It would be nice to breathe.

Last month was a blur because of Cuba Nostalgia. It’s hard for you to imagine the preparations that are necessary to pull it off every year. And the festival itself is even more of a blur. We had a lot of things going on at the Babalu Blog booth. We had several authors signing and selling books and we were also promoting three different documentaries related to Cuba. Dream Havana is one of the movies we were helping promote. Gary Marks, a Chicago filmmaker (not to be confused with the Chicago Tribune’s former Havana correspondent, Gary Marx) is the director and producer of Dream Havana.

I spent an entire weekend with Gary, a very nice guy, and we talked quite a bit but to be honest I didn’t get a chance to watch the film though we were screening it on a plasma TV during the whole festival. Gary gave me a copy and I forgot about it, until today. I’m traveling on business, ironically to Chicago, and wanted something to watch on the flight. I looked on my shelf and found my copy of Dream Havana. Perfect.

Dream Havana is the story of Jorge Mota and his friend Ernesto Santana. Both are Cuban intellectuals who formed a close friendship during the 1980s. Mota left Cuba in a makeshift boat in 1994 and became an award-winning journalist (he’s now a news editor for the Telemundo station in Chicago) and Santana stayed behind and wrote a novel called Ave y Nada which won a major literary prize in Cuba. His reward was a trip to Mexico for a book fair where he has an emotional reunion with Mota.

I, as a Cuban-American, am indebted to Gary Marx. The beautiful film he has produced is a testament to the ridiculous and oppressive system of government that fidel castro and his henchmen have forced upon the Cuban people. This film is not political but watching Cuban intellectuals and creative people trying to explain their reality will be eye-opening to those who are not familiar with the Cuban tragedy. Especially enlightening are the various accounts of Cuba’s “special period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the plight of the rafters who literally thought facing the merciless ocean and the sharks was a better alternative than living another day in castro’s Cuba.

There’s a scene toward the end of the film where Santana’s wife talks about what it would mean for him to be able to travel abroad for the for time and she says, “It would be nice to breathe.”

Thank you Gary from the bottom of heart for putting together such a wonderful film that will certainly be a record for future generations about what happened once on an island called Cuba.

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at June 26, 2008 06:04 AM

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Posted by: Ziva Sahl at June 26, 2008 02:53 AM

Posted by: omar at June 26, 2008 08:11 AM

Posted by: Henry Louis Gomez at June 26, 2008 09:42 AM

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