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6. Filming in the Margins: Esteban Insausti Explores Life and Art amidst Chaos
- The University of North Carolina Press
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My subject will always be humans and the mystery implicit in existing. —Esteban Insausti Filming in the Margins esteban InsaustI exPlores lIfe and art amIdst chaos In the summer of 2006, a Florida television program aired a short film made in Cuba. Miami viewers tuned in, as did the scores of Havana residents with access to one of the many unauthorized satellite dishes. This transnational audience heard the commentator frame the film Existen (They Exist, 2005) as counterrevolutionaryand its makeras anti-Castrista. Having seen the experimental short only a few months earlier in Havana and having known the filmmaker, Esteban Insausti, for several years by this time, I was intrigued by this assessment. Existen premiered in December 2005 at the flC, a nongovernmental organization located in Havana. And, as already mentioned in Chapter 1, viewers applauded the work. The audience commended the innovative 6 0 Esteban Insausti filming and editing techniques, the respect accorded to the filmed subjects , and the homage it paid to Cuba’s avant-garde cinema tradition. How can we explain the incongruent perspectives, the divergent readings of this film by Miami and Havana audiences? Films, like virtually all works of expressive culture, lend themselves to interpretation. And the position from which we view—the place where we stand—shapes and influences our vision. In other words, precise circumstances contribute to determining our particular ways of seeing. And the image of the island has, to a great extent, corresponded to the geopolitical location of the viewer over the past half-century. Residents of Cuba and of south Florida “see” the island in vastly different ways. They have, in fact, built a wall between their divergent perspectives—loving Fidel or hating Castro, supporting the liberating Revolution oropposing the oppressive dictatorship, condemning the blockade or defending the trade embargo, and so on. In actual fact, many individuals in both sites occupy a far more nuanced position. But that fact has not eroded the barriers, symbolic as well as tangible. So it should come as no surprise that the film meant something different on opposite shores of the Straits of Florida. The fact that this work could be co-opted by Miami Cubans for its purportedly anti-Castro stance and simultaneouslyembraced by Cubans on the island for its revolutionary form and content demonstrates the skill of Street Filmmakers at eliding dichotomies. Insausti and his counterparts situate their films not in a bounded national frame but, rather, in a broad field of cultural meaning where manydiscourses intersect. Insausti’s twenty-five-minute experimental film refuses to take sides; it resists dichotomies and rejects absolutes. In conjoining as it does past and present, aesthetics and politics , here and elsewhere, and “us” and “them,” Existen yields a poignant reflection on the complex times in which we live. This chapter will examine the work of Esteban Insausti, a Street Filmmaker who strives to craft a unique film language appropriate for his explorations of the human condition. Drawing on video art, advertising , and avant-garde cinema, the young auteur creates complex works capable of producing multiple meanings. Unlike the avant-garde revolutionary filmmakers from whom he draws inspiration, Insausti uses digital technology. He works sometimes with and sometimes without industry infrastructure. From this in-between position where many of Cuba’s [3.94.102.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:18 GMT) 0 cloSE -u p // Street Filmmakers find themselves, this director probes the meaning of life and role of art in our chaotic world, experiments with the audiovisual medium, and calls into question extant histories and truth claims. Eploring Craziness in Havana—and in the World: Existen In Existen, Esteban Insausti takes to the streets of Havana and focuses on people suffering from some degree of dementia. The filmmaker locates these individuals in an urban setting, within the context of their everyday lives, and permits them to speak. Framed in extreme close-ups, they share their unique visions on the present state of Cuba and the world. By casting those who “exist” as active agents in narrating their stories, Insausti embraces their idiosyncrasies and diverse experiences. Existen portrays its protagonists with dignity and respect. Compiling the stories of Havana residents considered crazy by some was no easy task. The filmmaker pedaled around the Cuban capital on a bicycle with a borrowed camera, seeking informants whose perspectives could be integrated into this film. Most days, serendipity rather than scheduling determined where and when and with whom interviews took place. Informants were not “called...