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'Anecdotes' introduces Castro the man
Source: Agencies |
December 12, 2009, Saturday
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THE Reverend Jesse Jackson took him to church for the first time in 27 years. Home-run legend Hank Aaron asked him for autographed baseballs. Literary great Gabriel Garcia Marquez gave him a copy of "Dracula" which kept him up all night reading and smuggled ingredients into the country so he could make baklava.
An international cast of luminaries who traveled to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro, as well as top members of his government and military, talk about their experiences with the man who ruled the island for 49 years in American documentarian Estela Bravo's "Anecdotas Sobre Fidel," or "Fidel Anecdotes."
"You really see Fidel the man, a little more of who he is," Bravo said on Thursday at a screening of her new 46-minute movie, part of Havana's annual film festival.
A longtime island resident married to a Cuban, Bravo made the 91-minute-long, sympathetic documentary "Fidel: The Untold Story" in 2001. For that film, she interviewed Hollywood stars, American authors and political leaders who had met Castro, as well as Cuban government and military leaders and those who knew Castro as a child.
Bravo used leftover, unedited material from those interviews between 1996 and 2000 to produce her latest documentary. She said she had long believed footage left on the cutting room floor was worth releasing and felt compelled to make the film now, since Havana's humid and salty air was destroying her recorded material.
Nothing to read
Civil rights leader Jackson visited Cuba in 1984. He and Castro visited a school so Castro could show off Cuba's education system. Jackson asked if, to return the favor, Castro would accompany him to a Cuban church service.
"He said, 'I haven't been to church in 27 years'," Jackson says, recalling the shocked faces of the Cuban priests when the pair appeared the following day.
Garcia Marquez, a Castro confidant and frequent visitor even after a 2006 health crisis forced him to disappear from public view and cede the presidency to his brother Raul, tells of Castro complaining about never having time to read anything but government reports.
On a subsequent visit, the Nobel Prize-winning author says he decided to bring his friend what he called "best-sellers," the first of which was Bram Stoker's "Dracula." The following day, Castro showed up bleary-eyed, saying "that book won't let me sleep."
An international cast of luminaries who traveled to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro, as well as top members of his government and military, talk about their experiences with the man who ruled the island for 49 years in American documentarian Estela Bravo's "Anecdotas Sobre Fidel," or "Fidel Anecdotes."
"You really see Fidel the man, a little more of who he is," Bravo said on Thursday at a screening of her new 46-minute movie, part of Havana's annual film festival.
A longtime island resident married to a Cuban, Bravo made the 91-minute-long, sympathetic documentary "Fidel: The Untold Story" in 2001. For that film, she interviewed Hollywood stars, American authors and political leaders who had met Castro, as well as Cuban government and military leaders and those who knew Castro as a child.
Bravo used leftover, unedited material from those interviews between 1996 and 2000 to produce her latest documentary. She said she had long believed footage left on the cutting room floor was worth releasing and felt compelled to make the film now, since Havana's humid and salty air was destroying her recorded material.
Nothing to read
Civil rights leader Jackson visited Cuba in 1984. He and Castro visited a school so Castro could show off Cuba's education system. Jackson asked if, to return the favor, Castro would accompany him to a Cuban church service.
"He said, 'I haven't been to church in 27 years'," Jackson says, recalling the shocked faces of the Cuban priests when the pair appeared the following day.
Garcia Marquez, a Castro confidant and frequent visitor even after a 2006 health crisis forced him to disappear from public view and cede the presidency to his brother Raul, tells of Castro complaining about never having time to read anything but government reports.
On a subsequent visit, the Nobel Prize-winning author says he decided to bring his friend what he called "best-sellers," the first of which was Bram Stoker's "Dracula." The following day, Castro showed up bleary-eyed, saying "that book won't let me sleep."
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