Among so many questions that he had time to ask himself in 79 years, Cuban filmmaker Rolando Díaz wondered about how it influenced his sense of humor, why the comic tone of his work The birds attack the shotgun (1984) turned into “cinema as painful” as it was Absence file (2020). The answer lies within you and the knowledgeable body of your generation.
Díaz (Havana, 1947) was a child from the poor neighborhood of Luyanó. On January 1, 1959, he was exactly 11 years old and the Revolution dazzled him like so many others. “Alfabeticé, I had a coffee in the middle of the October crisis, I did – even inconsistently – military service for more than three years. I went to Angola as a war correspondent, a soldier and a believer, but the disappointment was stronger than all that.”
The first revelation was read when reading the novel Cancer PavilionRussian Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “I had to start thinking since then, looking at past events that I already know about, such as Cuban support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968,” he says. Luego witnessed the failure of the Zafra de los Diez Millones de tones de azucar, directed by Fidel Castro, in the case of the poet Heberto Padilla, “the colophon of the first appearances of censorship in art which opened my eyes, ever more often”, he assures.
With his great friend the filmmaker Daniel Díaz Torres, he worked in the seventies for the famous ICAIC newsletter, where he saw for the first time the face of the Cuban state censor. But his personal break with the government was only an experience when they were censored. Alicia in the Pueblo of Maravillasthe Torres movie. Although he was originally from the island, he lived for more than a year in the United States, he left Spain, he returned to the Caribbean, this time to the Dominican Republic, and once again he went to the other side of the world, to Valencia… “In all these places I made films. I take Neruda’s word: ‘I trust that I have lived.’
Some deaths have been marked by his cinema, notably of his brother, the writer Jesús Díaz, and of his wife of more than 30 years, Ileana García. “From then on, my films were like those of a person with an inherited soul. » He also had the opportunity to be numerous filmmakers during the same lifetime: director of comedies like Redonda and Viene in Caja Quadrada THE Melodramaproduced within the institutions of the Cuban state, up to the independent creator who arrived this year with Goodbye Cubathe film which recounts the last Cuban exodus, the largest in Castro’s history in power.
It’s a film with so few resources, someone has to help crowdfunding. A film about exile, made by an emigrant director, who became a Spanish national and who made a film marked by all the places he went and those who left him. “The need to make this film came impulsively. I was extremely concerned that the island was moving away,” he says. “It is true that people have been leaving Cuba, for various reasons, since 1959 itself, but this recent exodus, which is not over, is often total. I have the feeling that the island could disappear.”
Question. Fr Goodbye Cuba we feel the specter of so many people who have fled the island in so many ways…
Answer. The selection of interviewees was a coup. It had to be filmed, this type of film needs immediacy; either you do it or you abandon it. Search departures from Cuba by air (planes and airports), sea (ferries) and land (borders) and find what you need to get around. The commitment to uniting real stories with a fictional plot was also a difficult and urgent process. I thought that building a fictional character, a playwright who planned to create a theatrical work around the testimonies, was an ideal resource to tell the film. Ultimately, the intention is for the human to transcend the strictly political.
P. Is it difficult to create cinema with a minimum of resources, in a world surrounded by images and devices to produce them?
A. The tremendous technological development makes it easier to shoot, or at least to make a film with very few resources. But he doesn’t have money if he feels it. Many people didn’t charge anything. Others, very few. All the money we had was used for technical matters, and with a little more money we were able to operate better. There are friends within the team who tell me that it’s not possible, because it’s frowned upon in a poor cinema, but I can’t deny the reality. It bothers me that I have to lie.
P. Emigration, this theme which runs through Goodbye littleOh, that’s its own drama. How long was the film packaged before going to another country?
A. It’s very complicated to emigrate. I have Spanish nationality, but I am Cuban at heart. When you arrive, you don’t know how much you could do with your own efforts. Gives you powerful blows. And you receive joy with fear. I have just arrived in Spain, my documentary, The long rustic journeyI was nominated for the Goya Awards, and even though it was a co-production with Cuba, at the gala everyone perceived it as a Spanish documentary. At the ceremony, no one knew he was Cuban. I felt very rare, because every time I speak, I accentuate them. Then I was at the Berlinale with another film that I really wanted, If you understood me. That this film is Spanish is total nonsense. It is a truly Cuban story, written with Cuban women and recorded all over Cuba in a hidden way, but since she could not have Cuban nationality, because Cuba did not admit it as such, the direction was launched for her to belong to the Luna Llena company. From that moment on, I understood that I had to go to the cinema under very particular pressure.
P. I say that The birds attack the shotgun It is not his best film, but it has established itself as an indisputable piece of Cuban filmography. What could I do for her today?
A. It’s a film that is beyond me. I recognize it. What is unmistakable is that you have betrayed me many joys. There is a lot of spontaneity that allowed me to recreate the neighborhood and the people I lived with. You also had a very unique cast. I assure you that there are extraordinary Cuban actors and actresses. It’s a shame that we don’t have the conditions to produce better.
P. Goodbye Cuba It was not selected by any Spanish film festival. What do you think is the reason?
A. This baffles me. Empiezo for deciding that film festivals have all the power to decide what to select. Be as tough as you are. It is also true that the Cuban theme is not fashionable, perhaps at other times Cuban filmmakers saw us favored, but times have changed. I believe it is also important to create a completely independent film, which would be completely acceptable in the cinema.
P. What is, for example, the value of Goodbye Cuba?
A. I believe and I want to believe that he will be there forever. This is what we have been forced to do for so long. I am sure, even if there are no completely reliable figures, that there are more than three million Cubans who have abandoned the country for one reason or another. It’s too much. There is the film and it will have value in itself. What you want to do now, in your lifetime, is see as many Cubans as possible. I hope I can live to see the day when I can see freely on any screen inside the island.
P. Were you able to say goodbye to Cuba?
A. No. So, as contradictory as it may seem, there is a movie. To convince myself that I have nothing else to do, other than a simple film, about Cuba. I don’t consider myself a nationalist; I believe that nationalisms, in politics, are perhaps too conservative. I speak about Cuba through feelings and not through a narrow idea of its nationality. The feeling of leaving behind forever what your life has been is very frustrating. Emigrating means giving up many things, not just politics. You are filled with smells, memories of the first bride, your mother’s love (many children left without their mother, in my case), infinite things that armed your essences.
P. I say there is still a comedy to be made. Why close this cycle of your life in comedy?
A. The current situation is so dramatic that it nevertheless constitutes an excellent option. I love comedy. I even think about Goodbye Cuba a comedy. I take it in comedy despite all my difficulties. But except in an isolated theater scene, I got serious. Perhaps because I’ve had a comedy in my pocket for a few years now, I haven’t decided to close all the cinema doors.
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