ABOUT THE FILM
I interviewed some of the writers in the Havana-based collective Group Ariete on a trip to Cuba in January 2017. I asked them about life, creativity, spirituality and the future.
Phrases from their responses were cut up and set to music from the Antilles Violin Concerto performed by the Cuban National Symphony and imagery I shot around Havana, in an outsider’s reflection on contemporary Cuban thought, history, and the outlook toward a complicated future.
I named the short film that emerged “Es Confuso”– an excerpt taken from the first sentence of the first interview that was recorded for this project.
In 2018 and 2019, the film was screened in a few small festivals around the states and internationally. As of February 2020, I have only been able to share the audio of the film with the participants from Group Ariete – the link to a 480p version of the 5 minute film was too much bandwidth to load at their location in Havana!
ABOUT GROUP ARIETE
Ariete is a collective of young writers based in Havana, Cuba founded in mid-2014, by graduates of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center for Literary Training. In 2018, with author and mentor Raúl Aguiar, the group published “Ariete”, an anthology of short stories, published by Editorial Guantanamera and Lantia Publishing.
In 2019, “Ariete” won the Best Fiction - Multi Author category at the 21st International #ILBA Latino Book Awards, held in Los Angeles.
Paperback and kindle copies of the book are available online, through the publisher Lantia, and Amazon.
Purchasing this book is a small act you can do to support direct economic relations with Cuban people, regardless of political orientation. At the moment, the only version is in Spanish, but even if you aren’t fluent, it makes a great gift or donation to your local library or book store.
ABOUT THE ANTILLES VIOLIN CONCERTO
Music for Es Confuso consists of excerpts taken from the Antilles Violin Concerto, composed and conducted by Guido Lopez Gavilán, and performed by the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba, with First Violin Ilmar Gavilán (of the acclaimed Harlem Quartet). Used and licensed with the permission of the Gavilán family.
The Antilles Violin Concerto is a transcendent musical journey through a mythological genesis of Cuba and its Afro-Euro heritage. Its original title, Por El Mar de las Antillas, Anda un Violin is a playful take on Cuban Poet Nicolas Guillen’s well known children’s poem Por El Mar de las Antillas, Anda un Barco de Papel, which tells the tale of two children-- one of Spanish and one African heritage-- co-captaining a paper boat on the Caribbean Sea and navigating the wonders and dangers of the sea together.
According to Ilmar, the Antilles Concerto grows from that folkloric space in 3 movements that witness the geological genesis of Cuba, evolution of Afro-Euro heritage, and cultural culmination into a full Cuban montuno.
Text from Guillen’s Son Numbero 6 is also referenced in the 3rd movement, as the chorus chants “Congo, Mandinga, Carabali!”
¿Que es confuso?
The idea of “confusion” in the title doesn’t only come from the first line heard in the film (and very first words recorded during these interviews), but represented a state of mind for me as an American when I try to make sense of the history and ethics of US/Cuba relations since 1898, and how it underlies the complexity of problems that everyday Cubans face, when thinking about the future.
What wasn’t confusing at all, was the intelligence, diversity, independence, and openness of the writers I met, and their warmth in welcoming and collaborating with a stranger (and American at that) on a spontaneous and improvisational endeavor.
In sharing this short film with Americans on the privileged side of an embargo, I hope it adds to the calls from millions of other Americans, Cubans, and governments around the world, to think about more creative and compassionate ways to engage with history, and our neighbors just 80 miles to the south– neighbors that still deal with unnecessary hardships every day, from living under an authoritarian government, and a punishing American embargo that has been choking them out from vital resources since 1963.