The young filmmaker Carlos Lechuga is immersed in preparing his second feature film: Habana, territorio vampiro (Havana, vampire territory). With this suggestive title it comes to us this project that will become the first Cuban film showing flesh and bone vampires, heirs, in a way, of the disciples of Dracula who decades ago broke into our screens by the hands of Juan Padrón. The capital of all Cubans was already overrun by zombies and now it is the turn of these resurrected to make their incursions in the city. OnCuba was on the trail of this new release and found its filmmaker who gave exclusive details.
Why shooting another vampire story in Havana?
Our filmography is very small and sometimes if two comedies are made in the same year, several people say: Another comedy? O this year that there are several LGBT movies, you hear people saying: Another gay movie? My friends and neighbors ask me: Why doing a vampire movie? Why another one? And I always tell them: And why not? In Cuba we are not accustomed to horror films, in fact this would be the first feature film about vampires, previously we only had two animated films. It is a question I see it is provoking great concern to us here, but outside Cuba or even here when dealing with foreign film, I see nobody when watching Saturday night movie and saying: “Another America thriller.” I think we should make all kinds of movies and much more. When increasing national film options we will also begin to stop counting.
What major differences will it have with its predecessors of the genre?
I think my film is going to be different because beyond the story, I want to use a completely half-breed, mulatto and black casting and my main characters, those moving the story, are women. This is not very common in genre cinema where heroes are strong and white men. The few occasions when African descent actors play vampires have always been treated with sarcasm or irony. My vampires aspire to be very entertaining but at the same time will be closer to the common people than any foreign vampire. After Melaza, I was eager to make a very sensorial film, and as it is known, vampires are always related to sex, blood and death and I had several ideas for a story of a teen’s sexual awakening. The story takes place in the 1990s in Cuba. Due to the fall of the socialist bloc, Cuba is immersed in its worst economic crisis and the Cuban vampires have no other choice but to ration blood. Our protagonist is 18 and is a wimp vampire who has been overprotected all along his by his mother and grandmother. One night while out hunting his mother and grandmother are killed and the boy has to go out to avenge his family. It’s like a revenge movie but with vampires. And the boy is going to be taught by the women he finds in his way. So, this may be the first vampire movie where women are not only treated as an object of desire, but also with qualities that on other occasions would only be for male characters. It may be the first feminist vampire movie.
What is the story about?
By the hands of Natalia, a beautiful teen vampire, the boy enters a world of desire and revenge, which is opposed to education given by his mother and grandmother … Leaving aside his fear, he should fight the bad while trying to stay as humanly possible. I have seen many films about vampires lately, seeking what rules can be skipped and what should stay and, for example, I know that my vampires can sunbathe, they look pretty normal, just some skinny and haggard and have rotten and stained teeth due to lack of good blood. In addition, Cuban identity and sensuality are going to be something I have not seen before and I want to try it now. I want to delve into certain aspects of the genre. Cubans vampires do not flee at high speed, because they do it in bikes… Cuban vampires ration blood … Cuban vampires are very sexual, still do not know if it’s a cliché or not … The Cubans vampires make their weapons using old spare parts… The Cuban vampires are half-breed and dressed with simplicity…
What is the biggest challenge of a Cuban film of vampires?
My intention is that the genre to be seriously taken. We always thought that dramas or arthouse films of festivals are more serious, deeper and more important to society. For years the criticism and sometimes specialized audiences have looked with an evil eye or paternalism genres like comedy, which almost certainly is harder to do it well than making a good drama. Sometimes not even the filmmakers themselves know how to deal with a sci-fi or horror film and respond with mood or reluctantly. I think with terror or horror or action or police movies we can be as deep as with the dramas. There is Kubrick’s The Shining, Borgman by Alex Van Wanderman, Birds by Hitchcock, Vampyr by Dreyer… Anyway, for me the special effects are never going to be a challenge because the film would never rest only in that. Achieving a compact team and quite original script will greatly help in the shooting.
For several years in the international cinema vampires have become fashionable. Therefore the topic has been repeatedly treated. Do you think that the Cuban identity is the novelty you offer with this release?
The current trend in outsider genre cinema, non made in USA or UK, consists in grabbing aesthetic guidelines and laws established by the mainstream cinema and subvert them because trying to compare or achieve that level of high technology for our budgets is sometimes harder, so almost everyone just add some of the experiences of his country and does something different and thus also creates a new discourse, more of his own. Havana: Vampire Territory is a very personal film; the names of the characters are the real names of my family. I spent my childhood, during the hard years of 1990s, in the midst of the most surreal economic crisis in the history of mankind.
Why did you locate the story in the special period?
The “Special Period”. That “Period”, in the eyes of any child, seemed a horror movie: The power cuts left the city in darkness during all night. Hunger and the need gave rise to the emergence of a large number of urban legends about how people had to hunt cats and dogs for food. How is this film going to be seen? My benchmark in terms of visuality and staging is Blade Runner but retouched by the aesthetics of socialist realism in the USSR, especially since the 1990s allowed Cubans to overflow all their imagination: they built candles and lighters for “blackouts “with waste, televisions and washing machines were very rustic. Everything will place us in a parallel world. So yes, there are much Cuban identity and much of the way of being of Cubans in the film as well as, as it is tradition in Cuban cinema, there will be a social concern drawn with terrifying elements.
Which actors will be involved in the film?
Well, as part of the search for financing I filmed a five minutes trailer and there I was lucky to work with actors like Luis Alberto Garcia and Rachel Pastor who return to work together after Molinas test. Besides them, the film will have several female characters that are very important and several young actors who are between 14 and 19 years. Recently, several Cuban actors living abroad have taken the initiative to take some pictures, a kind of casting on the web, characterized as vampires and they have sent that work to my Facebook account. I think it is a great initiative and we will soon launch a casting call on social networks.
And in which locations do you think to start filming?
Completely in Havana, in the municipalities of Habana Vieja, Centro Habana and 10 de Octubre. The locations will be dungeons, tunnels, bomb shelters, caves and cinemas and abandoned and dilapidated buildings.
In a recent interview you mentioned that the film will be focused on scaring and disgusting the viewer. How will you achieve these goals?
Well the 90s in Cuba already were quite scary. Genre cinema has stylistic guidelines and laws that work over the years but sometimes they must have been broken. When I started writing this project I tried to include moments or situations that provoked afraid on me. So in the first readings if I was not scared then I passed to another thing. Beyond the darkness , demolished locations and the fact of realism with which I will try my vampires, because they will be physically normal, but will have rotten teeth, poor hygiene and nutrition; I focused on deeper fears, like those in movies like Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton, where two children have to escape from an evil being. The fact of l osing your parents in a Havana night during a blackout and moreover you are being searched by a strong bad vampire with a disfigured face give plenty of material to speak from fear of parent-child relationships. Efficiency and achievement will not be seen until the movie to be finished, but with a team like the one we’re counting with I hope the film to come out very well. Just like the five-minute teaser that is already on the street which is more focused on humor and less on terror. The film will be more serious and more realistic.
When would you start shooting?
We are still with 5th Avenue Productions, the same producer Juan de los Muertos, seeking financing. The project has won several awards in the United States and Argentina and some European co-producers are interested. The size of the project, as the effects, makeup, the number of actors who will work in the film, and art are quite complex and therefore we do not have a start date for filming, but we intend to do it late 2016.
