Filmmaker Won’t Weep for the Cuba He Left Behind

Filmmaker Won't Weep for the Cuba He Left Behind
MARCH 15, 2015

Leon Ichaso, inside the vaults at DuArt in Manhattan, where the
negatives to his film "Azúcar Amarga" were discovered. Credit David
Gonzalez/The New York Times
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Side Street
By DAVID GONZALEZ

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Thirty years ago, Leon Ichaso made "Crossover Dreams," a heartfelt
independent movie that starred a young Ruben Blades as an ambitious
salsa singer. Both Mr. Ichaso and Mr. Blades went on to greater success.
Unfortunately, the film itself — the actual negatives stored in reels
inside cans — has languished in obscurity. Mr. Ichaso has no idea where.

He hopes "Crossover Dreams" has escaped the fate of "El Super," his
breakthrough movie about a Cuban family coming to grips with life in New
York. That film's negatives were lost when the film lab where they were
stored was destroyed by a fire.

For independent filmmakers like Mr. Ichaso, caring for analog negatives
in an increasingly digital world is no small consideration. Not that
long ago, he was elated to learn that archivists had found the negatives
to "Azúcar Amarga," his 1996 movie about a disillusioned young man in
Communist Cuba.

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"There is a sense that the film is not lost," Mr. Ichaso said of "Azúcar
Amarga." "That it is resting peacefully somewhere. And that, to me,
gives me a little bit of peace, knowing it is being preserved."

Mr. Ichaso will be screening "Azúcar Amarga" this week at the Museum of
the Moving Image as part of the Queens World Film Festival, which is
honoring him. The fact that the movie can be shown at all is a tribute
to the detective work of IndieCollect, a group that has been scouring
the vaults at DuArt in Manhattan to discover, catalog and preserve
independent films.

DuArt was favored by independent filmmakers because it could make prints
of their movies and store the negatives. As the industry changed, the
company closed its photochemical division. It did not, however, toss any
negatives.

IndieCollect stepped in not just to find new homes for those negatives,
but also to identify and catalog them. It has already placed the
negatives of 3,000 films in archives like the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences and the Library of Congress. IndieCollect has indexed
7,000 films and hopes to add an additional 10,000 this year.

"We have this notion of the importance of American independent cinema as
part of world cinema, but we can't point to a list of independent films
or study the myriad strains in that body of work," said Sandra
Schulberg, who founded IndieCollect. "That is a vital part of what we're
doing."

"Azúcar Amarga," or "Bitter Sugar," was among the films Ms. Schulberg
helped rescue. A colleague she enlisted to help her identify work by
Latino filmmakers spotted the film's can. She thought it would be a good
film to show at the festival, given the recent changes in United States
policy toward Cuba.

The timing was good for her, but a bit awkward for Mr. Ichaso. He had
started to work on a movie about an older Cuban exile in a nursing home
who revives the spirits of people from his younger years. It was a movie
about the heartbreaking finality of exile, something that had haunted
the generation that left Cuba in the 1960s.

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The policy shift threw all that into question.

"I just thought a lot of this stuff was not going to be relevant to
anyone," Mr. Ichaso, 66, said. "Cuban exile stories, at this point, even
Cuban exiles are not that interested in them. I stopped production after
four days."

"Azúcar Amarga" held a special place in his heart. Mr. Ichaso was born
in Cuba and moved to the United States as a teenager, embracing film and
avoiding politics. But in the mid-1990s, he grew uncomfortable seeing
Hollywood celebrities reveling in Havana while Cuba's residents were
reeling from the economic — and sometimes moral — collapse caused by the
demise of Cuba's patron, the Soviet Union.

"Cuba was like Studio 54, and everybody was talking about how much fun
it was," he said. "It was painful to see Jack Nicholson and others
partying in Havana. So I threw myself into 'Azúcar Amarga.' I had to do
something."

"Azúcar Amarga" was a story of love betrayed, not just of a man and a
woman, but a man and the revolution that had raised him. It was a
critique of a failed system that ended with the leading man trying to
kill Fidel Castro. Mr. Ichaso was proud of the film, even though he
suspects that it earned him criticism in some circles that held a
romantic view of Cuba.

"It didn't play in some theaters I would have wanted in New York," he
said. "I think the West Side lefties weren't ready for that."

He holds no such nostalgia. He has no desire to return to Cuba to weep
in front of his old school. Nor does he want to fetishize the ruins that
many neighborhoods have become.

"That's like going to a hospital and seeing damaged goods," he said.
"It's not fascinating."

Instead, he hopes to make a movie in Havana.

"It's something I've always wanted to do," he said. "A movie can buffer
you; it's a very specific universe. I'm already writing something. I'm
getting my passport."

Source: Filmmaker Won't Weep for the Cuba He Left Behind - NYTimes.com -
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/nyregion/as-a-movie-about-cuba-resurfaces-so-do-a-filmmakers-thoughts-of-his-homeland.html?_r=0