LALIFF 2011: CUBAN FILMS

A scene from Chico & Rita.

Cubatopia

By Ed Rampell

The 15^th annual Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival is taking place in Hollywood through July 25, and the Hispanic-oriented film fete is screening a number of Cuban features and documentaries this year. They include: The nonfiction works Los 100 Sones Cubanos (100 Cuban Songs); the nonfiction, hip-hop themed Revolution about El Band Aldo, which, according to LALIFF, is censored in Cuba; the surfing doc, Havana Surf; the animated feature with music, Chico & Rita; and Boleto a Paraiso (Ticket to Paradise).

Director/co-writer Gerardo Chijona’s unforgettable, riveting Ticket to Paradise helps to redefine so-called “socialist realism,” which, under the Stalinists, was often neither “socialist” nor “realist,” but frequently propagandistic in the crudest sense Instead of brawny proletarians and peasants riding shiny tractors in a workers’ paradise, viewers of the ironically named Ticket to Paradise will see images of: AIDS, prostitution, drug use, suicide, sexual abuse/ incest, crime, homosexuality, graphic nudity, sex acts, homelessness, dumpster diving, alienated youth, underground heavy metal concerts, Cuba’s counterculture, etc.

The feature is set during the 1990s’ so-called “Special Period,” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although Cuba lost its greatest economic supporters, Havana’s U.S.S.R. and Comecon East Bloc allies, the socialist David still had to contend with that Yanqui Goliath only 90 miles away. 

A Spanish-Cuban co-production made with the participation of the official ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos), Ticket to Paradise is far more hard hitting than any Hollywood, theatrically released feature dealing with AIDS, teen sexuality, etc., I can think of, including 2003’s powerful Thirteen, starring Holly Hunter as a beleaguered mom of a teen gone wild. 

If there is a propagandistic element to the frank Ticket to Paradise it could be in the depiction of these excellent medical facilities, with their motivated, benevolent doctors and nurses, which reminded me of the New Deal camp the Joad family visited in the 1940 John Ford classic, The Grapes of Wrath. Even during the severe deprivations during the depths of the Special Period revolutionary Cubans somehow provided free healthcare for the least of those amongst them -- something bourgeois America has yet to do.

The ensemble cast delivers powerhouse performances, notably Miriel Cejas as Eunice, the runaway teen sexually molested by her father, and her longhaired boyfriend Alejandro (Hector Medina). Chijona deftly directs them and has created a searing cinematic work reminiscent and in the best tradition of the self critical trend of Cuban cinema, as exemplified by Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s 1968 classic, Memories of Underdevelopment. Like his motion picture predecessor, Chijona has made a most memorable movie, one that further develops, refines and redefines socialist realism.

Hopefully, the senseless 50-year-old blockade and embargoof Cuba will end soon so, among many other reasons, American moviegoers can have the right to buy tickets to see more great films, like Ticket to Paradise.