{"id":201961,"date":"2019-07-07T20:04:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T00:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=201961"},"modified":"2019-07-07T20:04:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T00:04:19","slug":"eduardo-del-llano-nicanor-odonell-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/people\/eduardo-del-llano-nicanor-odonell-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Eduardo del Llano: Nicanor O’Donell for president"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/span>Eduardo del Llano<\/span><\/a>\u2019s ideal Cuba, Nicanor O’Donell should be president. At least “I\u2019d vote for him,” he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

For 15 years, the writer and filmmaker born in 1962 in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, has made a series of short films with Nicanor as a central character, as an archetype of the common Cuban who, with mordancy and humor, reveals the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary Cuban society.<\/span><\/p>\n

The shorts, starring <\/span>Luis Alberto Garc\u00eda<\/span><\/a> and N\u00e9stor Jim\u00e9nez, have gone from flash memory to flash memory like hot cakes on the island, even though distrust and official silence have sidelined them from the state distribution circuits. However, despite the underground popularity of the “Nicanor” series, Del Llano has decided to end his successful saga.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week he officially released in Havana Dos veteranos, short number 15 of the series, which according to its author will be, once and for all, the last.<\/span><\/p>\n

OnCuba<\/strong> talked with the also screenwriter of films like Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas<\/em> and La vida es silbar<\/em> about this closure and its meanings, and about his remaining career in film and literature. He also revealed his reasons for not emigrating and for continuing to create in Cuba, where, he says, he still has “many things to do.”<\/span><\/p>\n

On previous occasions you have announced that another short would be the last in the series and it hasn\u2019t been like that. Why should we believe you this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that people are somewhat skeptical when it comes to me because I\u2019ve already said several times that a previous short was going to be last and then I\u2019ve made others. But now I am going to finish. At some point you have to close the cycle, and it\u2019s good that one is the one that decides when it ends and not because an actor died, or because he went to live abroad and we lost touch, or because we no longer get along, or for any other imponderable. It’s not that one of us is thinking about dying soon, but it’s hard for it to end because of something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the fact that this is the short number 15, which is an important number, because of its symbolism for Cubans, its argument itself tastes like the end. Although Nicanor doesn\u2019t die, the characters are already old and there is a party that can be seen as a closure. It seemed elegant to me to end it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

But not making more shorts about Nicanor doesn\u2019t mean that I won\u2019t do other things. I would like to make Nicanor, la pel\u00edcula<\/em>, although not with that predictable name, if I get the financing, which for a feature film is more complicated. I also plan to continue making shorts, but perhaps I’ll do something more dramatic, or another kind of humor, or erotic, or for children, or any of the other thousands of genres that exist, because the Nicanor series forces me to do more or less similar tones and certain structural characteristics, and professionally I would like to deal with other topics, tug at other genres.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the first 10 shorts, I did my two feature films, Vinci and Omega 3, which, although they by far didn\u2019t have the success of the Nicanor series, for me were important. Now I\u2019d like to do the same. I\u2019ve already planned the next short, which, I repeat, will not be about Nicanor, although it\u2019s humorous, and I hope I can make it next year if I get the money. The idea is not to retire to Tibet to meditate, but to continue filming other things.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Eduardo del Llano. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Did you get tired of Nicanor, after so many years do you see him as an antagonist or do you fear the public can pigeonhole your work, which is much broader, as only these shorts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get tired, I don\u2019t hate him, I didn\u2019t kill him like Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes, but you feel that the characters or certain areas of your work have a time and afterwards you want to dedicate yourself to other things, without this meaning that you disavow them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor does it mean that I stop writing other works with Nicanor as a character. To not go far, in the novel that won the Alejo Carpentier award and that was presented at the last Book Fair, Nicanor appears as a priest from a country which is never mentioned and which could be Cuba or not. And yet, because of the way he acts, because of the situations in which he gets involved and the way he gets out of them, he is Nicanor, because Nicanor is a character that transcends shorts, which comes from a lot earlier and will probably continue to appear in other stories and novels I\u2019ll sit down to write.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for whether or not my work is pigeonholed, that is something very difficult to control. It\u2019s true that other things that I\u2019ve done, my two feature films, for example, haven\u2019t been very successful in Cuba, but I do like them, and I don\u2019t think I have to do cinema or literature by blindly following the public’s taste.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember that when the TV show Pateando la lata<\/em> started, in the beginning I created a character named Professor Nicanor, who appeared in a small space and said his bit and all of a sudden the space was covered or someone was passing by, like a metaphor of censorship and difficulties to express oneself, and it lasted a short time. However, in the three or four months that I made that show many more people knew me on the street than the ones that ever recognized me for my work for many years in the <\/span>Nos y Otros<\/span><\/a> humor group, which is the genesis of Nicanor’s character, which artistically I liked much more and of which I infinitely feel prouder. That is another example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, I do everything I can: I write my books with more or less luck, I make my shorts and other things in movies, and I would like people to remember everything, but that is not up to you. Success is a mystery and you can\u2019t do social engineering to convince people of what they have to remember. People simply remember what they want.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Dos veteranos” does not take place in the present or in the past, but in the future, as a dystopia. Why close the series with a fiction of this kind?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of Nicanor’s 15 shorts, 14 are based on pre-existing short stories by me; only Arte<\/em> was written specifically to be filmed, and the way we chose the next one didn\u2019t always follow a preconceived plan. Many times I proposed it, other times the actors proposed it to me; but already in the last ones we consciously thought in advance, and this one I thought as the last because I thought it could work well as the closing one.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you make a short for every problem that exists in this country, or for everything that existentially concerns you, you would need to make thousands of shorts. Or actually more, because no short exhausts a topic. But I liked this one because it\u2019s a dystopia of a post-communist future, in which the project of the nation in which we live has changed, and addresses something that is inherent to all times and societies: that the elderly always idealize the past and say that in their times things were good.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Still from the short “Dos veteranos,” by Eduardo del Llano. In the image, from left to right, actors N\u00e9stor Jim\u00e9nez (Rodr\u00edguez) and Luis Alberto Garc\u00eda (Nicanor).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That was the reason: what would it be like to talk about that in a post-communist era? And at the same time I also wanted to leave my interpretation that Nicanor considers himself a left-wing man, in his own way and saying the things he wants to say, and with him, myself. Even in the short the only two who vote for communism as the best system are Nicanor\u2015who is a kind of eternal rank-and-file warrior, someone who still intuitively thinks this could have been the best society possible, but that we screwed it up\u2015, and I, playing the part of a beggar, a guy who obviously hasn\u2019t done well with the end of communism, but at the same time has contradictions because he wears a T-shirt of Juan Carlos Cremata\u2019s censored play, or maybe he’s a little crazy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was interested in that science fiction tone that allowed us to venture a little into the future, about how Cuba could be in a while and at the same time shed light on the Cubans of the present, their contradictions. Notice that when they vote, it\u2019s true that communism is the least voted socioeconomic formation, but democracy is the second that has the least votes; it\u2019s as if people distrust it. Most of those who vote do so for slavery and feudalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a really risky thesis, but they are things to think about and think of us as a people: the fact that people love to protest and feel dissatisfied with their present, rightly so, but they aren\u2019t necessarily able to propose a coherent alternative project, or that the one they propose is not necessarily the best.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it may sound pretentious, the idea is that this short, this being the last one, would give rise to this sociological debate about which is the best Cuba we want. In any case, one as an author tries, but then things take their own course.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 15 years and 15 shorts, what profits has the Nicanor series left you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, not money, as someone might think, because I haven\u2019t recovered a penny from all the money I\u2019ve spent making them, which is not little. Literally. I haven\u2019t sold any of my shorts, neither in Cuba nor outside of Cuba, nor on DVD nor in any other format. So, if there is a definition of art for art\u2019s sake, Nicanor’s shorts are something like that. Luckily, there are other more important profits.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the ambitions of every writer is to create a character or a story that in some way reflects the spirit of the time and is remembered. And I think with Nicanor I’ve gotten close to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

I started writing about him when I was in Nos and Otros, because I liked the idea of \u200b\u200bhaving, more than a character\u2015because he really isn\u2019t a unique character\u2015, a pattern for the regular antihero. Nicanor never, in the short stories or shorts, manifests himself as a hero, he\u2019s not a leader but a normal guy, who does what you and I would do if we see ourselves in the circumstances in which he\u2019s involved. And in that sense it\u2019s explained that in one short he\u2019s a plumber and in another a health official and in another a film director and in another a journalist and in this one an old former leader. It\u2019s like a sticker that\u2019s put on anyone who falls into the category of the common man.<\/span><\/p>\n

And many people, even many who don\u2019t like other things I\u2019ve done, do like the shorts and see the character as a reflection of the common Cuban. As an author that is always a satisfaction. It would be necessary to see if they can withstand the passage of time or if in a few years they\u2019ve already forgotten about them. For the time being it\u2019s impossible for me to know.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has also been a privilege to work with great actors, not only like Luis Alberto Garc\u00eda and N\u00e9stor Jim\u00e9nez, who accompany me in all the shorts, which is a prize in itself, but also with figures such as Mirtha Ibarra, Enrique Molina, Mario Guerra, Osvaldo Doimeadi\u00f3s, his daughter Andrea, Laura de la Uz, a number of spectacular actors and actresses.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the same could be said about the music, made by Frank Delgado, but in which Santi Feli\u00fa, Carlos Varela, Gerardo Alfonso, Oscar S\u00e1nchez, Roly Berr\u00edo, Diana Fuentes, Dioni from the Zeus rock group, a number of singer-songwriters, rockers, musicians in general of different genres and aesthetic formations, but all very respected.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Eduardo del Llano (2-r), with actors Luis Alberto Garc\u00eda (l), Carlos Gonzalvo (2-l) and Nestor Jim\u00e9nez (r). Photo: Eduardodelllano.wordpress.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 15 years the society you were reflecting in your shorts has been changing. How can you dialogue with it without the series losing freshness and relevance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that since we started filming the Nicanor shorts Cuban reality has changed, that there are visible differences with respect to 2004, which was when we started doing the shorts. With travel abroad, for example, there\u2019s been an interesting dialectic, because in a short like Pas de Quatre there is talk of the possibility of traveling as a tourist, something that at that time was not possible\u2015it was more likely that someone would come from the Moon\u2015and now it\u2019s possible, although it\u2019s still difficult for the majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, in addition, there were the new immigration laws, the rapprochement with the United States, Obama\u2019s visit and then Trump\u2019s election\u2015which has been disastrous for Cuba\u2015, concerts by artists such as the Rolling Stones, the increase of private work, the first non-Castro president in several decades…. And we\u2019ve also been getting older and we\u2019ve started questioning things from that experience, to ask ourselves what is our truth from a more cumulative, more settled perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not that there\u2019ve been so many changes, nor so radical: we continue to live in a poor, blocked country, with ups and downs in relations between the officialdom and the artists, where suddenly there are no eggs or chicken, which in the long run is the same animal, and we are still a society in which Monte Rouge could be shot last night and it would also work.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, with the shorts I\u2019ve never tried to make a newscast, that immediacy is not what interests me. I try\u2015it may or may not succeed\u2015to do more structural, more timeless things about Cuban reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Artists are not journalists or historians, of the immediate or of the evolution of History. They are people who write about characters to whom things happen in a specific circumstance and in those movies, short stories, stories, the spirit of the times somehow emanates, or not, but it\u2019s not that I should propose a priori to write with that intention, or to plan a story to be a reflection of the times and the changes that have occurred, at least that\u2019s how I understand it.<\/span><\/p>\n