EVENTS-ELIÉCER JIMÉNEZ ALMEIDA-FILM SCREENINGS

×

  • October 2019
    Eliécer Jiménez Almeida

  • BIO

    GUEST:
    ELIÉCER JIMÉNEZ ALMEIDA

    HOST:
    LYNN CRUZ


    Bio:

    Eliécer Jiménez Almeida
    (Camagüey, 1983)

    Interested in experimental cinema, Eliécer Jiménez Almeida founded the production company IKAIK Films in 2019. His films investigate human problems of a global scope, such as socio-ecological issues. Journalism and investigation define the conceptual line of his work. He is the winner of the PM Award in the New Media 2019 category.

    PROGRAMMING OCTOBER 2019

    Friday, October 25 at 8 pm


    Usufructo (2011) / 10’ / Documentary

    La faz de las aguas (2012) / 10’ / Experimental

    Arte soy (2012) / 3’ / Experimental

    Verdadero Beach: La playa del pueblo (2012) / 5’ / Documentary

    Persona / 27’ / Documentary







  • INTERVIEW

    This interview with Cuban filmmaker Eliécer Jiménez Almeida, which we will publish in three parts, took place in 2019, in the Cine Independiente-Cine Pendiente (Independent Film–Pending Film) Showcase as part of its Directors Cycle, organized in Havana by the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (INSTAR). This first part followed the screenings of the films Usufructo [Usufruct] (2010), Verdadero Beach (2012), La faz de las aguas [The Face of the Waters] (2012), Arte soy [I Am Art] (2012), and Persona (2014).

    In Persona, how did IKAIK and Cooperativa Producciones come together?

    Well, before I put my foot in my mouth, I’d like to thank INSTAR, and thank you for coming because I know how difficult Havana is, and especially to Tania, for organizing all this—she’s a warrior and I love her very much. The meetings between Ricardo Figueredo, Diana Reyes, IKAIK, and Cooperativa Producciones came to be thanks to Edgar Soberon. He was the first person I talked to about what I wanted to do with Persona, and he told me: “You have to see Ricardo Figueredo, he’s the right person for a project like this, a difficult project, you need a lot of time, you need a camera for a year.” “But who’s going to give me a camera for a year? That’s impossible, no producer is going to agree to that,” I replied. And then he said, “Let’s talk to Ricardo.” We had met at film school, but when I sat down with Ricardo, you know, Ricardo is my brother: “Whatever you need.” It was very special that Ricardo trusted me. But beyond the fact that Edgar trusted me, Edgar is someone I have a lot of affection for despite our political differences. There was a chemistry from the beginning, we didn’t need to discuss anything, it was very special…

    Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is an iconic film. Were you trying to make a connection with it?

    Yes, of course. It’s complicated because you know that everyone’s going to tell you, “Ah, Persona, like Bergman’s,” but, well, I always had faith that people, after they saw the first minute of Persona, would see that it’s a different sort of film, that it takes another path, regardless of the fact that it’s also a tribute to Bergman. I filmed a documentary where people go from being a subject to being a character, that is, it’s a documentary where people are filmed as in a fiction film, but it doesn’t become a fiction film. I also didn’t want it to be like Suite Habana, although inevitably there are many references because it’s a rather odd film and it’s a film that influenced my generation a lot. Suite Habana distances itself from the ICAIC [Cuban Film Institute], from the political context. To show so much silence in 2003 in Cuba and, at the same time, to shout so loudly about how bad this country was and how badly the people were doing, that shook us all. When I watched it for me it represented, and continues to represent, that other side of Cuba.

    Now I have different convictions, perhaps I’m a better person, perhaps worse. But Persona sought to have the breath of Suite Habana, and also the breath of Bergman’s Persona, it wanted to have its own personality in the end, right? And somehow we achieved that, right? It gradually becomes established as the first few minutes go by.

    Persona still amazes me—and I’m a very strange director because when I finish films I completely lose affection for them, although now seeing them like this, one after the other, you say to yourself, “Damn this happened over all this time.” I mean, this [film] is part of my life and it’s important, right? But then I try to disconnect quickly and get hooked on another project that is at that moment the most important thing in my life. Later other things will happen, I won’t feel as affectionate. I don’t know if I answered your question... I’ll tell you one thing, now when I watched all these films, I would take a knife to it all because I’m the editor... But, well, I’m also happy because that was a beautiful time in my life, because I tried to build a world for myself that didn’t exist in my life before...

    Your brother in the movie gets jail time for killing a cow and this leads to him migrating and subsequently disappearing. As in Bergman’s Persona, it could be said that as director you are the character of Liv Ullmann, who looks through the coldness of the lens at the intimacy of life unworthy of these characters, your mother’s unfinished bathroom, the nudity of a man with disabilities…

    Can you clarify your question?

    The question is if you think there is some cruelty in that gaze...

    I’m not such a complicated person, I always try to get the precise image. My favorite writer is Ernest Hemingway because he didn’t pretend to be an intellectual, and I’ve never pretended to be an intellectual, that’s why I’ve tried to find the precise image for each sequence, the precise voice, I don’t do a lot of analysis. Later when people critique and talk about the film, I learn a lot from them, I’m a rather simple person in that regard. I want things to be fresh and I view cinema as a show, not as a philosophy book. People should be moved at the movie theater. The first person who should feel moved about it is me, as a director, then as a photographer, as an editor, then I am moved to put together a soundtrack and, if it continues to move me later, then I’m sure it will to move someone else. I’m not trying to be a philosopher.

    I asked the question as a viewer...

    And you busted me!

    It’s inevitable from the title that one makes the connection. I mean, do you feel that there is some cruelty when you film your characters?

    It was very difficult. Keep in mind that all those people who are in the film are friends of my mother and that it’s the story of my brother. My brother’s story is the hardest to tell because it’s only through photos. It’s very personal… My mother was very difficult to film because my mother’s pain is also mine, my brother was close and he’s no longer here. I don’t try to be cruel or at least I don’t set out to be. I want to be clear about something: I don’t make concessions even with my mother. When I make movies I do it without concessions, that is, maybe I won’t give you the answer you want, or I don’t have the right answer, but that’s important to me because I believe strongly in the idea of not making concessions, neither with my mother, much less with myself, nor with history. That is, you have to take the bull by the horns, wherever it is, for me that’s essential. I’m very caring with my mother. Nobody does what my mother did as a character in that movie if one is not caring enough with their mother; that is, if there’s not such a climate of trust that you manage to film that...

    Even if they’re your relatives or your friends, the images are very cruel.

    I’m not interested in exploiting them, I’m interested in denouncing them in all possible forums...

    But that is political, I mean on a personal level. It’s a transgressive discourse.

    I think that when the camera reached that place, that reality already existed. I didn’t invent that reality, and that’s what maintains the documentary nature of the film. I lived in that reality and what I did was try to film it as I saw it. I did not insert that cruelty, it’s where I want to get to, the cruelty was put there by others. Not even my mother can understand who put the cruelty there. Almanza, yes, Almanza is another type of person. My brother’s situation highlighted to me the absoluteness of the cruelty… The cruelty was there even before I existed. Communism is a real and cruel thing, people who live in real socialism are screwed, they end up screwed, even those who are screwing other people end up screwed...

    Well, it also happens in capitalism...

    Yes, but in capitalism at least you have the option of not being screwed.

    But, hey, let’s not get off track, because I want to get more to the form, to the path you chose to get to film.

    The chosen path was very simple. I read a poem by Rafael Almanza that has always fascinated me, called “Kempo,” from the book El gran camino de la vida. A fragment of it appears at the beginning of the documentary and there’s a full stanza towards the end. I was fascinated by that poem and I mixed it with the Constitution of the Republic. It’s a fallacy to tell people that man’s full dignity is fully achieved in this country; that is a total fallacy, and it is also obvious because reality reveals it all the time. However, they insist on it and now they have a new constitution that says exactly the same thing. Well, this is a crazy country and it is very difficult to put up with. I wanted to shit on all that, and I loved doing so.

    I think your film goes beyond that, and you explore existence and to what extent it is possible to continue living under those conditions.

    Another thing that mattered to me, now that you mention it, was that the film not be a tear-jerker nor about defeated people. As Hemingway said, “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated…” These people are fighting for their dignity however they can, they don’t give up, that’s what I see. So, maybe, maybe not; maybe time has passed and I’ve grown as a person, I have other ideas.

    [Rafael] Almanza also lives in precariousness and has this Martí-esque discourse...

    You can’t separate Almanza from Martí, Almanza is obsessive about Martí…

    That’s where I’m going: in Arte Soy [I Am Art], you planted the seed for what happens in Persona.

    Yeah, I don’t know, probably. Well, I got to know Martí through Almanza, which is a good way to do so. Almanza is a scholar who knows about Martí, he is the greatest scholar of José Martí that this country has in the 21st, 22nd and probably the 25th centuries. I learned about Martí through Almanza. He has a very special interpretation of José Martí. And in the case of “With all, and for the good of all,” it seems to me that this is the discourse of the nation, and that if tomorrow people went out and read that, there would be a national rebellion... Well, people don’t read in this wretched country and I’m not trying to be ironic, but it’s true, what can you expect.

    Arte Soy: the content and the form came from two different paths. One day I’m standing in line at the doctor’s. I had a camera in my pocket and I saw that fly entangled on the doctor’s head, and I filmed it with that zoom, it was very badly filmed, a mess. At least two years went by and I saw some text on the Internet and I said to myself: “Damn, this is great, if I mix this with the fly…” A＋B=C, and when I saw that I asked Almanza, and he told me there’s a photo of Martí with a fly. And that’s what I put at the ending with a red circle, which you can hardly see, but, well, the most curious people will always seek it out and try to explain it. It’s a fly, it’s a photo of Martí with a fly. What can you do, the fly was there at that moment, but all those things are interwoven and create a discourse. And I like to experiment with images, I love Arte soy…

    In the case of your brother, you touch on an almost unexplored theme in Cuban film, which is that of the disappeared, of human trafficking. Would you like to revisit this topic later?

    Yes, it’s a very difficult subject, in the real world of film everything is very expensive, prohibitively expensive. The films that I’ve made can only be made here in Cuba. I mean, I’ve tried to make movies in the United States and I’ve managed to do it somehow, but it’s very difficult because movies there are made at bedtime, meaning that you lose sleep to be able to make movies. All my films made in the United States, which will be shown here, were almost always made at night, while I was doing many things during the day, any gig I could get, because there you don’t become a sports editor overnight. You have to do several things at the same time, you do the best you can with the conditions you have. I would like to learn more about the people who have disappeared, and get much more involved.

    There’s so much that could be done on the topic of people who take to the sea.

    Well, the quintessential case is unfortunately the “13 de marzo” tugboat. There have been times when boats were ordered to be sunk. It’s common for countries to control their borders so that immigrants don’t enter. What’s very rare is that a country controls them so much that their citizens cannot leave.

    Very rare, no; that’s totalitarianism...

    Yes, but there’s some kind of agreement...

    Well, the day that the average Cuban finds out about the real history of the Revolution, he’s going to commit suicide the next day because Cubans are such cowards that they prefer to commit suicide before doing anything about it...

    I don’t share your opinion...

    Well, we’re not all cowards, but we’re here to talk about cinema, not politics...

    Yes, we’re digressing from your films.

    Look, no one ever asks me about my influences. Personas is full of references to painting, to Caravaggio’s light. No one ever asks me about Antonia Eiriz, “The Annunciation,” or anything like that. And I’ve had talks with highly educated people… That’s where fiction operates within the documentary—they are semi-real scenarios, they are not exactly real scenarios. The kitchen, yes, but there it is essentially the light of Caravaggio. I was fascinated when I saw Caravaggio’s work in person a few years ago in Italy, in his element. But you also have to keep in mind that I’m from the countryside and I’ve been discovering these things the hard way, and it’s absolutely supreme, I came to it all in different ways. I’m very happy with my life...

    You’ve made almost all of your movies practically alone. Do you plan to continue like this?

    I’ve never had any pretensions of making industrial cinema, I rather like to do things by hand. At some point I won’t be able to continue working like this because being alone is very tiring, although documentaries can be handled alone quite well; fiction is much more complicated because it always involves other people, other factors, other complexities, the actors.

    Though with documentaries you have to carry a character that you have to convince to do what you want, but I plan to continue on like this. I have a job—at the same time that I make movies I also edit sports news at Univisión. I’m a professional editor and I have to take on any project without passing judgment. Ultimately I have to do what the director tells me, no matter how collaborative or intellectual I am, or how much I know about montage, I have to stay within the lines. I don’t refuse to do those things, but the films I prefer to make are personal films with very close collaborators and few people.

    Work with a lot of people? I don’t think so—I learned to edit because nobody wanted to edit the things that I wanted to edit. I learned to film because nobody wanted to film the things that I wanted to film. I marginalized myself from many people. I didn’t want to hear from anyone, except maybe really elegant people, like Ricardo, I’d go to the end of the world with him. They have to be people who aren’t afraid, I can’t do things with people who are fearful. We only get one life, let them arrest me; they’ll release me after half an hour or after five days. But if I’m going to start thinking about Miami, whether I’ll pass customs, whether they’ll catch me, etc… Then I don’t come back. When I made Persona I was a very different person. The truth is, I wanted many people to see it, I really wanted it to be shown and that didn’t happen until eight years later, when it could be shown in a real theater at MoMA, thanks to all the factors that made that happen, and that day I didn’t even know what I was going to say there. You know, I spent years thinking about how I was going to make a movie, and I was crazy about showing it to people, especially people in Cuba. I’m more interested in being here than at MoMA, this is the most important event in my entire life, being able to screen my work here, whether we’re three people or ten doesn’t matter...

    I’ve been “de-complexing” myself. I don't want to invent complexities, any more than what reality imposes on you and you have to deal with. I want everything to be quick, and to flow like the wind. I don’t get involved in any complicated situations... But back then I wasn’t like that, I really wanted people to see it and that was difficult and it was rejected in all national film forums... It did win an award at Gibara [Festival]...

    Oh, was it shown at Gibara?

    Yes, it was screened on a Sunday at 9:30 in the morning; therefore the audience was me and Angélica and two or three others, maybe five people…

    Humberto was no longer there...

    No, that year it was Lester Hamlet. I remember that the selection committee was made up of kids from ISA, all of whom approached me and said: “That was awesome…” That encouraged me, because you know, I didn’t study at a normal film school, I lucked out going to San Antonio de los Baños. There were very special people there like you, Ricardo. And there were people who weren’t so special who threw shit at me, but that’s another story. They gave me that award at Gibara and I even got scared, a film that no one here has seen—how could they give it an award? And then Juan Antonio García Borrero showed it in Camagüey, the city where I lived most of my life. There was a man in the audience who stood up, it was a provocation, although I can’t say whether he was from State Security… Maybe he was. I’m very impulsive, I stood up and I wanted to grab him by the neck...

    Of course, the first time that happens, it makes us angry.

    I remember that they had given me one of those little bottles of water—it was starting to become fashionable to give people little bottles of water, while in this country people have died of thirst all their lives. Well, at that time they gave you a little bottle of water and that little bottle of water lent you some caché or prestige, really this country is crazy as hell. And I took that bottle like this and crushed it with my hand so as not to crush that guy, but well, that’s part of my personality, I’m very impulsive. I was praying today at the airport that they wouldn’t take away a doll that I brought for Ricardo’s daughter, because I was going to kill an agent there, but well, everything is fine, I’ve changed a lot, I’m no longer so impulsive and I let a lot go because you have to learn from the blows, you know.

    Why Verdadero Beach* and not Varadero Beach?

    I called it Verdadero [True] so that everyone would get the joke, but it is True…. I went there, to Jibara, to a beach called Caletones, that’s why I’m so interested in cinema, because cinema can be seen in different ways. The story of Verdadero is very simple: Angélica and I wanted to travel to all the towns in Cuba; I even wanted to visit the shittiest little town in Cuba, and we went to Puerto Padre. Well, Puerto Padre was so bad that we went to Jibara, we arrived the next day. I always have a camera in my pocket, and there were a lot of people enjoying themselves the water—the beach is called Caletones, and I thought of making a short called Calentones [Horny Beach]—but the people were too far away and I didn’t have time to capture everyone in the act. And Angélica says to me: “Look, what kind of pig is that?” and I started following this pig around and filming the pig all day. Then I came home and left the camera there, and a year or two passed. I came across the short film by Néstor Almendros, Gente en la playa [People on the Beach], and it fascinated me. I’ve always been curious about the people who left Cuba, and I also ended up leaving Cuba. It’s one of life’s paradoxes that you never know where you’ll end up.

    So I said to myself, “Damn, I’ve got these images, I’m going to put this together,” and I made this juxtaposition between what the pig does, and what the people do, and people naturally behave like the pig. We’re animals too, right? I establish a parallel there and I screw around a bit, I have a lot of fun with that and thinking about Néstor Almendros. Then fate put me in the situation of restoring Conducta impropia [Improper Conduct] in the United States for its 35th anniversary, a job I did for a year. It’s a coincidence that I came across a short like Gente en la playa, and I paid homage to it and ended up working on one of the most important films that Néstor made as a director together with Orlando Jiménez Leal.

    The copy that I restored was also shown at MoMA, and there was a very nice screening in Miami. Sometimes you don’t know where you’ll end up... I’m so avant garde that I’m getting ahead of myself, because like I told you, it can be constructed in a thousand ways, there’s a labyrinth of possibilities: sometimes you write a script, other times you do research or film and meditate afterwards. I really like free cinema, I’ve always been fascinated with free cinema for the possibilities it gives you to construct a different reality... * Verdadero or “True” Beach, a play on the famed Varadero Beach

    That’s also in the theory of Imperfect Cinema…

    Julio García Espinosa’s theory… For me, and I’m not afraid to say this, it seems to me that what he did to justify the non-cinema he made was very imperfect, but that’s just me…

    I don’t see it that way. I think he was perhaps a better theoretician than filmmaker, but he took a risk. Las aventuras de Juan Quin Quin [The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin] is an important film for Cuban cinema…

    Right, I’m not judging your criteria, I’m telling you mine...

    I feel that independent filmmakers, albeit unconsciously, have brought back those ideas. Because in your way of making movies you reject the industry, and in their way they also rejected Hollywood, cultural neo-colonialism...

    I think that if you make a book like that, and you’re also the deputy minister of culture and the director of the film school, and president of ICAIC, it’s somewhat contradictory...

    We’re judging the work, not the person.

    Well, if you separate the two, it’s a bit complicated...

    No, each person has their artistic self, and sometimes it’s quite different from their personal life... I was saying that the theater of cruelty is also anti-dictatorial, anti-clerical... In other words, there’s also a cold hand in your work...

    Yes, I distance myself, if I take it personally I’ll explode. If I take my father’s life personally, I’ll explode, or I’d kill Fidel Castro right now, well, I can’t kill him anymore, I would blow his headstone to pieces...

    In a system like ours, artists had two paths in the 1960s: they could either take the path of faith, in this case [faith in] the Revolution, or leap into the void that was exile...

    I had those two options...

    We’re talking about the 1960s...

    Don’t make me talk too much...

    We’re talking about a man and his circumstances...

    You and I already argued about this once... You’re trying to pick a fight, come on, come on...

    No, we’re going to be objective and cold. In Hollywood the final cut is made by the market, in the ICAIC it’s politics; the market doesn’t matter, not even today. But just the same, those Cuban films of the sixties put Cuba on the cinematographic map.

    Well, I’ll tell you something, if I’ve done it it was not intentional and people see it that way, which is fascinating, but I’ll tell you something, the film law that created the ICAIC is the one that remains in force, even the crap that has been created now for independent producers, [Decree] 373 and all that nonsense... If those people were naive it was because they wanted to be, it was their choice, that’s fine with me. I don’t question any of them, but if they had read the law that created the ICAIC, they would have realized that everything was focused on ideology. And for those who were able to make more or less avant garde films, that’s great. I have nothing against Memorias del subdesarrollo, perhaps a little against Lucía and some of the others…

    But that doesn’t take away from the importance of those movies...

    No, no, not at all, it’s my point of view... I think I would have been able to fit into the ICAIC if it hadn’t been for my personality. But I chose a different path, and another factor is the digital technological revolution. And there’s Usufructo, which was made with a tiny camera. Well, I didn’t have one, it was lent to me. I am very grateful to Rafael Almanza. Anyway, it seems very good to me. I’ll give you an example, I don’t see leaving Cuba as a leap into the void...

    It’s not the same today...

    Wait, give me a chance, okay? Because I listened to you a lot, take a break. I’m going to give you an answer. The first person censored by cinema in this country was Orlando Jiménez Leal. He went to the United States and he made six movies. How many did Titón [Tomás Gutiérrez Alea] make, five or six? And [Enrique Pineda] Barnet, also five or six. And Humberto Solás, also five or six… The fact is that it’s not a leap into the void—if people are going to do things, they do them here, in the United States, or anywhere. And this song and dance that all these people have invented, all these fucking communists—I’m not going to self-censor—these people have made up this story that the CIA gives you money, or the government and the organizations. Nobody gives you anything, there you have to invent yourself. I’ve made movies here just as I’ve done in the United States. That is something that people think, that if you land there, the American government will give you a sack of money to make a film. The American government is not interested in Cuba. No one cares, including the CIA. You have to make your own life, so I don’t agree with the leap into the void, although I respect your position. You haven’t lived there. I‘ve lived there for five years. When I arrived I was dying. Later, yes, I found the way to do my things. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and there’s Orlando Jiménez Leal and Néstor Almendros, etc.

    Well, there are many who didn’t make it...

    And how did Nestor become a French new wave filmmaker? An Oscar-winning cinematographer with a great movie, Days of Heaven? Some people couldn’t do it...

    They are exceptions...

    I’m sorry, but the majority of them arrived and took bureaucratic jobs in order to live well. Nicolasito [Nicolás Guillén Landrián] is a prime example, he didn’t have faith or anything. He did whatever he wanted until his wings were clipped…

    He had faith in films…

    Cinema was a Revolutionary project, a Leninist project, not a project that created revolution, but a Leninist project.

    But he gave us his work…

    Yes, the most important thing is that the movies are there. Pushed by a government that put money into them. It’s not money that Ricardo has, or Miguel Coyula, or you, or me...

    No, not me…

    Stop, stop there, hey, you’ve set me up to get angry with these people, well they’re going to have a lot of fun here because we’ve talked shit, keep going, I have no commitments... Not even to God... Well, yes, I can’t forget that I asked Him to [let me] come back into Cuba. Do you know that Hemingway story? He was with a very Catholic girl with whom he couldn’t get it up and so he began to go to church, and to confess and all that, and he prayed to God... And so it was, and what he put into the girl was on fire, super hot, and then he said: “Now I’m Catholic,” and he’s been drinking daiquiris around the corner ever since…

    In Arte soy, a rather experimental short film, you already told us about the fly, and then there’s that voice…

    It’s Jorge Lozano’s, a Cuban Martí official, who gives that very nice proclamation, it’s poetic, I don’t think it’s an absolute truth, rather a poetic truth, and poetic truth interests me because it moves me, I said: “Damn, look what this guy says.”

    This discourse about sincerity, I feel that the philosopher [Jorge] Mañach was the one who gave the Martí literature to Fidel in prison...

    Not only that, he wrote the prologue to [the speech] “History Will Absolve Me” in prison and he probably edited it and what we’ve read was actually written more by Mañach than by Fidel Castro.

    Because later we saw all the guy’s speeches and he was a shit talker... Now that I’m thinking back, there are many other things, too. For example, there’s this Titón movie that I like that has a lot of Chaplin in it, La muerte de un burócrata [Death of a Bureaucrat]. That movie fascinates me, I still laugh when I watch that movie. The twelve chairs, too. You know, at that time, when Titón was learning to make movies, like me, because I’m still learning, I don’t even know whether I still know how to make movies. I wanted to make something funny and it didn’t work out for me, because I can’t make anything funny, I would like to have the sense of humor of Enrique Colina or Ricardo Figueredo in Juan sin nada. That is hilarious and also very reflective. I mean, “The unique story of Juan with nothing”—you laugh, but when you go home you say to yourself, “Damn, I’m laughing at this, at so much misery and so much fuckery…” It’s like the Russians’ communication theory and gratifications, you use them at one point but later it serves a different function…

    I wanted to tell you something and forgive me for going back, but before I forget, I wanted to talk to you about Verdadero Beach: la playa del pueblo. There I discovered something: Gente en la playa and PM are the last films in Cuba where people were happy and enjoyed themselves. In PM, people enjoyed the nightlife, they enjoyed the bars, they enjoyed beer, marijuana, and there was that climate of freedom where those things could be enjoyed, and it wasn’t a sin, it wasn’t condemned. And in Gente en la playa people enjoyed the beach. So for me there is a division in Cuban cinema, from then on everything is sadness, even comedies are sad, everything is based on sadness and heroism (the seventies were the apex of the heroic). I believe that these two films mark the end of joy. Another moment is the death of Benny [Moré]; that is, for me there are two moments where there’s a break with joy. Joy was screwed up in this country; after those moments, joy became something that has to first pass through the filter of sadness, and of problems, hunger, and need. So that was fundamental when I made Verdadero Beach… I wanted people to have a good time, just like that pig, without pretensions…

    What was your inspiration for La faz de las aguas [The Face of the Waters]? The use of reflection?

    I had seen a short film by Joris Ivens called The Bridge, which fascinated me. It was so beautiful that I recommend it to everyone who can watch it because it’s terrific. I had already seen many experimental short films, things that circulated at that time, and I realize that now it’s much easier to access information. In 2010, 2011, when this was being developed, everything was very incipient, there was no Paquete*, there was nothing, when you received a bundle of content you devoured it. I watch a documentary every day, I watch a movie every day—a day doesn’t go by that I don’t watch something, that’s how it is. I saw those experimental and special shorts Rain and The Bridge: fascinating. And then something happened: one day I was out walking and I saw the reflection of a clock in a puddle. I’m really obsessed with time, I don’t like to waste time or waste anyone else’s time. And then time is in these reflections and also how to turn those images around in time, because all those images are manipulated, the reflections are always upside down. Yes. You always see a reflection upside down, when you look in the mirror you are seeing something else, not exactly reality. So I manipulated all those images, I turned them upside down, and that’s how I discovered a poem by Lezama Lima, “Muerte de Narciso” [Death of Narcissus]. The poem went “The golden thread that Daphne weaves on the Nile and dies in the sea..” (Look what you can get into when you’re young, youth can be so pretentious...) Well I went all in with that and this is the result.

    There was someone in the Young Filmmakers Showcase, I’m not going to say who... I’m going to mention the miracle, because it’s someone that I love very much and I never found out the intention behind that conversation. Besides, that person probably has forgotten it—I’ve tried to forget it, but I haven’t been able to, or I sometimes forget it temporarily, my memory is selective... And that person was a young filmmaker, but quite well-established, and I was a kid who had barely made two short films and she said to me: “And what did you mean by this?” And she asked me about four times and I said to myself… What’s going on with this girl, I mean, if you’ve achieved so many things and you’ve had so many opportunities that I haven’t had, and you and I both come from humble backgrounds, etc., why are you putting me through this now? There are two things I would never do to any filmmaker: ask them if they liked my film, or what they thought of it. I would never do it, no matter what I think of it. Even if I think it’s shit, I would never tell them it’s shit. I did that once to someone and now I feel ashamed of it. Anyway, she was going down that path with “What did you mean with this?” and I thought, “What did you want to see?” I don’t know, it seems to me a curious short from my youth that I always remember with great affection. I always like to experiment.
    *El Paquete [The Package] is an offline USB-based content distribution system in Cuba.

    You talk about the waters and creation, and then you end by saying that the water runs out.

    No, that’s in the synopsis, I don’t know how to write summaries. There’s no text or anything at the end. I write very bad summaries, so don’t hire me for that. I didn’t have any ecological intention with that ... I had seen a documentary called Home, which has images from drones that are very visually interesting. The bad thing is that this documentary gets mired in politics—it sucks when something gets into ecology, [and becomes about] the Revolution or in favor of the Revolution…

    Your documentaries make us think about our reality from a sensory point of view. There are silences...

    Well, I always try not to use music unless it’s absolutely necessary. I take the time to dub everything… Those three documentaries were made with the same camera and share that sound and that visuality, and I wanted to give it that intention for many reasons. Yes, I put a filter on it, yes, to give it an older look, because that was done with a very old camera that someone gave me at film school—Fabio, a Brazilian that I love very much, he’s very communist but we love each other. Fabio is a communist, neither am I—like Dalí said about Picasso: Picasso is a painter, so am I, Picasso is Spanish, so am I, Picasso is a communist, neither am I, like Dalí, like Dalí, like Dalí…

    Anything else you want to add about La faz de las aguas [The Face of the Waters]?

    I really love that short, I always enjoy it. It has brought me a lot of satisfaction, made as it was, with limitations and such. I never like to talk, and it’s important, like many very bad filmmakers who say: “I didn’t have the camera I needed, the microphone I needed…” No, no, excuse me, please. Most of them are bad filmmakers, cinema is a language—it’s not a camera, it’s not an editing machine, it’s a language. La faz and Usufructo were edited on a computer that couldn’t render much more than a minute… And what did I do? Very easy, I assembled everything and would render for a minute and then pasted it... You have to seek alternatives—all my aesthetic aspirations pass through my economic possibilities of producing my films... It’s a round trip...

    That’s important—the filmmakers here have filmed against all odds.

    Yes, but look, the scope and possibilities are not going to undercut the aesthetics of my project. I’m going to try to make a film that I like with the conditions that I have. You can’t just come in and then give up. I’m going to make an awesome movie, with whatever I have, because I’m awesome.

    I’m still anti-ICAIC, I’m not a good example to follow. I created my own IKAIC with a ‘k.’ But I don’t take any credit away from any of those films. The one I like the most is Memorias del subdesarrollo. I don’t like the others, but oh well...

    I like several: Lucía, Una pelea cubana contra los demonios [A Cuban Fight Against Demons, I like El final [The End], by Fausto Canel...

    I like the films by Fausto Canel, especially a short called Hemingway, and not just because I love Hemingway... No, I saw that short before Hemingway fascinated me, let me tell you, and I liked it a lot.

    So, about Usufructo. I really like the moment where your dad is sleeping and he talks about what he dreamt for his life. And finally the storm comes.

    Well, Usufructo is a very special short film and it begins with my foray into the Universidad de Camagüey. Something happened to me when I was studying journalism…

    Why did they kick you out?

    I was expelled for being a loudmouth, for making a very bad short about the university bathrooms. It was journalism—I wanted to do something as a journalism student about the “temporary situation.” I was up to here, up to here with temporary situations! The short was about how dirty the bathrooms are in this country, the ones at the university too. And since that was where I studied, that pissed me off, and I grabbed a camera to film all that and… It was a hell of a mess and they ended up throwing me out of the university in 2010, in my fourth year. The short is called Toilet. It’s on Youtube.

    So I began to question many things about my life, about my relationship with my father. My father is the most important figure in my entire life, and I was going to see my father, a total country person, and I didn’t know how to tell my father that they kicked me out of the university. My father was paying for my studies with blood, because men who work in the fields sweat blood... So when I told my dad that they’d kicked me out of college, I looked him in the eye and said: “Look, they just kicked me out of the university for doing this, although they say it’s for some other reason” (because politically they manipulate things so that it seems that you are very bad, and so that it appears there’s no censorship). My dad touched my arm and said: “What do you want to do with your life?” [And I said] “Look, dad, I want to be a journalist.” And he told me: “You know that all the newspapers here are liars and all this is shit…” And I, naively, had never thought about that. I had never questioned it and then I realized something: from the time I started in preschool until I got to university, they drilled into me that agrarian reform was the greatest thing that had ever happened to Cuban peasants and all that crap they stuff you with here, and at the same time my dad was telling me, “Look, Eliécer, since I was a child, agrarian reform is a scam that stole the land from the peasants in Cuba, from the real country people.”

    My dad always had very noble aspirations of being a peasant, peasants are very important; the whole world needs country people, country people don’t need anyone. Here everyone has enough to eat or else they would die, and that was fulfilled in the land and the cattle are raised and it’s like that—peasants don’t need anyone. And that is the conflict of the Revolution with country people, and therefore to liquidate them. All his life my dad wanted to be a country person and he couldn’t be. He is a landless peasant; I remember that from the Brazilian soap operas. He used to say: “Look, look, I’m a landless peasant.” I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand, I was a child, I was very naive, very immature, with all that propaganda and indoctrination. Until I put them up my ass and they kicked me out of the university, and I realized that all the newspapers are censored, that everything is bullshit. All of that came together in my head.

    Usufructo is a kind of puzzle that you put together with your father.

    That’s how it’s done, traditionally… In Usufructo, first, reality is analyzed in juxtaposition with my childhood. All those things that I learned through propaganda juxtaposed with the family; that’s diegetic, it’s outside the film, but carries through to the movie. It was a way to apologize to my father for not having believed in him, to tell him we are going to make each other’s dreams come true—you are going to be a farmer, I am going to be a filmmaker. My father’s favorite movie was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And he told me: “Like Clint Eastwood.” And I said, “There’s no Clint Eastwood here, dad, we’re going to do this.” I took Nanouk the Eskimo and Ociel del Toa, I made a smoothie, and that was the cinematographic path, the visual path. That is the most special short that I was able to make when he was still alive, because it preserves my dad. My dad died three years ago, and it’s very nice for me, having my dad there in a short film that had national significance.

    It’s also quite subversive...

    And curiously, that one could be shown here, they even put it on national television and I was going crazy.

    At that time there were many movies that would not happen today. Your origins are very interested in country life.

    One of my aesthetic goals was that it not look like Televisión Serrana. Later I said to myself: “Damn, they’re going to say that this looks like Televisión Serrana.” We need to do our best to not let that happen.

    Your films are very poetic…

    I am fascinated by Televisión Serrana, it seems very poetic to me, and when you try not to look like other people you may succeed, it’s not a matter of arrogance or anything, because in the end all my work is very personal. That is, I think about it, I talk it over with myself, and I try to do it little by little.

    You almost always use still shots.

    I’ve always been fascinated by the way that cinema is like a way of achieving dreams at their origins and so I said to myself, well, how can I create my father’s dreams and contrast them with his reality, which was what we were just speaking about—the storm in the background. I really like rain, rain is very poetic and special. I already had some experience with water; I had made a short film that had to do with water, because I had that fascination with water. I find water fascinating because it can adapt to any space... And I can’t.

    When he is mounted on the horse, the camera shakes…

    Well, because in every film you have to have two or three things so that people ask themselves: “Damn, what is this, what happened here…” That is, by excess or by default, we are going to appropriate the historical narrative of cinema, but in that film I put in a couple of things that break that narrative, so that you can see that there is a creator behind it, otherwise it would be the same as the entire history of cinema...

    We had talked about this, here there is no separation between the person and the artist.

    Don’t take me out of it, I don’t want you to separate me from it. I find no difference between what I’ve done and what I am, and I act as I think, because I come from the countryside and there are three elementary principles there. Number one: you must keep your word, if I make a promise, I keep it. Two: time is sacred, including other people’s time, I’m not going to mess with your time. And three: I don’t depend on anyone else to say what I think and do. When you grow up in the countryside, country people have a different code of ethics from people who grow up in the city, based on things that exist in reality...

    What had you studied about cinema before Usufructo?

    Nothing. I made Usufructo and it won a prize at the Gibara Festival, and the prize was to go to a workshop at the film school. I did the workshop and I did well, I met people, I stayed longer. I was invited to do a thesis that in the end I didn’t do, but I stayed on and got involved in several projects within the film school. There was someone who I won’t name who told me, “You are never going to get into this school…” I never asked them, keep in mind that in the year 2010, 2011, 2012, when I tried to get in, it was the best thing here in Cuba. Now I know it sucks, but well at that time it was [the best], and I came from a very traumatic experience having been kicked out of college, then this person came along who had real power inside the school, and it chills your soul, and you ask yourself, “What am I waiting for?” In the end I thanked them, you know, because they were the only honest person who told me about my situation within that school. Many people, friends of mine at that school, Edgar Soberon, didn’t know about my situation.

    Why not?

    Because I was a politically confrontational person. It’s a real challenge for me because I go for people’s jugular. I tell people, “Hey, asshole, you’re a motherfucker…” I'm like that, I can’t live without being like that and it’s my personality. So at the end of the day I thanked that person for telling me that. Later with more experience you realize that it doesn’t matter if people reject you, and that’s when you start to be wiser about yourself, you start to know yourself as a human being. Because we care a lot about people rejecting us, instead of focusing on the myriad possibilities that we have to succeed in different areas of life.

    That was something I hadn’t realized until years went by, and I already have some gray hairs: Don’t worry about the rejections that you receive, worry about your current and future achievements, because you will always have many achievements if you focus on specific projects and on work. That’s how I rejected the ICAIC because it rejected me; that’s how I rejected the film school because it rejected me; that’s how I rejected all the people who rejected me. And I stayed with other people, and with other institutions. But that’s about self-recognition. I said to myself, “I can’t waste time with people who reject me.”

    Let the ICAIC go on with its shitty films. Let the film school go on with its crap; the guy who censored me, let him go on with his crap; the person who said that to me in film school has not made any films. So you learn how to focus, you take the focus line and see where your possibilities are: Here? Let’s go there, and take everything else out of the box. ICAIC, out. Film school, out. Havana Film Festival, out, because later you realize that the festival is a mediocre event, in a mediocre city. And there are others… Did Sundance eliminate you? Sundance, out. Everything out. And then I had the opportunity to get on the Internet and have access to the Internet—I live in the United States—and enter my short film in a thousand festivals around the world. And I saw that people in China like my work, and they gave me an award of 10,000 dollars, and things like that, and then you say… “Damn, what was wrong with those guys?” They were just some municipal-level assholes from Havana or Camagüey. All you have to do is put in the work.

    -You can also access the interview HERE