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In a full-spectrum festival that screens films as short as three minutes, documentaries from first-time directors, and experimental videos from San Francisco-based artist Tony Labat, you would naturally expect to find a full-length feature of the highest order. Which is exactly what you get in director Orlando Rojas’s thoroughly entertaining Las Noches de Constantinopla (Nights in Constantinople).
Something of a padron in the way that Francis Ford Coppola was way back when, giving opportunities to unknown yet future stars, Rojas boasts a 30-year career in Cuban cinema that includes such films as Papeles Secundarios (Supporting Roles, 1989) and Una Novia Para David (A Girlfriend for David, 1985). So it’s fitting that his latest film would kick off the first Festival of Alternative Cuban Cinema, organized by long-time Cuban film presenter Alejandro Rios (see Night & Day, page 32, for festival details). A little Rojas mojo might work to make the festival an annual event.
Even though the film is set in present-day Cuba, it’s a wholly mythical world unto itself: The story revolves around the old aristocratic Lope de Ferrara family living in a large estate in the middle of the city. Yeah right, like Castro would’ve let that slide. And then we meet the family members. There’s Hernan, the innocent young man and central character who writes award-winning erotica; his sister Christiana, a strong-willed prankster and aspiring singer; their morose sleepwalking aunt; a rapscallion uncle; his illegitimate son by the limping, histrionic maid; and Dona Eugenia, a famous painter and matriarch of the house.
It’s a bit like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s brand of magical realism meeting Fellini’s Amarcord, as the kinetic energy of the film rolls seamlessly from scene to scene and the overcontrolling dona falls into a coma upon learning of Hernan’s erotica award. It’s no ordinary coma, but one of a “gluttonous cadaver,” where she still eats, and all the time. Poor Hernan tries to keep the house and family in order, but as Dona Eugenia gradually comes out of her coma, so do the repressed residents of the house.
As fast-paced as the film is, the characters are still compelling and complex, evolving along with a story line that manages to keep you guessing. This is a film by a veteran director in full command of his craft, and should appeal to both serious Cuban cinephiles and the average theater-goer out for an enjoyable movie. If you disagree, you can tell Rojas himself, who will be on hand for a Q&A.
With nearly 100 films packed into four days of screenings for the Festival of Alternative Cuban Cinema, all somehow related to the subject of Cuba, there’s bound to be a wide variety of formats, lengths, and production quality. It’s a fact of life in the film world but especially here, considering that a number of films are from new filmmakers inside Cuba, where resources are few and shorts are the only viable means of expression for young, politically provocative artists.
Never mind; it’s merely another hurdle to jump for Cuban directors like Tamara Morales, who manages to pack a feature-length story into 22 minutes, and tells it with some punch despite spotty production and less-than-fluent English subtitles. Set mostly in a small Havana house, and not one of those classic vaulted-ceiling ones, Dos Hermanos concerns the life of Carlos Alberto and his family (wife, mother, two kids) and, naturally, his brother Ernesto. On the eve of his daughter Karla’s quince, the debutante coming-out party at age fifteen, Carlos Alberto struggles to provide her with even the basics of a decent party like snacks and decorations.
But ever the loyal party man, waiting for the fruits of Castro’s revolution to pay off, Carlos Alberto gets by with a money-stretching lifestyle that includes cutting the tops off cans to use them as cups, “a good invention,” he muses. We see him at work pushing a wheelbarrow with a block of ice loaded in it, sweating through the bleak and dusty landscape of a high-rise housing project. “I have been assigned a big responsibility task,” he parrots about his job.
It’s when brother Ernesto cruises up in his old Chevy, unloading cases of beer and gifts, that the film seems to get to its point. The suave Ernesto is all about the new Cuba, playing loose within the system and doing whatever it takes to live a comfortable life; in other words, a capitalist.
With his sexy wife, fancy clothes, and fine rum, he can’t help but flaunt his wealth in front of his demoralized brother, setting up both types of confrontation (literal and metaphoric).
The film has lots of spirit, even if it’s a bit obvious and edges into telenovela territory at the end. Still it’s interesting to see what young Cuban filmmakers are up to, and what the take on the situation in the country is from someone living there — not from this side of the Florida Straits.
