Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Friday, January 18, 2008
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
MSNBC
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 8:04 AM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Five years ago, Ian Padrón made a documentary about Cuban baseball and ran afoul of government censors.
He took government money from the Cuban Film Institute and told a story about Cuban baseball, "Out of this League" ("Fuera de Liga").
In his daring piece of work, Padrón touched on a number of taboo subjects. He looked at the tough conditions players face on the island and included interviews with athletic icons who defected to the United States to play Major League Baseball.
No surprise, government censors considered it too controversial for the Cuban public. So it ended up on a shelf – barred from playing in state-run theaters or on television.
Which can often backfire in communist Cuba – anything censored often becomes an overnight success. Cubans love nothing better than passing around forbidden material.
In fact, "Out of this League" became one of the hottest pieces of contraband circulating on Cuba’s underground market. Lots of people here in Cuba saw the 68-minute film.
Still, Padrón was frustrated.
"My work deserved a wider audience. I always argued that the Cuban public is more than capable of debating our reality," said Padrón.
Finally, someone in authority seemed to agree with him.
Out of the blue, "Out of this League" aired on Saturday night primetime TV – making television history here.
It’s not often government censors change their minds.
It also marks the first time state-owned television ran images of defectors, considered turncoats by the Cuban government.
El Duque: ‘I am an Industrial"
Baseball fans are delighted by the change of heart, especially loyalists who follow the career of Havana pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who fled the island in 1997 for fame and fortune in the United States.
"This documentary is about baseball, our lives, our passion. It never should have been banned," said Karel Breto, a 27-year-old maintenance man. "El Duque belongs to us!"
That sentiment echoes what Hernandez said in the film.
"I am not a traitor. I am an Industrial," said Hernandez, referring to "Los Industriales," Havana’s champion team."I've had the opportunity to play for the two best teams in the world: Cuba’s Industriales and the Yankees." (Since the documentary was filmed, Hernandez signed on with the New York Mets and now plays for them).
At the time of his defection, Hernandez had posted a 129-47 career record for the national team but was under suspension. Sports officials had accused Hernandez of being in contact with U.S. agents who had helped other ballplayers leave the island to chase major league dreams.
Some of them appear in the documentary too: first baseman Kendry Morales, now a Los Angeles Angel; Rene Arocha, who pitched with the St. Louis Cardinals; and Euclides Rojas, who played for the Florida Marlins before becoming a bullpen coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Official censors never managed to discourage baseball fans here from continuing to follow the American careers of the men they consider true Cuban athletes.
No politics in baseball
In fact, for many Cuban fans, politics has no place in baseball. The game surpasses government.
"Forget politics. Baseball is my passion and I spend my time rooting for El Duque and our other players in the major leagues," said Ulises Alvarez, a Havana construction worker who commended Cuban TV for broadcasting "Out of this League."
Some Cubans see the broadcast as proof that times are changing in Cuba, a trend of greater tolerance and deliberate debate that began when Fidel Castro fell ill and his brother Raul became acting president some 18 months ago.
"TV has begun to tackle some harsh realities: housing shortages, problems in some hospitals, and in food production. Topics no one dared to touch before," said Ismael Sene, a retired diplomat and Cuba’s baseball historian. "I see this as part of the general policies of the last few months. It’s the only way I can explain why they aired the documentary."
But others think that may not be the case.
"Nothing has changed here," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified by name. "You still get chastised for telling unpopular truths."
No matter what, in a nation where the government maintains strict media control, "Out of this League" was not broadcast by accident. And while it’s too soon to tell if this is an isolated event or heralds a new artistic opening, fans here agreed with El Duque when he described the showing to the Miami press as "a breath of fresh air."
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 8:04 AM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Five years ago, Ian Padrón made a documentary about Cuban baseball and ran afoul of government censors.
He took government money from the Cuban Film Institute and told a story about Cuban baseball, "Out of this League" ("Fuera de Liga").
In his daring piece of work, Padrón touched on a number of taboo subjects. He looked at the tough conditions players face on the island and included interviews with athletic icons who defected to the United States to play Major League Baseball.
No surprise, government censors considered it too controversial for the Cuban public. So it ended up on a shelf – barred from playing in state-run theaters or on television.
Which can often backfire in communist Cuba – anything censored often becomes an overnight success. Cubans love nothing better than passing around forbidden material.
In fact, "Out of this League" became one of the hottest pieces of contraband circulating on Cuba’s underground market. Lots of people here in Cuba saw the 68-minute film.
Still, Padrón was frustrated.
"My work deserved a wider audience. I always argued that the Cuban public is more than capable of debating our reality," said Padrón.
Finally, someone in authority seemed to agree with him.
Out of the blue, "Out of this League" aired on Saturday night primetime TV – making television history here.
It’s not often government censors change their minds.
It also marks the first time state-owned television ran images of defectors, considered turncoats by the Cuban government.
El Duque: ‘I am an Industrial"
Baseball fans are delighted by the change of heart, especially loyalists who follow the career of Havana pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who fled the island in 1997 for fame and fortune in the United States.
"This documentary is about baseball, our lives, our passion. It never should have been banned," said Karel Breto, a 27-year-old maintenance man. "El Duque belongs to us!"
That sentiment echoes what Hernandez said in the film.
"I am not a traitor. I am an Industrial," said Hernandez, referring to "Los Industriales," Havana’s champion team."I've had the opportunity to play for the two best teams in the world: Cuba’s Industriales and the Yankees." (Since the documentary was filmed, Hernandez signed on with the New York Mets and now plays for them).
At the time of his defection, Hernandez had posted a 129-47 career record for the national team but was under suspension. Sports officials had accused Hernandez of being in contact with U.S. agents who had helped other ballplayers leave the island to chase major league dreams.
Some of them appear in the documentary too: first baseman Kendry Morales, now a Los Angeles Angel; Rene Arocha, who pitched with the St. Louis Cardinals; and Euclides Rojas, who played for the Florida Marlins before becoming a bullpen coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Official censors never managed to discourage baseball fans here from continuing to follow the American careers of the men they consider true Cuban athletes.
No politics in baseball
In fact, for many Cuban fans, politics has no place in baseball. The game surpasses government.
"Forget politics. Baseball is my passion and I spend my time rooting for El Duque and our other players in the major leagues," said Ulises Alvarez, a Havana construction worker who commended Cuban TV for broadcasting "Out of this League."
Some Cubans see the broadcast as proof that times are changing in Cuba, a trend of greater tolerance and deliberate debate that began when Fidel Castro fell ill and his brother Raul became acting president some 18 months ago.
"TV has begun to tackle some harsh realities: housing shortages, problems in some hospitals, and in food production. Topics no one dared to touch before," said Ismael Sene, a retired diplomat and Cuba’s baseball historian. "I see this as part of the general policies of the last few months. It’s the only way I can explain why they aired the documentary."
But others think that may not be the case.
"Nothing has changed here," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified by name. "You still get chastised for telling unpopular truths."
No matter what, in a nation where the government maintains strict media control, "Out of this League" was not broadcast by accident. And while it’s too soon to tell if this is an isolated event or heralds a new artistic opening, fans here agreed with El Duque when he described the showing to the Miami press as "a breath of fresh air."
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Film casts harsh light on problems in Havana
Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Jul. 08, 2007
Film casts harsh light on problems in Havana
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
A new documentary by a young Cuban filmmaker has cast a harsh spotlight on the housing and other serious problems faced by the thousands of Cubans who move illegally from the provinces to Havana in search of better lives.
The migrants, mostly from eastern Cuba and known as ''Palestinians'' because they lack legal residency in Havana, often are forced to live in shanty towns on the edges of the capital and expelled by police back to their hometowns.
''The phenomenon of forcible return continues to exist, although the police proceed silently and with some secrecy,'' said Elizardo Sánchez, president of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
Sánchez estimated that dozens of people are expelled from Havana every week by bus or train after being detained for failure to produce documents confirming their legal residence in Havana. Repeat violators are taken to court, although the sanctions consist only of fines and official ''banishment'' from the capital for several years.
Cubans' jobs and ration cards are linked to their legal residences. But the economic crisis of the 1990s brought a rise in migration to Havana. A government statement at the time said 92,000 people had tried to legalize their residency in Havana in the first half of 1997.
That same year a law made it extremely difficult to shift legal residency to the capital, a city of 2.1 million people.
Havana residents estimate that about 20 shanty towns rose in the city's suburbs in the past decade, with shacks usually built out of metal sheets, scrap lumber and cardboard without government permission.
EASTERN CUBA
Most of the migrants come from eastern Cuba, where people tend to be poorer and darker-skinned. Adding to the dislike for the orientales, many of Havana's police were brought in from the east, apparently to avert any sense of regional loyalty in case of disturbances.
''It's as if we were lepers just because we're easterners,'' says María, a woman from Guantánamo province who appears in the documentary Buscándote Habana -- Looking for Havana -- made in 2006 by Cuban filmmaker Alina Rodríguez Abreu, 22.
The 21-minute film, which will be shown at 6 p.m. today on AmericaTeVe-Channel 41, explores the deplorable living conditions and discrimination faced by the illegal migrants who live in the shantytowns.
The documentary was Rodríguez' graduation thesis at the School of Audiovisual Media in Havana's Higher Institute of Art. El Nuevo Herald was unable to contact her in Havana.
Filmmaker Jean Michel Jomolka, who was in her graduating class and moved to Miami this January, said some authorities seized several of her cassettes containing interviews with people expelled from Havana, and others barred her from filming in several poor parts of the capital. She was detained and her camera was confiscated in Guantánamo.
Most of the scenes shown in the film were taped in the Havana shantytowns of Casablanca, Planta Asfalto and Santa Fe. The documentary also shows María, a native of Camagüey who lives with her husband in a shack in the swimming pool of the former Bristol Hotel in central Havana, now an apartment building.
POLITICALLY SENSITIVE
Miami Dade College film critic Alejandro Ríos, host of La Mirada Indiscreta -- The Indiscreet Glance -- the TV program that will broadcast the documentary, said Rodríguez' film shows one of the island's politically sensitive problems.
''This is positive proof of the rebirth of the documentary in Cuba and the commitment of its new creators to depict reality without restrictions, with honesty, blowing away the smoke curtains of official history,'' Ríos said.
Havana residents' prejudices against those from eastern Cuba are current issues on the island. The recent national baseball championship series between teams from Havana and the eastern city of Santiago saw billboards posted around Havana streets that criticized the provincial team. One handmade sign hung across one street branded easterners as criminals and urged them to ``Go Home.''
''These people are like the roya,'' Oneida, a Havana resident, is seen saying on the documentary. Roya is a fungus that attacks vegetables.
A significant housing shortage is one of the key social problems affecting the country, particularly Havana. In 2005, the government announced a plan to build 100,000 new homes every year, but the goals were never met.
In the documentary, sociologist Pablo Rodríguez says that unless urgent steps are taken to control the proliferation of shantytowns, ``the future will resemble Las Yaguas.''
After the triumph of Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, the Las Yaguas slum on the Havana outskirts was held up as a symbol of poverty and social neglect under previous regimes.
It was razed and replaced by a housing complex in the early 1960s.
Posted on Sun, Jul. 08, 2007
Film casts harsh light on problems in Havana
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
A new documentary by a young Cuban filmmaker has cast a harsh spotlight on the housing and other serious problems faced by the thousands of Cubans who move illegally from the provinces to Havana in search of better lives.
The migrants, mostly from eastern Cuba and known as ''Palestinians'' because they lack legal residency in Havana, often are forced to live in shanty towns on the edges of the capital and expelled by police back to their hometowns.
''The phenomenon of forcible return continues to exist, although the police proceed silently and with some secrecy,'' said Elizardo Sánchez, president of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
Sánchez estimated that dozens of people are expelled from Havana every week by bus or train after being detained for failure to produce documents confirming their legal residence in Havana. Repeat violators are taken to court, although the sanctions consist only of fines and official ''banishment'' from the capital for several years.
Cubans' jobs and ration cards are linked to their legal residences. But the economic crisis of the 1990s brought a rise in migration to Havana. A government statement at the time said 92,000 people had tried to legalize their residency in Havana in the first half of 1997.
That same year a law made it extremely difficult to shift legal residency to the capital, a city of 2.1 million people.
Havana residents estimate that about 20 shanty towns rose in the city's suburbs in the past decade, with shacks usually built out of metal sheets, scrap lumber and cardboard without government permission.
EASTERN CUBA
Most of the migrants come from eastern Cuba, where people tend to be poorer and darker-skinned. Adding to the dislike for the orientales, many of Havana's police were brought in from the east, apparently to avert any sense of regional loyalty in case of disturbances.
''It's as if we were lepers just because we're easterners,'' says María, a woman from Guantánamo province who appears in the documentary Buscándote Habana -- Looking for Havana -- made in 2006 by Cuban filmmaker Alina Rodríguez Abreu, 22.
The 21-minute film, which will be shown at 6 p.m. today on AmericaTeVe-Channel 41, explores the deplorable living conditions and discrimination faced by the illegal migrants who live in the shantytowns.
The documentary was Rodríguez' graduation thesis at the School of Audiovisual Media in Havana's Higher Institute of Art. El Nuevo Herald was unable to contact her in Havana.
Filmmaker Jean Michel Jomolka, who was in her graduating class and moved to Miami this January, said some authorities seized several of her cassettes containing interviews with people expelled from Havana, and others barred her from filming in several poor parts of the capital. She was detained and her camera was confiscated in Guantánamo.
Most of the scenes shown in the film were taped in the Havana shantytowns of Casablanca, Planta Asfalto and Santa Fe. The documentary also shows María, a native of Camagüey who lives with her husband in a shack in the swimming pool of the former Bristol Hotel in central Havana, now an apartment building.
POLITICALLY SENSITIVE
Miami Dade College film critic Alejandro Ríos, host of La Mirada Indiscreta -- The Indiscreet Glance -- the TV program that will broadcast the documentary, said Rodríguez' film shows one of the island's politically sensitive problems.
''This is positive proof of the rebirth of the documentary in Cuba and the commitment of its new creators to depict reality without restrictions, with honesty, blowing away the smoke curtains of official history,'' Ríos said.
Havana residents' prejudices against those from eastern Cuba are current issues on the island. The recent national baseball championship series between teams from Havana and the eastern city of Santiago saw billboards posted around Havana streets that criticized the provincial team. One handmade sign hung across one street branded easterners as criminals and urged them to ``Go Home.''
''These people are like the roya,'' Oneida, a Havana resident, is seen saying on the documentary. Roya is a fungus that attacks vegetables.
A significant housing shortage is one of the key social problems affecting the country, particularly Havana. In 2005, the government announced a plan to build 100,000 new homes every year, but the goals were never met.
In the documentary, sociologist Pablo Rodríguez says that unless urgent steps are taken to control the proliferation of shantytowns, ``the future will resemble Las Yaguas.''
After the triumph of Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, the Las Yaguas slum on the Havana outskirts was held up as a symbol of poverty and social neglect under previous regimes.
It was razed and replaced by a housing complex in the early 1960s.
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