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• 08 / 14 / 2008

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Directed by Ibarra and written by the Spanish Lola Salvador, who also produced the documentary, Titón: de La Habana a Guantanamera will be premiered during the San Sebastian movie festival, to which the Cuban is invited and it will be screened in December during the Latin American Film Festival from Havana .

Less than a year ago, Mirtha Ibarra published the book Titón: volver sobre mis pasos , an immersion in the deepest thoughts of the director of Strawberry and Chocolate through his correspondence with friends, relatives, loves and colleagues such as the Spanish Carlos Saura, the American Sydney Pollack and the Cuban Julio García Espinosa.

But while the substantial volume created and organized by his widow –who dedicates a chapter to her close relationship with Titón reflects the movie maker as a human being above everything else, the documentary places the creator in the center.

“In the book there is the intimate, personal Titón and here it is he talking about his movies: Why he made this movie, why the other one? And there are important scenes of almost all of his movies. So this documentary tries to wake interest for his movies in people who knew it. That was my aim,” explains the actress.

As in the book by the Spanish Ediciones y Publicaciones Autor , the Gutiérrez Alea of the documentary also goes through Ibarra´s sight, who leaves her view of the man with whom she shared 23 years of her privet life and some of them on a set, being directed by him.

Mirtha made this tape during the whole of 2007 and she didn´t want to get more involved than as a director. But the Cuban movie maker Fernando Pérez caught her attention with an essential detail that she had not considered: anyone can make a documentary on Titón, but no one like a person who knew him so well for more than twenty years.

If you don´t get involved –explained Fernando to her then, while they were going over the project in Spain , where they coincided- it will never have the distinction and originality of your perspective. Ibarra understood; and started through the lens of her subjectivity, the documentary on one of the greatest directors in Cuban and Latin American cinema in general.

As in the book, Ibarra talks about Titón in the documentary, which lasts 93 minutes. There are also other people who offer their testimonies: Edmundo Desnoes, script writer from Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of underdevelopment) - the most controversial movie by Gutiérrez Alea; the writers Reinaldo González and Lisandro Otero, already deceased; the movie makers Enrique Pineda Barnet, Julio García Espinosa and Fernando Pérez.

Other people who give their opinion are Sandra Levinson, director of the Cuban Study Center from New York , as well as the movie critic José Antonio Évora and the actor Reinaldo Miravalles, both of whom now live in the United States .

Mirtha Ibarra promoted the figure of Titón during the Latin American movie festival, celebrated recently. There was screened Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (A Cuban fight against demons) found very current by the viewers due to the reading promoted by the movie of the religious fanaticism and they were surprised of how current it is in that sense.

According to Ibarra, who talked about this movie and its director, the Metropolitan University of London and other institutions organized the cycle as a tribute to Tomás Gutiérrez Alea to get funds destined to the Cuban Movie Institute ( ICAIC in Spanish), which needs to restore many of its movies, which are now in a deplorable state.


(Cubacine)