The play The Documentary People, directed by Inti Herrera along with other Cuban filmmakers, will premiere next week in Cuba. It contains testimonies from artists and politicians from the United States and Cuba about the cultural relations between the two countries.
“The film is a love song to cultural relations between Cuba and the United States,” Herrera said this week, in an interview with Laura Bécquer of the agency. Eph.
The documentary was born from the idea of filming the event at the Kennedy Center in Washington, where more than 400 guests performed in 2018, including Cuban artists living on the island and abroad, such as the singer Omara Portuondo and the pianist Aldo López Gavilán.
“The feature film is also a sample of “what independent cinema can do” on the Island,” said Reymel Delgado, producer of the documentary.
The team of seven independent Cuban filmmakers therefore arrived in the US capital with the idea of filming the event at the Kennedy Center, but at the last moment they were denied that possibility despite having made the necessary arrangements.
“We ran out of the subject of the documentary so we had to reinvent everything on the fly, include the film crew within the story and change the entire nature of the project, hence the title of The Documentary People“, explained Herrera, who remarked that the work “can contribute a grain of sand” to establish greater cultural ties between Cuba and the United States.
The work also contains testimonies from the musicians Aymée Nuviola and Arturo O’Farril; the painter José Parlá; the US Secretary of Commerce between 2005 and 2009, Carlos Gutiérrez, and Emily Mendrala (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Department of State), among others.
The Documentary People It will have its premiere on May 5 at the Chaplin cinema in Havana. The independent Cuban production companies FACFILMS, Wajiros Films and La Rueda Films participated in its production, which had the support of the Ministry of Culture.
“The film shows how Cuban independent cinema is made and calls on the new generation of these filmmakers to find the mechanism to achieve projects in synergy,” said Delgado.
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