On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition

Introduction: Screening an Island Nation in Transition

The meaning of revolution is embodied in culture, that is where the transformation process is evident. —Tomás Gutiérrez Alea I ntr o d uc tIo n Screening an Island Nation in Transition The camera frames a faded newspaper clipping that depicts a tremendous gathering. The place is Havana, and the time is the 1960s. Tens of thousands of people crowd together in Revolution Square. Zoom out to a woman moving a magnifying glass over the photo. She seeks to focus on familiar faces, but the attempt is futile; the lens reveals only a gray mass. As an extreme close-up obliterates the image altogether, the femalevoice cries out, “Where am I, Dios mío, where am I?” The woman in this 1994 Cuban film cannot place herself in that photograph, nor in that moment. Her dislocation in Cuba’s Revolutionary past resonated for Cubans floundering in a sea of change. The 1990s were a time of dramatic transformation for Cuba. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the island nation plummeted into a full-scale crisis. Severe shortages penetrated virtually every facet of life for Cubans:  Introduction Frequent blackouts left families without electricity for hours at a time; food scarcity resulted in widespread hunger and undernourishment; basic products once plentiful—soap, light bulbs, paper—disappeared altogether ; and the lack of fuel paralyzed private autos and dramatically reduced the public transportation upon which most islanders relied. As a result, scores of frustrated Cubans constructed makeshift rafts and drifted away from the island—some to wash up on the shores of south Florida, and others to be engulfed by the sea. This Período Especial, or Special Period, yielded extreme measures most Cubans never imagined possible: the legalization of U.S. currency, the marketing of the island as a tourist destination, the encouragement of entrepreneurial activities and small businesses, and even the pope’s celebration of Catholic mass in Revolution Square. During this moment of accelerated change, Cubans struggled—both to make ends meet and to reckon with an uncertain future. Given the sudden and dramatic insertion into the global marketplace, what would become of the nation’s Revolutionary ideology and the island’s socialist structures? How would Cuba’s economic system, political mechanisms, and cultural apparatus fare? Answers to these questions were as elusive as basic supplies were scarce. Cubans watched their world turn upside down; it was all they could do to hang on—and hope. Fernando Pérez documented this time on film. With honesty and courage, he relied on his personal experiences to illustrate the impact of Cuba’s abrupt entrance into the global arena and the ongoing evolution of what it means to be Cuban. Madagascar was made against all odds, during the summer of 1993, the lowest point during the Special Period. Cuba’s state-sponsored film institute was experiencing shortages of film stock, fuel to transport crews and equipment, food to provide a meal to those working long days, and the hard currency necessary to edit, produce , and distribute films. Pérez, a filmmaker in Cuba’s national institute for more than forty years, recalls thinking this might be the last work he’d ever make—that at any time the countrycould become paralyzed and the film project stalled out. Yet, he forged ahead and completed Madagascar, a film deemed by the Cuban critic Ambrosio Fornet to be “an X-ray exposure of the prevailing state of our soul.”1 For his poignant reflection of Cubans’ reality during that difficult time, Pérez was named the Cuban  Introduction filmmaker of the 1990s. And for capturing the existential uncertainty of that moment, Madagascar is considered the film of the Special Period. Theyoungprotagonist,Larita,seekstoembracetheunknown,tosimultaneously be “here” and “elsewhere.” In one scene, she stands with arms outstretched looking out to sea. Behind her lies the city, a once familiar space that is now alien. Before her the open water spans to an empty horizon. In another sequence, she stands atop a multistory building in Havana, arms outstretched once again. With her body forming a cross, she chants, “Madagascar, Madagascar, Madagascar.” The editing reveals similar figures across the city, human cruciforms interrupting the urban skyline. In an essay I wrote on the film shortly after its premiere, I likened these human forms to television antennae, awaiting distant signals, each one a medium for receiving and transmitting.2 Each stands alone, but they are...