Since I was lucky enough to see the documentaries Tacones cercanos (2008 ) and El Mundo de Raúl (2010, co-directed by Horizoe Garcia), I look forward to any new endeavors, both in documentary or fiction, by Jessica Rodríguez Sánchez-Ponte, born in Havana in 1986, graduated in direction from the Faculty of Art of Audiovisual Media, and the Master course in Cinema and Television script from Madrid’s Carlos III University. Tacones cercanos and El mundo de Raúl had the audacity to give word and prominence, respectively, to a transvestite cruelly humiliated by someone passing and a fetishist obsessed with masturbation.
In Spain, Jessica focused on female experience and the topic of violence in Crac (2012), and then she co-directed with Shaza Moharam the film Ahlam (currently in post-production). However, the audiovisual activity is not enough for her and recently she published her first novel La Bestia y el Pueblo, which according to a well authorized jury, it represents ” the right mix of high literature, social analysis and minor genres that entwine with new literary trends” with a “particularly rich and appropriate” language and the transit ” through territories ranging from Latin American boom exotic literature until the Gothic novel and B series “.
In 2013, the director and scriptwriter enjoys a creation scholarship at the prestigious MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (USA), and concludes in Cuba the filming of Espejuelos Oscuros, her first feature film, which script was written in 2008 while the film will probably be premiered this year.
I wanted to talk to Jessica about her new film, and the first theme that emerged was precisely the extreme delay between the date of production of a Cuban film and its release.
Has not the awaiting time for Espejuelos Oscuros been too long? Did the project essentially change? How did you do to keep yourself interested for so many years, and to bear the risk of changing opinions and perspective?
Espejuelos Oscuros was the first feature film script I wrote. I think the first things you write have always some type of innocence, because everything is done with great faith. Then I wrote other things, another feature film script that is still shelved, and a novel I recently published, but the truth is that I knew how tough was to take projects forward, and I took into account other factors such as the adequacy or production facilities. Espejuelos Oscuros was written with my belief that it could be shot. It’s a quite round story, unpretentious, with conflicts that get closed and that always excited me. Now I would not be able to write Espejuelos … I’d surely write about other things, but shooting something written with such passion and eagerness excited me a lot. The project did not change much; I had to change just some locations because of budget.
Luis Alberto García and Laura de la Uz play, each one, four characters at different times. Did you choose them from the film would become a real test for their respective histrionics? How do you the characters differentiate from each other, or are they essentially the same as passing from one to another ?
They are great actors and as I’m pretty new in this, I knew they could help me a lot. I have to say that what I liked most, even beyond questions of interpretation, has been working with two very smart actors. When at table work they talked me about the characters as if they had written them, they understood them very well, and even enriched them with many elements. This was for me one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. The four characters begin to differentiate themselves from the basics, because people did not speak or gesticulate nor lived in the same way in 1970s than in 1950s or in the nineteenth century. Life was understood differently. Also, the characters do not belong to the same social class. I think besides differentiating them, an important point was to get them closer. I was interested in achieving a degree of loneliness and stupor typical of people who do not know how to handle circumstances which they happen to live.
Why the interest in a structure based on continuous retrospectives? Doesn’t that thread of a woman that tells, returns to the past, remembers or invents have the risk that the narrator to be lack of interest, conflicts? What are your motivations or experiences to tell this story about a woman who tells stories?
The character that interests me most is Esperanza, the storyteller. She’s like a sort of Scheherazade, in her telling ability lies the chance of survival to another character, which has the physical strength, she has the word. The characters in Esperanza´s stories are somehow herself; that is why they are performed by the same actress, Laura de la Uz. The stories take place in four different moments in the history of Cuba, and always have to do with a woman’s conflict between her desires and what society expects of her. There are extraordinary conflicts despite being under the skin of seemingly mediocre and ordinary women. I like to think, and I know, that each of us is much more complex than it seems. People live and think wonderful things that never tell.
Tell us about the visual style and editing of the film, and on the viewpoint. One of the things I most admired in your documentaries (Tacones Cercanos, El mundo de Raul, Crac) is the presence of a strong sustained and coherent point of view. Fiction has other niceties. What did your film inherit from your documentary? Can it be said that your viewpoint is in the character of Esperanza? What is the theme of the film: survivability, the tide of the story, the need to go for what we want?
The visual style is considerably changing according to the time; we wanted to convey changes in aesthetics also from the film resources. I intend editing to be quite invisible, allowing you to dive into the story without getting noticed. I have to say I really like the documentary, and I enjoy more its shooting because it gives me more freedom , also in editing, I love it. In this film the viewpoint; at least as perceived by the viewer, goes through some changes, I’d like to be discovered while watching the movie. I think Espejuelos … inherits from my previous documentaries anguish, characters that are helpless but nobody notices that. The theme of the film becomes something of what I have always wanted to speak: everything that gets suppressed empowered, and things are usually terrible and complex than the way are shown on the often peaceful surface.
You always treated difficult issues in your documentary. What are the risk and strength that you see in Espejuelos Oscuros?
Perhaps the risk and strength consist in approaching periods that were never rosy. From my point of view, I’d like to show the history of Cuba as I imagine it: human, full of mistakes made by all, and perhaps discovering that there were “good people” among the “bad ones” and vice verse.
How is it possible to produce in Cuba an epoch film with the problems our cinema faces? The film comprises, in some way, most of the twentieth century through three very complex moments. Why did you choose these stages? What do you think about the lack of interest in the past, by the retro film, which is perceived in young Cuban cinema?
I understand that filmmakers need to tell daily living complexities, which are full of contradictions. And I know that we would like to say even more than what we say on the reality we live. But I’m really interested in getting into the skin of Cuban women in difficult times, those same eras that are studied from the bombast, from a distance, and almost always from the male sieve, which prevailed in each of these historical moments. I wondered about the nature of those women living wars and revolutions. What would happen to that who wants to fit the context to survive but can not fight against the urge of doing what she feels is wrong, but what she wishes with all her heart?
What is your opinion on current Cuban film? Do you trust on the possibilities that young independent and graduates from cinema schools represent?
I like movies made by younger because they take more risks, not from a social point of view, but from an aesthetic point of view. There are new ways to tell and I like that : shying away from trodden topics and common areas, and that is avoided only through sincerity that young filmmakers have, their desire to conquer the world, and to say something theirs. I understand that when doing a full-length film, by what it involves, you want to play safe, doing it wrong scares and it also costs taking risks, but to be honest with what you really want to do, and tell, I think there you have already won an important part. I particularly like much more short films and documentaries made in Cuba than full-length films, but I also understand that a filmmaker feels more comfortable when having less to lose and more freedom.
Judging by the synopsis, your characters in Espejuelos Oscuros opt for the realization of their personal desires and deviate, perhaps, from commitments to collective causes. All this reminds me Hello Hemingway or Madagascar. What films or filmmakers have influenced you? If you were forced to say that your film looks like a previous Cuban film, what would it be?
I love Madagascar. Fernando is the Cuban filmmaker of these times that I most admire. I wish I could do someday something like Madagascar. But Espejuelos … does not seem the kind of movie I use to consume, it is my debut film and I have decided to test myself with the basics: I want to tell a story well, build strong characters, and that people can understand and enjoy it. I thought of Fernando. He started with Clandestinos, which is not similar to the work he has made after that. Espejuelos Oscuros is a narrative film that tries to entertain and involve the viewer. I really do not know what Cuban film looks like it, people tell me “it has three epochs as Lucia, by Humberto Solas,” and I say “nothing to do.” However, before we started shooting I have reviewed much movies of those I prefer: Tres Extremos, El Regreso, In the Mood for Love, La vida es un miraglo or Hierro 3, but I think I did it just to get something from them…
Luis- Alberto-Garcia- Espejuelos- dark
Photos: Hector Garrido
