Cuba,
1994, 49 min
Shown in 1996
CREDITS
- dir
-
Fernando Pérez
- prod
-
Santiago Llapur
- scr
-
Fernando Pérez, Manuel Rodríguez
- cam
-
Raúl Pérez Ureta
- editor
-
Julia Yip
- cast
-
Zaida Castellanos, Laura de la Uz, Elena Balaños, Jorge Molina
- source
-
ICAIC
-
COMMENTS
Shown with Love Me and You'll See. Fernando Pérez in person.
OTHER
Mother and daughter suffer a strained relationship that sharpens with difficulty every day. Mother Laura is a twice-divorced Havana University professor. Teenage Laurita, desperate for stability in her tumultuous life, stops going to school, stays with hippie friends and escapes into her dream of traveling to the exotic island of Madagascar. As Laurita finds the security she craves, Laura becomes the restless one and the two switch roles. In the end, mother and daughter finally intersect through their imaginations. If you think you know Cuban film, be prepared for a surprise: Madagascar works on a completely poetic level, eschewing the social realism that has been a hallmark of the island’s cineastes since Cuban filmmakers like Tomás Gutiérrez Alea studied under the masters of Italian neorealism. Pérez (Hello Hemingway, 1991) feels the influence of Argentine surrealist Eliseo Subiela everywhere.
FACTOID #97
Actor Franchot Tone, the former husband of Joan Crawford, was the master of ceremonies at the first festival in 1957.
