{"id":15357,"date":"2024-10-30T22:12:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T22:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/?p=15357"},"modified":"2024-11-01T06:12:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T06:12:06","slug":"ociel-del-toa-queer-landrian-magazine-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/notas\/ociel-del-toa-queer-landrian-magazine-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Ociel del Toa: Queer Landri\u00e1n MAGAZINE 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"15357\" class=\"elementor elementor-15357\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-69cec2e e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"69cec2e\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-94744fa elementor-widget elementor-widget-spacer\" data-id=\"94744fa\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"spacer.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer-inner\"><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-21f4b9b e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"21f4b9b\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e783315 elementor-widget__width-inherit elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"e783315\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Ociel del Toa: Queer Landri\u00e1n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-0b1b6c6 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"0b1b6c6\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-d954b39 elementor-widget__width-inherit elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"d954b39\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By N\u00e9stor D\u00edaz de Villegas<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e8db727 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"e8db727\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-1f6c400 elementor-widget__width-initial elementor-widget elementor-widget-image\" data-id=\"1f6c400\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"image.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-1024x576.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-image-15171\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-18x10.jpg 18w, https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/elementor\/thumbs\/06.-PORTADA-DOSSIER-NICOLACITO-NDDV-1-scaled-qw5gc4zzmizgm8llp1yvx7obr80otp93y0vll4ihhs.jpg 754w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-edd3d1b e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"edd3d1b\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-cc6d179 elementor-widget elementor-widget-spacer\" data-id=\"cc6d179\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"spacer.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer-inner\"><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ef3c000 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"ef3c000\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ca846bb elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"ca846bb\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><b>1<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roberto Valera&#8217;s impressionist musical score for Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s film <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> invokes, from the very first scene, the spirit of Claude Debussy&#8217;s poem <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">L\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">).\u00a0 The soundtrack underpins the image of the film&#8217;s protagonist, a young man from Cuba&#8217;s Oriente region [1] with the face of a faun\u2014androgynous, high cheekbones, deer eyes\u2014that reappears under a different guise in the works of the painter Guill\u00e9n during his Miami period. The artist&#8217;s later canvases show how he dipped back into the canon of beauty that marked the beginning of his career.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel himself has said that it was Nicol\u00e1s who selected the little white hat he wears in the documentary, a precious version of a Borsalino. The character is transformed by this affected accessory into a young charioteer that sails the Toa River in his <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cayuca<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. [2]<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like much of Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s work, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is spliced with intertitles. The first one explains that the protagonist is sixteen years old, is active in the state militia, went to school up to the third grade, and has been working on the river for ten years. Following this initial intertitle is the first close-up of his face, accompanied by text revealing his name: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We see alternating shots of his chest, legs, and arms in movement as he maneuvers the pole that propels the boat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this voyeuristic montage, the lens takes pleasure in several fragments of the body being examined, as Livio Delgado&#8217;s cinematography alludes to the portraits of Sicilian youth by Wilhelm von Gloeden [3] (1856-1931). I do not believe it would be a reach to say that, from a contemporary perspective, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> invites a queer reading, and that Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s way of approaching &#8220;the Beautiful&#8221; is the first of its kind in Cuban cinema.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The subject of the film is constructed by juxtaposing close-ups that show Ociel&#8217;s white tee shirt; an angle where the naked chest of the other crew member of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cayuca<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is exposed and suggests a future glimpse of the protagonist&#8217;s body, once he is past adolescence; a cowboy shot showing Ociel in a tank top and a gallant little hat; and a wide-angle establishing shot of the Toa River.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;re by the river. There is a boat and two water-dwelling creatures: the story indirectly alludes to a mythical dimension, a fable filled with satyrs and afternoon fauns.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second intertitle precedes the image of a family seated around a table. Four children, one of which is Ociel, and another, a former combatant who became a driver after the Revolution, the only one that isn&#8217;t part of the world that revolves around the river. Ociel is also shown lying in bed in a languid interior scene set in darkness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One notices the type of food served, the simple fare typical of the era: it&#8217;s 1965, the &#8220;Year of Agriculture&#8221; [4] in the revolutionary calendar. The agrarian imagery is succinctly captured in the peeled yams, the white ceramic dishware, the Amerindian features of Ociel and his people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel is the Ariel of Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s filmography, a being of air and water. An ancestral spirit that is somehow manifested in the very word &#8220;toa,&#8221; an indigenous word meaning <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">frog<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Ociel is an amphibious and ambiguous creature.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His strange features could be considered <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">batistiano<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (in the manner of Batista) in nature. Fulgencio Batista [5] (1901-1973), originally from Banes in the eastern region of Cuba, was also something of a frog man. Ociel is a projection of Batista as an adolescent, Batista the railroad switchman: Fulgencio via indigenous endogenesis.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cayuca<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> moves down the river. The hypnotic rhythm of the poles is like writing in the space dappled with sunlight. The water is the indelible ink of this film-poem. The sequence lingers on the details of a mechanical exercise that transforms into an inscription system: [6] the tips of the rods are used to write on the water. For Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, cinematography is a substitute for writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><b>2<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second movement opens on a boatman named Fil\u00edn, a robust young man with a thin mustache and wearing a beret, the counterpart to his comrade, the young Ociel, who is clean-shaven and wearing a little Rococo hat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guillen&#8217;s eye inspects the interiors and the interiorities of family life, and the documentary approach takes on a critical function by witnessing a lost time that, when it was filmed, was presented to the camera as a time <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">regained<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s documentary approach suggests a dialectical reversal: the costumes, the manners, the food, and even the paradoxical physical integrity of what is real, are insinuated to the gaze of the contemporary viewer as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">possibilities<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It&#8217;s not about a primitive state but a counterfactual one: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does not speak to what is irreversibly <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">consummated<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but rather what is eternally possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the distance of a revolutionary eon, Toa is Arcadia, an artificial paradise, a Cythera [7] to which it&#8217;s impossible to go back because, like a mirage, its <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">futurity<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is presented as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the already-fulfilled<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: the insurmountable Cuba that we left behind. Thus the revolution flows into a vicious cycle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Due to this reversal, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a work of propaganda that turns against the propagandist, namely, the State and the ICAIC, the government institute of &#8220;Art and Industry&#8221; that attempted to take on anything and everything. [8]\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alfredo Guevara, [9] before Fidel Castro, leaves nothing outside the Revolution, which is governess and giver of the arts, science, and technology. Schooling, food, family, procreation, transportation, death, work: the universe of Toa is rediscovered and revealed by the Cuban film institute&#8217;s Eye of Sauron, the same that is currently &#8220;rediscovering&#8221; Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">didascalia <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[10] that the filmmaker inserts into the film was intended to re-educate the masses about what &#8220;birthing&#8221; meant from that point forward. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">La era est\u00e1 pariendo un coraz\u00f3n (The Era is Giving Birth to a Heart)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the song by official troubadour Silvio Rodr\u00edguez, would come out three years later, in 1968, but the screams of labor, the wheezing of the age that engendered a frog, can already be heard in the soundtrack of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a little explored eschatological dimension to Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s art: What other filmmaker has recorded the half-submerged legs of a Saint Christopher with the weight of an era and a superstition as young as a little girl resting on his shoulders? [11] After a long pregnancy (1959-1965), Cuba miscarried an ouroboros [12] and Guill\u00e9n was there to see it. His trip to Toa is a pilgrimage, a trip to the seed of everything: the Toa is the Tao.<\/span><\/p><p><b>3<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cEs bueno que esto lo vean en La Habana\u201d (&#8220;It&#8217;s good that they\u2019ll see this in Havana&#8221;), declares another intertitle, and Landri\u00e1n takes the Toa to Havana, with its aquatic waltzes, its young Neptunes, the kerosene lamplight on the Borsalino, and the halftones of the criollo Levant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s documentaries from this period are miniatures, sketches of an unprecedented daintiness in Latin American cinema. The cinematography is mannerist, picturesque at times, and each work is an amber encasing where the eternal Cuban-ness is commemorated and embalmed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel is the successor to Caravaggio&#8217;s paintings of Bacchus, and, like those Baroque satyrs, the boatman of Toa and his entourage are the work of a twentysomething visionary. Within Cuba\u2019s Eastern bazaar bursting with succulent images, Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n seems to be exclaiming, along with Allen Ginsberg in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Howl<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: &#8220;What peaches and what penumbras!&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to legend, when Nicol\u00e1s finished shooting the film, he brought Ociel to Havana in real life. The strange episode, which stoked the fury of Julio Garc\u00eda Espinosa, [13] is evoked half a century later by the elderly Ociel and the cinematographer Livio Delgado in Ernesto Daranas&#8217; film <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Landri\u00e1n<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. After all, it wasn&#8217;t good for certain details about the production to be seen in the capital, and the slip-up led to Ociel being banished from the capital and returned to the river.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><b>4<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Birth of Tragedy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Nietzsche says \u201ca literary genre is declared born as a body;\u201d in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> we attend the birth of a film genre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The body of Ociel marks an era; if ever the Revolution embodied a sort of renaissance, the young militiaman seduced and forsaken by the ICAIC&#8217;s cameras would come to be its David. Like an Etruscan marble statue, the young boatman is restored and returned to his pedestal by the curators of Aracne Digital Cinema S. L. and the historical repair shop of Ernesto Daranas.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The substantialism in Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s films, his cabinet of curiosities containing venerated bodies, those Byzantine portraits on the walls of the mausoleum that would become the Republic of Cuba, they all recover the depth of the chiaroscuros, the silky sheen of the whites, the lyricism of the paper pennants waving over the town&#8217;s main street that Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n, superb set designer that he was, placed there like an Arc de Triomphe for Ociel to pass through.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s a sensualism that reaches its climax in the segment titled \u201cLa fiesta del s\u00e1bado por la noche en casa de Hilda, la mujer de Tom\u00e1s\u201d (&#8220;The party on Saturday night at the home of Hilda, wife of Tom\u00e1s&#8221;), where Ociel is transformed into a young woman. The wife of Tom\u00e1s is the unfolding of Ociel. Thus the hermaphrodite jumps out of the embers of a wood-fired stove and a new inkling of gender\/genre is born in the alembic of film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bodies twirl to the sound of primitive music, and Ociel dances with his double, the ideal woman formed from his rib. There is a physical, almost metaphysical, likeness between Ociel and his feminine counterpart, coupled together in the dance and manifested by the Dionysian power of the music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This passage is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">P.M.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (1961) reduced to a single sequence and focused on the emblematic figure of the young man. The song repeats, &#8220;Me muero de amor&#8221; (&#8220;I&#8217;m dying of love&#8221;), as a Kuleshov-like montage, interlaced with scenes of the revelry, flashes past on the screen: Hilda peeling <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">malangas<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, [14] grinding a mortar and pestle, or laughing at the camera.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We see <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">real maravilloso <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[15] portraits of partiers and drunks before returning to Hilda, delightfullooly dressed in a blouse with tulip sleeves, the kitchen her stage. It&#8217;s a classic shot where Guill\u00e9n portrays her with bare arms and her head leaning against her shoulder, clinging to a wooden post. They are glorious moments that turn this sixteen-minute film into a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> free of the pamphleteering of Mija\u00edl Kalatozov&#8217;s 1964 film.<\/span><\/p><p><b>5<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The underdevelopment that Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s films show has little to do with the disenchanted intellectual&#8217;s crisis of conscience in Guti\u00e9rrez Alea&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fact that Nicol\u00e1s Marcial Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n, the latest in a long line of outsized figures from the cultural aristocracy of Camag\u00fcey, examines the customs of Blacks, Whites, and Ta\u00ednos along Cuba&#8217;s eastern borders, and remixes French situationism, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">batistiano<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> aboriginalism, and Italian Neorealism in the smorgasbord of revolutionary art and industry is the definitive artistic event of the year in which the historical blockbuster of Castroism reaches <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The End<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Underdevelopment had triumphed and taken over the Palace as ersatz Stakhanovism: [16] <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> comments on the debacle with a soundtrack that incorporates radio static, the loudspeakers\u2019 fury, and the concrete music by Roberto Valera. In Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s head, the revolution is noise: the only thing lying between this racket and the discharge of electroshocks was a turn of the dial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cockfights, yodeling, and screams at point-blank. A new intertitle informs the viewer, laconically: &#8220;&#8230;van a quitar los gallos&#8221; (&#8220;&#8230;they&#8217;re going to take away the fighting cocks&#8221;), and the ominous tone of the verb &#8220;quitar&#8221; (&#8220;take away&#8221;) creaks, for the first time, in the sound wave of modern Cuban-ness.<\/span><\/p><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is an etymological treatise and a real-time investigation into the way the Revolution expressed itself: &#8220;Pero si no hay gallos, habr\u00e1 otra cosa, peor es la muerte&#8230;&#8221; (&#8220;But if there are no gamecocks, there will be something else, death is worse&#8230;&#8221;). Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s finely tuned ear registers even the slightest variations in official discourse, the oscillations of commitment, the obsequiousness with which the dictatorship is received and accepted like a divine being from the Oriente.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A goddess who, like any exotic deity, insists on proscribing and vulgarizing only to later impose a new canon, which is then left in the hands of dubious arbiters of taste: Servando Cabrera&#8217;s corpulent militiamen, Ra\u00fal Mart\u00ednez&#8217;s heroes in make-up, an effete Cuba, gaudy and overdone. [17] <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> distances itself from this contingent of social climbers.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fighting cocks are &#8220;taken away&#8221; as if they were pieces of a political game. &#8220;There will be something else:&#8221; samples of conformity, in its natural expression, are collected on the ground, from the subject\u2019s plain manner of speaking. Because the revolution, in the art of Landri\u00e1n, is always a stereophonic and graphological phenomenon: a distortion of discourse. It&#8217;s a heroic feat that, in the quarter of an hour that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> occupies, the portrayal of fighting cocks sits alongside a semiotic investigation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A piece of black cardboard with white letters contains the next caption, tinged with irony: &#8220;Ahora los domingos los campesinos tenemos plenaria de educaci\u00f3n&#8221; (&#8220;Now on Sundays, we <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">campesinos <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[18]<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have educational assemblies&#8221;); once again, the omitted question imposes itself: This was progress? The disappearance of the fighting cocks and the arrival of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">campesino<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> assembly, was a social triumph? The answer to every question lies in the realm of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the undecidable<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><p><b>6<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A procession advances along a path; the common people carry a sign painted on a piece of canvas: &#8220;La comisi\u00f3n #5 JAUCO saluda la plenaria municipal con las metas sobrecumplidas&#8221; (&#8220;JAUCO Commission #5 salutes the municipal assembly for exceeding its goals&#8221;).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elsewhere I&#8217;ve analyzed the function of signage in Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s films, the line of tachisme [19] that runs through his work. This snapshot of a sign functions as another intertitle and is the negation of a pro-assembly policy whose true message is implied by the absurdity of the writing, the enunciative function as a mechanism of coercion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sixty years later, Cuban viewers will understand that no goal was exceeded, not then and not ever. That the new regime never aspired to exceed, let alone fulfill, its promises: the painted word and its history on film are evidence of its flimsy scheme.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1965, the bureaucratic automation of a collective of farmers located in a remote fluvial enclave intended to confuse the ones carrying the signs, deceive the ones holding the banners: &#8220;exceeding,&#8221; in the vocabulary of Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s films, is a wrong notion and fake news. Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s films reveal a new kind of transvestism: the hidden tool of political disinformation in the Revolution&#8217;s didactic apparatus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><b>7<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Fundamentally, it is no more than an image of light (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lichtbild<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) projected on to a dark wall,&#8221; says Nietzsche of the Apolline qualities of Greek tragedy in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Birth of Tragedy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The midday hour, which falls like a thunderbolt on the people of Toa, replicates the same Greek effect. \u201cSe cruza el r\u00edo y el monte\u201d (&#8220;One crosses the river and the mountain&#8221;) and at \u201c11 am,\u201d another intertitle announces the beginning of the assembly. The women walk along the path covered with white towels; the repeated presence of Ociel provides space-time coordinates and continuity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A woman striped by the shadows of a palm tree sells cold drinks at an improvised stand and says she wants to &#8220;be a Communist youth.&#8221; Communism is named for the first time in the onscreen text. Next the church is mentioned. The aspiring Communist &#8220;goes to church with her aunt,&#8221; which is now a sin. The portrait of the young woman and her aunt is one of the figurativist masterpieces of Landri\u00e1n and Livio Delgado.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the Protestant church by the Toa River, the festive music transforms into a Lutheran hymn: \u201c\u00a1Hay vida, hay vida en Jes\u00fas!\u201d (&#8220;There&#8217;s life, there&#8217;s life in Jesus!&#8221;). What the lens captures, between songs, is the Apolline abundance of Cuban-ness, a shadow projected onto the luminous background of the past, a complex and plural life that, due to the dictatorship\u2019s lens effect, seems completely foreign to us now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only the most eloquent and philosophical Latin American filmmaker of the mid-20th century could return to us the Cuba that once laughed, sang psalms, and walked on water. Nicol\u00e1s shows us the things we lost: a Black preacher, a collection plate covered with a lace cloth, the shared communion ritual. The great power of this extraordinary <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">memento mori<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is not of the earthly realm, but of the kingdom of the Most High: \u201cYo quiero m\u00e1s y m\u00e1s de Cristo, yo quiero m\u00e1s de su poder\u201d (&#8220;I want more and more of Christ, I want more of his power&#8221;).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The last intertitle is in the form of a question: \u201c\u00bfUstedes han visto la muerte?\u201d (&#8220;Have you all seen death?&#8221;); but Ociel has never seen it and his childlike face betrays incredulity. The men attending a burial wear hats and white shirts, simple people neatly dressed and taking pains to appear as civil as possible in public.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Death is in front of Ociel del Toa, but he doesn&#8217;t see it. The assembly and the burial exchange masks during the final moments of the film: the ones that attend the dance, the house of worship, and the funeral will die in jails and African wars before the end of the century. Before the decade is over, others will be banished. Mothers, aunts, and cousins will disappear from the map. The final question also lacks an answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The young boatmen plow through the Toa&#8217;s current, the waters that separate life and death for both a place and an era. Ociel&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cayuca<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is Regla&#8217;s little motorboat in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">P. M<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. elevated to a theological plane.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scene of the final passage becomes, in turn, a corollary of the documentary <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicol\u00e1s: el fin pero no es el fin (Nicol\u00e1s: The End But It&#8217;s Not the End)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2005) by Jorge Egusquiza Zorilla, which could serve as an outro for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ociel del Toa<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right before dying, Nicol\u00e1s addresses Egusquiza&#8217;s camera. It&#8217;s his last chance to explain himself:\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe national problem has always been very hostile for me. Not because of racism, because of being Black or Chinese or White, but because of a problem with the Island&#8217;s geography, which has always seemed a little dramatic to me. The way it&#8217;s long and cut into two extremes. I don&#8217;t know if everyone&#8217;s happy they were born on an island. I&#8217;m not.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><b>N\u00e9stor D\u00edaz de Villegas<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a poet, editor, and essayist. His most recent book is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Poemas inmorales (Immoral Poems)<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2022). He lives in Varese, Italy.<\/span><\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[1] <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Translator&#8217;s note: The Oriente is the eastern region of Cuba.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[2] Translator&#8217;s note: a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cayuca<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a small dug-out canoe used in the Caribbean.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[3] Translator\u2019s note: von Gloeden was a German photographer known for nude photographic studies of Sicilian boys stylized to evoke ancient Greece.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[4] Translator\u2019s note: Beginning in 1959, the Cuban revolutionary government instituted a calendar where every year was given a symbolic name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[5] Translator&#8217;s note: Batista\u2019s regime was overthrown by the Cuban revolution in 1959.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[6] Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800\/1900, Stanford University Press, 1992.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[7] Translator\u2019s note: In Greek poetic tradition, Arcadia refers to an idealized rural setting; in Greek mythology, Cythera is the birthplace of Aphrodite.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[8] Translator&#8217;s note: Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematogr\u00e1ficos (ICAIC), is the Cuban government\u2019s film institute, whose name literally translates to &#8220;Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[9] Translator\u2019s note: Guevara was considered Cuba\u2019s \u201cfilm czar\u201d and the founder of the ICAIC.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[10] Translator\u2019s note: an Italian word meaning caption, subtitle, or stage direction.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[11] Translator\u2019s note: Saint Christopher is a Christian martyr said to have carried a child across a river before the child revealed himself as Christ.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[12] Translator\u2019s note: an ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[13] Translator&#8217;s note: Espinosa was a filmmaker and Cuban cultural <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">apparatchik<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who helped found the ICAIC and served as Vice Minister of Culture.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[14] Translator\u2019s note: a tropical root vegetable.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[15] Translator&#8217;s note: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Real maravilloso<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which literally translates to &#8220;marvelous real,&#8221; is a term coined by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier to describe a sort of magic realism specific to the way of life in Cuba.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[16] Translator\u2019s note: a Soviet movement intended to increase worker productivity.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[17] Translator&#8217;s note: Cabrera and Mart\u00ednez were Cuban painters.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[18] Translator\u2019s note: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">campesinos<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are people in rural communities that live on and work the land.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[19] Translator\u2019s note: a French style of abstract painting that sometimes included brushstrokes similar to calligraphy.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ed2bfe3 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"ed2bfe3\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-0254657 elementor-widget elementor-widget-spacer\" data-id=\"0254657\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"spacer.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer-inner\"><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-85e1541 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"85e1541\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-97d3501 elementor-widget elementor-widget-spacer\" data-id=\"97d3501\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"spacer.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer-inner\"><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ociel del Toa: Queer Landri\u00e1n By N\u00e9stor D\u00edaz de Villegas 1 Roberto Valera&#8217;s impressionist musical score for Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n&#8217;s film Ociel del Toa invokes, from the very first scene, the spirit of Claude Debussy&#8217;s poem L\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun).\u00a0 The soundtrack underpins the image of the film&#8217;s protagonist, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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