September 17, 2025 • 55 mins
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In the mid-20th century Caribbean, cinema became a powerful tool for nation-building, education, and political messaging through two remarkable organizations with surprisingly parallel methods but divergent ideologies. Dr. Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez joins us for this enchanting history in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
The story begins in 1949 when Puerto Rico established the Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO), creating films that taught rural communities practical skills while reinforcing cultural identity within the island's complicated relationship with the United States. Ten years later, revolutionary Cuba founded the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), similarly using cinema to educate citizens but through an explicitly socialist lens. Both organizations deployed mobile cinema units, bringing film to remote villages alongside community discussions and educational programs. These weren't Hollywood productions seeking profit, but state-sponsored projects with clear political objectives.
Perhaps most surprising is Cuba's relationship with American cinema despite the US embargo. The ICAIC organized pirated screenings of films like The Godfather, viewing them as critiques of American capitalism rather than threats to revolutionary values. This openness to global cinema influences, filtered through a revolutionary perspective, helped shape Cuba's enduring film tradition. What can these remarkable cultural experiments teach us about the power of cinema as both art and political instrument? The answer lies in understanding how these films didn't just entertain audiences—they helped shape Caribbean identities during one of the region's most transformative periods.
Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Michigan State University and Co-Director of the Manchineel Project. He is a historian of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx film and media whose research surveys cinematic encounters between the global North and South, diasporic and exile filmmaking, and avant-garde film cultures in and of the Hispanic Caribbean. He is coeditor of the anthology "Vivirse la película: Methods in Puerto Rican Film Studies," forthcoming from Centro Press.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, alexandria Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello everyone.
(00:21):
My name is Alexandria Miller,your host of Strictly Facts, a
guide to Caribbean history andculture.
Back again to share not only mylove of Caribbean history with
you but some of the reallyexciting moments and things that
I recently came across.
And so one of the moments Irecently learned about was the
fact that in 1974, a Cubanorganization, the Cuban Film
Institute, a Cuban organization,the Cuban Film Institute Well,
(00:44):
that's the English version, butyou know, in Cuba it's known as
the Instituto Cubano de Arte eIndustria Cinematográficos, or
otherwise known as the ICAIC,which we'll talk more about
throughout our conversationtoday.
But they organized a piratedshowing of popular American 70s
movies the Godfather, part 1 and2, and I just thought it was so
(01:06):
funny.
For a lot of reasons, of course.
You know anybody who's a littlebit familiar with Cuba at this
time, especially the 70s.
You know it's Cold War, us andCuba embargo, and all of these
things are happening.
So it was really ironic for meto learn that.
You know, there is thisstate-sanctioned showings of
American films happening.
(01:26):
It was also pirated whichbrings us to a whole nother set
of you know thoughts andquestions that we'll also get to
in our conversation today.
But yeah, for me it was like,okay, it's state-sanctioned,
it's also pirated, which to me,brought me to you know how
oftentimes we in the globalSouth or other parts of the
world have to get access tothings which is not always the
(01:49):
most direct route as well, asyou know, of course, these
connections between pirates inthe Caribbean and all of these
things, right.
But, all that to be said, we'llunpack a lot of these ideas.
But it brought me to thisthinking of the Caribbean film
industries, and in a differentperspective.
So we've had a conversationabout films in the Caribbean,
(02:11):
but primarily from the, you know, anglophone Caribbean
perspective, and so I reallywanted us to unpack what it
looks like in different parts ofthe region, so in a place like
Cuba and in Puerto Rico, whichare our concentrations for today
.
So, before I jump right in,joining me for this exploration
of film industries in theHispanic Caribbean is Dr Pedro
(02:32):
Noel D'Orestes Rodriguez, theassistant professor in the film
studies program at MichiganState University.
And so, dr Rodriguez, thank youso much for joining us.
Why don't you tell ourlisteners a little bit about
yourself, your connection to theCaribbean and what inspired
this passion for film for you?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, well, first off , alexandria, thank you for
having me here, New fan of yourpodcast.
So yeah, I am originally fromPuerto Rico, born and raised
there, but my family is of Cubandescent, so I always had an
affinity toward both islandsgrowing up and I actually was a
relatively late arrival toCaribbean cinema and Latin
(03:11):
American cinema broadly.
So what I'm saying is don't lookup my master's thesis, because
it's something else entirely.
But yeah, I just sort of likereally got into Cuban cinema,
particularly when I was amaster's student, to sort of
like helping me understand Cubanpolitics.
You know which, if you knowanything about Cuban exile
politics, then you know it'svery one-sided.
So growing up within thatenvironment kind of gave me like
(03:36):
a very narrow view of Cubanhistory, and cinema opened that
up for me.
And then I just thought, youknow, during my PhD program, you
know what, if you know, I coulddo through Puerto Rican cinema,
through studying Puerto Ricanfilm history, what Cuban cinema
and Cuban film history hadalready done for me.
Puerto Rican film history is alittle bit more obscure, more
(03:58):
scarce, more scattered.
So it's sort of become mylife's work, I guess, to sort of
fill in those historical gaps.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
A lot of us who have at least been on my show, have
certainly come to this point,through our research, of really
understanding ourselves andwhere we come from.
So tremendous to have you.
You picked up a little bit on apoint that I definitely want us
to underscore as we reallybegin the conversation.
It's that the Cuban filmindustry has existed for a lot
(04:34):
longer than several of the otherplaces that we'll discuss today
or in the greater Caribbean ingeneral, and, you know, in a lot
of ways that's obviously due toUS investment and US companies
in Hollywood, which you know wemight want to also discuss,
discuss.
But there is this particularmoment in the latter 20th
century where we see companiesand organizations like ICAIC,
which I mentioned earlier,another one, the Puerto Rican
Division of Community Education,really coming up, as you know,
(04:58):
instrumental in this politicaltime frame, given the Cold War,
given, you know, radical callsto independence that are
happening not just in theCaribbean but throughout the
world.
And so could you sort of framethis moment for us, not just in
the formation of theseorganizations but also how this
stands against the longerhistory of film in both Puerto
(05:19):
Rico and Cuba.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, well, as you already allude to Alexandria,
these are what's the saying.
Cuba and Puerto Rico are twowings of the same bird, both
their modern history you knowthe last 130 years or so and
their film history are likeintertwined.
That came to Cuba and came toPuerto Rico.
(05:47):
A lot of people or historiansthought that it was filmed in
Puerto Rico scenes of theSpanish-American War, you know
the Rough Riders, all of thatbut a lot of it was filmed in
the US as sort of like warpropaganda.
So there's this idea that ournational cinemas are already
sort of, you know, there'sblurred boundaries between them
and I guess that's kind of whatties Cuban and Puerto Rican
cinema together in the post-warperiod, right.
(06:10):
So what really unites a lot ofthese what I call minor or
developing cinemas post-WorldWar II is this idea of
underdevelopment, right?
So there are various ways tocombat that.
Going around the world aroundthe time, puerto Rico had one
direction, sort of like becominga United States Commonwealth
(06:30):
right, aligning themselves withUS-styled democracy and
capitalist sort of systems,whereas Cuba sort of languished
under dictatorship for thebetter part of that mid-century
period and of course had theirown revolution, which instead
instituted a socialist andcommunist government, a sort of
(06:51):
state-controlled culturalorganisms and art institutions
such as the Ikaik.
So what I'm really interestedin in these two sort of
comparative cases is hownational cinemas,
state-sponsored national cinemas, can be constructed, you know,
to combat underdevelopmentalismfrom two different political
frameworks.
(07:11):
On the one hand, you have, likethe liberal internationalism
and liberal sort of humanism ofthe DeVetco films and the
DeVetco program, which is, youknow I'll talk about it more in
detail but essentially what itwas telling the Puerto Rican
peasant class is to don't relyon the government to solve your
own problems, right?
(07:31):
Basically, what they wanted todo is to sort of shrink the
Puerto Rican welfare state inline with the overall project of
like depopulating the islandslowly in order to sort of like
prime it for American andforeign capital investment.
So the De Vecchio basically wasteaching people in the
countryside how to make watersafe to drink right, how to
(07:54):
combat alcoholism in yourcommunity, how to build your own
bridges, your own schools, yourown sort of like public
infrastructure, so that you canessentially like become
independent of the government inthese areas.
Of course, you and I know thatthe government wasn't really
interested in developing thoseareas, which is why this program
sort of like you know, tocontinue with the bird metaphors
(08:18):
killing two birds with onestone, I guess Whereas the Icaic
, on the other hand, sufferingfrom many of the symptoms of
underdevelopment that PuertoRico was suffering from in the
1950s, the Icaic had a totallydifferent sort of approach.
Even as the topics that bothstate-sponsored film entities
(08:39):
sort of took on you know likehow to make your own house, how
to practice self-subsistence,farming, things like that, you
know gender equality, how toparticipate in politics and
electoral politics the Ikaikstill had a much more
nationalist and radical sort ofbent to their educational cinema
.
And these are some of thedifferences that I kind of want
(09:00):
to talk about today, that I kindof want to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
One of the interesting parts to me about
this exploration, why Idefinitely wanted to have you on
the show, is, while, of course,you know there are several ways
that films become educationaltools, they become markers of
you know where we are at a timeperiod and how we understand
ourselves, all of the sort ofmore emotional understandings to
(09:25):
film beyond just being like asource of entertainment.
Right, these two organizationsreally intentionally, were
predicated on, as you're saying,right, teaching things like
subsistence farming, like how tovote, how to participate in
politics.
Right, these weren't industriesfilm industries that just
sparked out of, you know, acapitalist desire to like, make
(09:48):
money and entertain people.
Right, and of course, that'sdefinitely a part of the times
that they were launched in.
So, for DeVetco in Puerto Rico,established in 1949, for Ike in
Cuba, established in 1959.
So, you know, 10 years apartand really just wanting for us
(10:08):
to understand that, that is acritical part of you know the
point of these organizations,and it's not to say that there
weren't certainly like otherfilm industries and things
happening alongside what thesetwo organizations have going on,
but it's really tremendous forus to think about it not
necessarily being in some ways amarker of nationalism, but also
(10:31):
really about the individual asopposed to about the state
framework, which I think isdifferent from sometimes how we
see films.
Could you share a little bitmore with us about you know how
you saw these organizationsreally being champions of
identity in Puerto Rico and inCuba and reshaping these ideas
of who these individuals are andthe legacies of imperialism?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, that's a great question and actually a very
complicated one in the case ofPuerto Rico.
So I'll start with them.
So Puerto Rico didn't have anestablished sort of like film
industry.
Neither country had really likea national cinema prior to
their respective reforms orrevolutions, but Puerto Rico
really had nothing.
You know, the US was sort ofembroiled in World War II
(11:17):
Immediately afterwards.
It's like there wasn't sort offertile ground for film
production in Puerto Rico.
What did happen is, with theliberalization of Puerto Rican
politics or sort of ground forfilm production in Puerto Rico,
what did happen is, with theliberalization of Puerto Rican
politics or sort of.
You know, puerto Ricans werefinally allowed to elect a
Puerto Rican born governor right, as opposed to having a US
state appointed or US state bornand elected governors prior to
(11:39):
1948.
So these sort of like changesin Puerto Rican politics brought
with them new sort of civicresponsibilities for this newly
constituted citizenry.
The De Vetco sort of stood into explain to the populace,
really in a very paternalisticway, how they fit into this
(12:00):
rapidly changing society andindustry.
So of course we had this hugeshift from agricultural industry
to more industrialization, tomore urban life.
We became much more of animport economy as well around
this time.
So that led to growing dividesand wealth inequality.
It resulted in mass migrationof Puerto Ricans from the
(12:24):
islands to urban centers alongthe East Coast in the US and
elsewhere as well.
So the DeVetco was kind of likea sort of like palliative, in a
way, for the psychic shock of,you know, being Puerto Rican
poor and working class in the1940s and 50s.
A lot of the films tapped intothis sense of Puerto Rican
(12:45):
identity and Puerto Ricannationalism to sort of create
this sense of community.
But a lot of Puerto Ricanhistorians and just critics of
Puerto Rican culture have takenthis moment as a sort of like a
missed opportunity.
Right, this was the decade inthe 1950s, particularly in 1952,
where Puerto Rico sort ofcrystallized its colonial
(13:08):
relationship to the UnitedStates by voting in favor of the
referendum that created thecontinued US occupation of
Puerto Rico.
As we became a free, associatedstate is the official
(13:29):
designation, which we can talkabout that for hours.
But yeah, so as part of thisarrangement there were concerns
by many politicians but alsomany Puerto Ricans about what
would this mean to our culture.
You know the US had alreadyinstituted limitations on the
expression of, you know,autochthonous Puerto Rican
(13:50):
culture, be it language, be itmusic, be it flying their own
flag, right?
So this sort of arrangementwith the US came with some
caveats.
What the governor of Puerto Ricoat the time, luis Muñoz Marín.
What he did was that he createdthis vast arts and cultural
(14:10):
apparatus of which the de Betcowas a part, to sort of give
Puerto Ricans a sense ofidentity, pride, through
cultural nationalism instead ofpolitical sovereignty and
self-determination, which is, itmay seem like a very cut and
dry way to put it, but it isessentially what ended up
(14:32):
happening.
And what's important is thatLuis Muñoz Marín never thought
that the Commonwealth was goingto be a permanent sort of
arrangement with the US.
He always thought that it wasgoing to be a path towards a
form of independence in thefuture.
But of course he passed awaywithout ever seeing that and
we're still stuck in the samesort of political stalemate with
(14:53):
the US.
So the DeVetco came from thisvery flawed sort of calculus of
how can we implement a sort ofuniversal understanding of
Puerto Rican identity in placeof Puerto Rican, you know,
self-determination, sovereigntyin place of an actual Puerto
Rican state, if that makes sense.
(15:16):
So, on the other hand, almost 10years to the day, the ICAIC,
the Cuban Film Institute, wasone of the first laws that the
revolutionary Cuban governmentpassed.
I think the revolution triumphsin January 1959.
In March, the law that createdthe GIC had already been created
, and then what came afterwardswas like a vast propaganda and
(15:40):
education campaign, basicallytrying to involve the entirety
of Cuba into the revolutionarychanges right and reforms that
were happening.
So these early, mostlydocumentary works focused more
on, like, explaining the landreform that was happening in
Cuba, explaining, you know, sortof property rights in Cuba,
(16:04):
even of people who had beencompletely disenfranchised
during the prior regime.
During the literacy campaign,cinema played an essential part
of this vast educationalinitiative.
So, really, the Gaique wasinitially a vehicle for the
revolution and the reforms thatcame from that.
(16:27):
What is curious, though, is thata lot of the same sort of
topics, techniques and stylesthat the DeVetco used to train
their own, you know, workingclass Puerto Ricans in Puerto
Rico, cuba seemed to tap intothe same strategies, and this is
something that you know if youtalk to any film historian.
In either Rico, cuba seemed totap into the same strategies,
and this is something that youknow if you talk to any film
(16:47):
historian in either island,they'll say like, oh yeah, of
course there are.
You know, the Icaic was basedon the Devedco.
But you know, it's kind of beenlike the holy grail for me to
sort of like find evidence ofthis, and maybe it's a fool's
errand, but I'll keep trying.
But just by watching the filmsyou can see how similar they are
the people, the audiences, theway that the films were made, by
(17:12):
, you know, going out into thecountryside, consulting their
communities.
Like, hey, what are yourbiggest issues right now?
And the community would respondwell, kids are getting
bilharzia when they, you know,go to the river and play in the
river.
Or kids are getting bilharziawhen they, you know, go to the
river and play in the river.
Or kids are getting sick whenthey go to the river.
So they put out this campaignagainst, like you know,
(17:33):
parasites and against, like,making sure not to go in like
bodies of water if you have likean open wound, things like that
.
So they were responding to thesame sort of social ills but
through different sort of likemeans.
I guess the other thing thatthey really had in common that
was kind of exceptional aroundthe time, was the mobile cinema
unit.
(17:53):
So each institute had a mobilecinema unit, which sounds very
fancy but it's literally just avan with a screen and a
projector.
They would take it out into thecountryside, they would
organize sort of afternoon-longprogramming, cultural
programming for specificvillages, they would have
(18:14):
reading groups, they would havesort of vernacular theater and
then they would end with ascreening of their films and a
sort of public forum to discusswhat the films were about, to
discuss the films in relation tothe literature that they were
circulating.
So it was all this very sort ofdemocratic way of, you know, of
(18:36):
engaging with a state-sponsoredproject.
So you know, a lot of peoplehave dismissed both the DeVetco
and the Geik as propaganda.
Propaganda doesn't necessarilyneed to have these negative
connotations, right, propagandacan just be understood, as you
know.
A public service announcement,right, brush your damn teeth.
Who's going to disagree withthat?
(18:58):
So if somebody comes to you andhas told you for decades that
you can't vote, right Becauseyou're a union member, for
example, and then the revolutiontriumphs, they come to your
house, they knock on your doorand it's like hey, welcome back
to Cuban democracy.
This is what you have to do tomake your voice heard.
That's the sort of likepropaganda or public service
(19:20):
announcement that anybody canget behind, and that's what the
ICAIC was, and the DVEDCO, to alesser extent, were trying to do
.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So I'd imagine that, you know, based on that, there
was at least in my mind to makesense that there was a pretty
positive response to theseorganizations or feel free to
correct me if that's not true.
As you're saying, right, if anorganization is telling me how
to clean water, how to take careof my kids, like that seems to
be, you know, a lot morebeneficial, especially in rural
(19:49):
places of the islands, asopposed to you know who to vote
for, or to an extent maybe, butyou know it's not strictly
political, is more so.
What I'm trying to say, right,it's also about the social
well-being of the communities,which I find really impressive.
But I guess, to that point then, what were some of the
strengths and weaknesses of bothorganizations?
(20:10):
And another piece that I'd bereally interested to hear about
is, I'm sure, based off theseorganizations, there are
filmmakers that are, you know,growing and developing their own
craft, coming through them.
So how do they play a factor innot only what is happening with
the organizations but also howthe organizations are
influencing these?
You know, more modern set offilmmakers coming out of Puerto
(20:33):
Rico and Cuba.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Excellent question.
I'll focus on the individualfilmmakers first, because that's
sort of an approach that'susually not used in the case of
the DeVetco.
In the case of the Ikaik, it'svery well known, their
filmmakers are very well knownas individual artists.
In the case of the DeVeco,that's not really the case.
So in the Icaic, of course,there are the major figures, the
(20:57):
first of which is AlfredoGuevara.
Alfredo Guevara was the founderof the Icaic, but long before
then he was one of FidelCastro's best friends.
He founded a sort of cine cluband film library with two
filmmakers who would eventuallyalso become part of the founding
group of the ICAIC.
These are very well known TomásGutiérrez-Alea and Julio García
(21:20):
Pinoza.
You know, if you've seenMemories of Underdevelopment,
then you've seen Gutiérrez-Aleafilm.
So yeah, these three.
But later, people like SaraGomez, like you know, an
Afro-Cuban woman filmmaker whowas a pioneering presence in
Cuban documentary but also LatinAmerican documentary proper,
(21:42):
who is just now getting her dueas all her films are being
restored I think it's YorkUniversity, so keep an eye out
on that.
People like Humberto Solas,right, fernando Perez.
So Cuba has this storiedhistory of like auteurs, right
Like film filmmakers who hadtheir own signature styles.
The DeVetco didn't quite havethat.
(22:03):
The DeVetco was mostly foundedby North American filmmakers or
North American artists whobecame filmmakers when they went
to Puerto Rico.
Among the most famous ones areJack and Irene Delano and Edwin
and Louis Roskam.
So you'll notice these are twocouples.
They were photographers, all ofthem who worked in the New Deal
(22:28):
, so I think they worked for theFarm Security Administration in
the 1930s and early 40s.
They did some work in PuertoRico in the early 40s, which is
how they sort of fell in lovewith the island In the immediate
post-war years where you knowthe US sort of started paying
attention to Puerto Rico as asort of strategic military point
(22:48):
.
But also, you know, they werekind of forced because of
growing unrest in the island topay attention to what they were
doing down there.
They sent Jack Delano and theRoskins to Puerto Rico to sort
of start this film and graphicsand literature program through
the Parks and RecreationDepartment for some reason.
(23:10):
And basically it was an earlyDeVetco.
This is 1946 into 47.
So a lot of films about sort of, you know, boiling your water
before drinking it, washing yourhands.
There's a really important oneabout sort of blood drawing
right and getting your blooddrawn to be able to like find
(23:32):
diseases or find you know howdoctors are gonna use needles
and things like that.
And that was like the immediateprecursor to the De Vetco.
Once the De Vetco was founded in1949, luis Munoz Marin, the
governor, makes it a point tohire local talent, right To sort
of like treat the De Vetco asquote local talent, right To
(23:52):
sort of like treat the DeVetcoas quote a schoolhouse on the
screen.
And that was a schoolhouse notjust for the audiences, right,
the people in the villages whowere watching the films, but
also the filmmakers and thegraphic artists and the
screenwriters who were makingthe films.
So among this early group youhave Amin Caltirado.
So among this early group youhave Amin Caltirado, you have
(24:13):
Luis Maisonet, you have Ángel FRivera, michael Smetancourt, so
a lot of Puerto Rican artistswho were usually involved
somewhere between the theaterand the screen, right, sometimes
as actors, other times theywere directors.
The DeVetco basically taughtthese artists to play different
(24:34):
roles and through the 1950s theyall sort of developed in their
own direction, but of coursetheir formations as artists were
facilitated by the De Vetcoitself.
It's important to note that theDe Vetco wasn't just a film
program, right.
It had three productionsections that were called cinema
, graphics and literature, andin each one of these you have,
(24:58):
like, huge names in the artscene of the Tevetco.
Some of them were already hugein the 1940s and 50s, others
became so through the Tevetco.
So in the literature you canname people like René Marqués,
pedro Juan Soto, emilioDíaz-Balcalce, so very
well-known novelists of the time.
(25:19):
In graphics you have RafaelTufiño and Lorenzo Omar, which I
hate this term, but if anybodyin Puerto Rico uses the phrase
old masters they're usuallyreferring to people like Lorenzo
Mar and Rafael Tufiña.
But the thing about having likethese very seasoned artists in
the Divetco is that they wereable to train like a newer
(25:42):
generation of Puerto Ricanartists that sort of developed
their own voice, their own styleand, in terms of cinema, their
own vision.
And I'm not going to get toointo the individual trajectories
of each artist, because it'sall very fascinating how they
all individually wanted toconstruct the national cinema in
Puerto Rico, in which the DeVetco would only be a small part
(26:03):
.
So they tried to use the DeVetco as a sort of jumping off
point to make a national cinema,and they all had different
proposals for it.
Some of them wanted to workexclusively through the De Vetco
right.
They truly believed in thegovernor's agenda right of the
Puerto Rican Commonwealth.
Others tried to use the DeVetco to sort of further their
(26:28):
own film careers by getting theDe Vetco to pay for film schools
, getting the DeVetco to pay togo to film seminars or film
festivals in Europe and all thatand they sort of built a vast
network that way.
Others jumped into a nascentprivate film industry in Puerto
Rico, and when I say private Imean mostly Hollywood B-movies
(26:50):
and sort of like earlyexploitation cinema that was
being filmed in the island.
So a lot of films from the1950s that say that they're set
in the South Pacific areactually made in Puerto Rico.
Things like that, that type ofreally bad film, softcore,
pornography there was a lot ofthat in the 1960s being filmed
(27:11):
in Puerto Rico.
You know, as theaters startedstruggling getting people into
the through the doors theystarted showing more skin in the
60s.
So Puerto Rico became sort oflike the playground for excuse
my language, but the shittiestkinds of film that you can
imagine.
And DeVetco filmmakers sort ofuse these opportunities to
(27:32):
polish their technique, to likefurther their own careers and in
a lot of respects it was a sortof like failed project.
A lot of them ended up workingin television or going back to
the theater, or they enteredacademia, became teachers,
became professors, which is nota failure in their own right,
but it definitely did not meetthe standards that they had set
(27:54):
themselves, which was to createa Puerto Rican national cinema.
And then the one artist that Ido want to talk about that sort
of unites these two islands isOscar Torres.
Oscar Torres was a Dominicanfilmmaker who joined the DeVetco
in 1954, made three films forthem between 54 and 58.
(28:17):
And in 59, he mysteriouslydisappears from Puerto Rico and
reappears in Cuba in 1960,making films for the Icaic.
So there are a lot of gaps inhis record, but he's a
fascinating character.
He grew up in a relativelywell-placed family in Santo
Domingo in the DominicanRepublic.
(28:39):
All of them were avowedanti-Trujillo organizers and
activists and they funded sortof like anti-Trujillo or
anti-dictatorship organizationsand all that.
His cousin, moises de Soto, wasa very well-known Dominican
revolutionary right who famouslyconspired against Trujillo in
the 1940s.
(29:00):
Then Oscar Torres himself sortof got in trouble in the
Dominican Republic for attendingthese meetings and sort of like
agitating against Trujillo andsort of like agitating against
Trujillo even as he was workingas a film critic for Rafael
Trujillo's newspaper El Caribe.
So while he was publishingreviews of Italian neorealist
(29:21):
films, he was sort of likecalling for Trujillo's head, you
know, moonlighting as arevolutionary.
So in the 1950s he gets exiledfrom the Dominican Republic.
You know, very common aroundthose days.
It was either like leave theisland or mysteriously disappear
.
He goes to Rome to study film atthe Centro Experimental de
(29:43):
Cinematografia, which is theirfilm school in Italy and
basically where Italianneorealism was being taught to
the rest of the world.
And once there he went to allsorts of film festivals, you
know, in the Soviet Union butalso the sort of satellite
(30:04):
countries around there.
So he went to Prague, he wentto Poland, he went to Romania
and sort of was exposed to thissort of radical and experimental
cinema that he didn't know ofbeforehand.
He was very Western in his sortof like tastes and that
radicalized him even more.
And over there in Rome he alsomeets Tomas Gutierrez Alea and
(30:26):
Julio Garcia Pinosa, whothemselves were fleeing a
dictator in Cuba, you know,under the guise of like
furthering their film education.
So these three meet there.
They all graduate in 1953.
In 54, oscar Torres goes toPuerto Rico, while the other two
return to Cuba.
His credentials right as agraduate of the Rome Film School
(30:56):
to join the DeVetco and becausehe has all this training, he
basically becomes the mostseasoned filmmaker, or at least
you know, caribbean-bornfilmmaker, in the DeVetco.
So he could be director ofphotography, he could be
director, he wrote screenplaysright, he was an actor we
already know.
He was a film critic andjournalist.
So really, even though he waslike an actor, we already know
he was a film critic andjournalist.
So really, even though he waslike one of the younger members,
he was more experienced than alot of them and he was Dominican
(31:20):
, which is a story that's notreally told about the DeVetco.
The DeVetco, this grand nationalproject built on Dominican
labor and Dominican expertiseVery standard story in Puerto
Rico actually.
But yeah, oscar Torres madesome films there.
He quickly became disillusionedwith the Puerto Rican
(31:41):
Commonwealth and by 1958, he wassort of like done, you know,
sort of propagandizing forAmerican colonialism.
He was done making sort of likemilquetoast, liberal, liberal,
educational cinema.
And he fell off the map andwent to Cuba in 1959, joined the
(32:03):
ICAIC and he was actually madehead of the didactic documentary
department.
So he made two films in Cuba,none of them really
documentaries, they're more likedocudramas, or one of them's a
historical epic.
One of them is called TierraOlvidada, forgotten Land, from
1960, which is about the Ciénagade Zapata, the Zapata swamps in
(32:26):
the southern middle part of theisland, well known for, you
know, abject poverty for howremote it is from the nearest
sort of like cities.
They didn't have like publicinfrastructure hospitals,
schools, roads, trains, bridgesand really one of the first
projects of the revolution wasto go into the swamp, drain
(32:48):
parts of it and buildinfrastructure so that residents
of the swamp would know thatthey were being integrated into
this revolutionary project.
In fact, one of the first filmsthat the two Cuban students in
Rome made when they went back toCuba was precisely about the
Zapata swamps, called El Merano.
So clearly this was like a sorespot, you know, for Puerto
(33:08):
Rican society, like how can wepretend to be this modern nation
where we have these peopleliving in the swamps with some
of the lowest life expectancy inthe world?
So Oscar Torres tackled that in1960s, as soon as he became
part of the Icai, his secondfilm, ralengo 18, which is
(33:31):
Ralengo 18, is a sort ofhistorical epic about a peasant
uprising that happened outsideGuantanamo in the 1930s.
So around this time in 1961,the Cuban Revolution had already
declared itself socialist right.
So they were making moreoutwardly sort of radical and
(33:54):
socialist cinema, and OscarTorres was a part of these
initial experiments in making atruly state socialist national
cinema.
But isn't that crazy, like thefact that he was exiled from the
Dominican Republic, trained inItalian neorealism in Rome,
(34:17):
where he becomes a communist,then goes to Puerto Rico and,
almost like betrays his ownpolitics, making these films
that are being used to entrenchthe Puerto Rican political
status with the US, and thenjust falls off the map.
And when he pops up he's arevolutionary in Cuba.
So I just think like he is oh,a detail that I left behind.
(34:42):
He's also a gay man, an openlygay man, which would have been
an added obstacle in all ofthese locations for him.
So he's truly like thispan-Caribbean figure sort of
trying to position himselfsomewhere on the political
spectrum, but he keeps runninginto sort of historical
(35:02):
realities of these three islandsthat he's actively working to
liberate right the DominicanRepublic, puerto Rico and Cuba,
and so I suspect that he leavesthe Cuban Revolution because he
was sort of in disagreementabout how it was growing closer
to the Soviet sphere ofinfluence.
He was kind of disappointedabout how the ICAIC had begun
(35:27):
consolidating film production inCuba.
So one of his best friends,néstor Almendros, who he met in
Italy, had a film producinggroup in Cuba, lunes de
Revolución, which got banned in1961 when he was there and
there's no way to know for sure,but sort of freewheeling
(35:49):
personality like Oscar Torres.
He wouldn't have been veryhappy seeing these early
instances of censorship, and notjust censorship but just
government interventionism incultural practice more than
anything.
So he returns to Puerto Ricosometime in 1962 or 1963, a sort
(36:09):
of defeated man.
By now he's able to return tothe Dominican Republic because
he's Rafael Trujillo.
The dictator had beenassassinated.
He's no longer running the samerisks going back to the
Dominican Republic, but he sortof aligns himself with the
liberal reforms of Juan Bush,the Dominican president and
(36:30):
presidential candidate later,and his politics become
de-radicalized to an extent thatactually he actually comes
closer to the politics of 1950s,puerto Rico in the 1960s, and
by then he's more of astruggling artist.
He's taking bit jobs where hecan and ultimately he passes
(36:53):
away early in 1968, at the ageof 35, if I'm not mistaken.
So even though he is like thisvery hopeful transnational
radical reformist figure, he'salso a tragic figure in a way.
But what is mostly known abouthim in Caribbean film history is
this aspect of tragedy, and alot of the work that I'm doing
(37:15):
in trying to weave together hisentire career and his political
aspirations is to sort of resistlooking at his life through the
lens of tragedy and trying tosee him as a fully realized
filmmaker but also activist andradical.
Sorry, alexandria, can you tellthat?
This is the thing I've beenwriting?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yes, no worries.
Oh God, I was like, oh, heloves this so much.
That's what I've been over herethinking.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
He's, he's the missing link between this two,
these two cinemas.
I guess is why I'm so into hisstory.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And it makes sense, I mean, as you painted out for us
, right, he's clearly moving Ofcourse we talk about migration
all the time, moving throughoutthe region.
I'm sort of really captivated byhow central he plays a figure
in all of these places, right,right, and of course leadership
and domination obviously takepart, but you know, to see how
he's moved through not just theCaribbean, but of course his
(38:17):
time spent in Italy isremarkable and that's what I
always love about history.
In a lot of these ways, youalways find these niche points
where, you know, we started outthinking we were talking about
just film history, right, but weget this remarkable story of
this man who, you know,sometimes goes overlooked when
we, you know, gloss over things.
And speaking of that, right, Istarted our conversation with
(38:40):
this story of, you know, theGodfather screenings in Cuba and
I just, you know, would reallylove to hear your take on piracy
and how it played a factor.
You've definitely walked usthrough films that these
organizations created, but howdo you think piracy played a
factor in sort of understandingthat?
You know, of course people wantto access films coming from
(39:03):
other parts of the world, butwhat does this also say about,
you know American culturalinfluence amidst the national
sentiment.
That's happening as well.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, that's a good question.
It sort of ties into thequestion you asked earlier that
I forgot to answer because Iwent on a long tangent about
Oscar Torres.
Educational cinema is kind ofbogus, right, like that's not
what spectators want to see,especially if they're already
(39:43):
familiar with, you know,hollywood film, european art
film, and even like theextremely popular Mexican and
Brazilian films that showed inall these these islands at
around that time.
So really, you know, neitherCubans nor Puerto Ricans stopped
watching Hollywood film or longform features from other
countries.
The revolution in Cubainitially tried to do that.
(40:07):
Right, they tried to say that,yeah, hollywood is cultural
imperialism, right, imperialism,right.
They propped up this boogeymanof like.
This is one of the sort of likepsychological ways that US
imperialism sort of is manifestin the global South.
That was early in the revolution, as a response to the embargo.
Very quickly, though, theCubans realized that they
(40:32):
couldn't just depend on theirown or their allies' film
infrastructures, that the Cubanpeople also wanted to see what
was going on in the rest of theworld.
Right, and part of the world ismostly aligned with capitalism,
right and world liberalism, butalso just the cinema that they
were used to prior to therevolution.
(40:53):
So they opened up their screensto Hollywood films relatively
early and their reasoning wasthe embargo can be economic,
right, but we're not going toallow it to become cultural.
And that was the sort ofposition that the ICAIC took to
showing films from the formerfirst world in Cuba, because the
(41:19):
embargo prevented Hollywood tonegotiate directly with Cuba.
What they did is that theyusually went through a third
nation In the 70s it was mostlySalvador Allende's Chile, right,
because they had also beenembargoed or not embargoed, but
their trade with the US was sortof restricted after his
(41:42):
election.
So if you look at the catalog ofthe Ikaik and you don't even
have to look at the catalog,just look at the film posters
that the Ikaik was making in the1960s you'll notice a ton of
American films.
You'll notice a ton of British,french, italian films, right,
but they seem to be sort ofhandpicked.
(42:02):
They're not going to showeverything, right, they're not
going to show Alice inWonderland or something like
that, for no reason.
They picked films, carefullycurated, films that sort of
aligned with the ideology andthe project of the Cuban
Revolution.
So they had films that showedsort of like social unrest, that
had sort of you know,historical materialist
(42:25):
interpretations of recent events.
So a lot of war films made inthe US didn't make it into Cuba
because for Cubans that wasbasically fantasy, right, it was
like an alternate reality, thisidea of the American soldier as
a sort of hero, an individual,as opposed to like a death
machine.
Anyway, so in the 1970s thissort of infatuation with
(42:51):
American cinema really becomesentrenched in, not just in Cuban
culture but also in the cultureof the Icaic.
So the Icaic starts bringing in, even like films from the new
Hollywood, so even Spielbergfilms, francis Ford Coppola
films.
So these films that don'timmediately have this
anti-capitalist sort of latentinterpretation in them, they get
(43:15):
brought in.
And, as you mentioned, one ofthe big ones was the Godfather,
particularly the Godfather PartII.
So it was brought in a littlebit late.
I think the first Godfathermust have came out in 73, but it
was brought to Cuba in 75.
The Corleone family was sort oftaken as a microcosm of
American society, right when youhad, like this collusion
(43:39):
between organized crime,government and private capital,
which, if you look at it thatway then yeah, it's a perfect
sort of like encapsulation ofthe American dream.
And so they were both broughtto Cuba through third country.
It wasn't Chile anymore by themid-70s, since Pinochet was in
(44:01):
power, and they were screened togreat fanfare.
It's become very, it's verycommon.
If you ask like a Cuban personlike what their favorite film is
like, give them 10 tries andthey'll mention the Godfather.
And this is across thepolitical spectrum, by the way,
which is another thing that sortof captures my attention, like
what are they seeing that I amnot seeing?
(44:23):
But yeah, so in 1977, I think,cuba even invites Francis Ford
Coppola to come to Cuba topresent his films and to talk
about making the Godfather,which was, by the way, filmed in
the Dominican Republic, likeright next door to Cuba, and has
(44:44):
scenes that are set during theCuban Revolution.
So there's this idea that thisfilm, even though it's a
Hollywood product, it's made bya leftist filmmaker in a way,
which is Francis Ford Coppola,and even though it's taken the
perspective of a mafia familyright, very hard to sympathize
with, it's sort of showing likethe ills, the corruption and the
(45:08):
sort of like decrepit state ofAmerican democracy.
And I think the Godfather filmsbeing this popular in Cuba sort
of opened the floodgates, so tospeak.
So another huge film in Cuba wasJaws a few years later.
So Steven Spielberg, it wascalled Bloody Shark in Spanish.
(45:32):
I mean, I've only read thereviews.
I don't really, I can't reallysay what you know the sort of
political spin was.
But Fidel Castro personallyscreened that film in his
residence and there was somebodythere who asked him like so
what is it?
What is it about this film thatyou know that's so important
(45:54):
for the revolution?
Right, you had like this bigpremiere.
You had like film posters madefor it.
It was covered in the wholepress, like what's Marxist about
this film?
And then Fidel Castro likelooks at the reporter and says
the shark.
That's hilarious, one of myfavorite apocryphal stories of
(46:15):
this time.
So we can sit here andintellectualize, like cuban
piracy of hollywood film in the1970s.
But I think if we want to takea simpler approach, we can just
say file castro was a big fan ofhollywood, he was a big fan of
coppola, he was a big fan ofspielberg and that's kind of why
(46:36):
he found a way to pirate thefilms.
Bring them in.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
You've given us quite a few names of certain films,
but do you have any others thatyou know, in my love of all
things Caribbean popular culturethat you feel like are really
reflective of this?
You know 50s, 60s, 70s periodfor Cuban and Puerto Rican films
, just films to watch.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah, I would say.
In the case Puerto Rico, in1959, a lot of De Vetco
filmmakers worked on a filmcalled Maruja by an Argentinian
filmmaker called Oscar OrzavalQuintana who was based in Puerto
Rico and made a lot of sort ofromance melodramas, even though
it's a film made by anArgentinian.
You can sort of see theaspirations of DeBetco
(47:21):
filmmakers of the type ofnational cinema that they wanted
to make through this film.
So if you just read like thesynopsis, it's like a typical,
you know Latin Americanmelodrama from the 1950s based
on like the Mexican Golden Agestyle.
But if you actually watch thefilm, you'll notice that there
are a ton of scenes with, likeyou know, puerto Rican trova and
(47:44):
Puerto Rican danza and musicalstyles and genres that are like
native to the island dances, youknow, and other sort of like
folk expressions of Puerto Ricancultures that bleed into the
film itself.
And then also just knowing thata lot of Puerto Rican cultures
that bleed into the film itself,and then also just knowing that
a lot of Puerto Ricanfilmmakers were part of the film
, a part of the crew, it's sortof like a I always prop it up as
(48:07):
you know what could have beenor what the Puerto Ricans sort
of wanted to make.
Even if it's not necessarilylike my cup of tea or my
favorite type of film, even ifit's not necessarily like my cup
of tea or my favorite type offilm, in the case of Cuba, I
really recommend Oscar Torres'Ralengo 18,.
So Ralengo 18 from 1962.
So this is the film, the famoussort of uprising of the Ralengo
(48:31):
in 1934.
But you can sort of see this in1961.
It's when the Icai was tryingto break out of its documentary
(48:58):
box, so to speak.
So Ralengo was a film that wasmade almost outside the
influence of the Icaic.
Oscar Torres was on the otherside of the island completely.
He was working with his ownfilm crew, he was head of his
own department, so he didn'thave any direct oversight and he
ended up making a film that isso different from the other
films, the other Cuban filmsthat were being made around the
time, especially long featurefilms, such as something like
Histories of Revolution, whichis more in a neorealist style,
and the Adventures of JuanQuinquín, a comedy by Julio
Garcia Pinosa.
Well, scott Torres' film is, ofcourse, a historical epic, but
(49:24):
it's also like picking andchoosing which neorealist
techniques or which sort of likestyles it borrows from and then
construct, like this weirdFrankenstein Italian, neorealist
, soviet-style edited historicalepic that, seen in the context
(49:44):
of what Cuba was producingaround that time, stands out as
very idiosyncratic.
It also helps to know thecontext.
Oscar Torres left Cuba beforehe was able to finish this film,
so as mysteriously as heentered Cuba, that's how he left
it as well.
So it's also sort of anincomplete project.
It's just a 60-minute film, soyou don't know if it was meant
(50:07):
to be that way or not.
And there are things about itthat are sort of like not super
congruent with one another.
But I guess you could say whatinterests me most about these
Caribbean national cinemas arethese sort of missed
opportunities, like these modelsthat didn't quite come to
fruition but still constitutelike original proposals right
(50:30):
Maruja on the one hand, eventhough it's made by an
Argentinian, and then Ralengo 18, by Oscar Torres, as a model
for Cuban cinema, even though hewas Dominican.
This sort of like necessarytransnationalism that I think is
missing from Caribbean filmcriticism and Caribbean film
history broadly.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Certainly, I'll be sure to link those for our
listeners who you know reallyyou know to link those for our
listeners who you know reallyyou know more, so want to dive
into the work of DeVetco andIkaik and really underscore.
You know what this momentlooked like within that 50s, 60s
time period.
I want to draw us to a closebecause I think you've woven for
(51:12):
us such a beautiful history andgenealogy of this time period
and how certainly these twoorganizations not only
transformed Puerto Rico and Cubain the 50s and 60s, but how
they inspired other filmmakerswho then went forward to
continue this work.
Right, how do you really seethem having inspired today's
(51:37):
current generation of filmscoming out of both organizations
, or both islands, rather, iswhat I meant to say you know,
every academic has his niche.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Part of the reason that I am, you know,
irretrievably stuck in the 50sand 60s is because this was such
a momentous shift for bothnational cinemas, right, for
better or worse.
In the case of the DeVetco, itstill remains our most cohesive
attempt at establishing nationalcinema.
Even if it was mostly, you know, shorts and sort of
(52:14):
middle-length films,docudramasas and documentaries,
it still constitutes like ourclosest attempt at, you know,
having like this, thriving andcomprehensive catalog of
filmmaking.
And in many ways some artistscontemporary artists, for better
(52:34):
or worse, try to emulate theDeVetco.
There was even one very naivefilm student who went to the
film archive in Puerto Rico andsaid I want to create another
DeVetco and I'm like you knowwhat, that's never going to
happen and we wouldn't want itto happen.
It's very much a product of itstime.
In the case of Cuba, it's justbecause it's become such an
(52:58):
institution right of LatinAmerican film broadly that you
know, I just have a great amountof respect for it, even as it
sort of, like you know, had itspitfalls.
It's made mistakes in itshistory, whether through
censorship or just shelvingcertain artists in favor of
others.
It still exists, it's stillmaking quality cinema.
(53:22):
It's still supporting well lessthan before, but still
supporting contemporaryfilmmakers, even as other sort
of filmmaking bodies andentities and groups in Cuba have
emerged to sort of complementit.
But even if somebody, evenmyself, who I'm highly critical
of the Icaic and the ways thatthey serve as the sort of
(53:45):
mouthpiece for a lot of flawedyou know Cuban politics today
they still sort of have an eyefor talent, they still have a
lot of the resources and thesort of just good taste to make
or to keep the dream of a Cubannational cinema alive, so to
speak.
That was a bit too flatteringof the geek, but I hope you
(54:08):
understand.
Yeah, I wish they supportedmore younger artists.
That is one thing I will say.
But other than that, it's likemost of the well-known and
successful feature films thatare coming out of Cuba are still
being supported by ICAIC in oneway or another, even as they're
being co-produced with, likeFrance or the Netherlands, you
(54:30):
know.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I do think it is not only beautiful to see certain
organizations from the height ofour certain revolutionary
periods in the mid-20th centurystill survive so that's the case
of the IKIC, which is evenstill continuing today, as you
outlined for us, but also I loveto hear that you know the
current generation is stillbeing supported in some ways,
(54:58):
that you know the currentgeneration is still being
supported in some ways, and that, I think, is wonderful to me
when we consider just how youknow our nations and our islands
have changed over the course oftime.
But you've certainly given usso much to learn from and sit
with.
I definitely like feel like I'mgoing to jump into spending my
weekend watching a lot of thesefilms, dr Rodriguez.
So I thank you and appreciateyou so much in sharing your love
(55:19):
and expertise in this filmhistory with us, as always.
You know I will put up some ofthese links to you know where to
possibly watch these films andyou know some material etc.
For our listeners who want tolearn more.
And till next time, look formore, learn more and till next
(55:40):
time, look for more.
Thanks for tuning in toStrictly Facts.
Visit strictlyfactspodcastcomfor more information from each
episode.
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at Strictly Facts PD on Twitter.
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, alexandria Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello everyone.
(00:21):
My name is Alexandria Miller,your host of Strictly Facts, a
guide to Caribbean history andculture.
Back again to share not only mylove of Caribbean history with
you but some of the reallyexciting moments and things that
I recently came across.
And so one of the moments Irecently learned about was the
fact that in 1974, a Cubanorganization, the Cuban Film
Institute, a Cuban organization,the Cuban Film Institute Well,
(00:44):
that's the English version, butyou know, in Cuba it's known as
the Instituto Cubano de Arte eIndustria Cinematográficos, or
otherwise known as the ICAIC,which we'll talk more about
throughout our conversationtoday.
But they organized a piratedshowing of popular American 70s
movies the Godfather, part 1 and2, and I just thought it was so
(01:06):
funny.
For a lot of reasons, of course.
You know anybody who's a littlebit familiar with Cuba at this
time, especially the 70s.
You know it's Cold War, us andCuba embargo, and all of these
things are happening.
So it was really ironic for meto learn that.
You know, there is thisstate-sanctioned showings of
American films happening.
(01:26):
It was also pirated whichbrings us to a whole nother set
of you know thoughts andquestions that we'll also get to
in our conversation today.
But yeah, for me it was like,okay, it's state-sanctioned,
it's also pirated, which to me,brought me to you know how
oftentimes we in the globalSouth or other parts of the
world have to get access tothings which is not always the
(01:49):
most direct route as well, asyou know, of course, these
connections between pirates inthe Caribbean and all of these
things, right.
But, all that to be said, we'llunpack a lot of these ideas.
But it brought me to thisthinking of the Caribbean film
industries, and in a differentperspective.
So we've had a conversationabout films in the Caribbean,
(02:11):
but primarily from the, you know, anglophone Caribbean
perspective, and so I reallywanted us to unpack what it
looks like in different parts ofthe region, so in a place like
Cuba and in Puerto Rico, whichare our concentrations for today
.
So, before I jump right in,joining me for this exploration
of film industries in theHispanic Caribbean is Dr Pedro
(02:32):
Noel D'Orestes Rodriguez, theassistant professor in the film
studies program at MichiganState University.
And so, dr Rodriguez, thank youso much for joining us.
Why don't you tell ourlisteners a little bit about
yourself, your connection to theCaribbean and what inspired
this passion for film for you?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, well, first off , alexandria, thank you for
having me here, New fan of yourpodcast.
So yeah, I am originally fromPuerto Rico, born and raised
there, but my family is of Cubandescent, so I always had an
affinity toward both islandsgrowing up and I actually was a
relatively late arrival toCaribbean cinema and Latin
(03:11):
American cinema broadly.
So what I'm saying is don't lookup my master's thesis, because
it's something else entirely.
But yeah, I just sort of likereally got into Cuban cinema,
particularly when I was amaster's student, to sort of
like helping me understand Cubanpolitics.
You know which, if you knowanything about Cuban exile
politics, then you know it'svery one-sided.
So growing up within thatenvironment kind of gave me like
(03:36):
a very narrow view of Cubanhistory, and cinema opened that
up for me.
And then I just thought, youknow, during my PhD program, you
know what, if you know, I coulddo through Puerto Rican cinema,
through studying Puerto Ricanfilm history, what Cuban cinema
and Cuban film history hadalready done for me.
Puerto Rican film history is alittle bit more obscure, more
(03:58):
scarce, more scattered.
So it's sort of become mylife's work, I guess, to sort of
fill in those historical gaps.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
A lot of us who have at least been on my show, have
certainly come to this point,through our research, of really
understanding ourselves andwhere we come from.
So tremendous to have you.
You picked up a little bit on apoint that I definitely want us
to underscore as we reallybegin the conversation.
It's that the Cuban filmindustry has existed for a lot
(04:34):
longer than several of the otherplaces that we'll discuss today
or in the greater Caribbean ingeneral, and, you know, in a lot
of ways that's obviously due toUS investment and US companies
in Hollywood, which you know wemight want to also discuss,
discuss.
But there is this particularmoment in the latter 20th
century where we see companiesand organizations like ICAIC,
which I mentioned earlier,another one, the Puerto Rican
Division of Community Education,really coming up, as you know,
(04:58):
instrumental in this politicaltime frame, given the Cold War,
given, you know, radical callsto independence that are
happening not just in theCaribbean but throughout the
world.
And so could you sort of framethis moment for us, not just in
the formation of theseorganizations but also how this
stands against the longerhistory of film in both Puerto
(05:19):
Rico and Cuba.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, well, as you already allude to Alexandria,
these are what's the saying.
Cuba and Puerto Rico are twowings of the same bird, both
their modern history you knowthe last 130 years or so and
their film history are likeintertwined.
That came to Cuba and came toPuerto Rico.
(05:47):
A lot of people or historiansthought that it was filmed in
Puerto Rico scenes of theSpanish-American War, you know
the Rough Riders, all of thatbut a lot of it was filmed in
the US as sort of like warpropaganda.
So there's this idea that ournational cinemas are already
sort of, you know, there'sblurred boundaries between them
and I guess that's kind of whatties Cuban and Puerto Rican
cinema together in the post-warperiod, right.
(06:10):
So what really unites a lot ofthese what I call minor or
developing cinemas post-WorldWar II is this idea of
underdevelopment, right?
So there are various ways tocombat that.
Going around the world aroundthe time, puerto Rico had one
direction, sort of like becominga United States Commonwealth
(06:30):
right, aligning themselves withUS-styled democracy and
capitalist sort of systems,whereas Cuba sort of languished
under dictatorship for thebetter part of that mid-century
period and of course had theirown revolution, which instead
instituted a socialist andcommunist government, a sort of
(06:51):
state-controlled culturalorganisms and art institutions
such as the Ikaik.
So what I'm really interestedin in these two sort of
comparative cases is hownational cinemas,
state-sponsored national cinemas, can be constructed, you know,
to combat underdevelopmentalismfrom two different political
frameworks.
(07:11):
On the one hand, you have, likethe liberal internationalism
and liberal sort of humanism ofthe DeVetco films and the
DeVetco program, which is, youknow I'll talk about it more in
detail but essentially what itwas telling the Puerto Rican
peasant class is to don't relyon the government to solve your
own problems, right?
(07:31):
Basically, what they wanted todo is to sort of shrink the
Puerto Rican welfare state inline with the overall project of
like depopulating the islandslowly in order to sort of like
prime it for American andforeign capital investment.
So the De Vecchio basically wasteaching people in the
countryside how to make watersafe to drink right, how to
(07:54):
combat alcoholism in yourcommunity, how to build your own
bridges, your own schools, yourown sort of like public
infrastructure, so that you canessentially like become
independent of the government inthese areas.
Of course, you and I know thatthe government wasn't really
interested in developing thoseareas, which is why this program
sort of like you know, tocontinue with the bird metaphors
(08:18):
killing two birds with onestone, I guess Whereas the Icaic
, on the other hand, sufferingfrom many of the symptoms of
underdevelopment that PuertoRico was suffering from in the
1950s, the Icaic had a totallydifferent sort of approach.
Even as the topics that bothstate-sponsored film entities
(08:39):
sort of took on you know likehow to make your own house, how
to practice self-subsistence,farming, things like that, you
know gender equality, how toparticipate in politics and
electoral politics the Ikaikstill had a much more
nationalist and radical sort ofbent to their educational cinema
.
And these are some of thedifferences that I kind of want
(09:00):
to talk about today, that I kindof want to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
One of the interesting parts to me about
this exploration, why Idefinitely wanted to have you on
the show, is, while, of course,you know there are several ways
that films become educationaltools, they become markers of
you know where we are at a timeperiod and how we understand
ourselves, all of the sort ofmore emotional understandings to
(09:25):
film beyond just being like asource of entertainment.
Right, these two organizationsreally intentionally, were
predicated on, as you're saying,right, teaching things like
subsistence farming, like how tovote, how to participate in
politics.
Right, these weren't industriesfilm industries that just
sparked out of, you know, acapitalist desire to like, make
(09:48):
money and entertain people.
Right, and of course, that'sdefinitely a part of the times
that they were launched in.
So, for DeVetco in Puerto Rico,established in 1949, for Ike in
Cuba, established in 1959.
So, you know, 10 years apartand really just wanting for us
(10:08):
to understand that, that is acritical part of you know the
point of these organizations,and it's not to say that there
weren't certainly like otherfilm industries and things
happening alongside what thesetwo organizations have going on,
but it's really tremendous forus to think about it not
necessarily being in some ways amarker of nationalism, but also
(10:31):
really about the individual asopposed to about the state
framework, which I think isdifferent from sometimes how we
see films.
Could you share a little bitmore with us about you know how
you saw these organizationsreally being champions of
identity in Puerto Rico and inCuba and reshaping these ideas
of who these individuals are andthe legacies of imperialism?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, that's a great question and actually a very
complicated one in the case ofPuerto Rico.
So I'll start with them.
So Puerto Rico didn't have anestablished sort of like film
industry.
Neither country had really likea national cinema prior to
their respective reforms orrevolutions, but Puerto Rico
really had nothing.
You know, the US was sort ofembroiled in World War II
(11:17):
Immediately afterwards.
It's like there wasn't sort offertile ground for film
production in Puerto Rico.
What did happen is, with theliberalization of Puerto Rican
politics or sort of ground forfilm production in Puerto Rico,
what did happen is, with theliberalization of Puerto Rican
politics or sort of.
You know, puerto Ricans werefinally allowed to elect a
Puerto Rican born governor right, as opposed to having a US
state appointed or US state bornand elected governors prior to
(11:39):
1948.
So these sort of like changesin Puerto Rican politics brought
with them new sort of civicresponsibilities for this newly
constituted citizenry.
The De Vetco sort of stood into explain to the populace,
really in a very paternalisticway, how they fit into this
(12:00):
rapidly changing society andindustry.
So of course we had this hugeshift from agricultural industry
to more industrialization, tomore urban life.
We became much more of animport economy as well around
this time.
So that led to growing dividesand wealth inequality.
It resulted in mass migrationof Puerto Ricans from the
(12:24):
islands to urban centers alongthe East Coast in the US and
elsewhere as well.
So the DeVetco was kind of likea sort of like palliative, in a
way, for the psychic shock of,you know, being Puerto Rican
poor and working class in the1940s and 50s.
A lot of the films tapped intothis sense of Puerto Rican
(12:45):
identity and Puerto Ricannationalism to sort of create
this sense of community.
But a lot of Puerto Ricanhistorians and just critics of
Puerto Rican culture have takenthis moment as a sort of like a
missed opportunity.
Right, this was the decade inthe 1950s, particularly in 1952,
where Puerto Rico sort ofcrystallized its colonial
(13:08):
relationship to the UnitedStates by voting in favor of the
referendum that created thecontinued US occupation of
Puerto Rico.
As we became a free, associatedstate is the official
(13:29):
designation, which we can talkabout that for hours.
But yeah, so as part of thisarrangement there were concerns
by many politicians but alsomany Puerto Ricans about what
would this mean to our culture.
You know the US had alreadyinstituted limitations on the
expression of, you know,autochthonous Puerto Rican
(13:50):
culture, be it language, be itmusic, be it flying their own
flag, right?
So this sort of arrangementwith the US came with some
caveats.
What the governor of Puerto Ricoat the time, luis Muñoz Marín.
What he did was that he createdthis vast arts and cultural
(14:10):
apparatus of which the de Betcowas a part, to sort of give
Puerto Ricans a sense ofidentity, pride, through
cultural nationalism instead ofpolitical sovereignty and
self-determination, which is, itmay seem like a very cut and
dry way to put it, but it isessentially what ended up
(14:32):
happening.
And what's important is thatLuis Muñoz Marín never thought
that the Commonwealth was goingto be a permanent sort of
arrangement with the US.
He always thought that it wasgoing to be a path towards a
form of independence in thefuture.
But of course he passed awaywithout ever seeing that and
we're still stuck in the samesort of political stalemate with
(14:53):
the US.
So the DeVetco came from thisvery flawed sort of calculus of
how can we implement a sort ofuniversal understanding of
Puerto Rican identity in placeof Puerto Rican, you know,
self-determination, sovereigntyin place of an actual Puerto
Rican state, if that makes sense.
(15:16):
So, on the other hand, almost 10years to the day, the ICAIC,
the Cuban Film Institute, wasone of the first laws that the
revolutionary Cuban governmentpassed.
I think the revolution triumphsin January 1959.
In March, the law that createdthe GIC had already been created
, and then what came afterwardswas like a vast propaganda and
(15:40):
education campaign, basicallytrying to involve the entirety
of Cuba into the revolutionarychanges right and reforms that
were happening.
So these early, mostlydocumentary works focused more
on, like, explaining the landreform that was happening in
Cuba, explaining, you know, sortof property rights in Cuba,
(16:04):
even of people who had beencompletely disenfranchised
during the prior regime.
During the literacy campaign,cinema played an essential part
of this vast educationalinitiative.
So, really, the Gaique wasinitially a vehicle for the
revolution and the reforms thatcame from that.
(16:27):
What is curious, though, is thata lot of the same sort of
topics, techniques and stylesthat the DeVetco used to train
their own, you know, workingclass Puerto Ricans in Puerto
Rico, cuba seemed to tap intothe same strategies, and this is
something that you know if youtalk to any film historian.
In either Rico, cuba seemed totap into the same strategies,
and this is something that youknow if you talk to any film
(16:47):
historian in either island,they'll say like, oh yeah, of
course there are.
You know, the Icaic was basedon the Devedco.
But you know, it's kind of beenlike the holy grail for me to
sort of like find evidence ofthis, and maybe it's a fool's
errand, but I'll keep trying.
But just by watching the filmsyou can see how similar they are
the people, the audiences, theway that the films were made, by
(17:12):
, you know, going out into thecountryside, consulting their
communities.
Like, hey, what are yourbiggest issues right now?
And the community would respondwell, kids are getting
bilharzia when they, you know,go to the river and play in the
river.
Or kids are getting bilharziawhen they, you know, go to the
river and play in the river.
Or kids are getting sick whenthey go to the river.
So they put out this campaignagainst, like you know,
(17:33):
parasites and against, like,making sure not to go in like
bodies of water if you have likean open wound, things like that
.
So they were responding to thesame sort of social ills but
through different sort of likemeans.
I guess the other thing thatthey really had in common that
was kind of exceptional aroundthe time, was the mobile cinema
unit.
(17:53):
So each institute had a mobilecinema unit, which sounds very
fancy but it's literally just avan with a screen and a
projector.
They would take it out into thecountryside, they would
organize sort of afternoon-longprogramming, cultural
programming for specificvillages, they would have
(18:14):
reading groups, they would havesort of vernacular theater and
then they would end with ascreening of their films and a
sort of public forum to discusswhat the films were about, to
discuss the films in relation tothe literature that they were
circulating.
So it was all this very sort ofdemocratic way of, you know, of
(18:36):
engaging with a state-sponsoredproject.
So you know, a lot of peoplehave dismissed both the DeVetco
and the Geik as propaganda.
Propaganda doesn't necessarilyneed to have these negative
connotations, right, propagandacan just be understood, as you
know.
A public service announcement,right, brush your damn teeth.
Who's going to disagree withthat?
(18:58):
So if somebody comes to you andhas told you for decades that
you can't vote, right Becauseyou're a union member, for
example, and then the revolutiontriumphs, they come to your
house, they knock on your doorand it's like hey, welcome back
to Cuban democracy.
This is what you have to do tomake your voice heard.
That's the sort of likepropaganda or public service
(19:20):
announcement that anybody canget behind, and that's what the
ICAIC was, and the DVEDCO, to alesser extent, were trying to do
.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So I'd imagine that, you know, based on that, there
was at least in my mind to makesense that there was a pretty
positive response to theseorganizations or feel free to
correct me if that's not true.
As you're saying, right, if anorganization is telling me how
to clean water, how to take careof my kids, like that seems to
be, you know, a lot morebeneficial, especially in rural
(19:49):
places of the islands, asopposed to you know who to vote
for, or to an extent maybe, butyou know it's not strictly
political, is more so.
What I'm trying to say, right,it's also about the social
well-being of the communities,which I find really impressive.
But I guess, to that point then, what were some of the
strengths and weaknesses of bothorganizations?
(20:10):
And another piece that I'd bereally interested to hear about
is, I'm sure, based off theseorganizations, there are
filmmakers that are, you know,growing and developing their own
craft, coming through them.
So how do they play a factor innot only what is happening with
the organizations but also howthe organizations are
influencing these?
You know, more modern set offilmmakers coming out of Puerto
(20:33):
Rico and Cuba.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Excellent question.
I'll focus on the individualfilmmakers first, because that's
sort of an approach that'susually not used in the case of
the DeVetco.
In the case of the Ikaik, it'svery well known, their
filmmakers are very well knownas individual artists.
In the case of the DeVeco,that's not really the case.
So in the Icaic, of course,there are the major figures, the
(20:57):
first of which is AlfredoGuevara.
Alfredo Guevara was the founderof the Icaic, but long before
then he was one of FidelCastro's best friends.
He founded a sort of cine cluband film library with two
filmmakers who would eventuallyalso become part of the founding
group of the ICAIC.
These are very well known TomásGutiérrez-Alea and Julio García
(21:20):
Pinoza.
You know, if you've seenMemories of Underdevelopment,
then you've seen Gutiérrez-Aleafilm.
So yeah, these three.
But later, people like SaraGomez, like you know, an
Afro-Cuban woman filmmaker whowas a pioneering presence in
Cuban documentary but also LatinAmerican documentary proper,
(21:42):
who is just now getting her dueas all her films are being
restored I think it's YorkUniversity, so keep an eye out
on that.
People like Humberto Solas,right, fernando Perez.
So Cuba has this storiedhistory of like auteurs, right
Like film filmmakers who hadtheir own signature styles.
The DeVetco didn't quite havethat.
(22:03):
The DeVetco was mostly foundedby North American filmmakers or
North American artists whobecame filmmakers when they went
to Puerto Rico.
Among the most famous ones areJack and Irene Delano and Edwin
and Louis Roskam.
So you'll notice these are twocouples.
They were photographers, all ofthem who worked in the New Deal
(22:28):
, so I think they worked for theFarm Security Administration in
the 1930s and early 40s.
They did some work in PuertoRico in the early 40s, which is
how they sort of fell in lovewith the island In the immediate
post-war years where you knowthe US sort of started paying
attention to Puerto Rico as asort of strategic military point
(22:48):
.
But also, you know, they werekind of forced because of
growing unrest in the island topay attention to what they were
doing down there.
They sent Jack Delano and theRoskins to Puerto Rico to sort
of start this film and graphicsand literature program through
the Parks and RecreationDepartment for some reason.
(23:10):
And basically it was an earlyDeVetco.
This is 1946 into 47.
So a lot of films about sort of, you know, boiling your water
before drinking it, washing yourhands.
There's a really important oneabout sort of blood drawing
right and getting your blooddrawn to be able to like find
(23:32):
diseases or find you know howdoctors are gonna use needles
and things like that.
And that was like the immediateprecursor to the De Vetco.
Once the De Vetco was founded in1949, luis Munoz Marin, the
governor, makes it a point tohire local talent, right To sort
of like treat the De Vetco asquote local talent, right To
(23:52):
sort of like treat the DeVetcoas quote a schoolhouse on the
screen.
And that was a schoolhouse notjust for the audiences, right,
the people in the villages whowere watching the films, but
also the filmmakers and thegraphic artists and the
screenwriters who were makingthe films.
So among this early group youhave Amin Caltirado.
So among this early group youhave Amin Caltirado, you have
(24:13):
Luis Maisonet, you have Ángel FRivera, michael Smetancourt, so
a lot of Puerto Rican artistswho were usually involved
somewhere between the theaterand the screen, right, sometimes
as actors, other times theywere directors.
The DeVetco basically taughtthese artists to play different
(24:34):
roles and through the 1950s theyall sort of developed in their
own direction, but of coursetheir formations as artists were
facilitated by the De Vetcoitself.
It's important to note that theDe Vetco wasn't just a film
program, right.
It had three productionsections that were called cinema
, graphics and literature, andin each one of these you have,
(24:58):
like, huge names in the artscene of the Tevetco.
Some of them were already hugein the 1940s and 50s, others
became so through the Tevetco.
So in the literature you canname people like René Marqués,
pedro Juan Soto, emilioDíaz-Balcalce, so very
well-known novelists of the time.
(25:19):
In graphics you have RafaelTufiño and Lorenzo Omar, which I
hate this term, but if anybodyin Puerto Rico uses the phrase
old masters they're usuallyreferring to people like Lorenzo
Mar and Rafael Tufiña.
But the thing about having likethese very seasoned artists in
the Divetco is that they wereable to train like a newer
(25:42):
generation of Puerto Ricanartists that sort of developed
their own voice, their own styleand, in terms of cinema, their
own vision.
And I'm not going to get toointo the individual trajectories
of each artist, because it'sall very fascinating how they
all individually wanted toconstruct the national cinema in
Puerto Rico, in which the DeVetco would only be a small part
(26:03):
.
So they tried to use the DeVetco as a sort of jumping off
point to make a national cinema,and they all had different
proposals for it.
Some of them wanted to workexclusively through the De Vetco
right.
They truly believed in thegovernor's agenda right of the
Puerto Rican Commonwealth.
Others tried to use the DeVetco to sort of further their
(26:28):
own film careers by getting theDe Vetco to pay for film schools
, getting the DeVetco to pay togo to film seminars or film
festivals in Europe and all thatand they sort of built a vast
network that way.
Others jumped into a nascentprivate film industry in Puerto
Rico, and when I say private Imean mostly Hollywood B-movies
(26:50):
and sort of like earlyexploitation cinema that was
being filmed in the island.
So a lot of films from the1950s that say that they're set
in the South Pacific areactually made in Puerto Rico.
Things like that, that type ofreally bad film, softcore,
pornography there was a lot ofthat in the 1960s being filmed
(27:11):
in Puerto Rico.
You know, as theaters startedstruggling getting people into
the through the doors theystarted showing more skin in the
60s.
So Puerto Rico became sort oflike the playground for excuse
my language, but the shittiestkinds of film that you can
imagine.
And DeVetco filmmakers sort ofuse these opportunities to
(27:32):
polish their technique, to likefurther their own careers and in
a lot of respects it was a sortof like failed project.
A lot of them ended up workingin television or going back to
the theater, or they enteredacademia, became teachers,
became professors, which is nota failure in their own right,
but it definitely did not meetthe standards that they had set
(27:54):
themselves, which was to createa Puerto Rican national cinema.
And then the one artist that Ido want to talk about that sort
of unites these two islands isOscar Torres.
Oscar Torres was a Dominicanfilmmaker who joined the DeVetco
in 1954, made three films forthem between 54 and 58.
(28:17):
And in 59, he mysteriouslydisappears from Puerto Rico and
reappears in Cuba in 1960,making films for the Icaic.
So there are a lot of gaps inhis record, but he's a
fascinating character.
He grew up in a relativelywell-placed family in Santo
Domingo in the DominicanRepublic.
(28:39):
All of them were avowedanti-Trujillo organizers and
activists and they funded sortof like anti-Trujillo or
anti-dictatorship organizationsand all that.
His cousin, moises de Soto, wasa very well-known Dominican
revolutionary right who famouslyconspired against Trujillo in
the 1940s.
(29:00):
Then Oscar Torres himself sortof got in trouble in the
Dominican Republic for attendingthese meetings and sort of like
agitating against Trujillo andsort of like agitating against
Trujillo even as he was workingas a film critic for Rafael
Trujillo's newspaper El Caribe.
So while he was publishingreviews of Italian neorealist
(29:21):
films, he was sort of likecalling for Trujillo's head, you
know, moonlighting as arevolutionary.
So in the 1950s he gets exiledfrom the Dominican Republic.
You know, very common aroundthose days.
It was either like leave theisland or mysteriously disappear
.
He goes to Rome to study film atthe Centro Experimental de
(29:43):
Cinematografia, which is theirfilm school in Italy and
basically where Italianneorealism was being taught to
the rest of the world.
And once there he went to allsorts of film festivals, you
know, in the Soviet Union butalso the sort of satellite
(30:04):
countries around there.
So he went to Prague, he wentto Poland, he went to Romania
and sort of was exposed to thissort of radical and experimental
cinema that he didn't know ofbeforehand.
He was very Western in his sortof like tastes and that
radicalized him even more.
And over there in Rome he alsomeets Tomas Gutierrez Alea and
(30:26):
Julio Garcia Pinosa, whothemselves were fleeing a
dictator in Cuba, you know,under the guise of like
furthering their film education.
So these three meet there.
They all graduate in 1953.
In 54, oscar Torres goes toPuerto Rico, while the other two
return to Cuba.
His credentials right as agraduate of the Rome Film School
(30:56):
to join the DeVetco and becausehe has all this training, he
basically becomes the mostseasoned filmmaker, or at least
you know, caribbean-bornfilmmaker, in the DeVetco.
So he could be director ofphotography, he could be
director, he wrote screenplaysright, he was an actor we
already know.
He was a film critic andjournalist.
So really, even though he waslike an actor, we already know
he was a film critic andjournalist.
So really, even though he waslike one of the younger members,
he was more experienced than alot of them and he was Dominican
(31:20):
, which is a story that's notreally told about the DeVetco.
The DeVetco, this grand nationalproject built on Dominican
labor and Dominican expertiseVery standard story in Puerto
Rico actually.
But yeah, oscar Torres madesome films there.
He quickly became disillusionedwith the Puerto Rican
(31:41):
Commonwealth and by 1958, he wassort of like done, you know,
sort of propagandizing forAmerican colonialism.
He was done making sort of likemilquetoast, liberal, liberal,
educational cinema.
And he fell off the map andwent to Cuba in 1959, joined the
(32:03):
ICAIC and he was actually madehead of the didactic documentary
department.
So he made two films in Cuba,none of them really
documentaries, they're more likedocudramas, or one of them's a
historical epic.
One of them is called TierraOlvidada, forgotten Land, from
1960, which is about the Ciénagade Zapata, the Zapata swamps in
(32:26):
the southern middle part of theisland, well known for, you
know, abject poverty for howremote it is from the nearest
sort of like cities.
They didn't have like publicinfrastructure hospitals,
schools, roads, trains, bridgesand really one of the first
projects of the revolution wasto go into the swamp, drain
(32:48):
parts of it and buildinfrastructure so that residents
of the swamp would know thatthey were being integrated into
this revolutionary project.
In fact, one of the first filmsthat the two Cuban students in
Rome made when they went back toCuba was precisely about the
Zapata swamps, called El Merano.
So clearly this was like a sorespot, you know, for Puerto
(33:08):
Rican society, like how can wepretend to be this modern nation
where we have these peopleliving in the swamps with some
of the lowest life expectancy inthe world?
So Oscar Torres tackled that in1960s, as soon as he became
part of the Icai, his secondfilm, ralengo 18, which is
(33:31):
Ralengo 18, is a sort ofhistorical epic about a peasant
uprising that happened outsideGuantanamo in the 1930s.
So around this time in 1961,the Cuban Revolution had already
declared itself socialist right.
So they were making moreoutwardly sort of radical and
(33:54):
socialist cinema, and OscarTorres was a part of these
initial experiments in making atruly state socialist national
cinema.
But isn't that crazy, like thefact that he was exiled from the
Dominican Republic, trained inItalian neorealism in Rome,
(34:17):
where he becomes a communist,then goes to Puerto Rico and,
almost like betrays his ownpolitics, making these films
that are being used to entrenchthe Puerto Rican political
status with the US, and thenjust falls off the map.
And when he pops up he's arevolutionary in Cuba.
So I just think like he is oh,a detail that I left behind.
(34:42):
He's also a gay man, an openlygay man, which would have been
an added obstacle in all ofthese locations for him.
So he's truly like thispan-Caribbean figure sort of
trying to position himselfsomewhere on the political
spectrum, but he keeps runninginto sort of historical
(35:02):
realities of these three islandsthat he's actively working to
liberate right the DominicanRepublic, puerto Rico and Cuba,
and so I suspect that he leavesthe Cuban Revolution because he
was sort of in disagreementabout how it was growing closer
to the Soviet sphere ofinfluence.
He was kind of disappointedabout how the ICAIC had begun
(35:27):
consolidating film production inCuba.
So one of his best friends,néstor Almendros, who he met in
Italy, had a film producinggroup in Cuba, lunes de
Revolución, which got banned in1961 when he was there and
there's no way to know for sure,but sort of freewheeling
(35:49):
personality like Oscar Torres.
He wouldn't have been veryhappy seeing these early
instances of censorship, and notjust censorship but just
government interventionism incultural practice more than
anything.
So he returns to Puerto Ricosometime in 1962 or 1963, a sort
(36:09):
of defeated man.
By now he's able to return tothe Dominican Republic because
he's Rafael Trujillo.
The dictator had beenassassinated.
He's no longer running the samerisks going back to the
Dominican Republic, but he sortof aligns himself with the
liberal reforms of Juan Bush,the Dominican president and
(36:30):
presidential candidate later,and his politics become
de-radicalized to an extent thatactually he actually comes
closer to the politics of 1950s,puerto Rico in the 1960s, and
by then he's more of astruggling artist.
He's taking bit jobs where hecan and ultimately he passes
(36:53):
away early in 1968, at the ageof 35, if I'm not mistaken.
So even though he is like thisvery hopeful transnational
radical reformist figure, he'salso a tragic figure in a way.
But what is mostly known abouthim in Caribbean film history is
this aspect of tragedy, and alot of the work that I'm doing
(37:15):
in trying to weave together hisentire career and his political
aspirations is to sort of resistlooking at his life through the
lens of tragedy and trying tosee him as a fully realized
filmmaker but also activist andradical.
Sorry, alexandria, can you tellthat?
This is the thing I've beenwriting?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yes, no worries.
Oh God, I was like, oh, heloves this so much.
That's what I've been over herethinking.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
He's, he's the missing link between this two,
these two cinemas.
I guess is why I'm so into hisstory.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And it makes sense, I mean, as you painted out for us
, right, he's clearly moving Ofcourse we talk about migration
all the time, moving throughoutthe region.
I'm sort of really captivated byhow central he plays a figure
in all of these places, right,right, and of course leadership
and domination obviously takepart, but you know, to see how
he's moved through not just theCaribbean, but of course his
(38:17):
time spent in Italy isremarkable and that's what I
always love about history.
In a lot of these ways, youalways find these niche points
where, you know, we started outthinking we were talking about
just film history, right, but weget this remarkable story of
this man who, you know,sometimes goes overlooked when
we, you know, gloss over things.
And speaking of that, right, Istarted our conversation with
(38:40):
this story of, you know, theGodfather screenings in Cuba and
I just, you know, would reallylove to hear your take on piracy
and how it played a factor.
You've definitely walked usthrough films that these
organizations created, but howdo you think piracy played a
factor in sort of understandingthat?
You know, of course people wantto access films coming from
(39:03):
other parts of the world, butwhat does this also say about,
you know American culturalinfluence amidst the national
sentiment.
That's happening as well.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, that's a good question.
It sort of ties into thequestion you asked earlier that
I forgot to answer because Iwent on a long tangent about
Oscar Torres.
Educational cinema is kind ofbogus, right, like that's not
what spectators want to see,especially if they're already
(39:43):
familiar with, you know,hollywood film, european art
film, and even like theextremely popular Mexican and
Brazilian films that showed inall these these islands at
around that time.
So really, you know, neitherCubans nor Puerto Ricans stopped
watching Hollywood film or longform features from other
countries.
The revolution in Cubainitially tried to do that.
(40:07):
Right, they tried to say that,yeah, hollywood is cultural
imperialism, right, imperialism,right.
They propped up this boogeymanof like.
This is one of the sort of likepsychological ways that US
imperialism sort of is manifestin the global South.
That was early in the revolution, as a response to the embargo.
Very quickly, though, theCubans realized that they
(40:32):
couldn't just depend on theirown or their allies' film
infrastructures, that the Cubanpeople also wanted to see what
was going on in the rest of theworld.
Right, and part of the world ismostly aligned with capitalism,
right and world liberalism, butalso just the cinema that they
were used to prior to therevolution.
(40:53):
So they opened up their screensto Hollywood films relatively
early and their reasoning wasthe embargo can be economic,
right, but we're not going toallow it to become cultural.
And that was the sort ofposition that the ICAIC took to
showing films from the formerfirst world in Cuba, because the
(41:19):
embargo prevented Hollywood tonegotiate directly with Cuba.
What they did is that theyusually went through a third
nation In the 70s it was mostlySalvador Allende's Chile, right,
because they had also beenembargoed or not embargoed, but
their trade with the US was sortof restricted after his
(41:42):
election.
So if you look at the catalog ofthe Ikaik and you don't even
have to look at the catalog,just look at the film posters
that the Ikaik was making in the1960s you'll notice a ton of
American films.
You'll notice a ton of British,french, italian films, right,
but they seem to be sort ofhandpicked.
(42:02):
They're not going to showeverything, right, they're not
going to show Alice inWonderland or something like
that, for no reason.
They picked films, carefullycurated, films that sort of
aligned with the ideology andthe project of the Cuban
Revolution.
So they had films that showedsort of like social unrest, that
had sort of you know,historical materialist
(42:25):
interpretations of recent events.
So a lot of war films made inthe US didn't make it into Cuba
because for Cubans that wasbasically fantasy, right, it was
like an alternate reality, thisidea of the American soldier as
a sort of hero, an individual,as opposed to like a death
machine.
Anyway, so in the 1970s thissort of infatuation with
(42:51):
American cinema really becomesentrenched in, not just in Cuban
culture but also in the cultureof the Icaic.
So the Icaic starts bringing in, even like films from the new
Hollywood, so even Spielbergfilms, francis Ford Coppola
films.
So these films that don'timmediately have this
anti-capitalist sort of latentinterpretation in them, they get
(43:15):
brought in.
And, as you mentioned, one ofthe big ones was the Godfather,
particularly the Godfather PartII.
So it was brought in a littlebit late.
I think the first Godfathermust have came out in 73, but it
was brought to Cuba in 75.
The Corleone family was sort oftaken as a microcosm of
American society, right when youhad, like this collusion
(43:39):
between organized crime,government and private capital,
which, if you look at it thatway then yeah, it's a perfect
sort of like encapsulation ofthe American dream.
And so they were both broughtto Cuba through third country.
It wasn't Chile anymore by themid-70s, since Pinochet was in
(44:01):
power, and they were screened togreat fanfare.
It's become very, it's verycommon.
If you ask like a Cuban personlike what their favorite film is
like, give them 10 tries andthey'll mention the Godfather.
And this is across thepolitical spectrum, by the way,
which is another thing that sortof captures my attention, like
what are they seeing that I amnot seeing?
(44:23):
But yeah, so in 1977, I think,cuba even invites Francis Ford
Coppola to come to Cuba topresent his films and to talk
about making the Godfather,which was, by the way, filmed in
the Dominican Republic, likeright next door to Cuba, and has
(44:44):
scenes that are set during theCuban Revolution.
So there's this idea that thisfilm, even though it's a
Hollywood product, it's made bya leftist filmmaker in a way,
which is Francis Ford Coppola,and even though it's taken the
perspective of a mafia familyright, very hard to sympathize
with, it's sort of showing likethe ills, the corruption and the
(45:08):
sort of like decrepit state ofAmerican democracy.
And I think the Godfather filmsbeing this popular in Cuba sort
of opened the floodgates, so tospeak.
So another huge film in Cuba wasJaws a few years later.
So Steven Spielberg, it wascalled Bloody Shark in Spanish.
(45:32):
I mean, I've only read thereviews.
I don't really, I can't reallysay what you know the sort of
political spin was.
But Fidel Castro personallyscreened that film in his
residence and there was somebodythere who asked him like so
what is it?
What is it about this film thatyou know that's so important
(45:54):
for the revolution?
Right, you had like this bigpremiere.
You had like film posters madefor it.
It was covered in the wholepress, like what's Marxist about
this film?
And then Fidel Castro likelooks at the reporter and says
the shark.
That's hilarious, one of myfavorite apocryphal stories of
(46:15):
this time.
So we can sit here andintellectualize, like cuban
piracy of hollywood film in the1970s.
But I think if we want to takea simpler approach, we can just
say file castro was a big fan ofhollywood, he was a big fan of
coppola, he was a big fan ofspielberg and that's kind of why
(46:36):
he found a way to pirate thefilms.
Bring them in.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
You've given us quite a few names of certain films,
but do you have any others thatyou know, in my love of all
things Caribbean popular culturethat you feel like are really
reflective of this?
You know 50s, 60s, 70s periodfor Cuban and Puerto Rican films
, just films to watch.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah, I would say.
In the case Puerto Rico, in1959, a lot of De Vetco
filmmakers worked on a filmcalled Maruja by an Argentinian
filmmaker called Oscar OrzavalQuintana who was based in Puerto
Rico and made a lot of sort ofromance melodramas, even though
it's a film made by anArgentinian.
You can sort of see theaspirations of DeBetco
(47:21):
filmmakers of the type ofnational cinema that they wanted
to make through this film.
So if you just read like thesynopsis, it's like a typical,
you know Latin Americanmelodrama from the 1950s based
on like the Mexican Golden Agestyle.
But if you actually watch thefilm, you'll notice that there
are a ton of scenes with, likeyou know, puerto Rican trova and
(47:44):
Puerto Rican danza and musicalstyles and genres that are like
native to the island dances, youknow, and other sort of like
folk expressions of Puerto Ricancultures that bleed into the
film itself.
And then also just knowing thata lot of Puerto Rican cultures
that bleed into the film itself,and then also just knowing that
a lot of Puerto Ricanfilmmakers were part of the film
, a part of the crew, it's sortof like a I always prop it up as
(48:07):
you know what could have beenor what the Puerto Ricans sort
of wanted to make.
Even if it's not necessarilylike my cup of tea or my
favorite type of film, even ifit's not necessarily like my cup
of tea or my favorite type offilm, in the case of Cuba, I
really recommend Oscar Torres'Ralengo 18,.
So Ralengo 18 from 1962.
So this is the film, the famoussort of uprising of the Ralengo
(48:31):
in 1934.
But you can sort of see this in1961.
It's when the Icai was tryingto break out of its documentary
(48:58):
box, so to speak.
So Ralengo was a film that wasmade almost outside the
influence of the Icaic.
Oscar Torres was on the otherside of the island completely.
He was working with his ownfilm crew, he was head of his
own department, so he didn'thave any direct oversight and he
ended up making a film that isso different from the other
films, the other Cuban filmsthat were being made around the
time, especially long featurefilms, such as something like
Histories of Revolution, whichis more in a neorealist style,
and the Adventures of JuanQuinquín, a comedy by Julio
Garcia Pinosa.
Well, scott Torres' film is, ofcourse, a historical epic, but
(49:24):
it's also like picking andchoosing which neorealist
techniques or which sort of likestyles it borrows from and then
construct, like this weirdFrankenstein Italian, neorealist
, soviet-style edited historicalepic that, seen in the context
(49:44):
of what Cuba was producingaround that time, stands out as
very idiosyncratic.
It also helps to know thecontext.
Oscar Torres left Cuba beforehe was able to finish this film,
so as mysteriously as heentered Cuba, that's how he left
it as well.
So it's also sort of anincomplete project.
It's just a 60-minute film, soyou don't know if it was meant
(50:07):
to be that way or not.
And there are things about itthat are sort of like not super
congruent with one another.
But I guess you could say whatinterests me most about these
Caribbean national cinemas arethese sort of missed
opportunities, like these modelsthat didn't quite come to
fruition but still constitutelike original proposals right
(50:30):
Maruja on the one hand, eventhough it's made by an
Argentinian, and then Ralengo 18, by Oscar Torres, as a model
for Cuban cinema, even though hewas Dominican.
This sort of like necessarytransnationalism that I think is
missing from Caribbean filmcriticism and Caribbean film
history broadly.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Certainly, I'll be sure to link those for our
listeners who you know reallyyou know to link those for our
listeners who you know reallyyou know more, so want to dive
into the work of DeVetco andIkaik and really underscore.
You know what this momentlooked like within that 50s, 60s
time period.
I want to draw us to a closebecause I think you've woven for
(51:12):
us such a beautiful history andgenealogy of this time period
and how certainly these twoorganizations not only
transformed Puerto Rico and Cubain the 50s and 60s, but how
they inspired other filmmakerswho then went forward to
continue this work.
Right, how do you really seethem having inspired today's
(51:37):
current generation of filmscoming out of both organizations
, or both islands, rather, iswhat I meant to say you know,
every academic has his niche.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Part of the reason that I am, you know,
irretrievably stuck in the 50sand 60s is because this was such
a momentous shift for bothnational cinemas, right, for
better or worse.
In the case of the DeVetco, itstill remains our most cohesive
attempt at establishing nationalcinema.
Even if it was mostly, you know, shorts and sort of
(52:14):
middle-length films,docudramasas and documentaries,
it still constitutes like ourclosest attempt at, you know,
having like this, thriving andcomprehensive catalog of
filmmaking.
And in many ways some artistscontemporary artists, for better
(52:34):
or worse, try to emulate theDeVetco.
There was even one very naivefilm student who went to the
film archive in Puerto Rico andsaid I want to create another
DeVetco and I'm like you knowwhat, that's never going to
happen and we wouldn't want itto happen.
It's very much a product of itstime.
In the case of Cuba, it's justbecause it's become such an
(52:58):
institution right of LatinAmerican film broadly that you
know, I just have a great amountof respect for it, even as it
sort of, like you know, had itspitfalls.
It's made mistakes in itshistory, whether through
censorship or just shelvingcertain artists in favor of
others.
It still exists, it's stillmaking quality cinema.
(53:22):
It's still supporting well lessthan before, but still
supporting contemporaryfilmmakers, even as other sort
of filmmaking bodies andentities and groups in Cuba have
emerged to sort of complementit.
But even if somebody, evenmyself, who I'm highly critical
of the Icaic and the ways thatthey serve as the sort of
(53:45):
mouthpiece for a lot of flawedyou know Cuban politics today
they still sort of have an eyefor talent, they still have a
lot of the resources and thesort of just good taste to make
or to keep the dream of a Cubannational cinema alive, so to
speak.
That was a bit too flatteringof the geek, but I hope you
(54:08):
understand.
Yeah, I wish they supportedmore younger artists.
That is one thing I will say.
But other than that, it's likemost of the well-known and
successful feature films thatare coming out of Cuba are still
being supported by ICAIC in oneway or another, even as they're
being co-produced with, likeFrance or the Netherlands, you
(54:30):
know.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I do think it is not only beautiful to see certain
organizations from the height ofour certain revolutionary
periods in the mid-20th centurystill survive so that's the case
of the IKIC, which is evenstill continuing today, as you
outlined for us, but also I loveto hear that you know the
current generation is stillbeing supported in some ways,
(54:58):
that you know the currentgeneration is still being
supported in some ways, and that, I think, is wonderful to me
when we consider just how youknow our nations and our islands
have changed over the course oftime.
But you've certainly given usso much to learn from and sit
with.
I definitely like feel like I'mgoing to jump into spending my
weekend watching a lot of thesefilms, dr Rodriguez.
So I thank you and appreciateyou so much in sharing your love
(55:19):
and expertise in this filmhistory with us, as always.
You know I will put up some ofthese links to you know where to
possibly watch these films andyou know some material etc.
For our listeners who want tolearn more.
And till next time, look formore, learn more and till next
(55:40):
time, look for more.
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