A Second Hit to Gibara after Ike Hurricane

, By Leandro Estupiñán / leandro@ahora.cu
Photos: Amauris Betancourt. / amauris@radioangulo.icrt.cu


I happened to overhear it last Wednesday when the Director of Culture in Holguin was being told: the man to whom Cuba owes the International Non-Budget Film Festival of Gibara had just passed away.

Humberto Solás, one of the most important national moviemakers, director of films such as the representative Lucia (1970), Cecilia (1982 and 1983) and A Successful Man (Un hombre de éxito) (1986), paid a visit to Holguín in April during Gibara´s Movie Festival (founding president), a film meeting that, thanks to his perseverance and commitment, has become an international gathering for low-budget movie producers.

He chose the sea city of Gibara because he arrived there one day to film one of Lucia’s stories. It was the life of a woman fighting against a male chauvinist society, but in Revolution; that is, according to his meaning, in constant change.

Gibara ended up then a fetish plateau ever since, in the same way actress Adela Legrá was fetish. He went back to Gibara later to film one of his latest movies: Miel para Ochún (2005), an example of what he considered a low-budget film. He said it many times: it is a cinema carried out with few resources, but with a high artistic, aesthetic and meaningful sense.

It was his last bet. He began filming that last film one day in 2002. There was no script, but lots of cameras. The boys attending the Festival brought them along with. They wanted to learn from their masters. They had believed in the call without thinking it over that much.

To Gibara's city, a city like Havana but without sprouting, musicians, moviemakers, actors, painters and international personalities arrived. Enthusiasm reigned then. Rumor had it that an important visitor, the Spanish composer Joaquin Sabina, was to come. Regrettably, Sabina did never arrive, but his absence was forgotten one night amid fireworks when everybody seemed to sing: it is worse for the sun...

Solás did not shout either Action; however, he began filming himself: neophytes’ visits to movies, experts’ conferences about short and full-length films, homages to famous moviemakers were recorded for ever. Gibara was the starting point for people to go anywhere in the world, and from that anywhere, people came back to Holguin. It was precisely there where memoirs of his National Movie Prize Awarding were engraved in 2005.

He was taken once to the corner of Mártires and Frexes streets to witness a new building. A coffee-shop emerged there. It was The Tres Lucias coffee-shop named after his 1970 movie. The city paid reverence so to the artist and to Cuban movie. The coffee-shop, a popular space today, showed up large scale posters of the three actresses starring in the memorable film Lucia, among the top-ten best Ibero-american. A pleasant environment was breathed, bathed by the coffee aroma and soundtracks of known movies. Everything was doing all right till Humberto Solas made out three small busts in the corner. He got closer and realized they were replicas of Cuban moviemakers Santiago Álvarez, Titón and of himself. He did not like the honor and the bust made after him, reproducing his face, had to be withdrawn. He was not dead yet.

Solás was a vital man and he filmed a movie, the man's film lifting to outstanding places the art of third world countries, the movie of the Island of Cuba. He had summoned his friends and he had no end in mind. He had a lot to say left. There was not much time. The film is not over yet today, and Solás has not yet either ordered the conclusive Cut!

This place served as one plateau for a scene in the film Lucia.