Cuban director Pavel Giroud speaks about his new film, Comandante Fritz, “inspired by Fidel Castro’s gift of a Cuban island to the GDR.” In the interview, Giroud says, “I am as fed up with the American vision of the mafia in Havana as I am with the official Cuban one.” Here are excerpts from his interview with Jorge Fernández Era (14ymedio). [The translation is from Translating Cuba.]
If any film in recent years starkly depicts the political exclusion following Fidel Castro’s revolutionary triumph, it is The Padilla Case. Despite being a documentary in the technical sense of the word, the suspense of its staging keeps viewers on edge and confronts them with one of the most repugnant events orchestrated against critical thinking and freedom of expression.
From Madrid, its director, Pavel Giroud, continues to delve into little-known chapters of Cuban history, as he recently did with the publication of the novel Habana Nostra. Now he promises to spark new debate with the film Comandante Fritz, which delves into a gift given by a similar leader to the German Democratic Republic in the 1960s, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Eastern European socialism, and the CMEA stepped in to support the Cuban Revolution after the failure of the 1970 Sugar Harvest.
Jorge Fernández Era: Is your novel Habana Nostra [Our Havana] a frustrated film project or the validation of Pavel Giroud as a writer?
Pavel Giroud: To define it as a failed film project is something that could very well appear on my death certificate. As long as I’m alive, I’ll try, because it is a story I’m passionate about. I’m as saturated with the American vision of the mafia in Havana as I am with the official Cuban one. And I don’t want this to be perceived as a disdain for what has already been done—which has also nourished me—but rather as a complement, another approach, with a keen eye on facts and figures that until now had been treated with kid gloves or were merely occasional mentions. I believe I’ve achieved a depth of investigation that, combined with the experience I’ve accumulated over all these years as a filmmaker, could result in an engaging film.
While I’ve enjoyed—and suffered, because nothing has been more exhausting—the process of writing this book, I don’t consider myself a writer in the strictest sense of the word. It’s a profession I respect with the same vehemence with which I demand respect for my own, in an age when anything audiovisual is defined as a film. I feel like a filmmaker who has written a novel. In any case, I feel more comfortable with the term “narrator,” a narrator who switches media to say what is on his mind.
You were one of the first to read and correct it before submitting it to the Azorín Prize, where it was a finalist. I vividly remember the relief I felt when you told me how impressed you were, because I’ve never felt the sensation of creative nakedness like I felt it when presenting this book. [. . .]
For full interview (in English), see https://translatingcuba.com/a-commandante-hits-the-screens/
For full interview (in Spanish), see https://www.14ymedio.com/cultura/comandante-llega-pantallas_1_1115233.html