First Look ’25: Chronicles of the Absurd

Unfortunately, for Miguel Coyula and his collaborator-muse, Lynn Cruz, being an independent artist is illegal in Cuba. That is not my analysis. Those are the words of multiple government officials whom they secretly recorded. The apparatchiks did not just tell them. They also laid down the law for photographer Javier Caso, who happens to be the brother of Anna de Armas (whose roles they approved of). You can hear the censoring and the not so veiled threats for yourself in Coyula’s documentary, Chronicles of the Absurd, which screens today as part of First Look 2025.

Shot over the course of several years, Absurd initially documents the long, arduous production of their dystopian film, Corazon Azul. Eventually, it cost Cruz her livelihood, because she was expelled from the actors’ union, but never properly informed. She even sort of successfully challenges her expulsion, winning reinstatement along with the immediate, legally required 30-days-notice of her second, permanent ejection.

Routinely, their attempts to attend screenings of their past films are blocked by cops and secret police, who refuse to identify themselves. Accustomed to the harassment, Coyula and Cruz regularly leave home with secret cell phones hidden on their bodies recording whatever might transpire. Indeed, such recordings make up nearly the film’s entire audio track. Although they have no corresponding video, they use cleverly monstrous looking stand-in icons and slyly selected photos for bureaucrats with an online footprint, creating dramatic montages.

Frankly, Absurd would be quite amusing in a farcical and aptly absurd way, if it were also not so Orwellian. Clearly, Cruz and Coyula are not paranoid. Caso similarly employs their cell phone technique to capture the secret police trying to scare him away from his longtime friends. Fortunately for Caso, his relationship with his famous sister provides him some degree of protection.

Mambo Man: Scuffling in Cuba

Most films you should want to watch closely, because that is the whole point of the medium. However, sometimes there are films you can enjoy listening to, but you might prefer to give only cursory attention to the events on the screen. This is definitely a “listening movie,” thanks to the wonderful Afro-Cuban soundtrack. The story that goes with it is pretty thin, but you can’t have everything, especially in Cuba. An impresario-farmer-get-rich-quick-schemer probably should just stick to music in Mo Fini & Edesio Alejandro’s Mambo Man, which releases virtually today.

JC (not a very Communist name, is it?) is the beloved godfather of the East Cuban music scene, even though we never see him pick up an instrument. Regardless, he is just wrapping up an album with music producer Mo Fini, playing himself. Thanks to unseasonable weather, he is sweating out his crops, but he still finds time to host shows for European music tourists on his farm. Then one fateful day, his childhood friend Roberto returns from Ecuador, offering JC a golden opportunity. The matriarch of a family he knows needs to sell a fabulous collection of jewelry to pay for her transit to Miami, the promised land—at the low, low price of $50K.

Sadly, because Cuba is a closed, oppressive pariah state, JC has never seen George C. Scott in The Flim-Flam Man or any other scam artist movie that would have warned him any deal too good to be true is precisely that. We can see it coming from way down the Malecon, but screenwriters Fini and Paul Morris stretch out their simplistic cautionary morality tale until the seams practically snap.

Sundance ’19: Count Your Curses & End (shorts)

In one of the shorts that screened at this year’s Sundance, average people take their encounters with the supernatural in stride. In another, not so much. Usually, such incidents are extraordinary, but they are common place in Lorène Yavo’s wickedly droll animated short, Count Your Curses, which screened during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Rather ominously, Sophie wakes to find their house spirit has been mauled to death it again. It is not just a pet. It is supposed to protect her and her roommate Charles from the ghosts and mythological beasts haunting the nearby field. They try to buy a new house spirit from the spirit store, but the proprietor refuses to sell to them anymore. Instead, he refers them to a sorceress, who might be able to diagnose the supernatural phenomenon at work.

Curses somewhat resembles the MTV show Daria, in terms of its blocky visual style and deadpan humor. Yavo’s dialogue is quite amusing, in a drily arch way. Plus, there is also humor in the characters’ blasé acceptance of some outlandish situations.

On the other hand, there is nothing funny about Yimit Ramírez’s End. The bad news is Juan is dead. He will get the chance to relive an episode from his life, but it turns out this is not good news either. The personification of death gets to chose when and it opts for the worst moment of his life. He does not handle the experience well.

End is a remarkably dark film with some real bite, but the budget constraints show in the scenes of the void of purgatory. Nevertheless, it is nice just to know Ramírez was able to complete this film, considering his past film reportedly ran afoul of the Cuban censors. His feature I Want to Make a Movie did not even criticize the royal Castro family. Instead, one character of dubious credibility goes off on José Martí, who has been dead for over one-hundred twenty years.

Both Count Your Curses and End are clearly the work of talented filmmakers, who must have some distinctive films ahead of them. Curses is the sort of highly rewatchable film that could go viral if it were a Vimeo Staff pick. Sadly, Ramírez will also have to navigate politics and bureaucracy (indeed, it is difficult to resist reading allegorical meanings into the Hellish vision of the afterlife presented in End). Each film is recommended for festival programmers, following their screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’18: Un Traductor

Malin is a professor of Russian literature living under the Castro regime, so he ought to be well prepared to deal with tragedy. However, his specialty was quite in favor with his dictator (at least until the whole Glasnost business started), so he enjoyed perks under the corrupt system. Unfortunately, the bill will come due just before the plug is pulled on Russian aid. Assigned to translate for young victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster transported to Cuba, Malin will become overwhelmed by the enormity of their suffering, to the exclusion of nearly everyone else around him in Rodrigo & Sebastián Barriuso’s Un Traductor (a Translator), which screens during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Malin is closely based on the Barriuso Brothers’ father Manuel Barriuso Andino and his contemporary art gallerist wife Isona is also modeled on their mother, Magda González-Mora. As the film opens, Malin and Isona do not let trifles like human rights and free expression trouble them, because they live well. It therefore comes as a rude shock when the Russian lit department is summarily closed and the faculty are assigned to serve as translators for the newly arrived Chernobyl patients. Malin really draws the short straw: night shifts in the children’s ward. He threatens to quit, but when told to “take it up with Fidel” he duly straightens up and toes the line.

Soon, Malin is leading a regular story-time. Not long after that, he starts to get deeply emotionally involved with the kids and their parents, especially young Alexi in the isolation ward and his school teacher father Vladimir. Meanwhile, with the cutting of Soviet aid, Cuban stores are now empty and Malin no longer receives gasoline vouchers—not that there is any gas left in filling stations anyway. The poor nutrition starts taking a toll on his son Javi’s health, but Malin hardly notices. He and the uber-pregnant Isona do not talk anymore, because he is so physically and emotionally exhausted.

Aside from Michael Moore, most grown adults now acknowledge the hype surrounding the Cuban medical system was really just hype. Still, it apparently beat the facilities available in both the USSR and Putin’s Russia, considering the Cuban Chernobyl program continued up through 2011. At times, the Barriusos clearly show a nostalgia for the Cuba Rodrigo never really knew. Yet, it is hard to gin up nostalgia for any of the circumstances surrounding the Chernobyl disaster.

Indeed, Un Traductor is not shy when it comes to playing on our emotions. There are an awful lot of sickly children in this film. Yet, the clear standout is Genadijs Dolganovs, who brings real dignity to the proceedings as Vladimir. His big climatic scene with Malin earns the inevitable lumps in the audience’s throats. Maricel Álvarez is also quite compelling as Gladys, the treasonous Argentine RN, who first busts Malin’s chops and then comes to respect his commitment. However, Brazilian international crossover star Rodrigo Santoro is problematically quite the cold fish as Malin and Yoandra Suárez’s Isona comes perilously close to a cliched scold.

In an enormously telling scene, Malin watches news footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, described as a “monument to socialist workers” or some such nonsense on the Cuban state news report, with conspicuous alarm. The fact that this was a triumph for human freedom and dignity is completely lost on him, and most likely the film. The truth is East Germans, Czech, Poles, and Hungarians do not look back on subsidizing Castro’s police state with much more fondness than the midnight knocks on the door and the invading tank columns. Frankly, the degree to which their economy depended on Soviet largess proves how dysfunctional the Socialist system was and remains. Decidedly mixed, Un Traductor should not be a high priority during the limited time of the festival, but for those with an abiding interest in the Chernobyl experience, it screens again tomorrow (1/22) in Provo and Friday (1/26) and Saturday (1/27) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Santa & Andres: Dissident Friendship in Cuba

Film festivals should want to showcase good films. That is why it is so disappointing the maybe not-so independent Havana Film Festival New York downgraded this tale of a gay dissident writer’s unlikely friendship with his temporary minder to an out-of-competition slot. Of course, the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana just completely caved to government pressure, reversing its initial acceptance of the film. These craven fests will really look foolish when audience see how sensitive and mature Carlos Lechuga’s Santa & Andrés really is when it opens today in New York (trailer here).

Life and Cuba has not changed very much since 1983, the year S&A is set. The infrastructure is more decrepit and it is more difficult to attain political asylum in America, but censorship is obviously just as high as it was then. Right now, average Cubans have no hope of ever seeing this film. Likewise, Andrés has no hope of ever seeing his work published in his native land. Out of his circle of literary friends, he is the last that remains. The others have defected or committed suicide. However, Andrés has been unusually difficult. He caused an international scandal by crashing the last “peace conference,” so Jesus, the local party boss (thug), has recruited Santa to babysit Andrés during this year’s propaganda fest.

Santa is a naïve rural woman, who has never questioned Party orthodoxy. She also probably doesn’t fully understand it when Andrés assures her he really is gay. However, she is naturally compassionate and instinctively cares for the dissident when he is beaten by a crude, self-loathing lover. Despite Andrés’s prickly personality, a friendship develops between the two outsiders. As a result, she finally starts to question the Party’s legitimacy and the ruthlessness of its tactics.

There is no mistaking the censorship and strongarm brutality exercised by Castro’s enforcers in S&A, so it is easy to understand why it gave panic attacks to the apparatchiks. Yet, the film itself is really defined by the connection forged by these gentle, put-upon souls. Most people who would have seen it would have remembered it for the platonic relationship, but by censoring it, the Castro regime ironically calls attention to its indictment of human rights violations. Awesome, great work people.

Lola Amores gives one of the year’s best performances as Santa. She is rough around the edges, but poignantly lonely and alienated. Arguably, Eduardo Martinez’s portrayal of Andrés is even more complicated, ranging from resentful to mournful to resigned hopelessness, yet still forging such a resonant connection with his counterpart.

Lechuga definitely captures that stifling hot Caribbean vibe of ennui as well as the hardscrabble realities of rural Cuba. Admittedly, it is a bit slow out of the blocks, but it amply rewards patient viewers. It is most likely the most touching platonic friendship you will see on film all year—and perhaps the most notable since Gregg Araki’s radically different Kaboom. Very highly recommended, Santa & Andrés opens today (11/10) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Sundance ’16: Viva

If you want to know about LGBT rights in Cuba, you could ask someone who survived Castro’s infamous UMAP work camps, like poet Reinaldo Arenas, except you can’t. Granted, the author of Before Night Falls deliberately chose death with dignity while succumbing to the AIDS virus, but the hard labor surely did not do his health any long-term favors. Currently, the Castro regime has put on a happy face for LGBT tourists, but Jesus’s father has not gotten the memo. Hairdressing is one thing, but the long absent father will not stand for his son’s drag performance aspirations in Paddy Breathnach’s Viva, Ireland’s shortlisted but not very Gaelic official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

It used to just be Jesus and his mother, but now it is just him. His father, Angel the boxer, took a powder years ago. The details are sketchy, but apparently prison was a factor. Jesus’s world now revolves around the old ladies in the neighborhood whose hair he cuts and the performers in Mama’s drag club, whom he coifs. He also sometime hangs with his slutty platonic pal Cecilia, but he grows weary of her self-centered behavior. When a performer bails on Mama, he (awkward pronoun) gives Jesus a shot under the stage name Viva. The kid shows promise, until one day Angel interrupts his routine with a knuckle sandwich.

It seems the old man is back, tipped off by the churlish Cecilia. Obviously, drag is out. However, Medina has to do something to feed himself and his lay about father, so he starts hustling near the international hotels. There’s your Cuban tourism in action. Still, do you suppose the father and son might come to accept each other as they grow to know each other better? Does Castro’s thugs beat up the Women in White? Of course they do.

Viva could have been a pretty hard-hitting expose of Cuba’s two-faced LGBT policies, but Breathnach and screenwriter Mark O’Halloran opt to keep it strictly personal on every level. However, that narrow scope becomes a saving grace, forcing them to rein in potential melodramatic excesses. Things never get too cringey or messy, frankly because folks like Jesus and Angel cannot afford such indulgences (or surnames).

It might be a small film, but Breathnach takes plenty of wide shots, trying to sop up as much of Havana’s crumbling Old World elegance as possible. It is indeed highly cinematic, but it also looks like the entire city is on the verge of collapse. Although Stephen Rennicks score is not exactly legit Afro Cuban, Rumba, Son, Danzon, or Pachanga, it has enough Cuban flavoring to be pleasant and peppy.

Héctor Medina is quite compelling as Jesus, in a severely dour and self-contained way, which contrasts quite effectively with his stage demeanor when adopting his Viva persona. Jorge Perugorría is solid, but never really surprising as Angel. However, it is Luis Alberto García who really throws it down as Mama.

So, honor thy father, but to thine own self be true—or something like that. Viva is not about to stretch beyond Polonius for take-aways, but it is reasonably nice on its own terms. It features some terrific work from the Cuban cast, but its lack of bite is ultimately disappointing. Recommended for those who can appreciate elements of La Cage aux Folles and Creed married together, Viva screens today (1/23) at noon in the Sundance Resort and Monday (1/25) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’11: Ticket to Paradise

In 1993, Cuban youths liked their head-banging music just as much as their American counterparts—possibly more so. Of course, the underground scene was decidedly dangerous thanks to frequent police rousts and the ravages of AIDS. The latter will take on ironic significance in Cuban filmmaker Gerardo Chijona Valdes’ Ticket to Paradise (trailer here), which screens during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Cuba is no workers’ paradise for Eunice. Sexually abused by her widower father while her teacher turns a blind eye, she has reached her breaking point. After a physical altercation with the old man, she runs away from home in hopes of finding shelter with her grown sister. Quickly running out of money, she falls in with a trio of pill-pushing metalheads on their way to Havana. Alejandro, their informal leader, has told their butch girlfriend-with-benefits they are going for a concert, but he has different, rather foolish and shocking plans once they arrive.

Truthfully, the first half of Paradise is pretty compelling, as Eunice and her new found friends navigate the seedy underbelly of Communist Cuba. However, Chijona Valdes springs the horrifying twist too soon, leaving at least a full third of the film to wallow in his characters’ how-low-can-they-go suffering and depravity.

If Paradise was intended as pro-regime propaganda, it does not even come close to working. Throughout the film, the entire country looks like it is falling apart, while the law of the jungle seems to rule among the people. At least it faithfully propagates the myth of Cuba’s crackerjack health system, which must have been how the film was approved by some clueless apparatchik.

Miriel Cejas deserves considerable credit for her work as Eunice, enduring all manner of on-screen humiliations. It is not her fault that Paradise’s final scenes ring so false. (Instead, the blame lies solely with the manipulative story.) By and large, her three primary compatriots are also quite convincing, looking like they came straight off the streets themselves.

Chijona Valdes certainly creates a visceral atmosphere of menace and decay (of course, it is not like any of his locations had been refurbished since 1993). His indulgence in lurid melodrama simply undermines what could have been a rare work of gritty Cuban naturalism. Interesting but ultimately just too much everything, Paradise screens again during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival this Tuesday (1/25), Thursday (1/27), and Saturday (1/29).

HFFNY ’09: Omerta

When Castro came to power, he nationalized everything, including organized crime. Of course, you will not hear about the drug traffickers and narco-terrorists doing business with the dictator in contemporary Cuban cinema, but they would horrify the old school gangster protagonist of Pavel Giroud’s crime thriller, Omerta (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Havana Film Festival New York.

It is 1961, and Giroud takes pains to include plenty of state broadcasts trumpeting the revolutionary triumphs of the new regime. However, once the propaganda is out of the way, Omerta settles into an entertaining crime story. Rolo Santos is a proud man, who lived by a code: Omerta. As the former bodyguard of an American gangster, Santos is now at loose ends in the new Cuba. Finally, word of an assignment comes from a former associate—they must break into the boss’s confiscated mansion to recover a hidden cache of gold.

Unfortunately, Santos’s old friend dies before they can carry out the job, leaving him with a ne’er-do-well nephew as his replacement. Together with a cab-driver reluctantly recruited by Santos, they hit the mansion. However, instead of gold, they find the long-time maid still on duty. Much to Santos’s regret, he quickly finds himself immersed in a hostage situation, holding a copper and the woman for whom he has long carried a torch.

The relationship between Santos and his would-be love gives Omerta surprising heart thanks to the chemistry between Cuban actor Manuel Porto and Spanish actress Teresa Calo, which suggests years of history between the two. Their intimate moments during this time of crisis, like a nostalgic dance they share between calls from the police, are indeed quite touching.

As for the caper, Giroud efficiently maintains the tension, throwing in some interesting wrinkles along the way. Although there are plenty of flashbacks, Omerta’s timeline is always easy to follow and the pacing never flags. While the supporting players might not have the considerable screen-presence of Porto and Calo, they are certainly serviceable in their roles.

Despite hewing to the requisite party line, Omerta is an entertaining and even endearing period noir. For sophisticated viewers able to parse diegetic propaganda, it is worth screening. It plays again at the HFFNY this coming Monday afternoon (4/20).

HFFNY: El Benny

America had two Kings named Benny. Both Benny Carter and Benny Goodman were crowned Kings of Swing. In Cuba, there was only one El Benny. Benny Moré (sometimes Beny) straddled mambo, son, cha-cha-cha, and Afro-Cuban jazz, becoming one of Cuba’s most popular vocalists ever. He is the subject of El Benny (trailer here), Cuba’s officially submitted film for the 2006 Academy Awards (though a Cuban-British-Spanish co-production), which screened Saturday night at the Queensborough PAC as part of the HFFNY.

Directed by Jorge Luis Sánchez, El Benny follows the conventions of most music biography films. We see Moré scuffle early in his career, before he gets a few breaks and becomes a star. However, his self-destructive behavior (drink in Moré’s case) threatens to derail his career, as he hurts those he loves the most. Yet throughout it all, he stays true to his music. Maybe they are conventions, but they still work, particularly when accompanied by Moré’s music. Lovingly recreated by some of Cuba’s finest musicians, including the great Chucho Valdes, the music of Moré sounds fantastic in El Benny.

Renny Arozarena brings a dynamic presence to the lead role. His Moré is roguishly charming, but with more than a hint of danger contained beneath the surface. The film moves along at a brisk clip, but it is not well served by the many flashbacks—another frequent convention of music bio-pictures. At times it is tricky placing the year on-screen (I was actually five minutes late, so perhaps it is easier if you see it from the start—this area of Queens is hard to get around in).

The sad irony is there would probably have been more politics in El Benny had Hollywood produced it. The film frankly depicts Moré as almost entirely apolitical. The Batista regime is certainly cast in a negative light, but his goons are seen hassling Moré’s friends in only one relatively restrained scene. There is also a completely unconvincing scene of a former theater owner who appears to be happy training a revolutionary cohort to run his former business on behalf of the people. Nobody in the scene appears to believe it.

Moré is safe cinematic fare in Cuba because he never left after the Castro regime assumed power. However, his life was tragically cut short in 1963, just four years after the revolution. Who can say how he would have reacted to the precipitously deteriorating conditions in Cuba had he lived longer?

Regardless, the music of El Benny is the reason to see the film, and it is great. All his biggest hits are represented in lively renditions, including “Maracaibo Oriental,” “Como Fue,” and “Santa Isabel de las Lajas.” Even if the film is not widely screened in America, there would still be a demand for the soundtrack if it were released. The film itself is very entertaining, despite some flaws here and there.

HFFNY: Innocent’s Night

The Havana Film Festival NY is based in New York and accepts films from throughout Latin America. Yet for some reason, the organizers chose to closely identify the festival with Cuban films. Be that as it may, hopefully it will be an opportunity to see some great cinema.

The festival opened last night with Innocent’s Night, which was an odd choice for the kick-off, probably selected for its Cuban pedigree. Innocent demonstrates that Cuba can indeed do Sundance-style quirkiness. It is a rainy December 28th night, and a severely beaten man in drag is admitted to the hospital. Soon family and friends gather around him to reveal the events of the night Rashomon-style. Piecing their stories together is Frank, a suspended cop forgoing his usual late night assignation with the duty nurse, in the hope that some on-spec police work can rehabilitate his career.

The film quickly assures us the beaten Federico is not really a transvestite—events simply conspired to force him into drag. It involves his attempts to win back a former girlfriend from a foreign businessman. There is little politics in Innocent, but it does hint at how drilled the Cubans are to present the right public face to foreigners. We do hear the businessman blame the American embargo for his financial woes, but he does not get a sympathetic response. We are also treated to a quick recap of the glorious history of Cuban Olympic boxing.

Most of the characters have been seen before, like a cold, career minded father and the mother who feels unappreciated. The young actress who plays the patient’s little sister should defect when Ellen Page gets too old to play those oh-so-insightful teenagers.

Innocent is dark quirky, not cutesy quirky, that is cleverest in its final scenes. It deserves credit for not wrapping things up in a compulsively happy ending, which gives the film some sense of integrity. Unfortunately, there is little chemistry between the Federico and his ex, which is problematic.

Interesting viewing, Innocent kicks off a line-up drawn from many countries. Look for more HFFNY in the coming week.