FILMMAKING IN CUBA
We passed by the Cine Yara, which was playing another friend’s documentary, El Proceso.
We were on the way to meet the only independent filmmaker in Cuba. He lives in the back of a duplex in Vedado with his wife, his cats, and his studio. We talked for hours, and he, a true director, told stories and held the conversation – fine by me because we learned a lot from him. His reel was more professional than many I’ve seen Stateside, and included quite a few commercials filmed in our neighborhood, Centro Habana, a dilapidated, ocean-front neighborhood full of hookers and hustlers. However, this is where you find authentic Cuba, the poverty and the beauty, the smiling, salsa dancing families with their windows wide open and they heels flying across the rugless floors.
Making movies in Cuba is difficult for foreigners to understand. The beauty we think of Cuba is restrictive to a filmmaker. There are no props, no camera rental places, and no locations that would be anything but dilapidated 1950’s. The locations are breathtaking, as are the cars, but your subject matter better by congruent. A foreign company asked our friend to shoot a rock video, which involved a rock band dropping from a helicopter onto a roof, being lit up, and rocking out. He laughed, because first of all there are no helicopters. The army has a few old Russian choppers, but that’s it. Second of all, there are no lights. And even if there were these things, as soon as the band landed on the roof, the entire building would collapse.
Oliver stone was recently fined by the US government years after he finished his film with Fidel, which I haven’t heard of it being played anywhere. The fine was just over $6,000, a paltry number for Stone, amounting to nothing more than getting his name in the papers again. He couldn’t have bought that much press for only 6k.
We’ve met only one person who has seen Oliver Stone’s film, which oddly played in the US Interest Section here. In his opinion, the film was a joke. Fidel fooled Stone, played him, as if Stone were a puppet filmmaker which Fidel was fingering. He said they interviewed dissidents in front of a crowd and in front of Fidel, and the dissidents of course said the predicted, “what we did was wrong – we should be punished to the full extreme of the law.” Fidel walked the streets with Stone and everyone came out so yell how much they loved him. Stone’s conclusions in the film where calculated by Fidel. The word he used was engañado, which means something like “played,” or “fooled.”