Photos: Courtesy of Rudy Mora
Known and respected in the Cuban audiovisual world for setting his own course in the production of music videos and television dramas (Diana, Doble juego), and heavily influenced by the language of the international vanguard, Rudy Mora is the director and screenwriter of Y sin embargo…, a new Cuban feature film that premiered April 10 in the country’s main theaters. Conceived along the same lines as other very successful recent films, such as Juan Carlos Cremata’s Viva Cuba (2005) and Ian Padrón’s Habanastation (2011), the Rudy Mora film explores the desires, emotions and perspectives of Cuban children. It is an adaptation of a production by the Cuban children’s theater company La Colmenita, which in its turn was taken from a piece by Russian Alexander Jmélik and adapted to Cuba’s circumstances and idiosyncrasy by the company’s director, Carlos Alberto Cremata.
The star of the theater production, and now of the movie, is Olo Tamayo, a very young La Colmenita actor who plays Lapatún. The children’s group also provided the actors for Viva Cuba and Habanastation, which are different from Y sin embargo… in that their respective authors have different points of view about what is real, concrete and possible. Rudy Mora’s film begins when a boy is late for his math exam at a music school and justifies his tardiness by inventing a fantastic tale that sparks chaos among the students and worries his teachers. The course of events that follow casts doubt on the veracity of the boy’s tale and creates uncertainly about how possible it is for fantasy and dreams to form part of our everyday, ordinary lives. Other young actors who work with Olo in the film include Ernesto Escalona, Daniel Ramírez, Liliana Sosa and Carolina Fernández, and seasoned veterans include Laura de la Uz, Manuel Porto, Osvaldo Doimeadiós, Raúl Pomares, Fernando Echevarría and Adria Santana.
The film contains certain surprises: Eslinda Núñez sings a cappella for the first time on the big screen, a song by Silvio Rodríguez. For his part, the trova singer not only plays a part in Y sin embargo… — he is also one of the people who suggested to ICAIC that it make a film version — he also contributes more than fourteen songs. Excerpts from songs like La Maza, Historia de las sillas and Paloma mía reinforce the drama of the story and expand on the meaning of the plot. The day that the events in the film unfold, the children are preparing to study Silvio’s music, and his songs are heard floating in the air, in the voices of children and adults. With so much music, it was to be expected that the film’s production would be shared by the Cuban Film Institute and the Artex record label Bis Music.
According to a recent interview, Rudy Mora was motivated to take this story to the big screen after seeing the play, and he feels very close to the spirit of its main character. “I can’t stand lying or a double standard; I am honest no matter what the price. I have a lot of dreams — big ones, medium size ones and little ones. And I wish I had much more imagination than I do. I have a lot of empathy with Y sin embargo…. The most important thing for me is to tell a story, and, if possible, to shake people up a little. To do that, I use different styles or tendencies according to the project. The language of Y sin embargo… was born while I was writing the script, and I respected it in every single shot.” This movie is an attempt to communicate with both children and adults.
