Lázaro J. González González
Carlos Lechuga, one of the young Cuban filmmakers who has received the biggest amount of prizes in recent years, smokes with anxiety as we talk in his living room, just a few days before the premiere of Melaza (Molasses), his first feature film, that competed in the category of Best Debut in the 34th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
Lechuga, 29, had already won a Coral Prize by its short length film ¨Los Bañistas¨ and felt very happy to have premiered his work in Cuba, just as the winds of festival began to blow and Cuban public expectantly awaits for new productions, and also because his film will participate in the International Film Festivals of Rotterdam, Miami and Panama.
Molasses, produced by Cuban independent producer 5ta Avenida (5th Avenue), two French producers and a Panamanian one, focuses on the story of Aldo and Monica, a young couple that doesn´t know how to survive due to the closing of the sugar mill where they work, which is the heart of an imaginary community, and it also provides the title to the film.
The screenplay of the film was Lechuga´s graduate thesis in that specialty at the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), from which he graduated in 2008. Previously, he completed two years of Film Direction in the Higher Institute of Art (ISA).
But after attending the “Cómo se cuenta un cuento" (How to tell a story) workshop that Gabriel García Márquez gave in EICTV, he decided to become a scriptwriter. Then, he had already written a screenplay named ¨Guanajay¨, which he thought to shoot with Humberto Solas, and was working on it with Juan Carlos Tabio.
So he was more interested in knowing how to tell a story that in directing it: "I thought I must learn that first. So, I spent a year writing before entering, after trying for the second time, to EICTV,¨ says the also director of the short length film Cuca y el pollo.
