Maybe there have been too many Cubans documentaries in the last fifteen or twenty years devoted to making the biography or paying tribute to transcendent figures of the artistic and cultural field. And nothing challengeable comes from the intention of honoring those who deserve it, but these audiovisual apologies were almost always made using overwhelming interviews as almost unique resource, and a fairly conventional use of voiceover, assembly, or camera work limited to talking heads calls . Among the many documentaries dedicated to exalt cultural or artistic worth of a personality, the conflicts inscribed in such resumes were often avoided, and dramaturgical structures clinging to tell more or less significant stories predominate without forgetting, of course, the merits and curriculum of the interviewee.
Many Cuban filmmakers seem unknowing that good documentaries go beyond interviews and archive material and that public impact is not only related to reiterate testimonies and performances, in a boring succession when the set lacks of peaks or dramatic curves, problems, suspense, the most elemental critic, or answers subjected to the described artistic career. The problem’s not in that there are several testimonies, or that archive images often hinder the discourse rather than illuminate it, the fact is that they insist in highly repeated aspects, or simply that the documentary was not thought as a work of creation, but by its value as a compendium and tribute.
Another problem of most of these Cuban biographical documentaries lies in the lack of amazement, and greater revelations, testimonies that are valuable anyway, but which are repetitive conferences on what is already known, or explanations of an inveterate obvious managing to saturate the understanding of the viewer with the most bombastic praise. And I’m not who will deny the right to a more than justified apology when trying to offer a map of gigantic achievements, but they often forget that this map and mirror should use more eloquent and convincing staging mechanisms than the interviewees or the voiceover covering of cheers a figure whose merits are well known. Furthermore, it is counterproductive to verbalize a list of accomplishments unless you simply want to compete with Wikipedia or try to meet educational-informational purposes.
I wonder what editors do, or the makers of a documentary of this type when they allow the collection of cumulative and cacophonous interviews, while the viewer ends up disconnecting from too verbose information, and is barely able to focus on the principles behind the exceptional biography of the character. Because the best Cuban and foreign documentaries dedicated to dancers, singers, writers, and other personalities from arts and culture transcended when reporting some kind of novelty with respect to the subject, a relevant aspect of his personality, conflicts with the context, and thus allowed us to peer into realities, knowledge or spiritual riches we did not have before.
And as for the works, more or less recent, which not only use the merits of the interviewee, I can mention: ¨Con todo mi amor, Rita¨ (2000, Rebeca Chávez); ¨Las sombras corrosivas de Fidelio Ponce aún¨ (2000, Jorge Luis Sánchez); ¨No me voy a defender¨ (2000, Ismael Perdomo, on the singer Pedro Luis Ferrer), ¨Luis Carbonell, después de tanto tiempo¨ (2001, Ian Padrón) or ¨Las manos y el ángel¨ (2002, Esteban Insausti, on the pianist Emiliano Salvador). ¨Digna guerra¨ (2013), by young director Marcel Beltran must be added to this list of exceptions.
¨Digna guerra¨, that way with lower case letter, so as to highlight the essential meaning of words that will turn into impressive designation if beginning with capital letter- aims to acknowledge, even honoring, but also explaining and understanding the life and work of the choir director whose performance heading the National and Entrevoces choirs has earned her a just recognition in and outside Cuba. However, unlike most of Cuban documentaries devoted to exalt the career of certain indispensable personalities, in this gloss of subtle shades the filmmaker Marcel Beltran not only relied on soundly and visually translating the talents of its star, but also offered the public the opportunity to delve into the temperament and observe privacy, because after all, temperament and intimacy become mainstays and mirrors of public actions.
Beltran´s portrait avoids diligent data in terms of chronology, identifying characters or direct interview, because he prefers to stimulate the audience inferences, surprise his lead character in moments of exaltation and peace, show the syncopated repetition of the trials, witness some of the protagonist encounters with her past, recalling moments of consecration from damaged archive materials, and introduce frontal revealing moments with black and white high and symbolic contrast. Thus, digna guerra, in lowercase, becomes fine conglomerate of textures and expository styles, each of which gradually acquires layers of meaning linked to topics in distant appearance as the role of the personality in the culture of the nation , or the ways in which the music is conceived and performed in this country.
Weird, unique characters, in some way diminished, but inhabited by incombustible desire to contribute and help others, star Marcel Beltran’s previous documentaries, often near fiction and staging, as Parihuela (2009 ), Cisne cuello negro, cuello blanco (2010), Cuerda al aire (2011). The filmmaker prefers approaching his characters amid defining moments, when these human beings are enshrined as such despite shipwreck, defeat and the proximity of some catastrophe of those populating the existence of any one.
So, regardless of whether it is an eminent creator or anonymous farmers of the Mountain Range, the uniqueness of Beltran´s characters is put in evidence from the combination of observational with certain resources of the staging as the narrative structure, suspense and in a sense, very unique, the so-called “journey of the hero.” The protagonists of Cisne … and Parihuela are victims off loneliness and disaffection, and even rejection and exclusion, but they both retain a glimmer of nobility that M arcel, as an author committed to his characters, decides to exalt. Thus his work converges with similar ethical options to those unfolded by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, while his films share the beauty of small and simple things, narrative minimalism, significant iterations and aesthetic sobriety.
And even though Parihuela, Cisne … and Cuerda al aire use characters anchored on contingency and destined to grow, Memorias del Abuelo moved into a much more experimental formal registration , as appealing to the memories of the musician Harold Gramatges to present one of the most beautiful thoughts of Cuban audiovisual, about the passage of time, the approach of death and the fleeting and transitory nature of all beauty. With “Digna Guerra”, Marcel Beltran confirms his outstanding position in the “new wave” of Cuban documentary from his remarkable ability to reveal the cracks of complex humanity in protagonists plunged into the paradox of everyday exceptionality.
