The well-known Cuban filmmaker León Ichaso died of a massive heart attack during the early hours of Sunday in Los Angeles, California. He was 74 years old.
Born in Havana on August 3, 1948, Ichaso came to the United States in the early 1960s. As a director, his first film in exile was the Spanish-language The supermarket (1979), based on an Off-Broadway play, a true film classic made outside the island about the life and problems of a Cuban family in New York.
He directed Crossover Dreams (1985), bitter sugar (1996) and pinero (2001), feature films that address the problems of a Latin American who lives in the United States, bilingual and yearning to succeed, and a Cuban who has not forgotten his island and has felt the need to project himself before politics, and who can even understand the despair of marginality and bohemia…
He worked on several projects for television, some adaptations of plays. zooman (1995) was one of them about a family dealing with the murder of a child. Execution of Justice (1999) also originated from a play about the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
directed for television Ali: An American Hero (2000) and hendrix (2000). He is also remembered for the biography of Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, The singer, filmed in 2006 and starring Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.
His last movie, Paradise, It was filmed in Miami in 2008 and premiered during the International Festival of that city in March 2009.
Our heartfelt condolences to family, colleagues and friends.
