Proyección de Pelicula

www.UnionCityMuseum.org

Bahia de Cochinos, Nuestra Perspectiva

Provocative New Film Premieres in Union City

"Bahía de Cochinos, Nuestra Perspectiva"

("Bay of Pigs, Our perspective") 

(Union City, NJ)  The City of Union City, Mayor Brian P. Stack & Board of Commissioners present the World Premiere screening of the documentary "Bahia de Cochinos, Nuestra perspectiva" on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 at 7:00 PM at the Union City Performing Arts Center, 2500 Kennedy Boulevard, Union City, NJ.  Free Admission.  Refreshments served. Free parking at the Parking Deck located on 23rd Street between Summit & Kerrigan Avenues.  The cast and crew of the film will be present.  

"Bahia de Cochinos, Nuestra perspectiva" is a documentary film about the Bay of pigs as told through the eyes of Cuban Exiles who actually participated in the invasion.  Now, many years later, they contemplate the happenings and share their individual satires and feelings with us.  That story comes at a price, a price we ask them if they would be willing to pay again.  When all is said and done, are these past invaders resentful?  Do they cast any blame?  Who lost most in the Bay of Pigs invasion?

Featured in the film is testimony by members of the 2506 Brigade: Ángel Casabona Ruiz, Isidoro López González, Ricardo Montero Duque, Raúl Puig Sánchez, and Alvin Ross Diaz; as well as Sergio Gatria, director of the Cuban Information Center.  Their stories are moving and shed light of the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion.  The film is bound to create some serious dialogue about what truly lies behind the events leading up to the invasion and the fallout thereafter.  

The film is directed by renowned Cuban director, Ricardo Bacallao and Lucio Fernandez; and produced by MeLu Films and The Grace Theatre Workshop, Inc.; Megan Fernandez, Executive Producer.  The entire film crew was from Hudson County. The producers held a pre-release screening of the film in 2015 to get feedback before completing the project this month. 

(Please note:  this film is presented in Spanish, but informational materials in English will be handed out prior to the screening; and all discussions will be conducted in both English and Spanish.)

www.GraceTheatre.com
www.UnionCityPAC.com

Pelicula Provocativa estrena en Union City

"Bahía de Cochinos, Nuestra Perspectiva"

(Union City, NJ) La Ciudad de Union City, el Alcalde Brian P. Stack y la Junta de Comisionados presentan el estreno mundial del documental "Bahía de Cochinos, Nuestra perspectiva" el Miercoles, 25 de mayo 2016 a las 7:00 PM en el Union City Performing Arts Center, 2500 Kennedy Boulevard, Union City, NJ. La entrada es gratuita.  Se servirán refrigerios. Estacionamiento gratis en el parqueadero localizado en la calle 23 entre Avenidas Summit y Kerrigan.  El reparto y el equipo de la película estarán presentes.  

"Bahía de Cochinos, Nuestra perspectiva" es una película documental sobre la Bahía de Cochinos representada a través de los ojos de exiliados cubanos que participaron en la invasión. Ahora, muchos años después, contemplan los acontecimientos y comparten sus historias y sentimientos individuales. Esa historia tiene un precio, un precio que les preguntamos si estarían dispuestos a pagar de nuevo. Cuando todo está dicho y hecho, ¿están estos últimos invasores resentidos? ¿Le echan la culpa a alguien? ¿Quién perdió más en la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos, los exiliados, los cubanos revolucionarios, o el pueblo de Cuba?  Esta es una nueva narración de esta historia, y se recuenta con profunda emoción.

La película cuenta con el testimonio de los miembros de la Brigada 2506: Ángel Casabona, Isidoro López, Ricardo M. Montero, Raúl Puig, y Alvin Ross; así como con Sergio Gatria, director del Cuban Information Center. Sus historias son conmovedoras y arrojan luz sobre la infame invasión de Bahía de Cochinos. La película posiblemente creará un diálogo serio sobre lo que realmente sucedió detrás de los acontecimientos que condujeron a la invasión y sus consecuencias posteriores.

"Bahía de Cochinos, Nuestra perspectiva" está dirigida por el reconocido director cubano, Ricardo Bacallao con Lucio Fernandez; producida por MeLu Films y The Grace Theatre Workshop, Inc.; Megan Fernandez, Productora Ejecutiva. 

Cuban Filmmaker returns to Union City

Two Films by Ricardo Bacallao

Interview with Ricardo Bacallao

The Way of the Art: An Interview with Filmmaker Ricardo Bacallao

by Amy Evans

As an African Diaspora dramatist with an American passport, I occupy a position of unequivocal privilege. I can cross national borders without applying for a visa or even undergoing so much as an eye scan. And yet even this privilege fails to alleviate the feeling of emptiness, of something missing, something situated far beyond the borders of my present location. In everything I write, I directly address this emptiness, and with each new piece comes a new incarnation of who I am. 

Writing from this position poses a complex dilemma. How do I as a Diaspora artist negotiate the task of sharing truths with audiences that are not ready to hear them? How do I avoid the trap of becoming a spokesperson rather than a storyteller, a translator instead of an inventor? My solution has been to seek out scriptwriters whose work explores questions of race and identity without compromising artistic integrity. 

One such artist is Ricardo Bacallao, one of the most versatile and prolific young filmmakers to emerge on the New York scene. Since he was a kid, Bacallao had it in him to tell stories. He grew up in Havana next to a cinema and played there after school: “The workers in the cinema were friends of my family. It was like my backyard.” That he would one day pursue a career in filmmaking was not a choice, but a given. Bacallao attended the prestigious Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA) in Havana and graduated in 2002, his thesis -- a feature film in three segments, one of which he would later develop into the short film Mondongo cubano (2010) – having been censored the year he was meant to finish. He finally completed his studies at ISA with a different project, a documentary on the Havana Film Festival and society entitled Mimesis. This film was also censored, this time by the film festival itself, and was only shown in festivals outside of Cuba.

In 2002 Bacallao left Cuba for Germany, where he completed two of his best-known documentary films, Short Radiography of Hip-Hop in Cuba  (2004) and The Maji-Maji Readings (2006). He relocated to the United States and is now in his final year in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Asia Program, which has brought him to yet another part of the world: Singapore. I interviewed him a few weeks before he was due to head back to Singapore and asked him what the term ‘Diaspora’ meant to him. “Diaspora for me is a big journey,” he says. “Physical, spiritual. Cultural … it’s a big journey that never stops.” 

The first leg of this journey was Berlin, a city with a pulsating arts scene and a brutal colonial legacy: it was during the Berlin Conference of 1884 that the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ was formalized, and the continent was effectively divided up among European nations. “When I was living in Cuba, I never thought I belonged to any Diaspora. It was only when I started living in Germany. In Germany, if there’s another Black person [on the street], he says hello to you, greeting you. This was something very weird to me. I said to myself, ‘Why?’ I realized at that moment that I belonged to a community, the Black Diaspora.” Making documentaries was a way for Bacallao to explore this shift in perspective. The Maji-Maji Readings features some of Berlin’s most prominent creative and intellectual voices -- Ekpenyong Ani, Philippa Ébené, and Grada Kilomba -- reflecting critically on everyday racism and German popular culture. “It’s like when you are far away, there’s something pushing you to go on this kind of journey, the journey to find out who you are. In Cuba, this pressure is not going to be there in the same way.”

What is the driving force behind this push for self-discovery? Under the British, the slave system in the United States sought to permanently wipe out the languages, religious practices and traditions that enslaved Africans had brought with them from the continent. The manner in which the slave system developed in Cuba differed significantly, resulting in a greater sense of connection with African traditions: “In Cuba, African culture was so strong,” says Bacallao. “We don’t look toward going to Africa because Africa is in Cuba.” And yet, for Bacallao, leaving Cuba – traveling abroad and looking back from a distance – has created a new urgency to embrace what has been left behind. “As an artist it’s important to go out traveling, to see what’s going on outside in the world. This is the good side of being in the Diaspora. At the same time you have many questions about who you are and where you are going. You’ve left behind your own people, your family, your friends, you start up a new life. Sometimes it’s very traumatic, this kind of thing. Not sometimes - all the times. It’s something you’re not ready for. You think you’re ready, but you’re not, because you don’t know. Diaspora is not voluntary. It’s a situation where there are external elements pushing you to move.”

Bacallao admits that he would probably not be making the same kinds of films if he had remained in Cuba: “When I was living in Cuba, [the films] were more about social conflicts, communities.”  Being far away has challenged him to move in a more intimate direction. In Offering to Yemaya: Goddess of the Sea (2009), Bacallao allows his audience a measured glimpse into the world of Santería, a religion brought to Cuba by Africans who had been captured and transported to the Caribbean as slaves. The film documents a Santería ceremony in which worshippers pay tribute to Yemaya, the mother of all the Orishas, or deities of Santería. “I decided to do something about Santería because I needed to know more about this. That was my feeling, like, ‘Oh, I need to do something there.’” Aware that he stood a chance of alienating viewers who might find images of the ritual overwhelming, Bacallao made careful choices about what to film and what to cut. “For me it was so fascinating to be there inside of the ritual, but I realized for many people it’s too much. So I cut out many scenes. I showed some part of the ritual, and for me, it was enough.” His strategy for achieving this level of accessibility is to take an economical approach: “You don’t try to say too much,” he says. “I think this is the challenge: to be specific with the audience but at the same time not be superficial. A good story is a story people will understand.”

The strategy seems to be working. Whether the setting is in an impoverished Cuban household, the ultra-trendy streets of Berlin, or a shrine in downtown Singapore, Bacallao’s films, while unapologetically political, are at heart good stories:, challenging, bittersweet and unpredictable. In his short fiction film The Offering (2008), a young African widower going to pay tribute to his dead Indian wife at a local shrine is turned away by a Chinese caretaker who insists that Blacks – as well as dogs – are not allowed inside. Defeated, the young man starts to leave, but an act of divine intervention leads him back to the shrine and inspires him to fight for his right to honor his loved ones. Shot in black-and-white in a style reminiscent of 1970s kung-fu films, Bacallao weaves humor and irony into a touching story about pride and redemption without downplaying the contentious issue of racism in Singapore: “I think this is the way

of the art, to give light or illuminate conflicts.”

So how does an artist with such a broad range at his disposal decide what stories to tell? Bacallao’s response is to remain true to himself and to his own point of view in seeking out stories that have universal appeal: “The challenge is to be explicit with the audience without being superficial,” he says again. “This is the challenge for any artist who lives in a different country.” Mondongo cubano (2010), his latest film, is set during the ‘Special Period’ in the 1990s during which Cuba was plunged into the most disastrous economic crisis since the Cuban Revolution. An ageing zoo-keeper, unable to bring himself to poison the zoo’s last lion, decides to bring the animal home and take care of it himself. His family, struggling already to make ends meet, balk at the idea at first – until they realize that the scheme might persuade the state to grant them a new and better house. Certain the additional hardship will pay off in the future, the family welcomes the beast into their home -- with desperately tragic consequences. How does this story translate for mainstream American viewers – many of whom were too busy celebrating the collapse of the Soviet Union to notice the devastating knock-on effect it had in Cuba? “Before starting to shoot, I deleted many political situations I had written before,” says Bacallao. “I tried to concentrate more on the story instead of the context.” Political tensions become familial tensions; the desperation of an entire nation is encapsulated in a single family’s willingness to gamble their lives on the promise of a better future.  

“I’m always part of the minority,” says Bacallao. “When you’re part of the Diaspora, you’re part of a minority everywhere you go. It’s curious … I have been some places where I say, ‘Whoa, if I’m not here, there’s no Black person!” For Bacallao, this means he has a duty to come to voice, to ensure that his story and the stories he gathers throughout his travels are told. “I realized, ‘OK, there’s something you need to tell that nobody has said before.’”

Ricardo Bacallao is currently at work on a feature film set in New York and New Jersey, a thriller featuring another Diaspora to which he belongs: the Cuban community.

Playwright Amy Evans seeks through her work to critically examine the impact of displacement, alienation and political violence on the human spirit. Her newest play, The Most Unsatisfied Town, based on the death-in-custody of Oury Jalloh, was completed while in residency at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry in Berlin earlier this year. She is based in New York. www.scriptingrage.com

World Premiere Screening of "Mondongo Cubano"

Cuban Filmmaker in Union City

Conversation About Cuban Film

with renowned filmmaker Ricardo Bacallao… "The Cuban Woody Allen"

& World Premiere of the film "Mondongo Cubano"

The City of Union City presents Conversation About Cuban Film with renowned filmmaker Ricardo Bacallao, known as "The Cuban Woody Allen" on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 at 8:00 PM at the William V. Musto Cultural Center, 420 - 15 Street, Union City, NJ.  There will be live music and refreshments.  Admission is free.

The evening will be dedicated to a discussion about Cuban cinema, its style, and its influence on filmmaking world-wide.  The World Premiere screening of  the short film "Mondongo Cubano" will be followed by a question and answer period with its director/producer, Ricardo Bacallao.

About Ricardo Bacallao

"There is a small group of modern filmmakers who have made a significant impact in the New York City film industry, and in doing so, revolutionized the industry as a whole and most importantly how the general public sees their respective communities; most notably Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen.  These three exceptional filmmakers are New York.  What was missing?  The Latino perspective.  Now add to this short list a hungry, young, Cuban filmmaker trained at some of the world's most prestigious film schools, and you have Ricardo Bacallao. 

                        

Ricardo Bacallao was born in Havana, Cuba. He graduated as Director of film, TV, and Radio from Havana's Superior Institute, and received his MFA in film from NYU (Tisch Asia school of the Art, in Singapore). While living in Madrid and Berlin, Ricardo participated several times in the Berlin Film Festival, including being awarded as the first Cuban representative to the festival's Talent Campus at the first time event in 2003 and awarded again in 2004. In 2010, a segment Ricardo produced for CUNY TV's magazine show Nueva York won a New York Emmy Award. Since that time, he has been working as a freelance director, Cameraman, producer and editor of documentary and Fiction.  “Mondongo Cubano”; “Christmas Therapy” are the latest short films. His current documentary is “Rite of Passage” for California Endowment Fund, about the curriculum program of Dr. Maulana Karenga, who created Kwaanza.  Ricardo first came to the U.S. in December of 2005 from Germany, when he was invited to tour universities around the United States screening his documentaries on topics such as race, immigration, Santeria, and madness in the arts. Bacallao is just completing "The Uncle’s Request”, his first feature film, a Political thriller, and Romañach, a dramedy, is in pre-production. The goal of Ricardo is to produce a feature film every year in the U.S. with the background of the Cuban perspective as Woody Allen, Scorsese and Spike Lee did films for their communities.  No doubt that Ricardo will accomplish this goal.  If the aforementioned filmmakers are synonymous to NYC, then we can safely say… Ricardo Bacallao is "The Cuban Woody Allen". "

--The Hudson Independent News