{"id":202262,"date":"2019-07-12T15:02:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T19:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=202262"},"modified":"2019-07-12T15:02:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T19:02:13","slug":"getting-around-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/between-two-waters\/getting-around-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"“Getting around the system”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The film Los sobrevivientes<\/em> (The Survivors) by Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea, Tit\u00f3n (1928-1996), always makes me face the same thoughts, because more than a comedy of Tit\u00f3n\u2019s evident and black humor to me it seems like a harsh and persevering satire, the powerful parable about what happens in any society that, for some reason, its own or external, voluntarily or necessarily imposed, is at the expense of isolation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This film, the seventh in Tit\u00f3n’s career, has reached its 40th anniversary this year. The premiere was on January 6, 1979 and, if it did not happen before, it was due to some delays beyond his control, as he said in letters addressed to friends or ICAIC authorities, such as Alfredo Guevara himself, who at the time was still the president of the film institute.<\/span><\/p>\n

That correspondence was collected in the book Tit\u00f3n. Volver sobre mis pasos<\/em> (Uni\u00f3n publishers, 2007), a compilation by Mirtha Ibarra, actress and widow of the filmmaker. This revealing document had a critical edition in 2018 and thanks to it I have re-read the testimonies of those times.<\/span><\/p>\n

I found out that the shooting of Los sobrevivientes<\/em> should have started at the beginning of 1977, but it was not until the following year when the conditions were created to materialize it. The plans subscribed by the ICAIC had been altered because the resources were unexpectedly made available to director Miguel Litt\u00edn, who arrived in Havana to film a production inspired by the novel by Alejo Carpentier, from which it also takes its name: El recurso del m\u00e9todo<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, in January 1978 the team started working and thus began the execution of another of the unforgettable films in Cuban cinematography and that are added to the magnificent work of Guti\u00e9rrez Alea; a film also full of amazing anecdotes that enrich and considerably increase his myth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Los sobrevivientes<\/em> tells the story of a bourgeois family, the Orozcos, who, frightened by the triumph of the Revolution, decide to withdraw to their Havana estate until the new government finally falls. The story is based on the short story “Estatuas sepultadas,” included in the book Tute de reyes<\/em> by Cuban writer Antonio Ben\u00edtez Rojo (Havana, 1931-Massachusetts, 2005).<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben\u00edtez Rojo won the Casa de las Am\u00e9ricas Prize with this book, making a magnificent debut in Cuban literature. The author has said in interviews that Tit\u00f3n, with whom he worked on another project, only wanted to take the idea of \u200b\u200bhis short story, and thus entrusted him with the film script, whose argument was also enriched by painter Constante (Rapi) Diego and photographer and researcher Mar\u00eda Eugenia Haya, wife of the film\u2019s director of photography, Mario Garc\u00eda Joya, a great friend of Tit\u00f3n\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The collaboration of both Rapi Diego and Maria Eugenia seems to have been so close that both were vital in convincing the owner of the Santa B\u00e1rbara estate, the place chosen for the shooting. It was not just anyone, and whoever has seen the film will understand that it\u2019s not just any residence. In fact, due to its cultural, historical and architectural importance, the longtime headquarters of the New Latin American Film Foundation <\/span>has just been declared a National Monument<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mirtha Ibarra says that when they were tracking down places to develop the story of the Orozco family, they “by chance” came to this incredible estate located in La Lisa. The ruined aspect, highlighted by the vegetation that was taking over everything, as well as the 32 dogs they found inside, gave the ghostly atmosphere that charmed Tit\u00f3n.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out that poet <\/span>Flor Loynaz<\/span><\/a>, the youngest daughter of , Enrique Loynaz, the general of the wars of independence, and sister of the writer and winner of the Cervantes Prize Dulce Mar\u00eda Loynaz, lived there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Flor had an incredible life, but (unfortunately) Tit\u00f3n wasn\u2019t telling her story, although it was Dulce Mar\u00eda who, at the time of signing the contract with ICAIC for the use of the residence, seeing the title of the film, was ironically driven to exclaim: “Hey, Flor<\/a>, Los sobrevivientes<\/em>. That’s us.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to having shot the film in the magnificent residence of the Loynaz family, the borzois of <\/span>Ram\u00f3n Mercader<\/span><\/a>, the man who had murdered Leon Trotsky and who at that time was in hiding incognito in Havana, appear in the film. So, even if he is not seen, the anti-Trotskyite must have been prowling among the actors and cameras while the team concentrated on its work.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this is part of the myth added to a film that was already mythological and ahead of it time that we have lived as Cubans. Because, although the Orozco family in their incredible mansion was preparing to resist, time passed and the only thing that fell or decayed were the supplies to stay alive and keep up their class. That precariousness forced them to look for resistance alternatives (“After all, resisting has its charm,” says the family’s heaviest drinker, Julio-Vicente Revuelta) before they regress to a complete state of madness and barbarism.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is how the argument justifies the appearance of one of the characters that have most interested me in the film. We see it after Vicente Cuervo\u2015the family\u2019s representative played by Reynaldo Miravalles\u2015has an incredible idea. Faced by the nationalizations and expropriations, under the pressure of “the communists out there,” he proposes to Sebasti\u00e1n Orozco, the marquis and head of the family played by Enrique Santiesteban (and you have to see the tone and the gestures of Miravalles when saying it by the window!) “doing business under their [the communists\u2019] noses.”<\/span><\/p>\n

For doing business no one better than Pepe Antonio (baptized as such for the hero who defended Havana during the English invasion), the most skilled of them all. When he gets off a truck with loaded with goods wearing a guayabera shirt, in his language so typical of today’s Habanero, he says: “Mission accomplished. Here are the bills and there is the phenomenon<\/em>.” “Did you bring it all?” Cuervo asks. And Pepe Antonio happily replies: “Even fish for the cat.”<\/span><\/p>\n