09/24/2001

Film offers a sense of relief from the trials and tribulations of everyday life through the magic of filmmaking. Undeniably, the survival of any business will always be subject to the whims of its market place. As any conscientious business, the motion picture industry assumes its larger responsibility when delving more deeply and more directly into contemporary, personal, social and political themes. Through genuine self-reflection, the film industry better avoids falling pray to excessively trivial, supposedly market driven, yet socially limited fodder. Not underestimating its public, many other current and complex topics, when honestly and dramatically presented, can yet demonstrate extremely high commercial value.

Throughout the world and for over forty-three years, ideological differences over Cuba have been a sensitive source of dispute, tension, and conflict. Unexplainably, Hollywood has chosen to essentially ignore the core of this subject matter or deal with it merely superficially. Increasingly, certain film projects weighted with controversial, intellectual quality have been a source of economic anxiety within the industry.

By largely ignoring or failing to truly engage more of these more challenging contemporary moral-ethical political subjects of international importance, many of our film makers have myopically allowed much potential to remain fundamentally unrealized. Besides achieving a vivid insights here in America, a film that dramatically and conscientiously approaches the central social and political issues surrounding Fidel Castro and his government would also have very strong, worldwide, commercial possibilities.

Pearl Film’s TRAITORS will be such a film.

Our Country’s Leadership:

Continuing its leadership in our rapidly changing world, America is reviewing some important aspects of its foreign affairs. Our country’s most ambitious efforts towards more successful international policies can be vulnerable to abject failure if not accompanied by sincere efforts towards improved public relations. With a willingness to more widely confront formidable moral issues, the time has come to further foster ideological understanding, even compromise. Modern film-making, the most sophisticated international communication mechanism of any country in history, remains at America’s disposal. America can concurrently enhance its “image” worldwide by more candidly and more broadly employing it.

Like any film-business endeavor, such lofty goals require wise ingenuity and a measure of daring. But only through such courage can the film “community” continue to help our country, our world, and humanity, grapple and prevail over some of its more difficult human conflicts. Only through such resolute courage can cinema continue to illustrate our culture and to exemplify its vital role as the truest art-form of our time.

Robert L. Chacona

Pearl Films, NYC

Some Recent Films about Cuba:

FOR LOVE OR COUNTRY: The Arturo Sandoval Story (Nov. 2000: HBO)

Passion and patriotism collide in this fact-based drama starring Andy Garcia as legendary Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. To play the music he loved, Sandoval… (…rest was cut-off on original HBO-Site/Web-posting) This film is a intimate portrayal of a personal struggle for release from individual and cultural oppression.

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (Theatrical: Dec. 2000)

Unquestionably, Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas was one of the major talents to have emerged from the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s; yet, running afoul of the Castro regime as both a political dissident and an openly gay man, Arenas was harassed, imprisoned and physically abused–all the more so because he managed to smuggle out and publish his works abroad. Adapting Arenas’ brilliant, posthumously published autobiography, painter and now very much film director Julian Schnabel magnificently captures the style and flavor of Arenas’ writing, with brief, intensely vivid scenes that evoke a succession of remembrances. He is immeasurably aided by a wonderful, star-making performance by Spanish actor Javier Bardem as Reinaldo, who embodies both the strength and vulnerability of a man for whom, as he wrote during his New York exile, “there is really no solace anywhere.” 125 min. [USA, 2000.]

‘FIDEL’ (“The Rise and Fall of Castroism Not Through Rose-colored Glasses”)

Showtime’s 4 hour epic miniseries was reasonably shorter than most of Fidel’s speeches. In this new presentation, “Castroism’s” myth survives, even thrives, this time through calculated misrepresentation, blatant omission and, as always, malevolent contrivance. The myth of Fidel Castro as the “great revolutionary spirit of the 20th Century” is alive and flourishing. [USA, 2002.]

Also see other Cuba Films:

Azúcar Amarga: Bitter Sugar

(1996) Also see: The NY Film Festival Accused of intolerance

Eight Ochoa or 8-A
(1993)

Nobody Listened

(1988 Documentary)

Conduct Unbecoming

(1975 Documentary)