Ernesto Daranas’s name is inevitably associated to high quality audiovisual productions that have managed to seduce the Cuban public. Noteworthy among them the film ¨Los Dioses rotos¨, his debut in the cinema, which in 2008 won the Popularity Award in the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana and it was also chosen to represent Cuba in the race for the Oscars, prize that eventually went to the Argentinean film ¨El secreto de sus ojos¨.
But before Daranas became a famous scriptwriter and director of films and TV productions, he left his mark on the radio where he began his journey in the media and where he established a pattern to transform the way soap operas were made.
He was driven by his desire of shocking audiences through stories that reflect Cuban complex reality in the early 1990s, Ernesto Daranas wrote twelve radio soap operas that were broadcasted on Radio Rebelde which attained national rating, and he was granted with some awards at radio festivals and also the Caracol Award by UNEAC.
For more satisfaction of Daranas, his works on Cuba´s everyday life with the correct amount of realism and sensitivity were not only broadcasted in his country, they also managed to be transmitted in seven nations of Latin America.
How was the process of convincing Radio Rebelde to broadcast a radio soap opera talking about Cuban society?
It was a special time, a specific one. I think at the beginning people do not know what the project was going to be, but it got clear in the first work that was called "Desde el hueco." But what actually impressed them was how the radio crew received their work, which broke at one point, their radio conception. The enthusiasm with which people of great experience, even people that you could associate with more traditional radio, came into the project with absolute harmony, as if they had done that all their lives. It got demonstrated the importance of dialogue with identity, with what we really are. A very important thing was the increase in the male audience. The novel managed to raise the rating of the female audience, but a tremendous amount of men started listening to it too. Do not forget it was in a moment of blackouts, in which the radio replaced many things, that is, it was a moment that facilitated having a large audience.
When you went to the radio, it was with the purpose of transforming the way radio novels were made so far?
No, it wasn´t my intention, nor in the radio, TV, or the movies.
But I do have something. I live in Old Havana in a poor neighborhood, of humble people. I dialogue with them constantly, every day and they are very smart people, that is, there is intelligence in nature of nationality, which is that thing alive that is inherent to our culture. That has always been my starting point, to talk to intelligent people. I could not underestimate the radio novel. For me it was very clear the listener thought it was clever. And I was wondering, how did I respond to these people while entering into their houses? Because that was done since "Los angeles de la calle" by Felix B. Caignet.
And even before, since "El derecho de nacer", I mean there is a social vocation in Cuba that is not exclusive to the current radio, or of what we did in Radio Rebelde, neither of what they are doing now. That was born with the dramatic radio of this country.
Then, that social vocation, my concern on how people saw themselves , that´s what really matters to me. In the midst of the special period people told me that no one wanted to talk about the severe shortages but listeners proved otherwise. The audience showed their willingness to hear about that if the topic was treated with respect and authenticity, providing some understanding of what they were living. We were told people did not want to talk about their work or the ugly things. The problem was that people did not want to see bad things which were false. People do not want that. The public will admit that in a foreign soap opera because it is another reality and is assumed as a fairy tale, but when you speak of their reality, they assumed as such and do not support even fiction. That’s what really happens.
How did the public receive this way of approaching a genre with so much tradition in our country?
I met a driver of the 98 bus when it used to run only once a day. He waited for me every day at a quarter past nine. He even waited for me if I was five minutes late and with the bus full of people because he wanted to talk about the novel. When word got out that Adrian was gay, at the end of the novel, I got bags of letters and all drivers of La Lisa bus depot called me because they had made a bet on that topic. At the end when they confirmed that, it was very nice because they said they felt they had all won and had also cried because it was not actually important if he was gay or not.
Are you aware that your foray into writing radio novels has set standards and that you are seen as an example by many younger writers?
I think it was a juncture. Any of them could have done that. Freddy (Dominguez) is an excellent scriptwriter, Cary (Cruz) is a natural-born writer, she is a storyteller with huge sensitivity that is always associated with existentialism. The radio is a very popular means of communication which always demands writers to have a vast knowledge of reality. Of course I think it is an element that is very specific to the radio. The current Cuban radio novel, as any other in general, inevitably establishes a dialogue with what we are experiencing ourselves. I think these writers and others, as Silvio Hernandez or Albertico Luberta, had assumed the same kind of novel.
This was not a search; it was something that fell from the tree. It was clear that time was claiming for that.
