Blanca Rosa Blanco (1972) has not allowed herself to walk the path of acting alone, although her performances in film and television are enough to make her feel fulfilled. For years, without leaving her acting facet, she has been committed to telling stories behind the scenes.
In 2018 he took his first step with the fiction feature film The return, seen in cinemas throughout Cuba and at international festivals. He continued with his projects from the marketing to the screen. Now with Return (2023), He touches on a subject that has been close to him as well as millions of people around the world: uprooting.
Return was presented on Friday, February 10 at the Chaplin Room of the Cuban Cinematheque.
“The creators have a debt with those who have suffered emigration; with those who have left behind their culture, their family; both in America and in Europe. It is surprising how Cubans in La Palma (Gran Canarias) have kept our customs alive. That makes you feel at home ”, he comments to OnCuba.
Although “The Indians” is also celebrated in Gran Canaria, it is the party par excellence of La Palma, the most popular and crowded.
It was born spontaneously in the 80s and celebrates the return of palmeros to their land, after having emigrated to Latin America in hard times, and particularly to Cuba. In the celebration there are Cuban and Canarian son, guarachas, guajiras and Latin gastronomy.
“The party became a pretext to talk about migration, specifically that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The fact of filming outside of Cuba, under different conditions, with a different work strategy, little budget and time, forced us to put our batteries and not lose a second”, says the actress and filmmaker.
“Migrating is a painful process, and the documentary is a tribute to all those who go to other lands to fulfill a dream,” he adds.
Filmed in La Palma and Tenerife, the 52-minute documentary was produced by Carlos de La Huerta and photographed by Alexander González.
“The investigation was carried out basically in Cuba. In the archives of the José Martí National Library we find extremely valuable documents,” Blanca Rosa told OnCuba. “Many friends also provided me with documents, archive images. Even though we contributed new elements in the documentary, we still had things to tell”.
For the actress, directing has been a path that she found “out of spiritual necessity”.
“From an experience with students from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) I felt the urgency to direct, to tell stories, without betraying the path of acting, of course. There is no reason to divorce things.”
Blanco is already in the process of investigating a new project, about the presence of Dulce María Loynaz in the Canary Islands. “Together with the scriptwriter Amílcar Salatti we are working on this truly interesting story,” he announced.
