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| CUBANOS- Life and Death of a Revolution |
Documentary
82min.
Spanish with English subtitles
Color HDV
Cuba 2007
Yan Giroux
Jerome Couture
Catuey
Jean-Francois Bourdon
Geraldine Restani
Cubanos, a completely independent production, liberates itself from television convention to draw an impressionist portrait of the Cuban community. Sincere interviews and sequence shots reveal an identity fragmented by 48 years of dictatorship, a people struggling to leave the 20th century behind. While music may barely camouflage the misery and corruption in Cuba, the sounds of engines and commercial radio can't mask the cultural gap between the island and the very active community in Miami. The main character, Catuey, a Cuban musician who has been living in Québec for a number of years, brings to his journey and his songs the image of an ideal Cuba hurt by the division in its people and the group-think that prevails in Miami. Confronted with the contradictions among his countrymen and his own demons, Catuey ends his odyssey drained and disappointed not to have found a simple path to reconciliation. The film steers clear of the pitfalls of sensationalist news, taking a more holistic approach to the identity issues the Cuban community will face upon the death of Fidel Castro.
Yan Giroux has shot, edited and directed a film that uses strong framing and extended shots to transform the chaos of reality into a set of evocative signs. While Catuey and the interviewees try to define themselves both as individuals and as Cubans, one scene at a time, the camera paints a broader, more complex portrait of a people held prisoner by their history. The travel footage scans the day-to-day lives of Cubans in Cuba and Miami for vestiges of the revolutionary dream. Echoing each other throughout the film, the scenes explore the many facets of a culture that is developing differently on either side of the Straits of Florida. Precise camera and editing work create a setting of objects and sounds that subtly interact with the content of the interviews. Amidst Havana's ruins, the interviewees' faces are blurred to protect their identities, but this is no longer a formal constraint, becoming one more aesthetic symptom in the crumbling landscape of Cuban communism. By exploring the richness of cinematographic language, Cubanos goes beyond the documentary genre to become a road movie that takes us to the heart of Catuey's struggle.
A faded flag flutters in the wind as a saw whines, far away. Catuey croons Cuba's national anthem like a lullaby. The ambiguity between dream and nightmare is what defines this revolution, its romanticism tattered by disillusionment.
The Accolade award, US Super 8 and DV festival, New Jersey, 2008
AFIA Film Festival, Denmark, 2008
ReelHeART International Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2008
Indianapolis International Film Festival, 2008
Long Island Latino International Film Festival, NY, 2008
http://www.der.org/films/cubanos.html
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Program #4 - $10
Pa (8:34 min.)
Cubanos - Life and Death of a Revolution
(82 min.)
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