 22, October 28, 2005, pp. 32–​4. 65. Chanan, ‘We are losing all our values’, p. 49. 66. Johannes Birringer, Jorge Perugorría and Gabriela M.  Cambiasso, ‘Homosexuality and the Nation: An Interview with Jorge Perugorría’, in TDR (1988-​) 40/​1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 61–​76 (62). 67. Humberto Solás, ‘Quizás se aprenda más en el sufrimiento que en el regocijo’, Interview with ABC 24 November 2005, at www.abcguionistas.com/​noticias/​ entrevistas/​humberto-​solas-​quizas-​se-​aprenda-​mas-​en-​el-​sufrimiento-​que-​ en-​el-​regocijo.html (12 March 2015).

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9 Within, Against, Inside, Out: Ian Padrón, Fuera de liga, Habanastation and Music Video RYAN PROUT

The focus of my contribution is dual and looks on the one hand at the work of Ian Padrón (fig. 9.1), a Cuban filmmaker (born in Havana in 1976), and, on the other, at the audiovisual representation of Cuban pop duo Buena Fe (Israel Rojas and Yoel Martínez). Buena Fe have provided music for Padrón’s best known films and he, in turn, has directed music videos for a number of Buena Fe’s records made over the last ten years. Sound and visuals come together as a common and collaborative oeuvre when we look at these artists alongside each other. Furthermore, and as I will go on to argue, Padrón’s work and that of Buena Fe share what I would call a register of obliquity. By this, I do not intend to say that Padrón sets out to make deliberately obscure and confusing films, or that Israel Rojas aims to write impenetrable lyrics. What I mean is that Padrón’s films and Buena Fe’s music overlap in an indirect form of address that produces an oblique discourse in its effort to say the unsayable and to depict the unrepresentable. Their work has tried to be inside the parameters of the Revolution and at the same time to express feelings of frustration and impatience with it. In that sense, they are both inside and outside a certain established frame of 195

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The Cinema of Cuba reference. I want to explore this in a way that answers the remit of an inside out Cuban cinema and visual culture. Fidel Castro’s memorable, and much quoted, edict regarding cultural labour and the Revolution established parameters that were at once apparently very flexible but which, within a munificence of opportunity, also created a designated no-​go area: ‘Within the Revolution everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing.’1 The injunction looks clear. And yet, where the boundaries of that no-​go area are actually to be found is, arguably, something that Cuban artists and creatives have only been able to discover through trial and error. Obliqueness has been another strategy: you point towards where you think the no-​go area might be without actually stepping foot there. Inside (‘within’) and outside (‘against’) are mandated but the boundary lines are not clearly marked. I would argue that Padrón’s films and Buena Fe’s music exemplify the post-​ revolutionary aesthetic of obliquity that has resulted from attempting to be creatively productive in the limbo land of shifting and poorly defined, yet strictly policed, frontiers of acceptability. Injunctions that are hinted at and implied produce, in turn, explorations of, and queries about, this forbidden space that are equally vague, forked, and imprecise. I do not think anyone would dispute the contention that since 1959 approaches to the Revolution on and off the island have been polarised and binary. In the United States, among the exile community an insufficiently critical attitude towards Castro and his continuing legacy has been attacked as reckless dialogue; and, in Cuba, enthusiasm for anything that emanates from the United States has not been advisable for anyone wishing to pursue a career in the arts or in journalism. Sometimes the same person can even fall foul of both sets of rules. In his foreword to Cuba on My Mind: Journeys to a Severed Nation, for example, Juan Flores describes how the book’s author, Ramón de la Campa, was ‘damned by both houses, branded a dialoguero in Miami and […] a disidente in Havana.’2 In that sense, Padrón, to some extent, and Buena Fe to a greater extent, have achieved something quite unusual. The oblique aesthetic has enabled them to traverse the political divide: Buena Fe receive as enthusiastic a welcome from their fans in Miami as they do when they perform in Cuba. While voicing a sentiment of frustration with the maturity of the Revolution, their work seems also to have found an appeal that crosses the Florida straits. 196

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Within, Against, Inside, Out Ideas, songs, and films, can sit above the peculiarly Cuban geography of divorce, recrimination, and attraction:  the individuals themselves can be in only one place at a time. The impossibility of inhabiting an oblique space became manifest in early 2015 when Ian Padrón announced that, after many years of working within the Revolution, he had decided to stay in the United States. Some of the hostile reactions generated by this news led Padrón to write an open letter to his critics: its extramural obliquity suggests that even outside Cuba, those who wish to remain on good terms with the Revolution –​to be at least spiritually inside the insular fold –​must continue to speak in contradictions and that, for the time being, there is no absolute outsideness.3 I will come back to Padrón’s open letter in conclusion. Before that I want to look more closely at some of the texts; firstly, Padrón’s documentary Fuera de liga (Dreaming in Blue, 2003) and his feature Habanastation (2011), and then at the lyrics and music videos for several of Buena Fe’s best known and most obliquely critical songs.

Fuera de liga (Dreaming in Blue): What’s the Score? If the title of Padrón’s baseball documentary already speaks of an outside and an inside –​of a divided Cuban whole rendered as a league, with its missing members –​something that ought to be as simple as attaching a date to Fuera de liga also speaks of obliquity. The film was finished by 2003 and this is the date recorded in the closing credits. It was not shown in Cuba, however, until 2008. In an interview with María Elvira Salazar, Padrón attributed the hiatus to censorship.4 The way in which he describes this censorship as having functioned to keep the film under wraps illustrates that it is not only the cultural expressions made in Castro’s ‘Everything within /​Nothing against’ framework that resort to indirectness, but also the very process itself by which someone comes to inhabit an ultimately unascertainable heterodoxical posture. No one came out and said that Fuera de liga was banned, Padrón tells Salazar. Instead, there were vague intimations that the time was not right for its release. In the same interview, Padrón expresses incredulity that a well-​intentioned effort to make a film stemming from his love of Cuban baseball should have set him against the arbiters of the acceptable and the heterodox in Cuba. 197

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The Cinema of Cuba Perhaps there is an element of disingenuousness here. To go into the history of baseball players in Cuba since 1959 is inevitably to trespass in that vaguely defined borderland between the revolutionary everything and the counter-​revolutionary nothing, if for no other reason than that there are perhaps few other subjects that so starkly reveal the rift that occurred in the wake of the triunfo. Prior to the Revolution, baseball teams in the United States and Cuba had exchanged players, with some working a winter season in one country and the summer season in the other. This changed abruptly after Batista’s ouster. Sports of all kinds were de-​professionalised in the new Cuba with an emphasis on athleticism and teamwork rather than on a competitive marketplace. We see this incidentally in Fuera de liga. Where stadiums in other countries would be emblazoned with advertising, the perimeters of venues in Cuba carry instead slogans extolling the virtuous qualities of team sports. The action of Fuera de liga begins in Santiago de Cuba, where the members of Havana’s Industriales team are looking for a place to train. A bureaucratic bungle means the facility they were expecting to be able to use is unavailable. The site where they end up is one that looks scruffy and run down. The site is shared with grazing animals. Whereas sports stars in the USA and the UK throw money at fast cars and showy bling, when we see a Cuban player (Lázaro Vargas) behind the wheel in Fuera de liga, he is driving a very battered Lada. On the tour bus, a player is reading a serious-​looking book about Osama Bin Laden, something that would be hard to imagine in a road movie based on the exploits of a sports team in the non-​socialist world. This embedded approach to the routine of the Industriales team is interspersed with several other narrative strands. There are cutaways to pieces to camera by the writer Leonardo Padura, and interviews and vox pops with ad hoc crowds of supporters. Threaded through the film are personal reflections from some of the most high profile players who left Cuba to play for the Major League in the United States, including René Arocha (the pioneer of Cuban baseball defection to the United States), and Orlando ‘El Duque’ Hernández, whose career straddled Industriales and the New York Yankees. Put together, these pieces tell an almost impossible transversal story of movement between Cuba and the USA. The human 198

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Within, Against, Inside, Out narratives behind these Cuban American baseball careers only emphasise the underlying breach between the island and the USA, however, and Fuera de liga obviously nudges sufficiently into this no-​go area to have pressed the unmarked censorship buttons. Simply acknowledging the names of players who left Cuba’s amateur league to make their fortunes in the big business of American baseball can be to court controversy on the island. Matthew Frankel writes that: After the requisite denunciations of the defectors  –​who are labelled traidores al béisbol, or ‘baseball traitors’ –​the government acts as if the departed players no longer exist […] In official record books, baseball defectors have asterisks by their name; the explanation reads, abandonó el país, or ‘left the country.’5

Fuera de liga does not denominate the likes of Arocha and Hernández as traitors or defectors, though it includes vox pops with a number of members of the public in Havana who, in general terms, deplore exit from the country for financial gain. However, neither does it present them as runaway success stories. Both Arocha and Hernández in their pieces to camera talk about a wish for reconciliation. Hernández still sees himself as an Industrialista and says ‘Yo estoy lejos y yo estoy cerca,’ [I am at a distance and I am also close] a remark that neatly encapsulates the logic of obliquity within which Padrón’s film operates. Arocha says that if there is no communication between him and his former teammates in Cuba, this is not because of rancour but simply because there is no channel open for such dialogue. Hernández says that while his material circumstances in Cuba may have been relatively modest, he was rich in happiness (at least before he was shunned and marginalised after his half-​brother left Cuba to play in the USA). There is no triumphalism of exile in the film. The footage of the baseball defectors is tightly framed and reveals very little about their surroundings or their personal circumstances, though the film does make a point of showing the proliferation of baseball merchandise available in the USA. Padrón tries to do in film montage what remains impossible in reality, in other words, to knit back together the divergent strands of Cuban experience. This is the most damning conclusion that could be reached from a dogged determination 199

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Fig. 9.1  Ian Padrón

to find some sort of political purpose to his inclusion in the same narrative of Cuba’s then current Industriales team and of interviews with baseball players in exile. He referred directly to a politics of reunification in the speech he made following the premiere of Habanastation in Miami. There, he stated it was time to stop talking about a division of Cubas and to see Cuba as one again.6 Using a sport that encourages tribalism and practices of parochial fan support may seem, on the other hand, like an odd choice for a narrative about the need for reconciliation. In the context of the interviews with Leonardo Padura and with the man on the Cuban street, however, the question of team identity assumes another level of meaning. Roughly half way through the film Padura says: En Cuba, a pesar de que la pelota es nuestro deporte nacional, nuestra pasión, una parte importante de nuestra cultura, y nuestra identidad, ser fanático de los equipos es algo muy, muy difícil.

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Within, Against, Inside, Out [In Cuba, in spite of the fact that baseball is our national sport, a passion, and an important part of our identity and our culture, supporting a team is a very difficult thing to do.]

It would be quite easy, if we wanted to read the film as one with a subtext about political partisanship, to see the difficulty of expressing support for one team over another as a rhetorical substitution device for the lack of political pluralism in Cuba. This reading would be reinforced by an affecting scene where a group of men on the street in Havana is having an animated discussion about all things baseball. When the unseen interlocutor’s questions move to the subject of players who have defected, and to ruptures around baseball, a previously voluble member of the group clams up. He withdraws physically and rhetorically from the discussion, deliberately turning his attention back to a magazine and recommends that the interviewer direct questions of that kind to those who are in a capacity to answer them. Obliquity takes time and preparation to formulate: put on the spot by potentially compromising questions, for the man in the street the solution is, obviously, to keep one’s counsel. The possible substitution of stymied team support for stymied political expression, however, is undercut somewhat by the attention in Fuera de liga to more mundane, immediate, and material obstacles to being a fanático. As the film illustrates, the raft of consumer goods, from baseball caps to printed T-​shirts and embroidered team stripes, that identify a supporter’s tribalism, simply do not exist in Cuba (at least, not at the time the film was made). Baseball enthusiasts plead in the course of the film for the authorities to do something to fill this lack. And players describe how articles of clothing with the team stripe function as a valuable alternative currency for them. To the silence of the man in the street could be added the film’s silence on the government’s decision to allow Orlando Hernández’s daughters and his mother to leave Cuba for the United States (in 1998) after lobbying that involved some Catholic mediation.7 Fuera de liga is also reticent about the case of Juan Ignacio Hernández Nodar, the Cuban American self-​styled talent scout who, in 1996, was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in Cuba. He was caught with materials (huge amounts of cash and

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The Cinema of Cuba a visa) that proved he had entered Cuba with the intention of soliciting and facilitating the defection of Orlando Hernández.8 This story –​one that paints a Miami Cuban in a bad light –​was told by the US film Brothers in Exile, made in 2014 by Mario Díaz. Omitting it from Fuera de liga would be consistent with Padrón’s understated politics of reconciliation (not stoking schism or demonising one side at the expense of the other), but not with the revolutionary reflex of taking any opportunity to vilify the United States. Inasmuch as there is a villain at all in Fuera de liga, it is money, and money-​oriented motivations. Leonardo Padura puts the point across succinctly when he says, in the context of baseball defection, ‘No es lo mismo jugar por dinero que venderse por dinero.’ [Selling oneself for money is not the same thing as playing for money.] Padura’s intervention comes shortly after one of the most compelling uses of aural montage in the film. In a scene set in the Latinoamericano stadium, and as a game is in motion, very obviously extra-​diegetic sound effects are layered over the action: what sounds like skittles falling in a bowling alley, a bell ringing as a train rushes through a station, and a thump on a taught calf-​skin drum head, punctuate a runner skidding onto a base. Then, quite abruptly, over a group portrait of the Industriales team we hear the unmistakable sound of an old-​fashioned cash register ringing up a sale. Kerching! The preceding sound effects tell us where the cash is coming from: the USA. And the abrupt intrusion of the cash register sound signals the abrupt and destabilising intrusion of foreign commercial interests on the Cuban amateur league. This is another influence that is fuera de liga. The question of cash inevitably points to the lucrative trade in the human trafficking of baseball stars from Cuba to the USA. Padura’s distinction between playing for money and selling oneself for money seems reasonable enough until one reflects that due to the calamitously bad relationship between the USA and Cuba since 1959, the only way for Cuban baseball stars to play professionally has been to sell themselves. Emigration policy and the blockade have conspired to make it extremely lucrative for scouts to spirit players out of Cuba and to a third country from where they can then enter the American baseball leagues as free agents. Cuban-​American Joe Cubas, the best known of these go-​betweens, prefaces his work ethic 202

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Within, Against, Inside, Out with the opportunity his business activities give him to settle a score with the Castros,9 but it would be disingenuous to believe that personal profit is not also a motivation for organising the movement of players between Cuba and the USA. Orlando Hernández was stranded for four days on a Bahamian desert island en route to the Yankees. When dramas like his –​of permanent exile, family separation, and risky voyages at sea –​infiltrate the baseball narrative, they seem to get Americans’ attention. Long before the current thaw in relations, there were suggestions made in the USA for the passage of legislation that would have improved international relations through baseball diplomacy, sparing Americans an awareness of the stark choices forced upon Cubans by the economic blockade.10 Did the Cubans who buried Padrón’s film for five years miss the film’s critique of the monetisation of sport and of the international collusion around a set of circumstances that promotes big bucks human trafficking? When the film was finally shown in Cuba in 2008, Joel del Río was attentive to the subtleties embedded in the sound mix. In ‘Diez razones para respetar Fuera de liga’ [Ten Reasons to Respect Dreaming in Blue] he wrote: [P]‌ocas veces en el cine cubano documental pudo un sonidista desplayarse a este nivel en los estados de placidez musical, silencio revelador, diálogo perfectamente registrado, audible; bullicio multitudinario en coherente alternancia con el diálogo íntimo, amistoso.11 [Not often in Cuban cinema has a soundman been able to show to such a full extent what he can do, and at this level, with moments of musical harmony, revealing silence, perfectly captured and clear dialogue, and the hum of the crowd alternating coherently with intimate dialogue among friends.]

Del Río’s assessment of Fuera de liga demonstrates that for domestic audiences the meaningfulness of the sound montage in the film was audible. I would add to this that the manipulation of effects and conventions associated with sports television also lends depth to Fuera de liga. Used in isolation, reverse motion sequences and slow motion replays would not tell us much; within Padrón’s layered and structured narrative –​and inside the formal conceit of representing society and international relations 203

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The Cinema of Cuba through a team game –​it is not a stretch to understand slow and reverse motion as a reflection on the maturity of Cuba’s Revolution and of its situation at the turn of the twenty-​first century. Fuera de liga anticipates later films, such as Gabe Polsky’s Red Army (2014), in which Russian and former Soviet ice hockey players reflect on the transit between the former USSR, Canada and the USA, and Russia. What makes Padrón’s film different from Red Army and from Brothers in Exile is that it was being made from the inside looking out, rather than the outside looking in, and not retrospectively. The semantic co-​dependency of sound and vision in Fuera de liga is evidenced further by the fact that Dreaming in Blue, the English version of the film’s title is not a translation of Fuera de liga but of the title of the Industriales anthem recorded for the film soundtrack by Buena Fe. ‘In a league of its own’ would only translate half the sense of Fuera de liga. The substitution strategy in the translation of the title, then, also underscores the logic of obliquity that underpins a discourse that must skirt around the poorly signposted perimeter of the counter-​revolutionary.

Habanastation: A Ludic Parenthesis in the Midst of Everyday Reality? Made eight years after the completion (if not the release) of Fuera de liga, Habanastation moves into the territory of drama and fiction, although, as a caveat that appears in the end credits advises, ‘esta película está basada en hechos reales.’ [this film is based on real events.] The positioning of this proviso at the end of the film, rather than at the beginning, leaves the viewer with a number of questions: which aspects of the film are based in reality? What do the filmmakers want us to take from this film as especially illustrative of reality? Is the underscoring of a documentary aspect like this a way to stress that the film aspires, through fiction, to portray emerging social realities in Cuba? The statement of facticity draws attention to there being something more at stake than dramatic verisimilitude. The documentary element, albeit one subordinated to a scripted story, points to a degree of continuity between Fuera de liga and Habanastation. So too does the fact that both films engage with game-​playing, and thus 204

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Within, Against, Inside, Out with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s description of conventional Hollywood drama films as a ‘Paréntesis lúdico en medio de la realidad cotidiana.’12 [Ludic parenthesis in the midst of day to day realities.] Baseball has moved from the three dimensional sphere of the Latinoamericano stadium in Fuera de liga to the role-​play of the Sony PlayStation standalone video game device. Padrón and co-​scriptwriter Felipe Espinet turn the -​station part of the device’s name into a suffix and apply its associations of simulation and ludicity to the Cuban capital, and to the patterns and rhythms of day-​to-​day life there. As in Fuera de liga, the soundtrack in Habanastation (on which Buena Fe collaborated again) is significant in articulating a counterpoint that allows the sound and the vision to say more together than either could communicate alone. For example, as the film opens, the music we hear belongs to a register very familiar from American films whose narratives unfold among the inhabitants of middle class suburbia. This is keyed visually with the circular sputtering of a water sprinkler. Aurally, the repetition of a cheerful melodic fragment in a major key with a briskly paced rotative rhythm further establishes picket-​fence generic expectations: the quotidian routine of a comfortable family going about its happy, suburban life. And, indeed, this is what we get, at least to start with. An apparently middle-class mother is readying her child for the school run: the only feature that seems out of place is the Cuban accented Spanish, though even this could be made sense of within the genre if this were a suburban drama set in Miami. But there is something not quite right and the soundtrack and the visual content start to veer apart from each other. Moraima, the mother, hands over a wad of cash to her happy handyman when he knocks on the car window, and Mario, her son, in the back seat, dons earpieces in readiness for plugging in to the in-​car video system. The child passenger, however, is wearing a pioneer uniform that would be out of place in the USA, and, when the car joins traffic outside the pseudo-​suburban neighbourhood, there are not only buses and vehicles with Cuban number plates on the road, but also Soviet-​era Ladas. Another scene shows us the family’s kitchen with American-​looking appliances but, when Moraima prepares her son’s school lunch box, among the contents is a can of Cuba’s indigenous TropiCola soda. 205

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The Cinema of Cuba These scenes establish that one of the film’s two child protagonists lives in what looks like a middle-​class home and that there is a kind of disjunction here: why are the soundtrack and the mise-​en-​scène cuing up the conventions of the American suburban drama in a film set in Havana? Some sort of answer becomes clear as the narrative unfolds. Havana may already have neighbourhoods and houses that could pass for American, but education is still a comprehensively based system and as soon as Mario enters his school and rejoins his peer group, the Cuba viewers are more familiar with from the country’s cinema since 1959 comes back into view: posters depicting Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and images celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution. The action of the film unfolds on the first of May and Mario has been chosen to address the school assembly as part of its programme of events to mark this important day in the socialist calendar. From a podium, he reads into a microphone words about the Revolution’s victory and the dawn of a new society. Contradictoriness, or obliquity, again comes into view as a child whose privileged living conditions we have just seen becomes the spokesperson for May Day rhetoric about a society without inequalities or exploitation. The fight that breaks out between some of the boys points to a different reality from the one scripted in Mario’s speech. Carlos, a boy from a much more modest part of the city than Mario, tries to join a conversation where other children are talking about their PlayStations and game swapping. He does not know what a PlayStation is, and, for that, one of the boys calls him a ‘comemierda’ [scum] as a violent altercation erupts. The PlayStation  –​ and knowing what it is and the kind of leisure practices it facilitates –​is among the film’s catalogue of what David Becerra Mayor calls ‘marcas por antonomasia del consumismo capitalista.’13 [the antonomastic markers of consumerist capitalism] In the context of any other national cinema, perhaps we could read this fight scene as evidence of friction between the haves and the have-​nots. In Habanastation, however, it takes on another layer of significance because it implicitly acknowledges that there are again in Cuba haves and have-​nots, in a sufficiently socially embedded manner. Furthermore, that the prejudices and privileges of parents repeat themselves in the actions and discourse of their children. The child who dismisses Carlos as a ‘comemierda’ obviously feels entitled to do so, and 206

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Within, Against, Inside, Out Mario has already absorbed enough consumerist behaviours to have been repeatedly messaging his father –​a jazz musician who enjoys travel privileges (easily able to work abroad, unlike the baseball players in Fuera de liga) –​about bringing him back the latest PlayStation Three. Havana may not have McDonald’s yet, but in this film, Padrón shows it as a place where consumerism has taken root enough for there to be pester-​power exercised upwards from children to their parents. Mario becomes separated from his school’s contingent on the May Day parade and he boards the wrong bus. As he wanders about the streets around Revolution Square, the shots are evocative of scenes from Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968). Like Sergio, Mario is alone in the crowd, walking against the human tide, utterly lost and isolated. The plangent harpsichord music that had voiced Sergio’s melancholy isolation is replaced here by synth pop and arcade game sound effects. When Mario jumps up and down to try and see who is on which of the many buses at the end of the parade, we hear the sorts of toggle sound effects made by a PlayStation to confirm an action or a move. The game is beginning: from the screen simulations of PlayStation, the child is moving into another sort of role play in the environment of Habanastation. Becerra Mayor reads Mario’s estrangement as indicative of his otherness and of his being set apart by the distinction afforded him through his family’s access to the material signifiers of consumerism. In his reading, the child has assumed the place of the bourgeois man in his late thirties represented by Sergio in Memorias del subdesarrollo. In Gutiérrez Alea’s film, Sergio’s alienation is explained by flashbacks to his formative years as a child and as a teenager amidst the mafia-​infested hedonism and prostitution of pre-​ revolutionary Havana. But Mario is a child:  his formative context is an environment shaped by five decades of revolution where bourgeois swimming pools have been turned over to Aquariums of the Revolution14 and the mansions of El Vedado partitioned into flats for the working class. What can explain this precocious proto-​bourgeois malaise? The lost boy stumbles into Zamora, a neighbourhood far more modest than Miramar. Wandering about there, he recognises Carlos. With a heavy canister slung over his small shoulders, Carlos is a picture in miniature of hard physical human labour. This classmate, who had earlier in the day been 207

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The Cinema of Cuba a ‘comemierda’ for being ignorant of Sony’s home arcade game system, now embodies Mario’s salvation. In Carlos’s home we see reflections of Diego’s guarida [attic den] in Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate, 1993), only without the bohemian chic, or the space. These young compañeros do not even eat the same food: Mario prefers surreptitiously to eat his packed lunch in the bathroom than to accept Carlos’s hospitality. This also seems to be the first time Mario has come across a domestic set up where menial tasks, like dish washing, are not carried out by paid servants. In exchange for fixing it for Mario to be collected by his parents –​there are no working payphones in this part of the city, never mind cell phones –​ Carlos asks to connect Mario’s PlayStation to the television. But the device doesn’t work in Zamora –​renamed La Tinta in the film –​and blows a fuse in the overloaded power outlet; a physical manifestation of the irrelevance of the game’s simulated realities in a place where people have more pressing concerns. The local repairman offers to fix the PlayStation for 200 pesos. For Mario this seems insignificant: for Carlos it represents a fortune and their exchange regarding the amount is at the crux of the film’s depiction of two vastly divergent senses of the cost of living in Cuba. For Mario, aspirational means an expensive hi-​tech gadget; for Carlos, a kite made of cardboard and string for him by his imprisoned father is a highly prized gift. The 200 pesos challenge drives scenes that again evoke American suburban cinema, even though the geographical focus has shifted from Miramar to Zamora. Carlos and Mario turn into highly focussed little salespeople, like kids in a Hollywood film, determined to make a fortune from a lemonade stand at the end of their street. Pumping flat bicycle tyres for cash, and cleaning empty glass bottles for the neighbourhood’s enterprising tomato purée maker, moves the children closer to their goal. It also begins to describe an area where there could be convergence between the two sets of backgrounds represented by the boys. As Cubans they know something about resourcefulness and when they put their heads together the income mounts up. When Mario haggles up the price for the empty bottles, the tomato purée man asks Carlos ‘¿Adónde tú sacaste el tipo éste?’ [Where did you find him?] Albeit this is a small scene in the film, it gives the lie to David Becerra Mayor’s contention that in Habanastation ‘Hay diferencias económicas, pero no de clase, porque no hay extracción de plusvalía.’15 208

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Within, Against, Inside, Out [There are economic differences but not class differences because there is no profit motive.] Can this really be true when the film shows us pre-​teens driving a hard bargain over empty bottles? If this is what the children are capable of, what must their parents’ business transactions be like? Becerra Mayor sees in Mario an Other who suffers no marginalisation or discrimination and is simply different ‘porque goza de unas condiciones económicas superiores a sus iguales y, por medio de artículos de consumo, reclama su distinction.’16 [because he enjoys a set of economic circumstances that are superior to those of his equals and who, through consumer goods, signals his distinction.] This citation provides a nice illustration of how obliquity in Habanastation shifts from the film itself to the critical reception around it. Through an innocent looking film about children, Padrón is breaking with the doxa that says that there is no inequality in Cuba and that there are not Cubans who live like middle class Americans, despite the blockade. Critical responses more mindful of the doxa simply ignore Padrón’s frankness and thus much of what he has to say in this story ‘based on real events’. For example, Luis Toledo Sande’s essay on Habanastation uses scare quotes around terms like rich and poor, as if an orthographic will to erase the adjectives would alter the fact that Mario’s family has a lot more money than Carlos’s. The Revolution does not permit this, so it cannot be true and ‘La base de [la] desigualdad está en el trabajo remunerado espléndidamente, no en inmoralidades visible.’17 [The source of inequality is to be found in work that receives splendid compensation, not in visible immoralities.] But the source of wealth for Mario’s family is work abroad: does Toledo Sande imagine that the filthy lucre imported into Cuba by a successful jazz musician who sells records overseas somehow loses all traces of contact with immorality and exploitation when it reaches the Cuban border, that it is cleansed by coming into contact with the Revolution? The comments left by citizen viewers after Toledo Sande’s article seem more in touch with the film than the critic’s appraisal of it. Several see Habanastation as registering an inflection point in Cuban social history. For example, Yuloa says: ‘Luego de 53 años impulsando la educación y cultura de nuestro país, nadie puede convencernos de que la realidad de nuestro país vaya a ser distinta a lo que se observa en este filme.’18 [After 209

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The Cinema of Cuba 53 years of promoting our country’s culture and education, no-​one can convince us that our country’s reality is going to be any different from what is observed in this film.] Raul B. goes further and says that the film ‘Es la claudicación al sueño de una Cuba socialista y solidaria.’19 [Is the surrender of the dream of a socialist Cuba built on solidarity.] A viewer who goes by Nipp dismisses arguments about affirmative action, and says: El que no aprovechó en Cuba los 45 años de abundancia intelectual y no hizo una carrera universitaria o técnica fue porque no quiso, ni nunca fueron a los teatros, festivales, exposiciones de arte, fue sencillamente porque no les interesó nunca prosperar en neuronas.20 [The only reason for someone not to have taken advantage of 45 years of intellectual abundance and not take up the opportunity of going to university or learning a trade was because he didn’t want to. And those who never went to the theatre or to festivals, or to art shows, didn’t go for the simple reason that that they weren’t interested in neurological prosperity.]

Nipp’s reference to Cuban categories of occupational equality lends his or her comments authenticity as coming from Cuba, as does reference to the notion of neuronal prosperity. These comments comprise only a limited pool, admittedly, but they reveal a different approach to the one taken by Toledo Sande and Becerra Mayor. None of these citizen reviewers is ready to dismiss the five decades of the Cuban Revolution and all seem to feel a sense of regret about the changes intimated in Habanastation. Unlike the official critics, however, they are ready to recognise Padrón’s courageous gesture in depicting things as they are and not as how they were meant to be. Furthermore, there is a note of optimism in the citizen reviews: they see in Habanastation a look towards the future where the cultural capital gained in the last fifty years gives them something with which to bargain as the inevitable changes start to unfold. While Mario’s whereabouts remain unknown, his parents, especially his mother, become frantic with worry. This occasions another scene familiar from the American suburban drama, this time the one of stentorious domestic recriminations over who has sacrificed most in a family to advance its fortunes from one generation to the next. Mario’s father, Pepe, 210

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Within, Against, Inside, Out blames Moraima for bringing their son up in a bubble and when in turn she reminds her husband of his humble origins, he asks her rhetorically if there is something wrong with wanting to get on in life. The responsibility for the make-​nice gesture is assumed by the child, or, at least, by the reconciliation the generic conventions would lead us to expect Mario and Carlos to effect by overcoming their differences. Habanastation does show a friendship developing between them but the idea that children could shoulder the burden of transcending class differences  –​something that fifty years and more of Revolution has not been able fully to eradicate –​is nonsensical. Pepe and Moraima arrive in their SUV capsule of privilege at Carlos’s home, to extract their son from the downmarket neighbourhood and restore him to his rightful milieu. That is about the only restitution that the rediscovery of the missing child effects here. The arrival of the family vehicle corresponds on the soundtrack with an effect recognisable as a ‘game over’ crescendo. Mario gives Carlos his PlayStation at the same point where the Habanastation role-​play ends. Choosing who to be outside the simulation is not as easy as pushing the PlayStation’s buttons in the right sequence to select an imaginary team or an identity. At least Carlos has his Industriales vest now. Eight years after Fuera de liga was made, Habanastation illustrates that ordinary Cubans have access to clothes bearing team logos. Buena Fe’s contribution to the soundtrack comes at the end of the closing credits, like a coda. The lyrics of the song, ‘Pleisteichon’, bring to the surface a debate not otherwise fully articulated in the film over the moral and political perils of behaviour-​driving capitalist consumer goods, where a toy is more than a toy because it is also a paradigm for a full-​fledged system in the adult world. By pointing out the gulf between the toy object and real-​world social practices, the song also queries the superficial satisfactoriness of the film’s ending. Carlos receives a PlayStation, but that will not materially change his social circumstances. The film’s final gift transaction does not perform the reconciliation of a divide in the way that child-​centred films from Latin America have often done in the past. The reconciliation, what there is of one, is effected by the filmmakers’ willingness to embrace Cuba’s divisions, both inside and out. ‘Mucha Cuba en una Cuba,’ [Many Cubas in one Cuba] as the refrain in ‘Pleisteichon’ puts it. 211

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Buena Fe Video Clips: Stressing the Off Beat In the video clips that Ian Padrón and other directors have made for individual Buena Fe songs, the hierarchical relationship between soundtrack or score and the cinematic mise-​en-​scène is inverted. In music videos, the soundtrack enjoys primacy and the work of the director becomes subordinated to the lyric and the song, though, as I will go on to suggest here, the visual component of Buena Fe’s video clips adds meaning to them in much the same way that Padrón’s use of score and of sound effects in Fuera de liga and Habanastation adds semantic value to his documentary and feature film work. For example, in the clip for Buena Fe’s ‘Soy lo que ves’ (I am What You See, 2008) shot by Alejandro Pérez Gómez and directed by the late cultural critic Rufo Caballero, a commonplace narrative about romantic tensions between men and women quotes Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968). The citation is visual at first, when Yoel Martínez observes Israel Rojas through a telescope as his musical partner is being tattooed in front of a life size print from Gutiérrez Alea’s film that shows Sergio on his balcony also looking through a telescope. At the end of the clip the citation then becomes aural when one of Sergio’s monologues from Memorias del subdesarrollo is sampled. As Israel Rojas walks towards the camera in a crowd, we hear this fragment: ‘¿He cambiado yo o ha cambiado la ciudad? Tú recuerdas muchas cosas. Recuerdas demasiado. ¿Dónde está tu gente? ¿Tu trabajo? ¿Tu mujer? ¿Y si ahora mismo empezará todo?’ [Have I changed or has the city changed? You remember a lot. You remember too much. Where are your people? What of your work? Your wife? And what if this very moment were to be the beginning of everything?] In Buena Fe’s song ‘Catalejo’ (Telescope) the telescope comes back not as a visual quote in the clip but as the centrepiece of the lyrics (and with it, an oblique reference to Gutiérrez Alea and to the dialectics of the spectator). In the studio version of the song we hear Israel Rojas ask, before the music properly starts, ‘¿Cómo va…? Ah, ok, con palmadas’. [How does it go? Oh, right, with hand claps.] The verbal lead-​in introduces the syncopated beat marked out by the hand claps as an expression of collective sentiment: the song that follows echoes what a larger group of people want to 212

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Within, Against, Inside, Out say. Referencing, but rejecting applause, the syncopation also rhythmically signals dissidence from the orthodox beat. Words and rhythm assume a visual dimension as Rojas then uses the telescope to represent a subjective experience where objects in the distance are clear and the personal –​the immediate –​defies observation and knowledge: ‘Tengo un catalejo /​Con él la luna se ve /​Marte se ve /​Hasta Plutón se ve /​Pero el meñique del pie /​No se me ve.’21 [I have a telescope /​I can see the moon with it/​I can see Mars /​Even Pluto /​But I can’t see /​My little toe.] The listener can be justified in searching for a wider political meaning to a vision permanently fixed on far horizons while a world closer to the individual will not come into focus and falls apart. The first iteration of the refrain (above) follows a set of verses that, although oblique, nevertheless conjure a vision of a social structure as inverted as the use of a telescope for observation close up and for self-​knowledge. They paint a picture of a social order of picaresque trickery and favours where spivs are conversant in law and incision-​making; prostitutes are urologist economists; sexual satisfaction is bureaucratised and orgasms enhanced; and verse belongs in a museum sponsored by Cuban national radio; and all of this inside an ambience of paranoia and surveillance. Don’t look below the table, the lyrics say, because the bags underneath might bite. The telescope as metaphor, and as key to understanding the critique of Cuban society that cannot be expressed more than obliquely, is indicated by the verse that says ‘Mi catalejo y yo entendemos el momento.’ [Me and my telescope understand this moment in time.] If the listener understands the connotative value of a telescopic view that is more concerned with matters afar than with matters at home, then he or she can also look through it and recognise what it is that the lens shows –​the contorted weirdness of ‘Dialektik im Stillstand’. Rojas’s ‘Catalejo’ is a concise synthesis of Cuba inside out. It also evokes Slavoj Žižek’s description of Cuba as a place suspended in ‘a kind of negative Messianic time [and] social standstill in which the “the end of time is near” and everybody is waiting for the Miracle of what will happen when Castro dies, and socialism collapses.’22 Rojas’s lyrics convey something that sounds very much like a state of suspended animation on the cusp of change. Everything, from the forbidden to the permitted, is marked by an ‘aroma de cementerio,’ [aroma of the cemetery] but this mortuary pall is brack213

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The Cinema of Cuba eted by regeneration just in sight over the horizon: ‘Hoy vemos catarsis /​Mañana habrá nacimientos.’ [Catharsis today /​Tomorrow a rebirth.] ‘Catalejo’ goes as far as it can in the discourse of obliquity towards brushing on a withering critique of the Revolution. Rojas’s words conjure a curtain rising to reveal a series of figures, the last of them an urban alcoholic credited with summing everything up very neatly in a pithy witticism: ‘De cada cual según su trabajo /​a cada cual según su picardía.’ [From each according to his labour /​to each according to his cunning.] The shape of the phrase makes it logical to see and hear it as a distortion of Karl Marx’s (or Louis Blanc’s) slogan ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ The official clip for ‘Catalejo’, for which Ian Padrón receives a credit as director, is unusually spare compared with the music videos for others of Buena Fe’s songs, with their high production values and visual narrative. Here, the clip simply shows us Rojas and Martínez performing the song on stage at an open-​air concert in 2008. It looks at first like the sort of performance clip that has usurped the place of the splashy auteurist fantasies from MTV’s heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the setting, Revolution Square in Havana, adds to the impression that the words of ‘Catalejo’ are in dialogue with the visuals, provided in this case by the monumental silhouette of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and the looming José Martí tower, itself a vantage point over distant horizons where the personal becomes minute. The camera work cuts between the impassioned performance of the song on stage and the equally emotional reception it receives from the crowd. Padrón shows us a multitude of people who know all the words and who sing along to them as if they were their own. ‘Catalejo’ may be written in the first person but, as this music video shows, it seems to express a collective feeling of edgy anticipation. When the official culture is supposed to be counter-​cultural, as it is in Cuba, for popular music to assume the role of articulating a counter-​cultural voice (as it often does in America and Europe) is not easy, especially when opposition can only be expressed sideways. The idea of popular music as a reservoir of resistance does not sit very well within a Cuban context where the government and its institutions is (or is meant to be) the counter-​ cultural. And yet here we see and hear something that looks like ‘a dialectic 214

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Within, Against, Inside, Out or struggle between margin and mainstream, resistance and complicity.’23 Padrón’s video for the song conveys the sense that the performers and the audience are as much sharing an expression of fatigue and impatience with the Revolution as they are celebrating the values represented by the figures whose historical presences loom over the open-​air concert. Reading Buena Fe as spokespersons for a younger generation tired of the Triunfo is not uncomplicated and I do not mean to pretend that it is. To close this section, I will refer, therefore, to Zoé Valdés’s critique of Buena Fe’s words of support for Hugo Chávez and to the performers’ apparently dismissive reference to the Women in White protest group, the members of which have been demonstrating since 2003 against what they see as the unjust and politically motivated imprisonment of their male relatives.24

Conclusion By way of conclusion, it seems fitting briefly to discuss what must be one of the last projects Ian Padrón completed before he left Cuba, the music video made in 2012 for Buena Fe and Descemer Bueno’s song ‘Ser de sol’. The lyrics (by Rojas) describe a strong set of contrasts, like those found in ‘Catalejo’. Here, the pairings are of night and day, sunset and daybreak, the sun and the moon. A  spurned lover, who feels betrayed, expresses bewilderment at the novelty of belonging to the daytime while another has usurped his place in the hours of darkness and of romantic intimacy. The story that Padrón built around these lyrics provides a good illustration of how the collaboration between the director and the musicians produced a narrative that was more political than either a soundtrack or a set of visuals would have been on their own. Padrón’s music video shows Descemer Bueno, Israel Rojas, Yoel Martínez, and a group of friends boarding a moored boat that hosts a party and a dinner. When night falls and the group gathers to eat, Rojas and Descemer Bueno notice that their respective female companions have disappeared. They discover them together in an intimate embrace. Bueno and Rojas look on, watching the women unnoticed, and they laugh when they realise that they have been usurped in their female companions’ affections not by a male rival, but by another woman. Since the clip is unabashed in 215

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The Cinema of Cuba its depiction of the women kissing, the video seems to mark some sort of watershed in the willingness of Cuban media to embrace representations not only of LGBT people but of LGBT displays of affection. This interpretation is complicated, however, by Cuba’s asymmetric relationship with the web. It is easy to find ‘Ser de sol’ on YouTube, and just as easy to assume –​wrongly –​that it is equally accessible to Cubans. Access to the internet is extremely restricted in Cuba where fewer than five per cent of homes are connected.25 Other than on television, the only place where ordinary Cubans would be likely to see the video (at the time this article was written) is in the digested form of internet content provided through the paquete (a weekly pre-​packaged assortment of selected internet material), and this would depend entirely on the editorial whim of the compiler. When Padrón is shown the clip during the course of his interview with María Elvira Salazar, he expresses pleasant surprise at seeing a version of it where the intimate scene between the two women has not been cut out. Only an edited version of the clip, with this part missing, was shown in Cuba, he tells the interviewer.26 What one can see of Cuban music videos from outside the country, then, seems to be a very poor guide as to what Cubans on the island can see. An interview with Israel Rojas adds another layer to the mystery around this video, and who can see it, and what they see in it. Ida Garberi puts it to him that from a feminist perspective the scene where he and Descemer Bueno look in amusement upon the women’s intimacy could be read as sexist and homophobic; sexist because the mise-​en-​scène suggests heterosexual male pleasure in voyeurism directed at women, and homophobic because the laughter reaction implies that lesbian sensuality is risible.27 Rojas does not entirely dismiss this interpretation, conceding that everyone will see a clip in his or her own way, but he says that Padrón’s aim was to break with convention and to address questions of gender and equality. He also says that the laughter reaction was meant to convey acceptance, just the opposite of homophobia. The reception of one and the same video, then, read from inside and outside Cuba tells two different stories. From outside it is a story about homophobic censorship on the part of media gatekeepers and

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Within, Against, Inside, Out their censorious gesture towards a film’s frank depiction of LGBT people; and, from inside, it is a narrative not about censorship but about debate over whether or not the content of the supposedly censored video is itself homophobic. Somewhat like one of his music videos, Ian Padrón himself has taken on conflicting meanings since his departure from Cuba in early 2015. He sees himself, as evidenced in his open letter to the authorities in Cuba, as someone who needed to leave for family reasons and because he was creatively stifled in Cuba. Others, such as Ramón Bernal Godoy, see the director as just another runaway and the latest in a line of those who have gone crying to the USA about mistreatment in Cuba.28 Looking closely at Padrón’s letter, and listening carefully to what he has told interviewers in the USA, it is difficult to find a wholesale rejection or repudiation of Cuba in his words. On the contrary, he seems to be as keen in the statement of his personal position as he has been in his creative works to avoid an absolutist inside/​out polarisation, to embrace the opportunities that living in the USA can offer him without rubbishing the forty years of his life that he spent on the island. This may explain why he ends the letter by quoting José Martí, one of the few historical figures to be a beacon both for Cubans on the island and those in exile: ‘Como diría José Martí: Prefiero ser yo extranjero en otras patrias, a serlo en la mía. Hoy más que nunca me siento orgulloso de ser cubano.’29 [As José Martí would say: I prefer to be a foreigner in another country than to be one in my own. Today more than ever I am proud to be Cuban.]

Note on Translations Translations into English are the work of the author, except for the quote from Fidel Castro’s 1961 ‘Words to the Intellectuals’ speech.

Funding Research for this contribution was supported by an award from Cardiff University’s Research Leave Award Scheme (2014–​15).

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Notes 1. Fidel Castro, ‘Fidel Castro’s speech to intellectuals on 30 June 1961’ (unpaginated), at www.lanic.utexas.edu/​project/​castro/​db/​1961/​19610630.html (20 August 2015). 2. Juan Flores, ‘Foreword’, in Ramón de la Campa, Cuba on My Mind: Journeys to a Severed Nation (London, 2000), pp. v–ix (vii). 3. Ian Padrón, ‘Viva donde viva, siempre seré un mambí, nunca rayadillo’, Open letter to the Cuban Ministry of Culture, 25 February (2015), at www. ianpadroncuba.com (4 September 2015). 4. Ian Padrón, ‘La censura total que recibió el documental Fuera de Liga sobre Industriales’, interview with María Elvira Salazar (2015), at www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=IEaEvlu_​_​jY (3 September 2015). 5. Matthew Frankel, ‘Major League Problems:  Baseball’s Broken System of Cuban Defection’, in Boston College Third World Law Journal 25/​2 (2005), pp. 383–​428 (402). 6. Televisión Martí, ‘TV Martí entrevista a Ian Padrón’, Martí noticias (2011), at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=DGc51Ou-​MFE (26 August 2015). 7. Juan González, ‘At last, Kin to Rejoin El Duque:  Hernández Kids Arrive in States for Reunion’, in New  York Daily News, 23 October (1998), at www. nydailynews.com/​archives/​news/​kin-​rejoin-​el-​duque-​hernandez-​kids-​arrive-​ states-​reunion-​article-​1.811568 (24 August 2015). 8. Christopher Rhoads, ‘Baseball Scout’s Ordeal:  13 Years in Cuban Prison’, in Wall Street Journal, 24 April (2010). 9. Mario Díaz, Brothers in Exile, Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (2014). 10. Matthew N. Greller, ‘Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Fastball Pitchers Yearning for Strike Three: How Baseball Diplomacy Can Revitalize Major League Baseball and United States-​Cuba Relations’, in American University International Law Review 14/​6 (1999), pp. 1647–​713; Rachel D. Solomon, ‘Cuban Baseball-​Players, the Unlucky Ones: United States-​Cuban Professional Baseball Relations Should be an Integral Part of the United States-​Cuba Relationship’, in Journal of International Business and Law 10/​1 (2011), pp. 153–​ 187; William, B. Gould, ‘Bargaining, Race, and Globalization: How Baseball and Other Sports Mirror Collective Bargaining, Law, and Life’, in University of San Francisco Law Review 48/​1 (2013), pp. 1–​42. 11. Joel Del Río, ‘Diez razones para respetar Fuera de liga’, in La Jiribilla: Revista de Cultura Cubana 357/​3 (2008), at www.lajiribilla.co.cu/​2008/​n357_​03/​labutaca. html (3 September 2015). 12. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Dialéctica del espectador (Havana, 1982), p. 42. 13. David Becerra Mayor, ‘Construir la diferencia en condiciones de igualdad. Tres películas cubanas’, in A Contracorriente 12/​2 (2012), pp. 272–​306 (298).

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Within, Against, Inside, Out 14. Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana:  Confessions of a Cuban Boy (New York, 2003), p. 330. 15. Becerra Mayor, ‘Construir la diferencia en condiciones de igualdad’, p. 299. 16. Ibid. 17. Luis Toledo Sande, ‘Habanastation o ampliación de una Suite por la ciudad’, in Cuba Debate, 16 August (2011), at www.cubadebate.cu/​especiales/​2011/​08/​16/​ habanastation-​o-​ampliacion-​de-​una-​suite-​por-​la-​ciudad/​#.VhKCI51waUk (6 August 2015). 18. Yuloa, comment appended to article by Toledo Sande, ‘Habanastation o ampliación de una Suite por la ciudad’. 19. Raúl B., Comment appended to article by Toledo Sande, ‘Habanastation o ampliación de una Suite por la ciudad’. 20. Nipp, Comment appended to article by Toledo Sande, ‘Habanastation o ampliación de una Suite por la ciudad’. 21. Lyrics transcribed from ‘Catalejo’ by Buena Fe, Catalejo [CD], EGREM, 2008. 22. Slavoj Žižek, ‘Passions of the real, passions of semblance’, in Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London, 2002), p. 7. 23. Will Straw, ‘Popular music and postmodernism in the 1980s’, in S. Frith, A. Goodwin, and L. Grossberg, in Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader (London, 1993), pp. 3–​21 (6). 24. Zoé Valdés, ‘Buena (Mala) Fé llamó “puñeteras” a las Damas de Blanco y se burló de ellas, por el contrario, del Mico Mandante’, published on author’s online blog (2010), at www.zoevaldes.net/​2010/​04/​01/​buena-​fe-​llamo-​ puneteras-​a-​las-​damas-​de-​blanco-​y-​se-​burlo-​de-​ellas-​por-​el-​contrario-​del-​ mico-​mandante/​ (5 September 2015). 25. San Pedro, ‘Cuban Internet Delivered Weekly by Hand’, BBC online, 10 August (2015), at www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​technology-​33816655 (10 August 2015); Guy Baron and Gareth Hall, ‘Access Online: Internet Governance and Image in Cuba’, in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 34, Issue 3, July (2015), pp. 340–​355. 26. Padrón, ‘La censura total que recibió el documental Fuera de Liga sobre Industriales’. 27. Ida Garberi, ‘Israel Rojas:  Cuba es un sueño posible’, in Cuba Debate, 29 November (2013), at www.cubadebate.cu/​opinion/​2013/​11/​29/​israel-​rojas-​ cuba-​es-​un-​sueno-​posible/​#.VhKDP51waUk (1 September 2015). 28. Ramón Bernal Godoy, ‘Ian Padrón y su decisión de culpar a CUBA para vivir en Estados Unidos’, in Miradas encontradas blog, 3 June (2015), at www. miradasencontradas.wordpress.com/​2015/​03/​06/​ian-​padron-​y-​su-​decision-​ de-​culpar-​a-​cuba-​para-​vivir-​en-​estados-​unidos/​ (7 August 2015). 29. Padrón, ‘Viva donde viva, siempre seré un mambí, nunca rayadillo’.

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Part Three

Reverse Shot /​Individual /​ Testimony

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Introduction to Part Three

Struggling against Separation: Cuban Filmmakers Create and Connect in the Twenty-First Century ANN MARIE STOCK

Hay que luchar contra ‘la cultura del desvínculo,’ que no sólo separa la razón del corazón, el pasado del presente y la vocación del trabajo; sino que también nos separa entre nosotros mismos, como islas condenadas a la soledad. [We have to struggle against the “culture of disconnectedness” that separates not only head from heart, past from present, and vocation from work, but that also separates us one from the other, like islands condemned to solitude.] Eduardo Galeano (1940–​2015)

Eduardo Galeano has insisted on the centrality of culture in forging connections, fomenting dialogue, and fostering understanding. For modeling this throughout his influential career, he was invited to present the prestigious Casa de las Américas prize. Galeano’s words, communicated during his speech in Havana in 2012, invite us to consider a series of questions: How to struggle against the ‘culture of disconnectedness’? How to avoid divisive dichotomies –​between mind and heart, past and present, vocation and work? And how to resist pressures that threaten to position individuals and nations as ‘islands condemned to solitude’? These questions resonate for creators and critics, particularly those seeking to

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The Cinema of Cuba employ culture to make a difference –​whether to enlighten and inspire, give voice to those who have been silenced, or pave the way for new possibilities. They are particularly poignant within the context of present-​day Cuban cinema. Filmmaking in Cuba has changed dramatically in recent years. What was once a concertedly national cinema is now a decidedly decentralised and diverse audiovisual practice.1 To track this process is to observe cultural complexity: the emergence of new modes of making and circulating films; the replacement of state funding with multi-​national capital; the entrance of individual auteurs into an ever increasing public sphere; and the proliferation of new media and communication networks. The move from ‘industry’ to ‘street’ filmmaking in Cuba, and the resultant emphasis on individualism, might have signaled the demise of shared values. This has not, however, been the case. Whereas Cuba’s collision with the global marketplace could have jeopardised some of the most entrenched principles and practices characterising revolutionary filmmaking –​the importance of the collective, for example, and the emphasis on solidarity –​in fact these are intact. Audiovisual artists working today remain committed to forging alliances and fostering connections. Whether working within or outside of state institutions, these creators seek to collaborate and communicate with their counterparts regardless of where they make their home. Eschewing divisive dichotomies separating ‘us’ from ‘them’, they affirm local traditions and a commitment to their communities –​all the while engaging with worldwide media. In embracing a spirit of solidarity, they succeed in struggling against ‘la cultura del desvínculo’. Uprooting is one contributor to separation and disconnectedness. The narratives of many twenty-​first-century Cuban films –​whether made with the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) or by street filmmakers ‘en la calle’ –​ focus on border crossings. While the phenomenon of migrancy dates back centuries in the Caribbean, and movement characterises present-​day populations the world over, the subject of emigration resonates uniquely for Cubans. Virtually all have had to reckon with the decision of staying on the island or leaving –​whether personally or through the experience of a loved

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Struggling against Separation one. Film explorations of this movement from one geopolitical territory to another generally depict the border crossing as arduous and the effects of separation devastating.2 Some recent Cuban films jettison the passports to reflect more broadly on migrancy and its impact on individuals. In Todas iban a ser reinas (They Were All Going to be Queens, 2006), Gustavo Pérez and Oneyda González probe the experiences of six Russian women who fell in love with Cuban men visiting their native country, and who subsequently emigrated to live with their husbands on the island. The collective portrait reveals their struggles to adapt and their desire to be at home in this new world. Alina Rodríguez frames the issues in another way when she takes on internal migration so as to expose the plight of Cubans who move from the provinces to the island’s capital; Buscándote Havana (Looking For You, Havana, 2006) depicts makeshift dwellings on Havana’s periphery that parallel their occupants’ marginal position in the country. In spite of –​or more likely because of –​their precarious situation, these individuals desperately seek to belong. Esteban Insausti’s first feature, Larga distancia (Long Distance, 2010), probes the experiences of those who remain behind after families and friends have dispersed (Part 3 fig. 1). Memory and fantasy merge as the protagonist envisions the long lasting friendships that would mitigate her isolation. And in HAVANAver.T.a 31 Kb/​seg (2009), co-​directors Javier Labrador and Juan Carlos Sánchez craft a conversation, via email, between two friends. Nuria writes from Cuba and Mara from the USA; after years of no contact with one another, the friends reconnect via the internet. Each of these works, and many more like them, invoke the comings and goings so prevalent today; together they invite a reflection on the human need for relationships and the desire for rootedness in an era characterised by mobility and movement. The lived experiences of many Cuban filmmakers parallel those of the on-​screen protagonists; increasingly, they travel in order to support themselves and their families and to earn money for their audiovisual projects. Some are counting the days until they return to the Island. Others have adapted to their new homes, far from Cuba. Still others see themselves as ‘citizens of the world’, most comfortable crossing borders and feeling

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The Cinema of Cuba

Part 3 Fig. 1  Larga distancia

connected to multiple sites.3 Recent legislation has made it possible for actresses and actors, editors and directors, writers and producers, and so many others to take off and land, working sometimes in Cuba and sometimes abroad.4 ‘Round-​trip-​ticket’ scenarios permit this generation to expand their perspectives and explore opportunities in various sites. A  few examples will illustrate. Miguel Coyula graduated from the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (International School of Film and Television –​EICTV) outside of Havana, and then moved to New York where he made Cucarachas rojas (Red Cockroaches, 2003)  and Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010).5 As Memorias was beginning to circulate at international festivals, Coyula returned to Havana. From his base in his bedroom studio, in the home where he grew up in the Vedado district, he travels frequently to participate in international film events and offer workshops beyond the island. Editor Angélica Salvador shares her mother’s home in the Dominican Republic for extended periods. Her motivation is to earn enough money editing films to return to Havana and invest in subsequent feature-​length projects, like Club de Jazz (Jazz Club), with her compañero and creative partner, Esteban Insausti. Alejandro Pérez, award-​ winning music video director and photographer, goes ‘on location’ where 226

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Struggling against Separation his work takes him; from his home base in Havana, he and his team travel to project sites in the Caribbean, the USA and beyond.6 The possibility of leaving and returning, rather than the former salida definitiva, is expanding the conception of ‘Cuban’ identity in the island’s film world; it is not so much geopolitical locale –​one’s rootedness in a particular place –​that constitutes the identities of Cuba’s audiovisual artists in the twenty-​first century, but rather their relationships and their commitment to remaining connected to individuals, communities and traditions. In summer 2016, Habaneros U12 (2016) was screened in Miami. This feature-​length documentary, directed by Alfredo Ureta, captured the experiences of a club of young baseball players who competed in Florida. The project models this new mode of making and marketing film on the part of entrepreneurial Cuban artists: the narrative moves between Cuba and the USA, tracking young athletes as they compete in a baseball tournament, tour Disney World, and visit the Chicago White Sox stadium; financing for this project came from individuals in both countries; and the premieres –​ one in Havana at the Fábrica de Arte and another in Miami at the Flamingo Theater –​attracted audiences more interested in engagement than in separation. Today’s audiovisual artists, regardless of where they make their home, communicate and collaborate with one another; savvy social networkers, they manage to stay in touch and travel back to the island when circumstances permit. In this way, they comprise a transnational community bound not by adherence to a particular ideology or affiliation with a specific institution, but rather bonded by a shared passion. Connected through global communications networks, they are intent on establishing (and rekindling) relationships. Media-​makers like Carlos Barba, Alejandro Brugués, Zulema Clares, Miguel Coyula, Ernesto Daranás, Laimir Fano, Carlos Díaz Lechuga, Oneyda González, Heidi Hassan, Inti Herrera, Esteban Insausti, Susel Ochoa, Alejando Pérez, Gustavo Pérez, Carlos Rodríguez, Angélica Salvador, Alfredo Ureta, and Aram Vidal,7 along with so many others, model strategies for surviving and indeed thriving in the twenty-​first century. With creative impunity, a sense of urgency, and a knack for resolviendo or making do, they participate in this struggle against disconnectedness and isolation. It is with their cameras and microphones that they help bridge divides. 227

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The Cinema of Cuba This section of the volume features the voices and visions of some of these contemporary creators who work to create common ground and bring people together. The testimonies of Aram Vidal, Oneyda González and Carlos Rodríguez proffer insight into the creative process and attest to their efforts, invoking Galeano, to conjoin ‘mind and heart, past and present, and vocation and work.’ And the analysis of the production of artists like these, and others who work outside of Cuba, marks a major critical contribution by Zaira Zarza. In doing so, they help ensure that we –​and they  –​do not become solitary islands. All four of these individuals feature subjects whose lives intersect with their own, all four are engaged with communities at home and far away, and all four have recently become even more ‘up close and personal’ in developing their projects: Aram in filming his encounters with people in Havana, Mexico City, and US urban areas whose experiences parallel his own, Oneyda in exploring the life of the poet who hails from the provincial capital of Camagüey where she currently resides, Carlos in examining his family’s complicated and painful story, and Zaira in curating a series of diaspora films for audiences both in her home country of Cuba and her host country of Canada. These talented artists effectively transform the experiences of separation and dislocation that inform their own lives into productive reflections on and interventions in coming together.

Aram Vidal Youth culture fascinates Aram Vidal and permeates his work. He began exploring the preoccupations of his own generation in Havana when, still in his twenties, he created Calle G (2003, co-​directed with Erick Coll) and De Generación (De-​Generation, 2006). The documentaries were selected for screening during the annual showcase of films made by emerging audiovisual artists; initially known as the Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores, the event was renamed the Muestra Joven ICAIC. The work of this aspiring cineaste was touching a nerve; he managed to capture the preoccupations of his peers during a time of pervasive change and widespread uncertainty. When Vidal moved to Mexico City to begin work on a Master’s degree, he once again focused on a group whose experiences resonated with his 228

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Struggling against Separation own; Ex-​Generación (2009) features Cubans who, like Vidal, were doing their best to adapt to new lives in Mexico’s sprawling capital. With Bubbles Beat (2012), the filmmaker expands his examination of young people and their concerns to multiple contexts, this time in the USA. Regardless of where he happens to be, Vidal employs his camera to connect –​one young person with another, himself with his filmed subjects, and his own experiences with his current context. When he can, the filmmaker returns to Havana to visit family and friends, catch up with his colleagues, including those who worked with him on an ICAIC-​sponsored project about literacy training in South America, La dimensión de las palabras (The Dimension of Words, 2008), and share his latest film. As Vidal’s testimony reveals, it is through the act of creating that he locates himself and becomes ‘at home’ –​regardless of where he finds himself living and working.

Oneyda González The passion with which she approaches the word is evident in the testimony of Oneyda González. This poet-​writer-​scholar-​filmmaker invites us on a journey through Cuba’s countryside, positioning her work in a precise locale. Camagüey and environs inspire González to listen attentively to the stories of her neighbours, her friends, and her family –​and then share them in her films. Often, she teams up with her compañero and creative partner, Gustavo Pérez, in doing so. In virtually all this artist’s projects –​ but especially the most recent Esperando a que caiga el jabalí (Waiting for the Wild Boar to Fall) and El Silfo: La historia de Norlan (The Sylph: The Story of Norlan) –​her poetic sensibility informs the work. It is not surprising, then, that the subject matter of her latest documentary draws upon the life and work of a poet, Severo Sarduy. She devotes Severo Secreto (Secret Severo) to tracing the lifelong journey of this Cuban man of letters who left the island and settled in France. Comprised of interviews filmed in Paris and Miami, Havana and Camagüey, and illustrated by materials from several archives and collections, this documentary introduces Sarduy to a broad audience –​including in the country of his birth and childhood. By focusing on a local figure and following his footsteps to France, González grapples with the question of Cuban identity. Her text tackles issues of 229

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The Cinema of Cuba belonging and separation, emigration and exile; identity questions are further complicated in addressing the subject’s sexuality. It is a nuanced history that she narrates, one that does not shy away from contradiction and the collision of opposing perspectives. By ‘listening to’ divergent views of the Revolution and vastly different life experiences, the filmmaker facilitates a dialogue among individuals who have heretofore been at odds; Severo secreto brings together those who stayed and those who left, and in doing so models a way to bridge a series of divides.8 That González has turned her camera to the life of this poet –​a figure not previously embraced fully by his home or host countries –​results in expanding the canon of Cuban literature. Cuba’s cultural history takes a transnational turn.

Carlos Rodríguez Carlos Rodríguez draws upon his experiences with the Televisión Serrana (TVS), a media collective in the remote Sierra Maestra region, to consider what it means to create both as an individual and as part of a collective. By tracing TVS filmmaking activity for two decades, Rodríguez introduces us to the individuals and modalities that have engendered more than 500 films –​many of them award winners. These works, each one unique, together give voice to the campesinos of the zone, probe issues of import to local communities, and demonstrate the respect between filmmaker and subject that emerges from strong relationships –​often months in the making. He concludes by sharing the text from the trailer of his personal project titled Rodríguez versus Rodríguez. With this work he seeks to make sense of his own complex identity as the son of a revolutionary ‘heroine’ mother and a ‘traitor’ father (his mother joined the Cuban cause in the war in Angola and his father left his family for the USA during the Mariel exodus). While developing the project, Rodríguez met his Miami-​based father whom he hadn’t seen since childhood, and managed to help reconnect him and his mother. Although regrets abound and pain persists, the isolation has given way to conversation and a desire to move together out of the past and into a more meaningful relationship for the future. Eminently personal, the film provokes a reflection for many in Cuba and elsewhere who

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Struggling against Separation have occupied this space –​sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes excruciating –​in between countries, cultures, worlds.

Zaira Zarza Zaira Zarza adds her voice to the conversation on the ways in which today’s Cuban cineastes are redefining their individual and collective identities. Following the lead of Ambrosio Fornet, who in the turbulent 1990s insisted on redefining ‘Cuban’ culture to include works produced in the diaspora,9 she tracks those audiovisual artists with ‘roots’ in Cuba who follow a series of ‘routes’ beyond the Island. The result: a provocative analysis of present-​ day media practice that eschews defined boundaries so as to embrace the crossing of borders, whether formal, ideological or geopolitical. Her own work blends the analysis of films and their contexts of production and circulation with intervention; Zarza conjoins theory and practice by mobilising her critical labour in order to create space for exhibiting films. Based sometimes in Canada and sometimes in Cuba, she has effectively tracked the discursive evolution of ‘exilic’ to ‘diasporic’ in films made by Cubans, and at the same time she has convened filmmakers and curated displays of their work. The experiences of these individuals reveal some of the many ways present-​day Cuban filmmakers create, compete and connect in a world increasingly impacted by global processes. Their powerful work and poignant words inspire us, as does Galeano, to envision and even establish linkages. I find this particularly resonant for our work as scholars and critics. How can we help forge connections? How should we make sense of and perhaps even participate in this struggle to resist disconnectedness and refrain from becoming ‘islands condemned to solitude’? Over a quarter-​century, my mode of ‘doing’ research on Cuba’s cinema and working with filmmakers has evolved –​in relationship with others, in response to events, and with respect for precise circumstances. And while I have no definitive answers, I do have some reflections to share by way of beginning the conversation. In January 2013, I was attending the Semana de la Crítica (Critics’ Week) in Havana. During one session discussion turned to the limitations

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The Cinema of Cuba of film criticism on the island –​particularly the reliance on textual analysis, repeated employment of semiotic approaches, and inattention to all but the most celebrated Cuban films. These critical modes, according to an archivist in the Cinemateca de Cuba, generated an immense lacuna. Alicia García García lamented the lack of ‘chronicles’ documenting the making of films. She invited and in fact implored critics to pay more attention to creative practices –​to the ways in which ideas are generated, scripts written and edited, financial resources secured, actors and actresses cast, locations scouted, conflicts negotiated, and so on. Explorations of these activities and many others, she argued, were essential for crafting a more complete narrative of Cuba’s culture. Indeed, in this era of accelerated change, it seems crucial not only to analyse the products (the completed films, videos, video clips, posters, etc.) but also to record, document, and capture the process whereby audiovisual materials come into being. Engaging in dialogue with the key agents in this endeavor, the filmmakers, seems crucial to me. Flash forward to March 2013. Dr Guy Baron, with funding from the British Academy and from the Aberystwyth University, UK, assembled an international delegation of filmmakers and critics from across Great Britain, Cuba and the USA for a conference devoted to sharing perspectives on Contemporary Cuban Cinema: New Spaces, New Histories in Aberystwyth, Wales.10 Our task was to explore this topic, with approaches informed by a variety of disciplinary and national contexts. In addition to enriching our critical practice by showing and sharing our varied tool kits, and introducing residents of the campus and community to the Cuban filmmakers present (Gerardo Chijona and Juan Carlos Cremata), we were also building the foundation for this publication. In the midst of a productive dialogue following one series of presentations, a question was put to one panelist. How had the filmmaker under study responded to her essay about his work? What were his impressions of her interpretation of his films? The author of the paper explained that she had not contacted the filmmaker; they had never corresponded, this despite the fact that he was accessible over email, through a website, and on Facebook. I certainly do not suggest that for scholarship to be legitimate it must contain the voice of the author. Apart from being impossible in many cases, it would also be unwise to impose such limitations or restrictions. And yet, we are working with 232

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Struggling against Separation an object of inquiry –​Cuban cinema and audiovisual culture –​that has unique features and particular constraints. Many present-​day filmmakers, particularly those working from Cuba, have limited opportunities for interaction beyond the Island. So when ‘we’ seek to make sense of ‘their’ work –​the creative projects of individuals we don’t know, from a context with which we have little or sometimes no first-​hand experience –​it can be productive for them and for us to communicate. In the same way that filmmakers like Aram Vidal, Oneyda González and Carlos Rodríguez establish human connections through their work, we, too, can employ our scholarship to develop relationships with others. A third way forward for critics seeking to forge connections is to act as what Doris Sommer has termed ‘cultural agents’. Her formulation positions scholars and others as agents capable of fostering creativity and making contributions beyond our immediate sphere. By reframing the critical enterprise, we can expand the possibilities for theory and practice to converge. How might this look in concrete terms? It may, as Zaira Zarza has modeled, take the form of convening artists from various sites, providing them with the opportunity to connect with one another and share their work with audiences previously unfamiliar with the material and the media makers. It may, as Guy Baron has successfully demonstrated, involve seeking funding through institutional grants or other agencies, to host conferences and community screenings. Or it may consist of curating an exhibit of film posters, subtitling films, or even filming, recording and editing interviews, as I have done with the Cuban Cinema Classics initiative I founded more than a decade ago. What began as a way to provide access to subtitled Cuban documentaries for professors and students at US universities has expanded: the DVD volumes now include interviews with filmmakers as well as other supplementary material; the documentaries selected are not so much ‘classics’ as they are recent releases; and the audience has expanded far beyond academic audiences in a single country.11 Endeavours like all of these require us to take risks. Accustomed as we are to being considered ‘experts’ in our respective fields, it can be uncomfortable to work as amateurs and learn new skills. And yet, I believe the risk is worth taking, for some of my most satisfying initiatives and rewarding relationships are the ones that emerged out of this process. 233

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The Cinema of Cuba For these reasons, and many others, we have devoted space in this third section of the volume to Cuban filmmakers and their stories, told in their own words. This is one strategy for integrating new voices and circulating new visions, thereby enriching our criticism and supporting their work. The fact that these chapters introduce us to media makers far from Havana and outside the ICAIC who have received little critical attention thus far is no accident; it is a purposeful attempt to expand the conversation. ‘Connected criticism’ is a mode I find increasingly compelling: it permits us to put down some of our old tools so we can attempt to build differently; it engages us in listening more often and more attentively so that we can tell new stories in different ways; and it compels us to reach out to others so we can develop and nurture relationships. I close this introduction to the third section of this volume by invoking, once again, the words of Eduardo Galeano: ‘what is told here has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner. I take sides. I confess it and I am not sorry.’

Notes 1. I track this transformation in On Location in Cuba:  Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2009); the volume appeared in Spanish as Rodar en Cuba (Havana: Ediciones ICAIC, 2015). 2. Désirée Díaz is among the critics who have analysed these works most extensively. She devoted her dissertation to the subject and has also authored several articles. 3. Miguel Coyula commented on this notion of identity during an interview at William & Mary in Virginia, USA, in 2009. 4. A Cuban migration law, effective in January 2012, permits Cubans to leave the island for up to two years and still retain their citizenship. Extensions can be requested for those who wish to remain outside the country for a longer period. This marks a notable change. During the first three decades of the Revolution, to leave Cuba for an extended period (unless sponsored by the Cuban government) was to relinquish one’s citizenship and lose the right to return. Professionals in the film world who opted to live outside Cuba generally left the island with a one-​ way ticket, and little if any hope of returning. Once outside Cuba, they tended to lose professional momentum and, more often than not, their careers stalled. 5. This film is analysed in detail by Rob Stone in Chapter  5 of this volume.

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Struggling against Separation 6. This artist’s video accompanying Enrique Iglesia’s hit ‘Bailando’ was deemed the best music video of the year by Univisión; the Spanish-​language awards show honoring Latin music, Premio Lo Nuestro, feature the work of this talented director-​photographer. 7. Acknowledging the collective efforts involved in media-​making, I include on this list not only directors but other key collaborators. 8. Among those interviewed for the film are others who, like Sarduy, decided to make their way outside Cuba and converged in France; in Miami, I assisted González in filming several interviews including those with one-​time ICAIC filmmakers Fausto Canel and Orlando Jiménez Leal. 9. Ambrosio Fornet, ‘Introduction,’ Bridging Enigma:  Cubans on Cuba, Ed. Ambrosio Fornet, South Atlantic Quarterly 96, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 1–​15. 10. This was a follow-on to a small conference in Havana, hosted by Dr Antonio Álvarez Pitaluga at the University of Havana. 11. I engage my undergraduate students in the process of translating and subtitling documentaries; they also participate in filming interviews for a growing digital archive that I am in the process of developing, with support from academic librarians at my institution, for public dissemination. See for more information.

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10 Circular Road: National Cinema –​Global Film ARAM VIDAL Translated by Ann Marie Stock and Guy Baron

I am part of the generation of Cubans born in the 1980s that lived through a moment of some stability and economic prosperity, although with many political contradictions that escaped us because of our youth. Still, we enjoyed some of the achievements of Cuban society, such as a good education and social well-being. That context, coupled with the positive influence of my parents, filled me with optimism, intellectual curiosity and creativity, but the arrival of the 1990s, and with it one of the worst economic crises in the history of Cuba, cut short this stability. My generation was marked by the crisis, as it was the end of both an economic and an ideological bubble. The country was virtually paralysed and Cuban society collapsed; group migrations occurred, prostitution and hunger re-​surfaced, the city of Havana lost its colour, and childhood dreams faded. In my case, the resulting discontent with my reality led me to tell stories; stories of what happened and of what was possible, of what was lost and not found. First, I found that relief in literature. Then, in the early years of this century, motivated by the increasing movement of Cuban independent 236

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Circular Road film, I began to make documentaries. I was interested in bearing witness to the themes of my time and my generation, and telling stories that, due to forgetfulness or concealment, did not find their way on to local screens.

National Film In 2000, when I was nineteen, I went to study Communication at the University of Havana, a degree that had been recently inaugurated, and which promised a space of learning about various aspects of the media. I took part in film clubs that brought me closer to the classics of world cinema and I participated in a filmmaking workshop, taught by Enrique Pineda Barnet1, a man who I still see as a tutor for his constant interest in supporting young filmmakers and sharing his experiences as a director. During the early years of the 2000s particularly, the production of Cuban films by young filmmakers began to increase. Short films like Video de familia (Family Video, 2001) and films such as Tres veces dos (Three Times Two, 2003) left their mark on me and showed me that a different kind of cinema could be made in Cuba; a cinema with a contemporary view of reality. Digital technology was strengthening this growth of independent film production. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the arrival in Cuba of DV (Digital Video) cameras indicated a shift in the production of audiovisual material. Several short films and documentaries started to be produced and directed by film students and self-​taught creators. This production of highly personal works filled most of the cinema listings of the first Muestra de Nuevos Realizadores de Cuba (Showcase of New Filmmakers in Cuba) in 2001. It was a festival that surprised us all because the films presented were very different from the cinema produced by the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC). Some films were formally experimental, others were politically bold, but all were made by young directors, with small digital video cameras and mostly produced outside state institutions. For young people like me, who in those years were attracted by the cinema and wanted to create our first films, the festival was a great showcase, because it confirmed the possibility of making a personal kind of cinema in Cuba. For 237

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The Cinema of Cuba the first time, producing films in Cuba was a simple matter of bringing together a group of friends, learning to operate user-​friendly technologies, and improvising. In 2002, I started working as an assistant director in the independent documentary production company Alma Films. There I learned, with a lot of practice, the basics of audiovisual production. The following year I borrowed a DV camera from the director Rolando Almirante2 as I wanted to film a personal project about young people, so I chose to film the crowds of young people who would regularly gather in Calle G in Vedado in Havana. It wasn’t an expensive project so I was able to create it without the help of state institutions or any commercial interests. My friend and accomplice Erick Coll, who had learned to use digital cameras on his own, was the photographer and we shot it all in one night, using the headlights of a car as the only light source. Later, we did the editing on the personal computer of another friend, Joseph Lemuel, now a prominent film and music video editor in Cuba, and that is how Calle G (2003) became a reality. The film is about the lack of options for young people to have fun and about a sense of identity they found in the urban tribes that they formed around rock music, and it was received favourably; it won the Opera Prima award at the Plaza Film Festival and was selected for inclusion in several festivals in Cuba, including the Muestra. To us young learners, such festivals were an ideal platform to test our early work. In the case of Cuba, digital technology brought us not only the possibility of producing at low cost but also, and above all, freedom; freedom to create personal works, uncensored during production, with no one to judge beforehand whether or not you were capable of making a movie. Learning this way through practice was an essential tool and in turn, an opportunity to convey our personal views on different subjects. At that time, along with most of my friends in the university, I was immersed in the construction of my own thought and the development of a critical sensibility. We shared a sense of disillusion with the problems of our country and the few opportunities for debate. In general, the rest of Cuba’s media production in the early 2000s was charged with a single political, oft repeated and well-​worn rhetoric with the exception of some Cuban films such as Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), Alicia en el 238

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Circular Road pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown), Guantanamera, Madagascar, and a few others. I was twenty-three back then and I wanted to reflect on our reality, share a somehow collective emotion of my generation, which did not have many channels through which to be heard. To create a documentary that showed the opinions of a group of friends about their vision of the country and their proposals for improvement as well as their individual dreams and disappointments, was my bid for a look beyond a single and alien political discourse. Using that momentum, the documentary De Generación (De-​ Generation, 2006) began to take shape. The topics I was interested in addressing were common; what was said in the gatherings of friends, our daily reflections on our present and future, not focusing on a defined ideological discourse but on the observation of our existence and us. The title of the documentary itself provided evidence of my disappointed vision of our time, caused by the degeneration that we had had to go through in historical, political and economic terms. I knew what I was risking by making this documentary because it presented another image of Cuban youth, other than that offered by the state media and the speeches given by the political party and the communist organisations. I was not sure if I would be able to show it publicly, or what the reaction would be. However, I needed to bear witness to our emotions and ideas of the moment. With that in mind, I spent two years gathering interviews from several young people. During that time I finished my studies at the university and I started working at the ICAIC, as a documentary filmmaker. I was backed up by my work in previous documentaries such as Jóvenes jazzistas (Young Jazz People, 2004) and Pintores cubanos contemporáneos (Contemporary Cuban Painters, 2004), both produced by Alma Films. At the ICAIC I directed other documentaries on request, such as Paco (2005) and Baja el telón, Sube el telón (Lower the Curtain, Raise the Curtain, 2006), while at the same time, and by self-​financing, I kept developing my own project. At the end of 2006, I finished editing De Generación, and I immediately sent it to several Cuban film festivals, with many doubts and not a little fear. Fortunately it was not censored and was chosen to première in the sixth Muestra, held in Havana in February 2007. For me it was a dream to 239

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The Cinema of Cuba have such a personal project premiered at the Chaplin cinema, the main cinema in Havana with a large crowd and a notable presence of national and international press. That was a prolific year for films that reflected issues evaded by the state media, such as Buscándote Habana (Looking for You Havana) and Model Town which made the Muestra of this year the one with the greatest impact during recent times. De Generación won the first prize for documentaries and was selected by the Cuban film press among the top five documentary films shown in Cuba in 2007. It also obtained special mention at the International Documentary Festival held in memory of Santiago Álvarez, besides winning more prizes at other cultural events. All of a sudden, a self-​funded documentary, with a discourse very different from that of the state, found a place in Cuba’s cinemas and was being given awards. Several national and foreign journalists interviewed me and I gained recognition within the growing movement of young filmmakers from Cuba. For two years, De Generación participated in film festivals in Spain, Sweden, Venezuela, The United States and Germany, some of which I attended. In terms of distribution the ICAIC was a great support because of its numerous connections with international film festivals. The fact that my film had been awarded several prizes made possible the concerted promotion efforts, and even today it is still shown in Cuba in various film exhibitions. My appearance at film festivals and exhibitions allowed me to meet some of the most important filmmakers from Cuba: Fernando Pérez3, Ernesto Daranas, Arturo Soto, and many of the young Cuban directors such as Alina Rodríguez, Esteban Insausti, Gustavo Pérez, among others. I shared similar views about our country with several of them, as well as similar challenges to producing films outside the state institutions. I also shared ideas with filmmakers from other countries at the festivals I attended, like Patricio Guzmán, Matías Bize and Erick Gandini. It was a very special time in my career where I could represent Cuban cinema in the festivals and exhibitions in which I took part. All this gave me the energy to try to create new projects and I wanted to continue to make documentaries because I felt the urgency to address 240

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Circular Road certain issues in my country. It was also a genre with which I was familiar and that I could produce by self-​financing and with my friends’ support. However, I  also wanted to direct fiction. I  had a couple of scripts written and I felt that it was time to find support for them, which could not be achieved through self-​financing alone. It soon became obvious, however, that even for Cuban directors with broad experience it takes many years, sometimes decades, to raise funds for a new movie. There were no transparent mechanisms to access national and international production funds. In this sense, the ICAIC was the only one authorised to generate co-​ productions, while there were legal and economic obstacles that hindered the expansion of independent film. In other words, although the ICAIC sponsored the exhibition and gave its support to the distribution of cinema made by young people in international festivals, as a state institution it did not facilitate the production of these independent works, since most of them contained critical content about Cuban reality. For those who wanted to produce outside the state institutions, the only way was by self-​financing. This meant that the scope of this type of film was very limited. But more than simply the delay in developing a new project, it was the lack of opportunities to build up a steady career as a film director that disheartened me. To picture myself in that stagnant future, depending solely on self-​financing, began to alert me to the difficulty of making films in Cuba at that time, when independent filmmaking was beginning, as well as in the future. It had taken more than two years to make De Generación, and now that I had the impetus to lead new projects, I faced the lack of access to funding them in Cuba or elsewhere. In the midst of that search, I received a call from the ICAIC inviting me to participate in a documentary film that would be composed of five stories directed by young Cuban filmmakers. Although it was a commissioned film, I would have the opportunity to work with outstanding people, so I immediately agreed. The film would be shot in several countries in Latin America and would have the financial support of the ICAIC, which gave me certain infrastructure advantages; something very difficult to achieve in Cuba when producing everything personally. Although I was already working with the ICAIC, I was only involved in small projects. But 241

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The Cinema of Cuba now I had an invitation to be involved in a project with greater support in its production and distribution. The theme of the project was the literacy campaign in Latin America and from the beginning it posed a challenge to all involved: Alina Rodríguez, Daniel Vera, Carlos Machado, Raidel Reinoso and me. Without exception, we all had produced works with self-​financing, and with some critical content, and suddenly we found ourselves involved in a government project. Leading the project was an outstanding Cuban documentary filmmaker, Belkis Vega, who was respected for her open and honest vision of Cuban reality. From the first meeting, we agreed to develop the issue from a humane perspective, rather than from the basis of an ideological discourse. We wanted to make a film with a candid view of what we would find in the various countries in Latin America where we were going to film; we did not want to produce a political pamphlet, but an honest film with different aesthetics according to the characteristics of each director involved; this was something we all defended from the start. On this basis, five working teams of young people were created, each consisting of the director, photographer, sound engineer and a producer. In my case, I  was filming in Vallegrande, Bolivia where the literacy campaign supported by the Cuban government had just started. For most team members, this was their first time abroad. In my case, it was not my first trip, but it was the first time I had filmed outside Cuba and it was my first experience with the production of a transnational project. We filmed for a month and I decided to make a documentary film without testimonies. I wanted to approach the reality of life for many people who could not read or write and I chose to do it in the most intimate way I could, by showing their daily lives without any dialogue. For everyone involved in the project it was an experience that marked us, from a humane and creative point of view and it ultimately resulted in the feature documentary film La dimensión de las palabras (The Dimension of Words, 2008), which later received considerable promotion in Cuba, although it had a rather cold response from the public. However, this state project was the first one that took me to film outside Cuba and expanded my interest in filming other stories, which were not necessarily tied to the national context; I started to think less locally, more globally. 242

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Circular Road The project also had another unexpected outcome. While in Bolivia, once I  had finished what I  needed to film for the commissioned documentary, I went to La Higuera for a couple of days, the village where Ché Guevara had been killed. Whilst there it made sense to me to ask residents about the story of Ché and shoot random answers I found on the streets. Upon returning to Cuba I reviewed the extra material and decided I had an interesting story, as what I had filmed told me something very different from what the figure of Ché was said to represent for the people of Bolivia. After obtaining the authorisation of the ICAIC to use the extra material, I edited a documentary from the testimonies. I named it XXXX años después (XXXX Years Later). The documentary premiered that year (2008) at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, and generated considerable controversy, as it was forty years since the death of Ché, and the documentary showed that part of that history had been forgotten. Some witnesses spoke of Ché as an invader who had come to take power; others had not even heard of him, and others were happy that communism had not come to Bolivia. The reality these witnesses had caught was in direct opposition to the Cuban media discourse about the impact of the Cuban Revolution and in particular the figure of Ché in Latin America. The documentary testified to the fact that forty years later, part of that history had been erased, or misrepresented in a kind of fable. In general, confrontation and critical reflection have always been present in my personal works, as in most films of the new Cuban filmmakers. Maybe that is why these films began to generate a great deal of interest in the national and international press, and suddenly the festivals that premiered these works began to receive some government pressure to reduce that impact. In that same year (2008) the Muestra limited access to the foreign press and projected the critical works at night, when there would be less of the public present. As a filmmaker in Cuba at that time I ran various risks and enjoyed certain advantages. I risked censorship and the danger that my work would be disturbing enough to receive some other type of pressure, and I ran an economic risk because of the difficulty of getting funds to film again in Cuba. On the other hand, I had the advantage of being part of a movement 243

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The Cinema of Cuba of young filmmakers with similar intentions and visions, the support of many well-​known Cuban cineastes, and help from ICAIC’s tradition of great institutional autonomy. It was a moment when there existed a certain political intention to permit spaces for moderate criticism, but there also existed various mechanisms to limit the production of films outside state institutions. After De Generación, I was not able to raise the funds necessary to film a new project in Cuba and the only other personal work that I managed to finish was XXXX años después. I then faced the question of how to keep making movies and in turn I began to wonder how to improve my personal life as, even though I was working on several commissioned projects, these were not enough. The answer to the question of how to support myself extended beyond the island given the lack of well-​paid jobs in Cuba, the limited access to international funds, and the lack of continuity in national film production. Although back then I knew (and still know) Cuban filmmakers who have been able to make a living in Cuba –​working for foreign producers, making music videos, creating commercial videos and other custom projects –​those options were not enough for me at that time. Amid these doubts, in late 2008, I was granted an art scholarship from the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Art, which provided me with the necessary funds to produce a new film and live in Mexico for four months.

Global Film I arrived in Mexico in September 2008 with a documentary project whose aim would be to look into the lives of young Cuban émigrés there. I had originally planned to film this project in several countries and follow the lives of Cubans in different contexts, but the funding meant that I could only do it in Mexico. I wanted to address a taboo subject and break some myths about Cubans living abroad, who were generally presented as living in political exile rather than as economic migrants. For my generation, migration was and remains first and foremost the search for better economic conditions, but it is also a way for those who for some ideological reason or other are excluded from the cultural and political life on the island. 244

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Circular Road I called this new documentary Ex Generación (Ex-​Generation) to create a continuity with the previous documentary and show some parallels between young people living in Cuba and young people living outside the island. I focused mainly on young university graduates who despite their education had not found economic stability in Cuba. I felt a great affinity with them and shared many common criteria, including the inability of our generation to take part in the political decisions of our country and to design a new country with better economic prospects, among other necessary changes. I spent three months filming the documentary. At the time I was twenty-seven years old and I had a fairly pessimistic vision about what awaited me in the future in Cuba. I was filled with a sense of helplessness about the possibility of creating some significant change in my country and in my own life. More than a great opportunity in Mexico, what made me decide to stay there was the disappointment I felt at that time about my life back home. In making that decision, I realised that the issue of Ex Generación was to become my life; this time it was not a documentary about my present, but about my future. Since that decision, my life has changed in every way, for better or for worse, as commented by the young people in the documentary. Migrating was a leap into the void, and as such I spent a lot of time in free fall while I was trying to find a space in the new reality to which I had transported myself. Today, nearly six years after that decision, I think most of the limitations that led to my departure from Cuba remain. There have been some changes, such as the relaxation of the travel restrictions both for Cubans at home and abroad, which has facilitated contact between Cuban migrants and our families at home. However, there remains a lack of job opportunities, which was the main reason that motivated me to leave. Here in Mexico I have continued to work as a filmmaker; most of my time is spent directing documentaries and commercials, and I give classes and workshops on filmmaking. In parallel with my professional career I have continued my personal project and so, in a way, having left Cuba has not changed my professional and personal goals. What is different is that in Mexico I have been exposed to greater diversity in every way: higher risks and more opportunities. I still retain most of what I learned in Cuba 245

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The Cinema of Cuba allowing me, for instance, to produce with smaller budgets, maximising the options of digital technology. I have also been able to access different funds, from artist residencies, for the creation of new personal films. In 2010, for example, I received support from William & Mary Libraries; as a Media Artist in Residence in Virginia, I was able to film in several US cities. In this new project, later entitled Bubbles Beat (2012), I again addressed the issue of young people, inquiring about the spirit of an era marked by technology, the accelerated pace of everyday life, information overload, political disillusionment, and the need for continuous reflection in search of meaning and identity. The themes were explored from the vision of a group of young Americans, from various backgrounds and in different cities. In some ways the themes and concerns of Bubbles Beat are the same ones that have always interested me, and that I tend to examine in my personal films. Generally, there are more questions than answers; I’m motivated by a perpetual need to reflect on my time and my space, and on diverse aspects of the human condition. The documentary has been the mode in which I have worked for the most part, but I don’t consider myself

Fig. 10.1  Aram Vidal directing on set

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Circular Road a social or political analyst, nor do I believe in the objectivity of the form. The only thing that can be represented in it is a vision of reality, not reality itself. I consider myself primarily a creator who expresses his personal views on certain issues, without expecting that my perspective be taken as the truth. In that sense, I see no difference between my documentaries and my fiction. The difference is that the documentary form connects me directly with an existing reality, while fiction allows me to explore more intimate and psychological aspects of the human condition, something I am working on at the moment. During my time in Mexico I have met and worked with many people, and I have been exposed to new ideas, new learning, and new visions of reality. Having travelled to other countries and now living in such a cosmopolitan place as Mexico City, has led me to develop a broader view of who we are as human beings in general, rather than as citizens of individual countries. This is an unexpected consequence of living outside Cuba, and one that I appreciate a great deal. At the same time, I have become interested in a more creative and aesthetic exploration of film language. Now I dedicate more time to the theoretical study of film and to the formal exploration of the art. I see cinema as being more diverse than ever, and studying its endless options and expressive resources inspires me. I am drawn to the work of filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Ari Folman, Jim Jarmusch, Werner Herzog, Won Kar-​wai, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Terrence Malik, Michael Haneke, Fernando Meirelles, Leos Carax, Steve McQueen, Kim Ki-​ duk, Terry Gilliam, Paolo Sorrentino, Peter Greenaway, and Stanley Kubrick, to mention a few that come to mind. The formal exploration of cinema is something I  have applied more in my fiction because it is a form that allows better planning of each element to be used. At the same time it is a mode that greatly influences the collective, the contribution of various specialties that support the initial idea that one can have as a director. For example, the short film Recursivo (Recursive, 2012), a circular narrative about the repetition of a dream, came from a script that had been written in Cuba but that I produced in Mexico, again from a production grant by the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Art, and with the support of the Film Training Centre and the 247

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The Cinema of Cuba National Art Center of Mexico. The project involved artists from different countries and different backgrounds: the protagonists were two Mexican actresses; the director of photography was Italian; a Spaniard did the post-​ production and a Colombian made the scenery, so the result cannot be easily attributed to a single person or a single country. Although the films that I direct now in Mexico are distributed as Mexican films, I remain Cuban, which makes it complex to explain the regional authorship of these works. This multinational creative endeavour is one of the characteristics of my recent work. For example, the photography of Bubbles Beat involved a young American, Randall Taylor, who led me to experiment with new visual elements, trying different lenses, mounting the camera in unexpected places and at many different angles, and all this enriched the formal outcome of the film. In the case of the short film Relevo (Relief, 2013), a love story that could happen anywhere in the world, and speaks of the nature of relationships, I  worked with an Italian-​English musician, Giovanni Tria, who made the soundtrack for the story, and this encouraged a very different view on the use of sound in fiction. In this case everything was done online, without meeting personally, since we contacted each other through our pages on Vimeo, and we worked on the project at a distance, he in London and I in Mexico City. Últimos días de una casa (Last Days of a House, 2014) is about loneliness and old age, and although emanating from the homonymous poem by Dulce María Loynaz, it has no visual reference to Cuba; and my new short film production, El Gato (The Cat), is about madness and imagination. You can call this global cinema, digital cinema, personal cinema, independent cinema, marginal cinema, experimental cinema. In the end, they are labels that rely more on individual interpretation. The truth is that my training and my production no longer have a duty to a sole country. The point is that none of these works refer directly to Cuba or Mexico, or any specific country. Not having to think in terms of Cuban or Mexican cinema gives me a lot of freedom when writing my scripts because I can explore any topic that interests me and also experiment in the way of telling the story. Throughout my documentaries and short films you can see some continuity in my interest in reflection, exploration and provocation, but I  do not feel it necessary to put labels on these films. Nor do I  feel 248

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Circular Road an obligation to make only personal cinema or only commercial cinema, or make a value judgement between these forms of production and their results. Each author should create according to their possibilities and interests, according to the opportunities that arise during the course of their professional life; you can learn from everything, everything has a purpose. And if I have learned anything over the years it is that diversity is always better, because it gives you the chance to live doing what you know how to do, and also lets you find such diversity within those things that really make sense to you and that define you as a person and as a creator. To look to make a film that meets certain preconceived stereotypes limits you in advance. So I admire the work of Cuban filmmakers like Fernando Pérez and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, because although their films have Cuba as a backdrop, they explore issues and concerns that extend beyond the regional. And I applaud the work of young Cuban filmmakers who are tackling novel genres, like in the case of Juan de los muertos (Juan of the Dead, 2011) and using modular narrative forms, as in the case of Larga distancia (Long Distance, 2010), and Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2012). All these films I believe extend the aesthetic and thematic possibilities of Cuban cinema and make it a wider, more global cinema.

Circular Path A proverb that always comes to mind and that somehow inspired the title of this essay is one that says: ‘No path is complete until it has returned to the beginning.’ For me, that beginning is Cuba. My essence has to do with what I lived in Cuba, with the values instilled ​​ in me by my parents, with that need to create that arose in my childhood and was stimulated by already existing traditions in Cuban cinema and culture, and by several other factors that have promoted the film movement in my country. Fortunately, the doors of Cuba are open to that return; I could return to my country, and several of the personal films that I have made in recent years have screened at national festivals, such as Ex Generación, Un día de Julián (Julian’s Day, 2010) and Bubbles Beat. The fact that they keep showing these films has meant that there has always been a way for me both to 249

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The Cinema of Cuba be present in Cuba and to continue to share my projects abroad. I keep my eye on what is happening in my country, at the new films that are released each year and at the latest debate of the filmmakers who are currently pushing for a national film law to create a legal framework for independent filmmaking and facilitate the continued production of a national cinema. I keep in touch with several filmmakers who live on the island and others who live outside Cuba, and in all there is a consensus on the desire for a better future for our country, and in particular for our culture and our cinema. Today, both Cuban cinema and the history of Cuba are at a turning point, and although it is difficult to predict the outcome I will try to be optimistic about the future. I hope to return to Cuba to make films; I have written a film script to set there and it is a project I hope to realise someday. I also intend to continue the documentary series about my generation, perhaps by following the lives of young people interviewed in previous documentaries, and I would like nothing more than to call this new chapter, Re-​Generación. I am not so naive as to think that the future of Cuba can be built with movies. Nor do I think that filmmakers have the capacity to transform the reality of a country with our films alone. But I strongly believe that Cuba would not be what it is today without its film. Undoubtedly, it would not be better.

Notes 1. One the most outstanding Cuban film directors. His musical La bella del Alhambra (The Beauty of the Alhambra, 1989) won several awards in Cuba and in international film festivals, including a Goya. 2. He was a renowned documentary film director. Among his production career, the most notable works are the documentary film La tierra más hermosa (The Most Beautiful Land, 1988), the short film Jazz de Cuba (2003) and En busca del Oriflama (In Search of the Oriflama, 2004). 3. One of the most important Cuban filmmakers today. He has directed many films that have received both national and international recognition such as: Clandestinos, Madagascar, La vida es silbar (Life is to Whistle) and Suite Habana.

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11 Trains of Silence ONEYDA GONZÁLEZ Translated by Guy Baron and Ann Marie Stock

‘I’m from where there is a river’ goes a song by Silvio Rodríguez1 and it is as if to say: ‘The mountain streams please me more than the sea.’ Maybe that is why the song ends saying, ‘And then when I left /​for the city and the trap /​I left knowing that in Tampa, /​my grandfather talked to Martí.’2 We do not know what these men talked about, and perhaps it was the simplest conversation with no mention of concepts like war, homeland or hardship; but knowing that the grandfather spoke to Martí gives us a precise reference and makes us trust him. It is the same confidence that the river gives us as it cleanses and flows, changing course and yet remaining the same river. I, too, am from where there is a river: the Najasa, in the Camagüey province, in the centre of Cuba. One morning we watched a group of men come in to our village in a huge and mysterious truck. It had an enclosed bed that soon would reveal unimaginable things. Over the light grey of the bed, which actually looked like a big box, you could read black letters, all in uppercase, they said, ‘ICAIC’, one of the many acronyms we saw back then. It was a mobile cinema truck, bringing films to the rural population, and those programmes 251

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The Cinema of Cuba shaped my fondness for the movies. I could have been one of the girls who appeared in the documentary Por primera vez (For the First Time, 1967) by Octavio Cortázar. With eyes full of wonder, I see myself in front of a makeshift screen. I can’t say how often this act of magic was performed, but I do know the impression it left on me. Sitting on an uncomfortable little bench, I  see myself holding on until the last moment, when some letters begin to appear, feeling disappointed that at least for now, my escape to such a faraway place was ending. The arrival of the ICAIC truck brought the opportunity to hear new music; to encounter stories, customs, games, battles, bodies that fought or loved each other; and to see diverse human faces, all at the same time. I remember some panoramic images in black and white, where a young man encouraged a crowd to follow him. I have often wondered if it was a scene from Andrei Rublev (1966), the Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky’s film. As if it happened yesterday, I remember that, one by one, the other children left, until I was alone with this story full of life. I don’t know if the beauty of the images kept me there, or if I would have stayed had it been another film, but I  feel my trembling, my uncertainty, as the crowd followed the young man and I remember the pleasure I felt, perhaps the first great joy of my life. In the Cuba of that time, we children of the countryside were fonder of the movies than of television. I have no idea how those mobile cinema programmes were organised, and although there were plenty of Soviet films, it was common to see Westerns, films about bullfighters, and others about Spanish, Argentinean or Mexican singers. Like the children of stories by Julio Cortázar, or Giuseppe Tornatore, I was fascinated by this new world that embraced me, and where I felt at ease, but only when I saw Cinema Paradiso (1988) years later did I come to understand the subtleties. It is one thing to believe that cinema is magic, but something else again and much more difficult  –​though infinitely enjoyable –​to live to make that ‘magic’ and share it with others. My professional experience has been diverse: I have been a teacher, researcher, and storyteller with words and images. I collaborated on some of Gustavo Pérez’s documentaries, but was also interested in fiction, 252

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Trains of Silence although in commenting on our popular concerns, the documentary form became ever more appealing. Early on, I would only research a topic, help create a questionnaire, or work as a producer to find and organise the material with which to develop the argument. Later, I developed other interests that became clearer after a short film about Salvador Cisneros Betancourt entitled ¿…Y el Marqués? (…And what about the Marquis?, 1996). I began to create images, develop characters, and look for dramatic solutions. The short film Vidas retiradas (Retired Lives, 1998) was one more step in that direction. In the Asociación Hermanos Saiz (Saiz Brothers Association), where I was serving as President, we had created a socio-​cultural project to get closer to rural people during the Special Period. One weekend we went to Tacones, the remote village of my childhood, where I rediscovered a dazzling experience familiar to me: the children, who did not have the opportunity to watch films projected by the mobile cinema, marvelled as much at the music, puppets or watercolours brought by visual artists as by discovering a familiar face on television. In the early 2000s, I discovered the story Todas iban a ser reinas (They Were All Going to Be Queens, 2006), but we only managed to shoot it in 2005, and completed the editing in early 2006. I put it in Gustavo Pérez’s hands, although I participated in the entire process: production, research, editing and even promotion. The documentary, about female immigrants from the former USSR who were immersed in Cuban society because of emotional ties, was not easy to make as Televisión Camagüey did not have the resources for a project that required extensive and complicated field production. But persistence is a quality of creative beings; it entails waiting while holding on to an idea, seeking opportunities to nurture it, or inventing the circumstances that get it started. It is important to remember the time and place. Back in those days, I was an adviser for television programmes, and we had a good working relationship with the director. I told Rebeca Buron Marín about the project and she suggested I send it to her for consideration, and soon we had her support. The project required searching, often blindly, until we would come across a face, a story, a character, that would reveal something representative of what we expected. When we got underway, but had no transportation, we had to get to some remote places 253

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The Cinema of Cuba on foot, often travelling long distances in order to get to the characters. For me it was a test because it meant acknowledging something very serious: all the effort pays off if you get great results. Nothing could guarantee success: studying the history of the USSR and the differences between each of the regions; filming enough material so as to gather valuable testimonies; discovering endless wonders in others; creating a script. We were all united around a single vision, that of the expert who is able to bring all the resources together and put them in the right place. It was the beginning of that difficult but thousand-​times-​over beautiful thing that is collaboration between artists. It is not always easy to create the right sense of expression in a film. In order to do so precisely, you have to be clear about who you are, and this means understanding other people. For example, in my study of Gertrudis Gómez de la Avellaneda, a poet, storyteller and playwright who, despite being of Antillean origin, dared to write about the rights of women in nineteenth-​century Spain, I had to develop a perspective on gender. That showed me that when we look for a way forward, many paths can move us toward our goal. I learned to understand the capacity of that woman from Camagüey to see through other beings, and to bring the experience of her verses, her legends, her novels and reflections from her autobiographical letters and depictions of personalities she admired. The study of her male characters allowed me to see and understand a universe that is born out of sympathy turned into awareness. I started working on something to which she attached great importance: female self-​esteem. This, curiously enough, gave me the opportunity to better understand men. I learned to work hard, to train my vision, to glimpse the Other. I was ready to ask her questions that came from my condition as a present-​day woman. How was I to represent the world if I do not change the perspective from which things have been looked at? How could I do so given that until recently most of the narrators were men? In what direction is everyone looking? And where am I looking? Determined to express myself, I first experimented as a director in 2008 with Violeta Productions, an independent company that my partner had just started. A student from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Lizneidy Martí, was in charge of field production and we had a domestic MiniDV camera, 254

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Trains of Silence owned by Wilfredo Omar Pérez. That’s how Al ánimo (Starting to Dance, 2008) was born, a study about the family, and the place of women within it. I wanted to explore this intimate space, something I had done through literature but wanted to probe more deeply on film. The four characters that appear in it are my friends and I wanted to look into domestic conflict, as the home is the place where conflicts arise that are also reproduced in society at large, but with less willingness to tolerate differences. These friends were very honest, and this comes across in the film. The strengths of this documentary come from these women and I have been told many times that they are presented with great affection, something I tried to do consciously, but only achieved with the help of the photographer and the editor. This first filmmaking experience was difficult but worthwhile. I recognised my limits, and also my possibilities. Working with a photographer I have known for twenty years, Wilfredo, I made new discoveries about the value of the image; and the suggestions of the young editor, Johan Wilcox, moved me in new directions. Immediately after the premiere of this film, we started to film Ave María (Hail Mary, 2009), a film set in the village of El Cobre, near Santiago de Cuba in the Eastern province of the island. El Cobre is the home of the renowned sanctuary devoted to Cuba’s patron saint, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, but the closing of the mine in this one-​time copper capital meant the loss of the major source of employment for its people. We soon discovered that the village had a particular sound pattern: the chimes and prayers of the faithful in the morning, the silence at midday, the Angelus with its vibrations over the valley at sunset, and the voices of children mixed with the howling of dogs at night. One day, we heard the steel band of the village rehearsing, and, after knocking on their door, we discovered a young man improvising Schubert’s Ave María on his Caribbean steel drums. This was one of the many images we captured that reflected the intimate religious life of the village beyond the walls of the church. There was also a group of nuns whose cells were near the small hotel where we were staying. We realised that it was going to be difficult to film them because they didn’t appear very often. We met the Superior, and learned they were 255

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The Cinema of Cuba Barefoot Carmelites, and therefore semi-​cloistered nuns who were reluctant to be filmed. But the Superior told me about the ‘pretty’ voices of some other women in the village, and we used one of those voices (a woman who was seven months pregnant) at the beginning of the documentary. Eventually, as often happens, someone would have an idea about someone else’s area of specialty, but we all focused on our own contributions. It was a kind of controlled freedom, guided by each one of us and by a collective awareness that the central idea had to be strongly reflected. We lived an experience that inspired us all, including the relationship we established with the villagers, who lead a very different way of life. The final day of shooting, on a Sunday, we filmed a mass and there, in the front row, we discovered the semi-​cloistered nuns and managed to get them on camera, and I believe we captured in them a nearly invisible form of sacred motherhood. Following this we developed a similar intimate process with the film El predicador (The Preacher, 2010), filmed in a remote community more than eighty kilometres from the city, and it took a year to film. La octava isla (The Eighth Island, 2012) was produced in a way similar to Ave María because we stayed in a place called Chambas, a small town where the character lives. The intimacy achieved in filming Modesto, a nonagenarian poet, who lives for his verses and feels saved by them, was one of life’s special gifts. Taking him out of Chambas, where he had lived for more than forty years, to see the sea, made his eyes light up like those of a child. Modesto gave himself over to us from the time of this first emotional moment onward, as he did during lunch when he saved the meat (claiming he disliked it), and then brought it to the woman who had given him nine children. Although it was not told in the narrative, the couple suffered the loss of two of their children –​one in the war in Angola –​and the separation from others who left the country. As with their parents many years earlier, the drama of rootlessness continues to play itself out in their descendants. In this same year my second short film came to fruition, Esperando que caiga el jabalí (Waiting for the Boar to Fall, 2012). In the film a man dreams that his children will have what he could not have and will become what he was not able to become. I had, for some time, been thinking about the idea and I had already developed the emotion of the character. I kept thinking about it and then one day, I understood what really interested me, 256

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Trains of Silence although more than the circumstances, I was able to perceive the drama. At the time I was designing projects with my students from Cuba’s University of the Arts, the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) and I always emphasised the importance of thinking and writing down ideas, of taking note of subtleties and developing them. When I told them about my character, one of them asked me if I had written up the project, but I hadn’t. I felt exposed, and the way out was to ask them to bring their own projects to discuss and say that I would bring mine along also. To have my project as a reference probably helped them feel closer to the process of literary creation. Some found a fictional story in the life of my character, and that yielded multiple perspectives on a single reality. During our discussion, something wonderful happened: they proposed collaborating on my project with me, and so it was from among the students of the group that the field producer, editor and photographer emerged. The child that appears at the end of the film showed me a world I did not want to overlook because it was familiar to me. While we were shooting, I became convinced that his fantasy was infinite, and that his hostile surroundings did not seem to cause harm, especially because of his creativity. He is a very funny child, and I saw myself reflected in many of his tricks to get his way, perhaps because we shared the experience of a childhood in the countryside. A few years ago, my partner Gustavo woke up suddenly one night and told me he had to ‘do something’. Sitting up in bed, with a restlessness that seemed to drown him, he shared ideas about a project he had in mind, one that seemed impossible. I calmed him down and told him it was too beautiful to let slip away and the next day he announced that the director of Televisión Camagüey had offered him support.3 El viaje (The Journey) was born and I dedicated some verses to it: ‘The train carries the noise of the city on its shoulders /​It shakes off fear, and lines up for the night journey /​Wild snails, timid breezes await it.’ Many Cubans have travelled on trains from the Interior of Cuba to get to Havana and railroads have inspired a great deal of artistic production on the island. At an early age, I learned that living in a remote, rural community forces you to move. To register a child, marry, give birth, see a doctor, or die, you have to go to town. For us, the town was Amancio,4 eighteen kilometres 257

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The Cinema of Cuba from Tacones. It was a great event for us to finally arrive at paved roads over the same route used by tractors pulling wagons loaded with sugar cane. Niñito, a driver who picked up people along the way, would give us a lift. On our way back one evening it started to rain and, amidst thunder and lightning, we all remained silent. Niñito wanted to get there before the river rose, but it was too late. We had two options: wait until morning or risk our lives crossing the river. Niñito calculated every last detail and, without saying a word, took off into the water. Despite the protests of parents and screams of children, he managed to get us through. When we arrived home, frightened but unharmed, we saw a coconut tree that had been charred by lightning. If Niñito had stopped at the risk of being dragged under by the Yáquimo, we would have all had to spend the night waiting, and who knows what dangers we would have been exposed to. So being a country girl, nourished by an artistic imagination, makes the journey part of the job. The work we have done since 2007 has emerged alongside a project we call Severo secreto (Secret Severo, 2016 –​fig. 11.1). It has been the result of a long and patient wait. Even before we started to consider the poet, Severo Sarduy, for a film character, Gustavo went with me in search of the world he lived in. While preparing a selection of essays on people from Camagüey like him, I had the idea of recording interviews to collect what might remain about his childhood and adolescence. In 2007, our curiosity and enthusiasm got the better of us and we recorded the first interview. If life is a journey, Sarduy’s own life was that way in the strictest sense and in the summer of 2010, the project went abroad for the first time. It was while we were trying to do the post-production of El predicador in Lisbon. We drew the producers’ attention to the new idea, but at that time they were not prepared to finance another production. They left us the camera, an invaluable gift, and their friendship, which remains a treasure. In order to film Severo secreto, we stayed for a few days in a small hostel with a number of religious people and later in the producer’s home. To illustrate the type of ingenuity in terms of production, food was provided by various restaurants around the city whose owners welcomed us in exchange for appearing as sponsors in the credits of the documentary.

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Fig. 11.1  Poster for Severo secreto. By Alucho (Alejandro Rodríguez)

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The Cinema of Cuba The following year we received one of the Cinergia awards, and with it the chance to participate in Bolivia Lab, an international script workshop in La Paz. With the prize, we achieved what had seemed an impossible dream: to travel to Gran Canaria and Paris to continue the research into the film on Severo (in order to keep the cost as low as possible, we were routed to La Paz with stopovers in Mexico City, Havana and Bogotá, a journey of more than 24 hours). We only had four days, including those for travel, but managed to find one of Severo’s paintings, Canela, held by the Atlantic Center of Modern Art, and we interviewed the Cuban poet, Manuel Díaz Martínez, who spoke of the extraordinary humanity of his friend, Severo. In Paris we learned that a selection of Severo’s paintings was in the USA in Princeton, New Jersey. Going there was a mere dream until we found out about a grant from the Friends of the Library at the University. We were encouraged to apply and, although it was a long shot given that the funds were generally awarded to projects of a more academic nature, we went ahead and prepared the online application. In April 2015 we received the good news that our project was among those selected. Later, at Princeton, we found more than we were looking for. We met incredibly generous people and left with our inspiration renewed. We want to bring the soul of Severo Sarduy closer to Cubans. It matters deeply to us that he is known in Cuba, and that he becomes more widely visible during our time. The journey this project has made possible is far more than the physical one; to discover how people take their culture beyond borders is marvelous. Culture is more than geography; it is an inheritance, a spiritual possession that can be taken wherever you go. That’s how this has been a time outside of time, to the point of spending several months in Florida where my daughter, who had financed my first two trips to the USA, now lives. That gift gave me the chance to contrast the mystery that exists between what is imagined and what is lived. And it gave her the opportunity to provide me with the kind of imaginary journey I created for her in her childhood when she would be fascinated by my reading of ‘Preciosa y el aire’ (Preciosa and the Wind), the poem by Federico García Lorca where the young girl escapes the man in the wind who wants to lift her skirt; and she would be moved by the tragedy of Juan 260

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Trains of Silence Darien, the tiger child from Horacio Quiroga’s story. The trip is one of the dreams that she made come true for me. It has facilitated my creative activity, and become a recurring topic in my work. The journey transforms us –​ sometimes painfully, and also reaffirms us. This article was born from one of those journeys following a stay at the College of William & Mary, at the invitation of Ann Marie Stock. During the course of a week, I met with her students in Hispanic Studies and Film and Media Studies. They had read my poems and interviews with filmmakers and had seen my documentaries. They made thoughtful comments and discussed my work alongside films by other directors from the island that Ann Marie had analysed with them in previous class sessions. Instead of feeling flattered, I was frightened. There are things that have to be done carefully. How is it that suddenly I was appearing as a documentary filmmaker? How is it that my work was being discussed alongside films from within such a respectable tradition? The truth is that it scared me to be named alongside documentary filmmakers such as Sara Gómez and Nicolás Guillén Landrián; not only because of the most obvious differences between their stature and mine, but rather because it doesn’t feel as if I am part of their legacy. Although I am fascinated by Gómez’s up-​front, defiant look, for example, and Guillén’s ironic stance, as well as by the clever solutions of their film language, I maintain an oblique gaze, and. in most of my work there is a visible (and often explicit) dialogue with social problems. An example might serve to illustrate this. In my second short film, Esperando que caiga el jabalí, the editor did not understand why I decided to take away the character’s voice after we had interviewed her. The editor is a very talented professional but with much trepidation she did what I asked. We had listened to the interview together, and she appreciated the testimony as much as I did. But instead, I chose silence, because the images functioned by themselves, and the anguish of the character revealed itself more powerfully without her voice. Silence can be extremely powerful and speaking about it might be what I’m looking for, but more than that, I want to give voice to other subjects. This is why at the end of this same documentary it is the child who speaks and, in the next El silfo (The Sylph, 2013), that same child becomes the 261

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The Cinema of Cuba protagonist, with a world of dreams, apparently playful, but also disturbing, even though they come from his own fantasy and innocence. It is the story of a boy who seems not to exist in the real world and chooses to express himself through fantasy, by dreaming that he can fly to a planet he names ‘Banana Splits’; and much of the power of this film lies in the silences that exist within it. In Severo secreto, silence is explored consciously and in many different ways. I was concerned about our general ignorance of a man I believe to be important, born a few years before me in my city. My first question was why he had not returned to Cuba, and the story follows the course of his exemplary life. We traced his journey from Camagüey to Havana and then to Paris; the journey of an artist, of a Cuban in Europe, and of a complex man. Severo himself gives us the key to making his (non-​)story, as he said himself: ‘The biography of a man begins before his birth, and goes beyond his death…’ He believes that ‘the important thing is to forget’, discarding trivial events so as to save valuable (poetic) memories. That’s how we chose what we enjoyed and wanted to share. And as we fervently hope that this story truly reflects him, we have searched through his thinking, and have tried to reflect his passion for the baroque and his thirst for poetry. Severo also had a great sense of humour, which we try to reflect in the film. There is a well-​known legend in Camagüey of a woman named Dolores Rondón, a beautiful criolla from the nineteenth century who went from riches to poverty. On her headstone, in the cemetery in Camagüey, are the following words: ‘Here lies Dolores Rondón /​her career at an end. /​You, mortal step forward and see /​The earthly desires which are: /​Pride and vanity /​Opulence and power /​Everything comes to an end /​For only immortalised/​Is the wrong that is minimised /​And the good that can be achieved.’ In one of Severo’s last poems he writes an epitaph for himself, using the sonority of that décima: ‘Here rests with a mocking attitude, /​Angel of the jiribilla /​the Wizard of the quatrain /​And even of the purest son /​A shot of cheap rum, /​A good purge, a mass /​A slow dry toast /​To appease the gods /​Absent, but ferocious: /​To the one that died from laughter!’5 And so when I speak of where I’m from, I believe that everything comes from the same source; in other words, from the same river. Severo Sarduy 262

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Trains of Silence created work that reflects the specificity of Cuban identity (cubanidad), overcoming many fears, and keeping many silences. Not everything can be expressed. Not everything should be said. As Violeta Parra, says: ‘We must measure silence /​We must measure words /​Without going too far or not going far enough /​Just what is needed.’ That is why I am reminded of Tarkovsky and his film Andrei Rublev, as it is a vision of life that Tarkovsky gives us; the necessary conflict between man and his environment in order that art may be created. It is this conflict that we need to express, and turning that purpose into a mission, not recognition or reward, is a measure of success, the patient cultivation of what is sought, the meticulous care of every little revelation, the confident progress toward overcoming every obstacle that might slow or disrupt the march. Our situation as Cubans was (is) that of individuals struggling to defeat an aggressive environment. In Tarkovsky’s 1966 film, overwhelmed by the debates of his time, Andrei Rublev remains silent. He says nothing because he does not understand the others. He suffers and denies it when he is called a painter. At his side, a young man is introduced to the dream of creation. Gentleness, shyness, indecision, fear of success or the lack of it, shows on his face. The rope that will make the bell toll moves like a pendulum before the boy’s eyes. Several rows of men pull other ropes that will elevate the dream; they encourage each other while working. Every shot informs, reveals, thrills. The arrival of the prince. The concern of the officials. The blessing by the religious people. The clapper, too slow, gains momentum and the boy looks up with anxiety and faith. The creator turns to us exactly when the bell rings. The princes step back, and there in the mud, the boy bursts into tears. Andrei comforts the boy, and invites him to work with him. Beyond the immense legacy of Tarkovsky, that scene appeals to me because that boy is every being that ventures into the world of creation –​ his fear of something as immense as opening oneself up to other people, the indecision, the shock that turns into tears when harnessing that energy without knowing if people will want to hear it. Because art is an act of love that only makes itself clear with that kind of magic. Because it is an enormous and significant act to make a bell, to reach the point of intensity that can shape metal, and to hit it to remove the mold that held it in the forge. 263

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The Cinema of Cuba In the end, it is difficult to lift even with the help of many until its sound reverberates through valleys and across time. That is why the creator lives in the details, in the small discoveries, in the subtle experiment that brings joy. But the extraordinary thing about this story conceived by Tarkovsky and his screenwriter Mikhalkov is the comparison between the artist that develops and the one that is born. The sweetness and enthusiasm of the young man manage to energise the older one, who invites him to make the Trinity, a painting in which we see again the same scene constructed by the filmmakers. It is an endless cycle, an ever-​flowing river. I recently spent some time in Tampa, Florida, a place that Martí spoke about in his speech ‘Los pinos nuevos’ (The New Pines), in 1891, in which he says: ‘The sun broke suddenly over a clearing in the woods, and there, under the sparkling sudden light, I saw rising up above the yellowish grass, around the black trunks of the fallen pines, the joyful bunches of new pines.’6 When we look at things with love they pass their energy on to us and give us their beauty. That is why he called Tampa ‘a faithful people’ because he sought love in a venture so far from love as war, the same war he described as necessary. That is why I say I am from where there is a river, without pretense, but rather with the desire to rise along with its waters, harmoniously. To learn to speak, we need to listen. Our awareness of remaining silent allows humanity to speak, and connects us with others. I  want to be quiet in order to feel the deep silence of what we do not have to say. In the way that Norlan flies through the wire fence of the yard up to the planet Banana Splits, where he happily gazes over the atmosphere, I can fly. I go with him through the branches of the anacahuita my father planted at the edge of the patio expressly for that purpose. Meanwhile, every afternoon, I hear, unconsciously, the trains of the hours passing by  –​the quietest trains I know –​and that is why I wish to call them the trains of silence.

Notes 1. Silvio Rodríguez was a member of the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (ICAIC’s Experimental Sound Group, GESI) and leader of the Nueva Trova movement.

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Trains of Silence 2. ‘El arroyo de la sierra me complace más que el mar’, from José Marti’s Versos Sencillos (1891). Y cuando después partí /​a la ciudad y a la trampa /​me fui sabiendo que en Tampa, /​mi abuelo habló con Martí.’ 3. Mirtha Padrón Torrens understood the importance of creative work for the channel. She also stood up for the artists’ concerns and took risks to protect this project that, for the first time, went beyond the boundaries of the province to address a national problem. 4. Amancio was a sugar producing settlement (a batey) known before 1959 as the Francisco Sugar Company. It was named after the union leader, Amancio Rodríguez. 5. Severo Sarduy, Obra Completa (Vol. 1), edited by Francois Wahl (Paris, 1999), p. 250. 6. ‘Rompió de pronto el sol sobre un claro del bosque, y allí, al centelleo de la luz súbita, vi por sobre la yerba amarillenta erguirse, en torno al tronco negro de los pinos caídos, los racimos gozosos de los pinos nuevos.’

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12 From the Community to the World: Perspectives of an Individual Creator within the Televisión Serrana Audiovisual Collective CARLOS Y. RODRÍGUEZ Translated by Guy Baron, Ann Marie Stock, Nathaniel Clemens, Kyle Mcquillan and Morgan Sehdev

I remember reading articles years ago that considered the technological revolution of the time as a dangerous process of dehumanisation and decentralisation as it established new power relations in the field of communication and because it divided the world into those who had access, and those (the large majority) who did not. However, a great deal of time has passed since the arrival of the videotape, the internet, and cell phones, when only the privileged few had the means to such luxuries. Today, there are no limits to the devices and networks that allow many people to document and make visible –​almost instantaneously –​happenings, events and developments from all over the world. Televisión Serrana (TVS) was founded on 15 January 1993, in the midst of one of the most difficult moments in Cuban history: the Special Period, resulting from the collapse of the USSR and the Socialist block. It was born thanks to the affordability of cameras and linear video editing at the 266

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From the Community to the World beginning of the 1990s and to a humanitarian effort to equip the campesinos of the Sierra Maestra with the knowledge and means to communicate their reality, first amongst each other and then to the world. The idea for TVS was first envisioned by its founder, Daniel Diez Castrillo,1 around 1986, but only became a reality seven years later with support from UNESCO, the Cuban Government, the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, and the National Association of Small Farmers. Out of the combination of humanitarian efforts, government support, and the talents of spirited dreamers inspired by José Martí and his article Maestros ambulantes (Traveling Teachers), a communal communication project unlike any other in Cuba (and most of the world, for that matter) was born. Despite the downward socio-​economic trends prevalent in the nation at the time (factory closings, economic and psychological depression, utopias in crisis, external threats, waves of external emigration), the programme was successful; the fruits and benefits of the work of Cubans all over the island were almost instantaneously described and documented in news articles, reports, and documentaries. These successes filled the deprived screens of disillusioned Cuban households and, like a breath of fresh air collected from an almost primordial human essence, these stories began to bring out the happiness hidden in the heart of the common man. This happiness of the campesinos was harnessed for our national culture; it inspired even the most sceptical through the images and voices of those men and women accustomed to being born into, fighting against, and dying in adversity while always retaining, deep down, that essential happiness, that hope.2 From a formal and artistic point of view, today it is impossible to detail the history of Cuban film and television without mentioning a few titles produced by TVS from a selection of over 500 works. In fact, scholars and critics even speak of an ‘estilo Televisión Serrana’ [Television Serrana style] despite the rotating membership of the creative team. In turn, more than 500 national and international awards and mentions attest to our work as some of the most robust of its kind in Latin America and the Caribbean. UNESCO recognises us as a landmark institution; they regard us as an effective project that has been more successful than any others like it; similar ventures fell through in their first few years for a variety of 267

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The Cinema of Cuba reasons including shortage of funding or the inability to take root within the community. The most significant achievement of Televisión Serrana will always be its ethical and human side, having given voice and representation to a significant sector of the Cuban population (the campesinos) and for offering an integral sociocultural dimension to the development experienced in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. The creators of TVS have always celebrated the work of the Revolution, while not refraining from criticising negative aspects:  that which is done poorly, political sloppiness, and the demagoguery of local leaders to whom we have denounced the principal problems affecting the lives of the campesinos of this region, a region that is rightfully referred to by some as the cradle of the Revolution that triumphed in January 1959. For over twenty years, our collective has faced many challenges. There have always been misunderstandings on the part of leaders who feel as if they are being called out and criticised or who simply do not understand that our debt is first and foremost to the inhabitants of these communities. Likewise, we have had to face our own shortcomings, and we have managed to overcome them only because we have remained faithful to the fundamental principles of our institution: ‘to work with essence, not appearance’, ‘ethic and aesthetic must go hand in hand’, ‘respect to human life and nature above all’, and ‘to not defend the rights of the most vulnerable is a moral crime’. In this way, with an attentive ear and forward-​looking gaze, we go from community to community, from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley, whether in a jeep or on the back of a mule or on foot, taking part in the cultural and historical legacy of the Sierra Maestra. Those who know us know of our devotion to a difficult and demanding job, always moving forward in the conditions in which we work, as difficult as that may be.

Creative Team versus Individual Creator Since its formation, TV Serrana has served as an audiovisual collective where the Creative Team is the fundamental nucleus in which the themes and projects to be filmed originate, are discussed, and are approved. Over 268

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From the Community to the World the years several questions have been asked of this process: Should a creator sacrifice his or her subjectivity and personal aesthetic aspirations for the sake of the group? Is it possible to create an original work, a style, within another, more dominant style? This is a complex problem that imposes a dialectical creator/​collective tension that I aim to examine from my own experience of making documentaries within this team for more than a decade. The use of ‘Artistic Creative Teams’, as they are termed, is a concept that emerged in the early years of the Cuban national film institute (ICAIC) with the hope that the new filmmakers would have a space within which they could discuss their ideas. These were the years of experimentation and learning when filmmakers like Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Santiago Álvarez, Humberto Solás, Julio García Espinosa and Manuel Octavio Gómez, to name only a few, emerged as the first generation of the greats. In Daniel Diez’s 2014 essay Desde los sueños (From Dreams), he conceptualises the working method of the Creative Teams at TVS: In regards to the community television work method it is necessary to understand that it is not a single leader who decides which theme is the most important to be completed, but rather the collective decides. Drawing from the experience and methods of the ICAIC, today the subjects are selected by the Artistic Creative Team. In these groups the director, cinematographer, sound designers, editors, producers, lighting specialists, video technicians, director of the installation, and even the drivers are participants in the creative process; this means that the members of the collective all contribute ideas for proposals and documentaries.3

And referring to creator-​collective relations, he expands on how the development of an idea works: It is a very important and difficult practice because it means putting the project first and knowing how to listen to and categorise the varying proposals. The group first agrees on a research project and then develops the scheme further. To finish the process, an outline or script is proposed for analysis and this gives way to the final discussion where the creators defend the

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The Cinema of Cuba treatment, the idea that they want to express and the benefits to the community or affected people in the documentary. If they can convince the group that their project best fits the needs of the community, they receive the necessary resources to bring the film to fruition.4

Individual/​Author in a Collective Audiovisual Project I joined TVS on 9 September 2001, shortly after the collective celebrated its eighth anniversary. I will never forget this because that first night there was an earthquake, and two days later I watched from there as the Twin Towers fell in faraway New York. Ten years later my work with TVS allowed me to visit the Big Apple; a journey from the village into the world, during which I questioned for the first time from a distance the logic of my work and that of my colleagues, and reflected on what it means for the Others that we perceive from afar. My start at TVS took place at the same moment its founder was handing over the direction of the project to the young people he had trained himself after intense days of conversations, studies, debates, and hundreds of hours of arduous work filming, editing and interacting with the community. This first generation of producers had already reached an extraordinary creative maturity, to such a point that the whole country had marveled on more than one occasion at the documentaries they had produced, works which were already beginning to be shown regularly on national television and at film festivals in the country. For me, the climax of this moment was when La Chivichana, (The Go-​Cart, 2000)  by Waldo Ramírez won the Third Place Coral Award in the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in 2000. Foreign audiences were able to recognise the film’s unique but cohesive style, coming as it did out of TVS. But despite this sense of cohesion, each producer in the group maintained their own poetic style within their own work. Daniel Diez, author of Como una gota de agua (Like a Drop of Water, 1998), La tierra conmovida (The Saddened Earth, 1999), and Un cariño poderoso (A Powerful Affection, 1996) had a preference for spiritual, 270

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From the Community to the World philosophical, and environmental issues. As the father of Televisión Serrana, he had the most influence in defining the style and the aesthetics of the documentaries. Having learned during the early years of the ICAIC and having worked with Santiago Álvarez as a sound engineer for the Latin-​ American newsreel (Noticiero Latinoamericano), Daniel was able to do what seemed impossible: start a community television programme in the middle of the remote Sierra Maestra, one that does not transmit a signal over the air but rather takes its production from community to community. This type of production and dissemination has since served as a model for the treatment of chosen themes, as well as the rhythm and duration of the stories. Waldo Ramírez, director of Son de la loma (Song of the Hillside, 2003), Oficios de hombre (Tasks of Man, 1999), Sierra de aire (Mountains of Air, 1998), and many others, was a prolific and practical filmmaker, with a great mastery of narrative structure. Waldo was the most restless of the filmmakers, with an innate capacity for organisation and one that imposed a certain level of rigour on each project. That said, I never remember seeing him with a script in his hands; he came to the editing room with sparse annotations that only he could understand. But his documentaries demonstrate his ability to tell a story at the right time. Rigoberto Jiménez was responsible for Las cuatro hermanas (The Four Sisters, 1998), Los ecos y la niebla (Echoes in the Mist, 2003), and Como aves del monte (Like Birds of the Mountain, 2005) and was a poet with a deliberate gaze. A member of the first generation, he is the only one who was born in and grew up in these mountains, and perhaps it is he who has best portrayed the tempo of its inhabitants. His documentaries contain an aching sadness in their contemplation of the landscape and its characters. The use of music and the deliberate pace of the visual narration reinforce this feeling in almost all of his works.5 Marcos Bedoya’s documentaries such as Tocar la alegría (Playing Joy, 1996), Reconcilio (Reconciliation, 1995), El Decano (The Dean), and Dónde está Graciano (Where Graciano Is), are both humorous and unusual. He has a casual (but no less original) way of addressing issues in an often light-​ hearted and fun manner. He began as an editor and later became a director, which may have influenced his desire to break patterns and play with the narration.6 271

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The Cinema of Cuba Personally, for me, joining this group under these conditions was an enormous challenge, since it demanded a high level of cultural preparation and an enormous capacity for work. I remember the fear I felt when I began making documentaries because at the time I had under my command a very professional team that demanded that I be very sure of every creative decision I would make. But I was able to integrate myself into the group, studying and growing as a filmmaker by working in a collective. Through the study of art history I learned about the loneliness of the creator, about the agony of the subject, and about how the artist had to face the outside world that was often cold and oblivious to his suffering. Little by little I was learning that the discussion of ideas, the analysis of their potential to become history to recount, the selection of characters, locations, and above all, the point of view, is best accomplished through active deliberation with the group first and then with the production team. Another lesson from working in a collective is that one learns to be humble, to listen, to assess the criteria of others, and to respect the diversity of approaches on the same theme or event. However, in the process I also learned to defend my ideas, my points of view and my personal conceptions. And that is the basis of the relationship among the creator/​collective, in which the group considers, questions, suggests, and the director launches a project, listening and analysing, but in the end making his or her own decisions. My first documentary was called Ruido en la señal (Static in the Signal, 2001), an eight-​minute exercise that examines the relationship between farmers and the radio, and the difficulties they have when purchasing batteries and equipment. This was an unforgettable experience, not only because it was my first, but also because I was learning in every way: human, practical, and even political. I wanted, at all costs, to make it clear that these people who lived in the area were under-​served, some left to their fate, and therefore more than one discussion arose about their treatment. In the end, I realised that the most important thing is to tell a good story, allowing the people involved to express themselves honestly on matters that affect them. Only through the work as a whole should my own opinions on the subject become apparent, as a sort of provocation; it was important to always leave a space for the viewer to get involved. 272

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From the Community to the World In Al compás del pilón (In Step with the Mortar, 2002), I learned other lessons. This was the documentary that helped me to mature as a filmmaker and earned me recognition among other filmmakers in the country (it won several national awards and an international one). While shooting another project, this topic was suggested to me by the sound recorder, Humberto Mendoza and I decided to present it to the group before beginning my research. The theme was very well received and I set out to find people with whom I could talk to about how to make a pilón, which is nothing more than a wooden mortar used to pulverise toasted coffee beans. This instrument, once widely used in the area, began to disappear and the initial objective of the project was to reignite this tradition for the future. But as I was diving into the topic and discussing the results with the group, new aspects, characters, stories, superstitions were appearing, all linked to the pilón. In this way, the initial purpose was greatly exceeded and in that moment the object itself became both a character and a source of culture. With respect to production, the main challenge of the process was editing, because there was a lot of recorded material (so here another lesson was learned: the more material, the more difficult it is during the selection process for the final script). We had an earlier version running 20 minutes, and after an intense debate among the group, the documentary was edited down to nine minutes. But in that short time we managed to capture the essence, a certain magic, and yield a work that marked all my subsequent productions and whose level of synthesis I managed again almost 10 years later with another documentary, Bohío (The Hut, 2010).7 Other documentaries also posed major challenges because it is not easy to insert oneself into a community, edit all of one’s material and generate a video in a structured manner that often includes a critique of the subject in question. On other occasions, difficulties had to do with material limitations, such as lack of transportation, lack of fuel or lack of food, or insufficient funds. However, when we needed something, the community or some isolated farmer often provided us with the necessary means and we have become accustomed to sharing our scarce resources and to receiving the generous support of people who understand the value of our work. 273

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The Cinema of Cuba During all those years, and after making some mistakes, I realised that I was mastering the technique of telling a story, but also that I would always have to continue gaining experiences, studying, and peering into the essence of who we are as Cubans and as human beings. At this stage I remember documentaries such as El ángel de la jiribilla (Angel of the Jiribilla, 2004), Al cantío del gallo (At Daybreak, 2005), Punto de fuga (Vanishing Point, 2004) and others that followed, with which I was forming my own narrative corpus. For me, the biggest challenge is to stand before my characters and try to be as sincere as possible about my objectives. It is difficult to gain the trust, for example, of a farmer accustomed to being used or misled by leaders or by people arriving from the city. Above all, it is necessary to show humility and listen. The most natural response is that they associate you with a journalist, which presupposes that they want to channel their most pressing concerns towards you. In turn, you must pay attention to them and demonstrate solidarity with their problems, while also affirming that the function of the documentary is more long term, even if it also has some immediate capacity for the mobilisation of public opinion. For example, in Tiempo de cosecha (Time of Harvest, 2009), one of the most successful farmers in the region questions why there has been a blockage of more commercial, faster and better means of production when, at the same time, President Raúl Castro declared the production of crops a question of national security. The question often posed then is: ‘If the Revolution has lasted more than 50 years, why are there still problems to be solved?’ Unfortunately, this documentary was never aired in the national forum and the country missed the opportunity to reflect on the idea, from the experience of a man bound to the earth, about issues of absolute importance for the survival of our nation.8 Looking back, sometimes I admire the path we have taken and I can’t stop thinking about the immense privilege awarded by our profession. It has allowed me to meet the most interesting, complex, and knowledgeable people in this region, and afforded me the opportunity to tell their stories, which is not an inconsequential thing. But I would like to pause a moment on Bohío (fig. 12.2), one of the documentaries which has given me the most satisfaction. It is a short story 274

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From the Community to the World

Fig. 12.1  Poster for Bohío

of a young married woman with two children, who builds her house with natural materials (sheets of wood and palm fibers, for the roof and walls, wood, etc.) and later obtains mineral pigments from the mountain to paint her bohío. What most caught my attention was the way we look for beauty in everything around us, and how we are able to create by reaching out into our surroundings if necessary. Even though the documentary has a very 275

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The Cinema of Cuba simple structure, it allows us to connect with something more profound than just the images; this invisible ‘substance’ is embodied by, and serves as a testament to the spiritual dimension of these people. In recent years I have produced other documentaries that have allowed me to examine the lives and daily problems of the people in these areas. In 2011 I made La leyenda de la bruja (The Legend of the Witch)9, a film I based on a local legend about a mythical bird to denounce the state of things I found in a hillside community adjacent to the Sierra Maestra, on the edge of the sea. More came after that including Rapsodia para Lezama (Rhapsody for Lezama, 2013), El camión de Daniel (Daniel’s Truck, 2013), Haití en nuestras venas (Haiti in our Veins, 2014), and Des-​velorios en media luna (Un-​vigils under the Crescent Moon, 2014), which I made faithfully following the ethical and aesthetic principles I learned over the course of fifteen years working as part of the Creative Team of Televisión Serrana, without renouncing my individual identity as a filmmaker.

Rodríguez versus Rodríguez: a Turning Point As already noted, in 2011 I had the good fortune to tour a dozen universities and cultural centres in the United States presenting the work of Televisión Serrana. It was incredibly impactful, not only because it was the first time I had left the country, but because of the way our documentaries were welcomed and received. It is very exciting to realise that there is nothing more universal than local stories, especially because of the inherently human desire to know how people think, act, and live in different parts of the world. This trip signified a turning point in perception of the work my co-​workers and myself produced during those years. During that trip I also reconnected with my father after thirty-one years of separation, since the time he emigrated to the United States, when I was a young boy, during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. Upon my return to Cuba my emotions began to boil over and I started to reflect on my family history and how it is connected to my country’s recent history, to the point where they began to represent the same thing. Out of this emotion emerged a pressing desire to put both histories into a documentary. I felt like everything that had happened up to that moment had only been preparation for it, and the project Rodríguez vs. Rodríguez was born. 276

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From the Community to the World The documentary tells the story of a Cuban who is the son of a deserter and a heroine of the Angolan War growing up under the precepts of the Revolution. It addresses some of the questions that really concern me, particularly given recent circumstances (especially the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the USA). I include here a transcription of the voiceover in the teaser we produced while searching for funding: I am Carlos Rodríguez Rodríguez (fig. 12.2), a Cuban who grew up with the Revolution. When I was four years old my father fled the country from the port of Mariel with 125,000 other Cubans. In school they called me a ‘gusano’ (worm –​the name given to counter-​revolutionaries). I spent the better part of my life thinking he was a traitor. Maybe it was idealism, maybe it was trying to forget, but a year after the departure of my father, my mother, who never remarried, enlisted as a volunteer teacher in the Angolan War. There she ended up fighting against apartheid and, with a gun in her hand, she became a war heroine. A year ago, when they began allowing Cubans to leave the country without special permissions for the first time, I traveled to Miami to search for my father 31 years later, and to try to understand what had happened to us. Everyone thought I wouldn’t return, but I came back with more questions than answers after having achieved one of my dreams. I am not like Che, I am the son of a war heroine and a deserter, and today I love both and I know that one way or another I will continue to love them. Rodríguez vs. Rodríguez is my story, my family’s story that is so similar to so many others […] an intimate, necessary, and real history of Cuba that is still being written.

This piece is a work in progress that is being constructed even as I write these lines. It is very difficult to immerse oneself in the history of one’s own family because of the fear of putting oneself in front of the world, creating a sense of fragility. At the same time, one must ensure that the creative act comes first so that the process doesn’t become mere therapy; for that, it wouldn’t be necessary to expend so much energy. To tell this story I have had to change the way I work, as I have had to completely fund myself, independent from the Creative Team at TVS due 277

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Fig. 12.2  Carlos Y. Rodríguez

to the nature of the theme of the project and because it is an independent production. This means that for the first time I am working on a project for which I am judge and jury. I have to admit that after many years this opportunity comes with many advantages:  I  have total control over the story; I  work at my own rhythm which allows me to more completely develop certain ideas; and whatever the implications, whether good or bad, they are solely a reflection of my own person. But also it comes with a disadvantage:  a lack of feedback from a group of creators with ample experience. 278

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From the Community to the World The most difficult thing has been not in deciding what stories to tell, but in trying to gain the attention of potential producers outside of Cuba. To address this I  have started working with Juliana Fanjul, a Mexican woman living in Switzerland, to gain an outside perspective and access to the international market. From here and after submitting applications for various funds and grants, we received access to a development workshop for Ibermedia projects in which we attempt to solidify a portfolio. I would like to point out that, even though it seems incredible, this story has not gained even the slightest interest from a legally recognised independent producer in Cuba. The production of this project signifies an enormous step forward for me as well as an enormous challenge: of leaving the security of Televisión Serrana to produce independently, with all of the difficulties that this implies in today’s Cuba; of a community project in the transnational sphere; of telling my story rather than the stories of others; and lastly, of going from the public to the private and intimate.

Conclusion Twenty-​two years after the founding of Televisión Serrana it is still the Creation Teams that are at the heart of the production process. Most of the creators that have been integrated into the group are young, but some not so young, and all have studied in the Centre for Studies of Community Communication (the majority have also studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte). The TVS style continues to be recognisable to audiences all over the country. Without a doubt, the individual voices are distinguishable if one were to look closely at the works after studying the aesthetic trajectory of some of the creators. I am speaking of creators like Ariagna Fajardo, Luis Guevara, Carlos R. Fontela, Kenia Rodríguez, Lenia Sainiut Tejera, or more recently, David Morales, for example. Televisión Serrana will continue to be my personal paradigm for all that it has given me as a creator and as a human being. I am sure that the new projects I take on will always have that footprint and that way of working despite the new aesthetic styles and production methods that realities in Cuba and the world will impose on us. 279

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Notes 1. For his contributions in founding Televisión Serrana, his creativity in filmmaking, and his work with the National Institute of Radio and Television, Daniel Diez was awarded the National Prize for Television in 2015. 2. For more information regarding TVS, see Desde los Sueños (From Dreams) by Daniel Diez or On location in Cuba by Ann Marie Stock. 3. Daniel Diez Castrillo, Desde los sueños (Havana, 2014), n.p. 4. Ibid. 5. This filmmaker completed his first feature-​length film in 2015; Café amargo (Bitter Coffee) takes as inspiration the lives of the four sisters Jiménez studied in an earlier documentary. 6. There exist other producers like Nilka Yero and Marcos Paneque, but their work is less extensive and less influential on the collective poetic of the group. 7. This documentary won the award for Las cámaras de la diversidad (Cameras of Diversity) in 2011 from the Regional Office of UNESCO in Havana. 8. The work was, however, shown at various festivals where it received some recognition. 9. La leyenda de la bruja (The Legend of the Witch) also won the award for Las cámaras de la diversidad (Cameras of Diversity) in 2012 from the Regional Office of UNESCO in Havana.

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13 From Exilic to Diasporic: New Cuban Cinemas in the United States ZAIRA ZARZA

The diaspora space has been one of the most relevant cultural realms to interrogate the sense of cubanidad and map contemporary notions of Cuban nationalism and ethnicity. Children of the early and late stages of the socialist Revolution, Cubans on and off the Island, have lived complex ideological processes facing the experience of leaving ‘home’. Those relations were and still are emotionally, economically and politically affected by migrant experiences in the United States in particular. Although spread all over the world today, several generations have tracked massive routes from the Island to the northern neighbour, especially since the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. The Act privileges Cuban citizens who can request political refuge and become permanent residents after only a few months on American soil. This situation contrasts with less privileged realities of other Latino communities in the USA. Recently, a new era of relations between both countries began. On 17 December 2014, Raúl Castro and Barack Obama made public announcements to restore diplomatic conversations after more than 50 years of antagonism, and Obama officially nominated Jeffrey DeLaurentis as US Ambassador to Cuba on 27 September 2016. And although the future 281

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The Cinema of Cuba of our bilateral exchange is still hypothetical, what has happened so far in terms of cultural production, precisely in the field of film and media, remains under researched. Therefore, this chapter delves into the study of Cuban independent cinemas in the post-​Cold War USA. I explore the idea that this form of filmmaking in the twenty-​first century has shifted from exilic discourses to others where diasporic subjectivities, new mobilities and translocalities are central. I argue that younger Cuban filmmakers in the diaspora have a claim on nation, ideology and belonging that is different from previous generations and that they do not experience the burden of ‘defection’ and ‘dissidence’ as an essential part of their migratory journeys. Re-​territorialised forms of belonging guide their narratives as a response to historic tensions between the homeland and the new host society. For this purpose, I consider films by Miguel Coyula, Laimir Fano, Aram Vidal, Tané Martínez and Magdiel Aspillaga, produced in 2010–​14. Extensive scholarship dealing with Cuban diasporic experiences has been produced in the United States (Campa 2000, Fernández 2005, Eckstein 2009). With the goal of multiplying the voices of the Cuban diaspora, Andrea O’Reilly edited Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced (2007) where she gathered essays by Cubans and Cuban-​Americans who sought to uphold the right to take part in the process of redefining Cuban transnational identity. In the introductory note, O’Reilly states: ‘Although Cuba diaspora serves as the connecting tissue, the collection reveals the nuances, complexities, and the oftentimes antagonistic and contradictory cultural and political debates and positions that coexist within the Cuban exile population.’1 Published shortly thereafter, The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World by Ruth Behar and Lucía Suárez is authored by members of an even larger community that imagines Cuba as a geo-​emotional condition, a haunted space that is hard to let go of. The figure of the island as a transportable, mobile homeland that one carries everywhere –​a space that reiterates itself in our lives as an echo –​is one of the greatest contributions of this anthology. Behar understands that ‘[i]‌n the twenty-​first century, travel defines us: travelling beyond the confines of the island; staying, returning, caught in between; here (Cuba) and there (no longer only the United States).’2 Migrancy is starting to be shaped today under new conditions and the filmmakers whose works are discussed in the following pages all reached 282

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From Exilic to Diasporic the United States from 2000, during a still unlabelled new migration period. The lack of massive departures from Cuba to the United States in the twenty-​first century and the introduction of safer mechanisms to explore possibilities of living abroad have made the process somewhat less distressing.3 Still, Cubans continue to settle regularly on American territory after requesting political asylum. These new conditions were defined by migratory regulations proclaimed on 16 October 2012 and activated in January 2013. The recent policies allow Cubans on the Island to travel abroad without requiring an exit permit from the government, a step towards a more flexible trans-​nationalisation of the Cuban diasporic experience. The relatively new Law 52/​2007 from 26 December, that allows claims for EU citizenship to grandchildren of Spanish nationals, known as the ‘Historical Memory Act’,4 has also permitted thousands of Cubans to obtain Spanish passports and travel to countries without visa requirements (with the USA being perhaps the most visited). Likewise, starting August 2013, Cubans could finally be granted multiple –​instead of the previous, always single –​entry visas to the United States. Financial links and trade with the diaspora have become stronger as well. After Raúl Castro’s decision to grant licenses for private entrepreneurs, financial family support via remittances and investments in small business has increased dramatically in a moment in which the economic crisis of the Special Period experiences a relative alleviation. Facing this landscape, Cuban filmmakers in the USA find a particularly complex destination due to historical hostility between both countries. For them understanding their place in its ideological dimension is essential. Being at the heart of an ideological conflict and trying to be non-​national is a challenge and a political stance in itself. These contextual positionalities differentiate diasporic from exilic subjects according to their moment of departure from the island, whether they are first or second generation migrants, and the number of close family members left at home, among other factors. Several authors recognise a relief in the radical politics that estranged both nations and their citizens (Hernández-​Reguant 2009, Humphreys 2012). In a recent interview, Jorge Duany mentioned how ‘the “anti-​Castro” component that “glues” the majority of Cubans abroad together […] is no 283

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The Cinema of Cuba longer the unique identifier element of the historical […] dispersion of this population.’5 He also stated elsewhere that ‘[t]‌he recurring problem with Cuba’s exceptionalism, in migration studies, is that it tends to isolate the object of analysis from its broader context. However, the contemporary Cuban exodus is part of regional and global trends.’6 He views a second generation of Cubans born in the USA as distancing itself ideologically from their parents instead of reproducing the dominant currents of the exile community. They also largely identify with the Democratic Party and with the experience of other ethnic minorities.7

Filmmakers of Exile A brief panorama of pre-​2000s Cuban exile cinema is necessary to understand contemporary diasporic cinemas. As is the case with most independent foreign artists, Cuban filmmakers in exile had a difficult time making movies in the United States. This is a situation that affects most independent foreign artists but, according to Ana López, it was particularly pronounced for Cubans as they were considered among the most pro-​capitalist migrants in the world who escaped a system admired by the American left.8 Operating outside the mainstream, first generation exilic filmmakers displayed a very strong anti-​Castro discourse in their work and adopted the documentary as a direct way to narrate their experience. The film Conducta impropia (Improper Conduct, 1984) by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal, for example, deals with the coercion of queer intellectuals in the early years of the Cuban Revolution while Nadie escuchaba (Nobody Listened, 1988) by Jorge Ulloa and Almendros became a critique of the controlling and absolutist policies and forms of repression of the Cuban government. Their impossibility of returning is perhaps what constantly makes them look back at the politics and society of the original homeland. León Ichaso is maybe the most thought-​provoking diasporic Cuban filmmaker of his generation, and also the most global. A diasporic artist of the exilic era, he has recognised the obsolescence of the confrontational exile community and the very thin, naive notion of America as the ‘land of freedom’. His first work El súper (The Super, 1979), co-​directed with 284

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From Exilic to Diasporic Jiménez Leal, is based on Ivan Acosta’s play of the same name. Produced on a very low budget, it portrays the life of a Cuban migrant family in New York during the 1977 blizzard. The main character is Roberto, a superintendent who refuses to learn English and lives in a basement in a large tenement on the Upper West Side. ‘Roberto thinks of his life as being a sort of long, boring, nonstop flight from Cuba that will eventually circle back there, while Aurelita (his daughter) and a number of their friends are losing no time in assimilating.’9 A classic of Cuba’s exile cinema, this film has yet to be screened in theaters on the island. Ichaso also directed Azúcar amarga (Bitter Sugar, 1996) and more recently Paraíso (Paradise, 2009), which explores generational and class divides within the Cuban exile community in southern Florida. It is a provocative Cuban exile drama framed around the story of Ivan, newly arrived by raft, and his adjustment to life among Miami’s expatriate community. But Ichaso has also engaged in stories disconnected from Cuba, thus becoming a more transnational filmmaker. Ana López considers him emblematic of a crossover phenomenon in the second generation of Cuban exilic filmmakers: born in Cuba but trained in the United States, cohering in in-​between spaces.10 Often engaged with the notion of Latino more than with that of Cuban-​Americans, Ichaso directed the biopic Piñeiro in 2001, about poet, actor and playwright of the Nuyorican Movement Miguel Piñeiro. Later in the decade, he also finished El cantante (The Singer, 2006) about the life of Puerto Rican salsero Hector Lavoe featuring the global Latino stars Jennifer López and Marc Anthony. Exilic filmmaking has been another form of audiovisual production that Cuban critic and researcher Juan Antonio García Borrero has deemed as cine sumergido or submerged cinema.11 However, García Borrero considers that there is no such thing as Cuban exile cinema in the USA. He defines most of the documentary works by the aforementioned filmmakers not as cinema but as ‘cinematographic journalism’ and thinks that their production in general ‘does not have a personality that allows them to take credit as an authentic and robust movement.’12 With the exception of Ichaso, whose work García Borrero praises, it is clear that the critic understands film production in terms of certain essential aesthetic/​narrative considerations or production values of audiovisual pieces. Thus, the contribution of 285

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The Cinema of Cuba these cineastes is undermined for their works’ perceived lack of quality and also due to deficiencies in organised structure or cohesion. In times when the ideas of ‘movement’ –​as coordinated group action –​and authenticity are in crisis, this last argument is, at the very least, debatable. I rather see this phenomenon as Hamid Naficy does, so that these filmmakers’ works stand for non-​centralised, alternative modes of film production: ‘accented styles’, interstitial and artisanal. These films, then, will be ‘driven by their own limitations, that is, smallness, imperfection, amateurishness and the lack of cinematic gloss.’13 Filmmaker Sergio Giral has developed a body of work in the United States since his arrival in 1992. He has devoted most of his career to the recognition of Afro-​Cuban and Caribbean history and culture. Giral recognises today a new wave of Cuban-​American cinema. In La alcancía del artesano, a blog run by young cineaste Magdiel Aspillaga, he wrote: Several Cuban filmmakers (and films), I think, integrate this new form of film expression: Balseros (Rafters) by Carlos Bosch and Josep Maria Domenech, Cercanía (Closeness) by Rolando Díaz, Celia, The Queen by Joe Cardona and Mario de Varona, and more recently Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment) by Miguel Coyula, Neuralgia by Magdiel Aspillaga and Danny Jacomino, Dos veces Ana (Twice Ana), by Armando Dorrego and myself and many more […] I propose to open a space for its recognition here. Initially, the theme of exiles and their feelings prevailed: the breakdown of the family for political reasons, existential angst after leaving the homeland, the manipulations of the regime against the population and the individual; escapism, distance, memory. Slowly and in a rugged, independent manner these filmmakers created a thematic basis that enabled a new way of approaching the issue from other angles. Their eyes now observe the surrounding environment; its peculiarities and how those affect them.14

A former director of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), Giral is known for his trilogy of films on slavery –​El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco, 1973), Rancheador (Slavehunter, 1975) and Maluala (1979). Possibilities that the Cuban context did not permit became available for him once in 286

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From Exilic to Diasporic the diaspora. Participating more actively in raising awareness on the relevance of queer cinemas was only one of them. Mainly composed of men who started their careers at the male dominated ICAIC, the older generation of exilic filmmakers includes fewer women; only recently have more female cinematographers, editors and film directors been able to develop their practice. To analyse some of the works included in this new wave of Cuban-​American cinema, I share the following reflections.

Multi-​sited Narratives Beyond the Ideological Divide The multiple routes tracked by Cuban filmmakers in the USA are impossible to capture in writing. Miami, Los Angeles, Wisconsin, Washington, New York, Ohio, Virginia and many other cities and states have become diverse locations for this post-​2000 generation of audiovisual producers. Although many of them are now American citizens, they were permanent and temporary residents, exchange students, and/​or long-​term visitors who went back to live and work in Havana. Some of their films attempt to reach beyond the exceptionalism and traditional narratives of exile that have signed Cuba for many years.15 Laimir Fano is a remarkable example in this context. After making the successful documentary Model Town (2006) and his thesis from the international film school near Havana (EICTV), the award-​winning short feature Oda a la piña (Ode to the Pineapple, 2008), Fano left Cuba in 2009 to present his work at the Tribeca Film Festival. During his trip, he decided to remain in the United States and went on to complete an MFA in film and media at the University of Wisconsin-​Milwaukee. His short fiction film Esperando a Berta (Waiting for Berta, 2012) was funded by the Borscht Corporation, an institution that attempts to forge a cinematic identity for Miami. It does so by supporting ‘films created by emerging regional filmmakers telling Miami stories that go beyond the typical portrayal of the city as a beautiful but vapid party town.’16 Esperando a Berta humorously describes Fano’s impressions of the time he spent in Miami, ‘a place of many tensions where some people are carrying a past full of conflicts and regrets from which they cannot 287

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The Cinema of Cuba detach themselves.’17 Surreptitiously, the story looks back at the chaos that the Revolution represented at the time. The protagonists are two elderly women who encounter one another in Miami after having met in Havana before 1959. Their confrontation is based on their racial, class and ideological divides, plus the fact that they seem to have fallen for the same man in their youth. The animosity between the characters is then both personal and political. The filmmaker aimed to represent the dysfunctional exercise of exacting revenge fifty years later. Thus, Fano uses generic elements such as comedy, car chases –​as if the audience were watching an action movie –​ and gestures to western cinema to reflect on the clashes between pro-​ Castro Cubans and older members of the exile community. He places the final scenes in the Versailles restaurant, a sort of temple of the Cuban exile population. There, he ironically creates a whole sequence where the film imagines Miami’s reaction to breaking news about Fidel’s death, the spontaneous celebrations in the film portentously matching the real celebrations in Miami when Fidel did actually die on 25 November 2016. Towards the end, as if she had been a daydream of her rival throughout the entire story, Berta disappears; her character therefore remains at a subjective level which reminds the viewer about the utopian dimension associated with the ideals of the Cuban Revolution. Berta is the Revolution as imagined by Fano. Similarly, Mexico-​based filmmaker Aram Vidal’s storytelling has been transformed by the diaspora experience. His trans-​local Bubbles Beat (2012 –​ fig. 13.1) is the third and final part of a cosmopolitan trilogy of documentaries preceded by De Generación (De-Generation, 2006) and Ex-Generación (Ex-​Generation, 2009). In these films, Vidal has moved his gaze from Havana, to Mexico City and then to Washington, Richmond, Miami and New York. Starting with a look from within the local context of Havana’s youth in De Generación to the diasporic experience of Cuban migrants in Mexico’s capital in Ex-Generación, the filmmaker goes on to engage again with young people in multiple US cities. As a temporary international student in the United States, supported by a scholarship from the College of William & Mary, Vidal decided to interview US students about the role of their generation in contemporary American society. The interviewees talk about their 288

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Fig. 13.1  Bubbles Beat

expectations and the re-​evaluation of their own development as citizens and human beings. They discuss issues such as privilege, consumerism, capitalism and frustration, and refer to the difficulty of relating to each other in this era of impersonal digital social media and the inherent selfishness of the American way of life. In his exploration of Miami’s youth in particular, one would expect Vidal to delve into the Cuban exilic/​diasporic experience of the city. How could he not, after filming ExGeneración and probing the many challenges faced by Cuban migrants in Mexico City? However, he decides to broaden the scope of the topic and look at the context from a more global perspective. No sign of Cuba is evident in the movie. Both English and differently accented Spanish are spoken in the Miami sections of the film. Only Mike, a Latino who mentions parties, drugs and alcohol as a dangerous part of the city’s culture is acknowledged in the credits. Although highly verbal, no one speaks to the camera. The voice-​over narration is imaged by scenes of the interviewees’ daily activities such as playing basketball, biking, strolling, walking back home from school, or during social gatherings. Max, who lives in Washington DC, admits the serendipity of his privilege as a white middle-​class able-​bodied man. An African American with a family-​oriented upbringing in Richmond, Virginia discusses the setbacks 289

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The Cinema of Cuba of unemployment and the fallacy inherent in the notion of success. An Indian diasporic young woman recognises both the magic and destructiveness of New York City, a place from where she could never escape now. As they all refer to their disorientation and disconnection between beliefs and actions, the filmmaker concludes that, today, here or there, some kind of disappointment unites young people. Another member of this fruitful cinematographic generation is EICTV graduate Miguel Coyula who moved to New York in the early 2000s. The filmmaker lived and worked for ten years in the USA and returned to Havana in 2011 to film his third feature film Corazón azul (Blue Heart). A hypertext of a previous film directed in 1968 by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Coyula’s Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010), narrates the alienation of a subject who is incapable of emotionally relating to society. With a new diasporic Sergio who has settled now in New York, the film explores topics such as US and Cuban politics, family relations, emigration, and homosexuality. Coyula’s experimental exercise represents the last fifty years of the Cuba–US relations as ‘a trajectory of mutual deceptions where both regimes have created a space that leaves affected people in a sort of limbo, of hopelessness and disillusionment.’18 In many scenes, theatrical representations and filmic artifice are metaphors of political and civil artifice. The film profusely uses examples of the so-​called Cuban epic photography from the 1960s which functioned as political propaganda and documented the historic moment of the Revolution. The central character builds multiple collages where he uses archival images mixed, juxtaposed and reunited with other pictorial representations. Thus, the protagonist constructs his own imagined version of Cuban and US history through clips of documentary footage suggestively linked to one another. Coyula uses the same resources managed by the exponents of the so-​called Cuban Documentary School –​Santiago Álvarez, Sara Gómez, Nicolás Guillén Landrián –​namely repetition, zoom in on photos, forgery of still images, animated fragments, and integration of didactic texts. Photos operate as a surrogate for statements that the silent character hides. The constant manipulation of the object functions as though it were possible to distort history by cutting, pasting and burning it at will. Hence, the filmmaker 290

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From Exilic to Diasporic plays with the notions of parody, pastiche, meta-​language and concepts such as the death of art, the death of the author and the end of History. Pointedly iconoclast, Memorias del desarrollo alters assumptions of ‘political correctness’. Within the framed face of the most famous photo of Che Guevara, the filmmaker places symbolic images presenting vicious sides of Yankee culture: Coke, American flags with pictures of Uncle Sam, scenes from a porn movie, the figure of Superman, and a video game. He inserts the last image of a dead Guevara in the space of movie theater screen while Fidel Castro states in a recorded voiceover: ‘Hoy todo tiene un tono menos dramático porque somos más maduros.’ [Today everything is less dramatic, because we are more mature.] Just as Coyula disapproves of the Cuban government’s absolutism, centralisation, censorship and bureaucracy, he also condemns US history for injustice against indigenous populations, slavery, racial discrimination, state coercion, and the murders of left wing political leaders with the same firmness. The creation of atmosphere is based primarily on the use of colour in every scene. In the character’s Cuban past, expressed through several flashbacks throughout the film, the narrator Sergio is, at times, a childhood photo in sepia pasted on a frame; at other times he is a subjective camera take. As if he were never physically in Cuba, the protagonist seems to want to delete his body from his own memory. The monochromatic tone of the past scenes contrasts with the wide range of shades of the present time. Red filters define his encounters with Deirdre, a young communist admirer of Guevara’s ideals. A gray palette is noticeable in the moments spent with his former wife, as a sign of the deterioration of their relationship. And, at the end of the film, metallic blue tones denote the social death of the character unable to understand the human universe. Sequences from Sergio’s brother’s film Towards the Sea, constructed by fragments of documentaries and TV news reporting the migratory burst through the port of Mariel in 1980, depict waterfronts as both physical and allegorical frontiers for islanders. Crossed by anonymous people in overloaded boats, the sea signalled the rupture and forced silence between the Cuban and the American shore. The sequence speaks to the new generations’ relative ignorance about this reality –​a harsh historical passage in Cuban history, and the definite non-​return of the protagonist. On the other 291

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The Cinema of Cuba hand, Sergio observes the landscape from a pair of binoculars that focuses on the Statue of Liberty. Far from Havana, New York City is now the photographed urban space par excellence. This Sergio is a flâneur, a ‘city stroller’ of the twenty-​first century. Alone, the character walks metropolitan streets as a voyeur, watching the behaviour of pedestrians in Central Park and commenting on their actions and attitudes. He even witnesses the fall of the World Trade Center towers in 2001. In the scenes that recreate his past in Havana, the abandoned city to which he will never return, a melancholic universe is portrayed through memories of his dead aunt, his sick brother, and the adult daughter he doesn’t know. After visiting Las Vegas, Tokyo, Paris and London he abandons himself to the solitude of the natural desert apart from all the nausea of capitalism. Also based in New York, former actress Tané Martínez has been making movies since 2005. After studying film production in Mexico for two years at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, she joined her brother in New York where they founded Colorbox.tv. The creative studio, formed by four Cubans, specialises in editing, motion graphics, visual effects, and sound. Even after ten years of living abroad, Martínez is still strongly connected to Cuban colleagues and Cuban cinema. Her films include three music documentaries: Tengo…lo que tenía que tener (I Have…What I Had to Have, 2008) about the New York City-​based Afro-​Cuban singer Xiomara Laugart; Interactivo, la película (Interactive, the Movie, 2011), produced with the support of Havana Cultura19 and Caminando Aragón (Timeless Journey: Orquesta Aragón, 2012) about the popular Cienfuegos-​ based band La Aragón. All but one of the films in this trilogy were shot in New York and Cuba. The project Garage Rendezvous (2015) is Martínez’s first film spoken totally in English with an American theme. Because of her work as an editor, the filmmaker is trained in narrating stories. She hardly knew anyone in the city, and making documentaries was cheaper for her  than producing a fiction film. During our interview, Martínez coined the humorous, but accurate term ‘todóloga’ to define when you do todo (everything) –​production, script, camera, sound and editing –​in a film project.20 Alina Rodríguez, Milena Almira and Laura Verdecia, other women filmmakers who recently arrived in the USA, have yet to direct their first diaspora film. 292

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From Exilic to Diasporic

Filming Genre at the Margins Genre movies are becoming increasingly popular among Cuban young diasporic film artists. They are subverting the paradigm of the majority of Cuban and Latin American audiovisual productions that follow the principles of Third Cinema.21 In Cuba, genre cinema is pretty much diluted, besides the classic comedies and melodramas. ‘Although Cuban filmmaking has evolved in a number of different directions since 1959, and unarguably represents a range of practices including farce and fantasy, the national cinema of Cuba continues to be a contemplative cinema and utilises the strategies of realism as a central tendency.’22 Probably the only cineaste that cultivates genre cinema in a sustained manner is Jorge Molina whose work, alternative to Cuba’s mainstream cinema, is halfway between sci-​fi, horror and gore. Ruth Goldberg has written largely about his fascinating career in the country’s film industry. She mentioned how his film Molina’s Test was ‘yanked from competition in the prestigious international Festival of Latin American cinema in Havana when a special committee deemed the film to be “not representative of Latin American cinema”.’23 Also, it is noticeable that genre films are cultivated almost completely by men both inside and outside of Cuba. An exception is Hilda Elena Vega, a Camagüey-​based graduate of Cuba’s arts university (ISA), who directed the 13-​minute horror film La bestia (The Beast, 2007). The 2003 sci-​fi drama Cucarachas rojas (Red Cockroaches) by Miguel Coyula, filmed in New York City, and the 2010 psychological thriller Neuralgia by Madgiel Aspillaga made in Miami are two generic films with no visible link to the homeland and no reference whatsoever to their author’s diasporic condition. ‘Produced for a total budget of $2,000, shot entirely […] in the English language, and featuring a surreal, futuristic and passionate story that has nothing to do with Cuba, Cucarachas rojas is the oddest example of “Cuban” cinema. But it is perhaps the work that best exemplifies the challenges and possibilities of “cinema” in the global world.’24 About the film, Cristina Venegas has written: The new generation of filmmakers does not work only in Cuba […] Coyula essentially launched his career in the “micro ­cinema movement” in the United States. Richly textured, his

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The Cinema of Cuba first feature, Red Cockroaches (2003), has the feel of a low-​budget Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), the classic postmodernist, science fiction film. The signature incest plot in Cockroaches is a throwback to Cuban radionovelas (radio soap operas) of the 1950s. But its narrative texture […] illustrates a depleted, environment where acid rain falls on New York City, a viral epidemic encroaches, and red cockroaches represent nothing unusual to beleaguered citizens.25

Magdiel Aspillaga is one of the filmmakers eager to explore genre movies even while still in Cuba. After departing from Havana, he lived for almost a year in Los Angeles and then moved to Miami in early 2009. During our conversations in 2014, Aspillaga mentioned that Miami was a hard place for a filmmaker to live due to the lack of development of its film industry. However, he managed to finish Neuralgia, a story that explores the narratives and aesthetics of the psychological thriller. The movie is also one of the few genre feature films made in the diaspora by a member of this generation of Cuban filmmakers. With a drive for fear and anxiety, a high degree of suspense, allegories to the suspended expectations of film noir, and extreme gore, the movie revolves around its characters’ unstable emotional states. Neuralgia’s choral narratives focus on several main characters. Shot almost completely at night in the streets of Miami, the film’s only explicit connection to Cuba is its cast of diasporic actors, well known at home due to their regular work in cinema and television. To see them performing in a movie about mental instability, Ouijas and mysterious car crashes is a new approach to Cuban filmmaking in the United States. Jorge Luis Álvarez, Ivette Viñas, and María Isabel Díaz star in the film with special appearances by the renowned Ramón Veloz and Laura Castellanos. An interesting element of this casting is that the ‘other’ is then the occasional American character that intervenes erratically in the story. The film is eclectic. Hyperbolic features in some storylines generate excitement, suspense and tension while other plots incite laughter with humorous strategies to amuse the viewer. They all somehow connect as the movie advances, in the tradition of the fragmented narratives nurtured by filmmakers such as Alejandro González Iñárritu and David Lynch. The 294

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From Exilic to Diasporic film begins with local news reporting a car crash from which two bodies are rescued. The first character introduced is a middle-​aged woman who has created a parallel world in her house. She calls someone constantly for help as she fears the presence of an intruder. Another overplayed red-​ haired woman is filmed in wide close-​up shots. Later, we recognise she is a figment of the protagonist’s imagination. They have dinner and play Ouija one rainy evening. At some point, the female ghost starts to tell the theatrically conceived story of a child’s death. When playing hide and seek with his father, the child found himself locked in a freezer in the basement of the family home and was unable to get out. Another story of a young writer begins twenty minutes into the movie. He takes pills for his frequent anxiety attacks caused by a childhood trauma. Numerous flashbacks to his early years unveil what at first appears to be his Oedipus complex. But the conflict actually reveals the story of his mother, her lover and her abusive partner (probably the child’s biological father) who ends up killing her and is later jailed. As an adult, the young writer can’t engage in relationships. He regularly watches soft porn and suffers from hallucinations where he sees his late mother. One day in a bar he meets a seductive woman; he sleeps with her only to learn later that she is also the lover of the Mafioso to whom he owes a film script. A fourth character that appears is a porn movie voice actor. Although he had an affair with his boss and his marriage is failing, he finds himself attached to his mentally ill wife with suicidal tendencies. Soon after, a couple on the verge of divorce, struggling over selling their marital bed at a flea market, gets back together after having sex in an abandoned bus. A less developed fifth storyline involves a pregnant woman who has decided to keep the child against the will of the father-​to-​be. As the tragic finale of the film approaches we learn that the voice actor and the scared woman in the mystery house are the married parents of the child who died while playing hide and seek. The husband finally gets home to find that his wife has committed suicide by drowning in the bathtub. It also becomes clear that the young writer and his lover had died in the terrible car accident covered by the news at the beginning of the movie. Their death had been briefly anticipated but was most likely unperceived by the viewers. Their storyline is, thus, a recollection of the days prior to 295

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The Cinema of Cuba their passing. Although very effective at times in the weaving of the narrative, the movie plays constantly with common places of thriller films. The multiple suspended actions, the ambience of the vicious bar night life and sex in public washrooms all attempt to thrill the viewer. Provocative spaces and extra diegetic music in the form of a suggestive soundtrack of suspense are also relevant to the film’s multifarious narratives. Aspillaga portrays the mysterious urban landscape of Miami at night, and with it, invisible locations of a fragmented city with nocturnal palm trees and express highways. The ‘haunted’ house with big clocks hanging on the walls all set at different times, the heavy rain and thunder effects, and the use of slow motion, shadows and diagonal camera shots are all elements conceived to thrill and unsettle the viewer. For Hamid Naficy ‘genre designation is an important marketing strategy by which alternative, minor, or accented films are reinscribed in recognisable cinematic forms to attract larger audiences’.26 However, Aspillaga’s thriller achieved little to no success in film festival’s selections. Finding funding for films like this is also rare. Aspillaga created the independent production company Ouija films and made Neuralgia with very little money. He did so with the help of friends who collaborate, and continues to do publicity and commercial advertisements to pay the bills. When asked about the privileges that Cubans had in the ‘capital’ of their diaspora, he stated: Powerful Miami Cubans are in the senate. There are many Cubans living here but I don’t know any Cuban institution that supports the artists’ community. If they exist, I  neither know nor visit them. In this city, I  don’t see the difference between people from Cuba, Colombia or elsewhere. If you are Cuban, there are privileges in terms of migratory status but not particularly in terms of grants, education or institutional support for the community.27

About the difficulty of producing this particular film, the director also commented: To be Cuban in Miami, or anywhere else in the Unites States, can become a conflict. I shot this film in Miami, spoken completely

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From Exilic to Diasporic in Spanish, starring Cuban actors, and with a theme not connected to Cuba. And that movie ended up not being well-​suited for any kind of festival. I have sent it to several and it didn’t fit the programmers’ expectations of a “Cuban film”.28

This situation raises the issue of authenticity in the diaspora: the difficulty of placing oneself and one’s work in that in-​betweenness. He continues to declare that there is evidently an exotic factor around film distribution in the festival circuits which affects exile communities from Cuba and elsewhere. Not being in Cuba, or being a Cuban exile makes you less Cuban in the eyes of others and that leads you to a dead-​end street which is to make American cinema. That is my goal right now. To make a movie from an exilic point view, with my “touch” and my roots but that responds to a more global culture, to an open country instead of an iron community. Somehow my upcoming documentary Me, Japanese is dealing with this sentiment. It’s a film about the Jewish Cuban-​American writer and poet José Kozer, co-​directed with Malena Barrios and currently in post-​ production process. Kozer is in no man’s land which is what being in Miami means to me.29

The filmmaker observes a degrading political consciousness in our generation and he thinks that the Cuban diaspora has never been driven only by an economic reason but by a need to escape from a somewhat closed society. His upcoming Final de sábado (The End of Saturday), another long feature film, attempts to be a more ambitious project than Neuralgia. Among other conditions, he promised himself not to start shooting until he has guaranteed distribution for the film. About the American context as a place to live and work, Aspillaga commented: What I don’t like about the American society is that everyone is basically living to work and not working to live. People live within strict timelines, schedules, and plans. The priority is not to feed one’s soul but to feed one’s stomach […] There is also a big problem with social security and with many other human priorities that this country is not focusing on.30

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Towards the End of Exile The end of 2014 was a turning point in the history of Cuban-​US affairs. Supported by the Canadian government and the Vatican, the Cuban and American presidents had been in conversations for eight months before media declarations were made on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between both countries. The theatre of public policy continued later in April during the summit of the Americas in Panama City when the leaders met and shook hands for the first time after much sustained political hostility and economic embargo. Cuba was taken off the list of terrorist countries and Americans were allowed to visit the island without special permission from the Department of the Treasury. The agreement began by negotiating the release of the remaining three prisoners of those known as the ‘Cuban Five’, incarcerated in prisons in the United States. ‘As part of that shift, Alan P. Gross, the American contractor detained in Cuba in December 2009 on accusations of being a spy, also returned home.’31 In this context, a high level of expectation and speculation is booming worldwide about the future of both nations, and especially the consequences these changes will carry for Cuba’s late socialism. Nonetheless, the embargo persists as well as the fear that massive capital investment will benefit only a few and that social differences, which are already visible in today’s Cuba, will grow even bigger. Other changes in the process of re-​establishing dialogue will require future congressional action, and the recent election of Donald Trump will do nothing to make that process easier. In the twenty-​first century, Cuban youth diasporic cinemas seem to stray both from a tradition of exilic cinema associated primarily with Miami-​based documentaries by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal and also from the cinematic internationalism of Cuban cineastes such as Santiago Álvarez. In contrast to the anti-​Castro exilic cinema of the 1980s, many new films by a young generation of Cuban audiovisual artists can be seen in Cuba nowadays, although in limited events organised by the ICAIC. Today, if they even look at them, they confront and debate tensions, conflicts and resentments between pro-​Revolution Cubans on the island and the historic exile community. Since they are not part of the initial nation-​building process of the 1959 Revolution –​and its detractors –​they 298

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From Exilic to Diasporic have allowed themselves distance to criticise that cystic divide. Their arguably less committed political filmmaking that understands and represents ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ in a different way has been affected by Cuba’s transition towards a market economy and recent changes in emigration policies and political relations. These could be read as postures towards ideological reconciliation in the future and maybe a moment will be reached in which notions such as ‘defecting’ and ‘exile’ are no longer applicable.

Notes 1 . Andrea O’Reilly, Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced (Albany, 2007), p. 6. 2. Ruth Behar and Lucía Suárez (eds), The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World (New York, 2008), p. 9. 3. The different waves of migration from Cuba to the United States that occurred in the twentieth century expressed issues about race and class social dimensions that were different at times. The white upper-​class exilic generation of the 1960s is usually contrasted with that of the marielitos in 1980 and the balseros of the 1990s. Today, the new economics that allow for moneyed Cubans in the USA and other countries to sponsor families and family businesses on the island, the proliferation of Spanish passports, among other forms of investments and mobility, make the diaspora a much more dynamic experience. This economic context is also raising questions on class division in Cuba like never before since 1959. 4. Miguel González, ‘España suma casi 250.000 nuevos nacionales gracias a la “ley de nietos” ’, in El País (30 March 2012), at www.politica.elpais.com/​politica/​ 2012/​03/​30/​actualidad/​1333132776_​885506.html (26 September 2015). 5. Jorge Duany, ‘Uno de cuatro cubanos planea regresar a la Isla’, (28 March 2013), at www.martinoticias.com/​content/​article/​20938.html (6 July 2015). 6. Jorge Duany, ‘¿Fin del exilio o latinización? La transformación de la comunidad cubanoamericana’, in Cuba:¿Quo Vadis? Katarzyna Dembicz et  al (eds.) (Warsaw, 2013), pp. 239–​43 (136). 7. The Antonio Maceo Brigades brought a large contingent of Cuban Americans back to their homeland for the first time in 1978 and began setting the foundations for a historic dialogue. Cuban Americans for Engagement (C.A.F.E.) is formed by younger generations of Cubans in the United States who continue this legacy and oppose the radical ideological positionalities regarding stereotypes of the Cuban people and government in the United States. They are interested in transmitting ‘the very important message that the Cuban-​American community is not monolithic and that many voices exist within this community

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The Cinema of Cuba that favor a policy of more engagement with Cuba, including [at the time] the end to the travel ban for all US citizens.’ See Cuban Americans for Engagement (C.A.F.E). ‘Cuban Americans for Engagement (C.A.F.E.) visit Washington, DC’, 25 April 2012, at www.lawg.org/​action-​center/​lawg-​blog/​69-​general/​ 1009-​cuban-​americans-​for-​engagement-​cafe-​visit-​washington-​dc#sthash. QiorMPyL.dpuf (17 June 2015). 8. Ana López, ‘Cuban Cinema in Exile: the ‘Other’ Island’, in Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 38 (1993), pp.  51–​9, at www.ejumpcut.org/​archive/​ onlinessays/​JC38folder/​ExileCubanCinema.html (1 July 2015). 9. Vincemt Canby, ‘El Super (1979). The screen: El Super, a Cuban-​American tale’, in The New York Times (29 April 1979), at www.nytimes.com/​movie/​review?re s=9E07E3D71438E530A2575AC2A9629C946890D6CF (5 July 2015). 10. López, ‘Cuban Cinema in Exile: the ‘Other’ Island’. 11. José Antonio García Borrero, Rehenes en la sombra:  ensayos sobre el audiovisual cubano que no se ve (Huesca, 2002). 12. Ibid., p. 83. 13. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema:  Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, 2001), p. 45. 14. Sergio Giral, ‘La nueva ola del cine cubano-​americano’ (14 May 2010), at www. laalcanciadelartesano.blogspot.ca/​2010/​05/​la-​nueva-​ola-​del-​cine-​cubano-​ americano.html (1 July 2015). 15. Central aspects of this exceptionalism could include the uniqueness of Cuba as the only country declared socialist in the Western hemisphere, the lack of mobility and open freedom of expression, and the restriction of internet access that limited communication possibilities between Cubans on the island and Cubans in the diaspora. Regular Skype meetings, Whatsapp audio messages, Facebook chats and even emails are either impossible or difficult to achieve. Calling Cuba from a place as close as Miami is more expensive than calling any other area across the globe. Under these difficult conditions of communication, distance truly dilates and family separation provokes a more dramatic tone. 16. Arielle Castillo, ‘Forthcoming film:  Laimir Fano’s Waiting for Berta and the Borscht filmmakers’ (10 September 2012), at www.repeatingislands.com/​2012/​ 09/​10/​forthcoming-​f ilm-​laimir-​fanos-​waiting-​for-​berta-​and-​the-​borscht-​ filmmakers/​(5 July 2015). 17. Interview with Laimir Fano (NYC, 29 August 2014). 18. ‘Memorias del desarrollo gana el premio a la mejor película’, (26 April 2010), at www.icrariza.blogspot.com/ ​ 2 010/ ​ 0 4/ ​ m emorias- ​ d el-​ d esarrollo-​ g ana-​ e l-​ premio.html (4 April 2012). Screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010, the movie was also awarded the Havana Start Prize for Best Film at the Havana Film Festival New York.

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From Exilic to Diasporic 19. Havana Cultura, sponsored by Havana Club, is a global initiative to promote contemporary Cuban culture. Its website contains over 80 artists profiles in visual and performing arts, music, film, design and literature. They provide grants for emerging Cuban artists and support visual arts projects. They also develop events across Europe and Latin America to promote Cuban culture in the world beyond the usual stereotypes. For more information, see http://​ havana-​cultura.com. 20. Interview with Tané Martínez (NYC, 22 September 2014). 21. Musical, crime, western, horror, adventure, fantasy, mystery and science fiction films are not majority in the region. Only a few exceptions make it to the mainstream industry such as Mexican Guillermo del Toro with the movies The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), among others. 22. Ruth Goldberg, ‘Sex and Death, Cuban Style: the Dark Vision of Jorge Molina’, in Steven Jay Schneider (ed.), Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe (Godalming, 2003), pp. 81–​4 (82). 23. Ibid., p. 81. 24. López, ‘Cuban Cinema in Exile: the ‘Other’ Island’, p. 194. 25. Cristina Venegas, Digital Dilemmas:  the State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba (New Brunswick, 2010), p. 151. 26. Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, p. 57. 27. Interview with Magdiel Aspillaga (Miami, 15 March 2014). 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Frances Robles and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, ‘US Frees Last of the “Cuban Five,” Part of a 1990s Spy Ring’, in The New York Times (17 December 2014), at www. nytimes.com/​2014/​12/​18/​world/​americas/​us-​frees-​last-​of-​the-​cuban-​five-​ part-​of-​a-​1990s-​spy-​ring-​.html (15 June 2015).

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Index 9/​11 126 1962 Second Declaration of Havana 77 Abakuá culture 57, 81 absolutist policies 284 access to the internet 108, 216 adolescence 143, 258 aesthetics aesthetic intent 23 aesthetic interests 72 aesthetic trajectory 279 aesthetics of digital media 108 aesthetics of ugliness 19 cubist aesthetics 112 oblique aesthetic 196 aggressive environment 263 Alma Films 238, 239 American cinema 128, 297 American dream 123 American immigration lottery 142 American suburban drama 205, 206, 210 Andrei Rublev 252, 263 Angolan War 277 Asociación Hermanos 69, 253 audiovisual audiovisual collective 266, 268 audiovisual experiences 73 audiovisual material 68, 232, 237 audiovisual production 5, 7, 55–​73, 107, 108, 238, 285, 293 audiovisual project xii, 64, 65, 73, 225, 270 aural montage 202 authenticity in the diaspora 297 authoritarianism 145 autonomy 37, 103, 102, 103, 108, 174, 181, 244

baroque mode 149 Barrio Cuba 171, 176–​180, 184–​189 baseball merchandise 199 beauty 62, 138, 144, 252, 264, 275 black market, the 41, 177, 182, 184 blogosphere 107 Bohío xii, 273–​275 bourgeoisie bourgeois society 77, 78 Brugués, Alejandro 22, 23, 102, 148–​150, 155, 161, 227 Buena Fe 103, 103, 195, 195–​217 burden of ‘defection’ 282 business transactions 209 Camagüey 46, 56, 228, 229, 251–​262, 293 Canal+ 35, 152 capitalism capitalist America 121 capitalist aspirations 151 capitalist enterprise 159 capitalist exchange 155 capitalist nature 102 capitalist past 82 capitalist presence 153 Castro, Fidel 16, 32, 103, 130, 143, 174, 180, 196, 206, 217, 288, 291 Castro, Raúl 96, 274, 281, 283 cavernicola 175 Cecilia 15, 32 censorship 17, 19, 25, 99, 174, 197, 216, 217, 243, 291 Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica 292 Chambas 256 Chaplin cinema 240

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Index childhood 143, 144, 177, 230, 249, 253, 258, 260, 291 choteo 48, 157 cinematographic production 55 Cities of the World 19 class struggle 14, 82 collaboration collaborative oeuvre 103, 195 collapse of the Soviet Bloc 152, 180 colonialism 20, 31, 81 Colorbox.tv 292 comic mode 149 commerce commercial advertisements 296 commercial uniformity 23 free market 181 communism communist organisations 239 community collective consciousness 135 community experiences 58, 72 mountain communities 63, 64 remote community 256, 257 rural community 63, 64 urban communities 58, 60, 73 consumption 151–​157, 182 contrapuntal awareness 114, 117, 121, 122 coproductions 17, 18, 34, 36, 37, 56, 60, 86, 95 corruption 97, 174 countryside customs 68 Coyula, Miguel 101, 105–​130, 226, 227, 282, 290, 293 CREART 71 creative processes Creation Teams 279 creative decision 272 creative freedom 19 creator/​collective 296 dialectical creator/​collective tension 269 Cuban culture Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 281

Cuban baseball 197, 198, 202 Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 180 Cuban Five 298 Cuban gerontocracy 189 Cuban government 97, 98, 177, 178, 187, 188 cubanidad 139, 150, 164, 263 Cuban nationalism 281 Cuban peso 180, 181 Cuban socialism 12 Cuban tourist development 179 Cuban underworld 88 Cuban youth 144, 145 cubanía 48, 150, 159, 164 Cubism 107, 109, 111, 114, 117 culture cultural heritage 71 cultural metaphor 149 cultural policy 6, 78, 85, 99 cultural space 7, 76 cultural subversion 9, 10 cultural training 79 culture of disconnectedness 223 Yankee culture 291 Cumbite 80 Daranas, Ernesto 24, 88, 90 das Ding 162 defectors 199 De Generación 228, 239, 240 degeneration 239 democracy 145, 174 diaspora xiii, 108, 114, 142, 281, 282, 297 Diez Castrillo, Daniel 62, 267, 269 digital film digital collage 107, 117, 125 digital content 108 digital Cubism 110 digital filmmaking 105, 119 digital manipulation 110, 117 digital media 107, 108 digital technology 110, 117, 237, 246 discrimination 34, 80, 85, 90, 178, 209, 291

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Index documentary filmmaking 43 domestic conflict 255 drama of rootlessness 256 dysfunction 6, 24, 39, 40–​42, 46, 47, 50 Díaz Torres, Daniel 33, 58, 59, 87, 134, 141, 143, 175 economic conditions economic blockade 108, 203 economic crisis of the 1990s 60, 75, 187 economic hardship 171, 177 economic migrants 244 economic prosperity 236 economic recovery 178 EICTV 16, 69 Eisensteinian montage 127 élan vital 112 El Cobre 60, 64, 65, 255 emigration 85, 142, 186, 187, 224, 230, 299 émigrés 41, 187, 188, 244 empire of Eros 140, 142 Entre ciclones 48, 51, 87 Esperando que caiga el jabalí xi, 229, 256, 261 everyday life 36, 58, 68, 69, 73, 89, 134, 246 Ex Generación 229, 245, 249, 288 exile exile community 196, 284, 285, 288, 298 exilic filmmakers 284, 287 existentialism 18, 26, 127 experimentation experimental cinema 248 experimentalism 101, 174 subtle experiment 264 Expressionism 107 failure of the sugar harvest of 1970 12, 14 family family intimacy 144 family separation 171, 203 nuclear family 158

fantasy escapist fantasy 133 Fauvism 107 Federation of Cuban Women 185 female self-​esteem 254 Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine 61 financial support 187 Florida 260, 264 foreign commercial interests 238 foreign entertainment 108 foreign investment 181 fragmentation fragments of meaning 149 Fresa y chocolate, 18, 180, 182, 186, 188, 208 Fuera de liga 197–​204 generation gap 134 generic elements 288 genre movies 293, 294 Giral, Sergio 13, 82, 174 Global Action Project 65 global economy 34, 181 González Pastrana, Nomar 71 gothic literature 165 grants 105, 108, 233, 279 grey five years 14, 80 group migrations 236 Guantanamera 18, 102, 103, 171, 177, 180–​189 Guevara, Alfredo 11, 15, 17, 32, 57, 61, 79, 98 Guevara, Che 44, 121, 206, 214, 243 Guillén Landrián, Nicolás 261, 290 Gómez, Sara 12, 58, 80, 81, 261 Gómez de la Avellaneda, Gertrudis, 254 Habanastation 197, 204, 206–​211 Haitian vodou 148, 154 hardship 51, 114, 152, 171, 177, 188 hegemony counter hegemony 10 cultural hegemony 6, 9, 10, 26 Hello Hemingway 18, 102, 136–​138, 142

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Index Historias de la Revolución 11, 31 Historical Memory Act 283 homeland 251 homophobia 68, 90, 189, 216 horror 148, 162 human condition 20, 246, 247 humane perspective 242 hypostasis 111, 112, 117, 119, 123, 125

intimate space 255 inverted pyramid 183 Irremediablemente juntos 21, 75 ISA 14, 22, 69, 73, 257, 293 jinetera phenomenon, the 184, 185 Juan de los Muertos 23, 102, 147–​166

Ichaso, León 284, 285 idealism 76, 277 identity cultural identity 23, 30–​52, 70, 139, 143 dissolution of identity 165 female identity 38 fluidity of identity 30, 38 national identity x, 6, 20, 21, 25, 39, 40, 48, 148–​151, 157, 159, 161 revolutionary identity 33, 77 transnational identity 282 vampiric identity 157 ideology ideological conflict 283 ideological reconciliation 299 Ignacio Hernández Nodar, Juan 201 ignorance 79, 262, 291 Indiegogo 101, 131 indie production 147 indigenous ideals 85 individualism 224 individual morality 49 inequality 76, 85, 90, 154, 188 Information Age, the 27 Insituto Superior de Arte 69 institutionalised double morality 176 internal dislocation 145 internalisation of difference 165 internal migration 183, 225 international press 240, 243 international relations 203 interracial love 21, 88 interracial relationships 76, 77, 83, 86 intertextuality 117

kernel of the Real 157, 158, 162 La decision 80 language film language 247, 261 Language of memory 113 meta-​language 291 LGBT 216, 217 literacy campaign 13, 68, 242 local projects 72 lo colectivo 79 logic of fetishism 159 logic of obliquity 199, 204 Los pinos nuevos 264 lucha 164 ludic parenthesis 204, 205 Luís Sánchez, Jorge. 21, 24, 75, 83, 88 Machado dictatorship 148 machismo 60, 90, 174 Madagascar 18, 134–​138 madness 248 Madrigal 20, 134, 140–​143 maestros ambulantes 264 mainstream 113, 215, 284, 293 malfunctioning society 6, 39 Mambí 11 marginality marginal cinema 248 Mariel boatlift 276 Mariel harbour 150 market forces 37, 38, 175 Martí, José 18, 20, 31, 39, 83, 143, 214, 217, 267 Marxist ideology 82 Más vampiros en La Habana 148–​160

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Index Massip, José 57, 58, 80, 83 material desires 186 Memorias del desarrollo 101, 105–​130, 226, 249, 290 Memorias del subdesarrollo 11, 105, 113, 143, 186, 205, 212 memory associative processes of memory 118 memory loss 106 MEPLA 71–​73 Miel para Ochún 40, 45, 51, 62, 145, 176, 184 mobile cinema 69, 251, 253 mobilisation of public opinion 274 monetisation of sport 203 monstrous unknowability of the neighbour 163 mortality 189 multifarious narratives 296 musical allusion 140 music videos 23, 109, 110, 195, 197, 212, 214 myth of the mulatta 88 Nada 42 narrative corpus 274 national culture national imaginary 56 national independence 143 national unity 17 Negrometrajes 7, 82 neocolonialism 113 Neuralgia 293–​297 neuronal prosperity 210 new generation of artists 23, 298 newsreels 57, 135, 173 New York 117, 288, 290–​293 nickel mining 181 nostalgic journey 47 obliqueness oblique space 197 register of obliquity 103, 195 occupation

occupational equality 210 occupational hierarchies 182 Oedipus complex 295 optimism 48, 141, 210, 236 Oriente 183 Ouija films 296 over-​identification 164 Padrón, Ian 22, 89, 103, 195–​217 paquete, the 216 parenthood 179 París, Rogelio 82 parody 142, 291 pastiche 42, 291 Pérez, Fernando xiv, 19, 48, 50, 90, 98, 100 perimeter of the counter-​revolutionary 204 perpetual desire 156 personal cinema 237, 248, 249 personal profit 203 pilón 273 PlayStation 205–​211 Pleisteichon 211 poetry 262 politics political education 144 political partisanship 201 political propaganda 290 political refuge 281 politicised cultural guidelines 80 pornography 101, 114, 119, 123, 291, 295 post-​revolutionary Cuba 109 prejudice 56, 75–​90, 183, 206 privilege 114, 206, 211, 266, 289 problema negro 79 production groups 72 Proyecto audiovisual comunitario Picacho 64, 73 psychological thriller 293, 294 Quesada Díaz, Enrique 56 quinquenio gris 14, 80

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319

Index racism racial complexity 7 racial conscience 82 racial debate 78, 79 racial issue 90 racial mixing 75 radical nationalism 31, 32 Real difference 166 realism dirty realism 26 magical realism 44 narrative realism 102 restrained realism 144 Socialist Realism 12 real socialism 60 regional authorship 248 religion 56, 76, 81–​85, 89, 137, 176 remittance income 187 revolutionary Cuban ideal 118 revolutionary values 32, 41, 49, 173 Revolution Square 207, 214 rock music 238 Rosal Paz y Paz, Rafael 97 rupture 32, 33, 98, 110, 171, 291 Santería 50, 81, 87, 88, 186, 189 Sarduy, Severo xi, 229, 258, 260, 262 scholarship 105, 232, 233, 244, 282, 288 self-​discovery 136 self-​examination 6, 39 Severo secreto 229, 230, 258, 262 sex contemporary sexual diversity 68 homosexuality 18, 21, 90, 103, 188, 290 National Centre for Sex Education 185 sex tourism 103, 153, 177, 184, 185, 187 Sierra Maestra 7, 68, 230, 267–​276 silence 20, 76, 83, 138, 261, 262, 264, 291 simulacra 106, 117, 121, 124, 125, 127 simultaneity 106, 111

slavery 20, 21, 81, 90, 121, 286, 291 social reality social criticism 12, 14, 17, 26, 83, 86, 172 social change 68, 7, 81, 85, 173 social comedy 139 social critique 16, 39, 72, 176 social inequalities 75 social justice 143 social media 289 social realignment 108 social recognition 68, 71 Social Sciences 4, 5 solar 41, 48, 50, 80, 81, 83, 84, 87 Solás, Humberto 12, 15, 18, 32, 45, 62, 82, 137, 145, 171 Spanish-​Cuban-​North American War 24 Special Period 6, 16, 34, 38, 39, 51, 84, 103, 107, 134, 137, 140, 151, 152, 154, 155, 163, 171–​187, 253, 266, 283 spectacle of the self 129 spectre spectre of capital 155, 156 spectre of capitalism 153, 154 spectre of difference 161 spectre of Marx 156 spiritual heritage spiritual contradictions 87 spiritual crisis 137 spiritual erosion 134 spiritual nationalism 78 stereotypes 76, 86, 249 stream of consciousness 113, 120 subjectivity 10, 106, 119, 120, 130, 269 Suite Habana 19, 23, 48, 50, 98, 134, 140–​142, 152 superstitions 162, 273 Surrealism 23, 107 survival 18, 47, 50, 84, 88, 141, 164, 177, 187, 274 symbolic order 150–​166 synth pop 207

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Index Tabío, Juan Carlos 22, 83, 84, 87, 102, 171, 175, 180 Tacones 253, 258 Tarkovsky, Andrei 252, 263 technological revolution 266 telescopic view 213 Televisión Española 147 Televisión Serrana 62, 230, 266, 267, 268, 276, 279 Third Party Congress 151 three Wars of Independence 4 Tiempo de cosecha 274 tolerance tolerance of difference 171 tourism 20, 85, 86, 151, 153, 154, 178, 181, 182 transculturation 7, 157 transmedia story-​telling 130 transnational cinematic and cultural tradition 148 travel restrictions 95, 245 tribalism 200, 201 triunfo 198, 215 unlimited expansion 154, 159 uprooting 25, 46, 78, 95, 224

urbanity urban comedies 15 urban tribes 238 US economic blockade 108, 203, 209 USSR 99, 204, 253, 254, 266 vampiric consumers 151 vampirism 160 Vietnam War 123 villagers 256 Vimeo 100, 131, 248 virtual reality 158, 163 vision of reality 5, 247 voyeurism 216 workplace paternalism 174 world of creation 263 World War II 148 Yoruba creation myth 189 younger generation 23, 215 YouTube 100, 130, 216 Yáquimo 285 zombie film 147

320