Cuba / Spain / France / Italy,
2001, 88 min
Shown in 2003
CREDITS
- dir
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Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti
- prod
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Thierry Forte, Sarah Halouia, Antonio P. Pérez
- scr
-
Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, Manolito Rodríguez
- cam
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Raúl Rodríguez Cabrera
- editor
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Antonio Pérez Reina
- mus
-
Edesio Alejandro
- cast
-
Thaïs Valdés, Nacho Lugo, Daisy Granados, Paula Alí
- source
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IntraMovies, Via E. Manfredi 15, Rome 00197, Italy. FAX: 39-06-807-71-37. EMAIL: sales@intramovies.com.
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti in person.
OTHER
At first glance, Nada (pronounced “nada mas,” or “nothing more”) seems like it could be the next chapter of the classic Memories of Underdevelopment with its black-and-white views of the Havana skyline from a modern apartment building. But this time it’s a female postal worker named Carla who suffers the malaise of not knowing how to fit into the revolution. Desperately wishing everyone to be happy, she steals letters and changes their contents to assuage hurt feelings and reunite quarreling lovers and feuding relatives. This first feature (with lines around the block at the Havana Film Festival a year ago) by the youthful Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti signals a new direction for Cuban film. Cremata Malberti breaks up the conventional narrative at the core and kicks it around to see if maybe there’s another way to tell a story. Carla’s confusion is echoed by the playful intrusion of drawings, freeze frames, radio broadcasts, TV commercials and postcards. The world outside the melancholy ruminations of this new Cuban woman is rendered in the exaggerated style of commedia dell’arte, with the passengers and crew of the Cuban ship of fools (the order-obsessed bureaucrat, the bossy supervisor, the nosy neighbor, the fat relatives in Miami) looking uglier than ever. Cubans in confusion? Maybe. But fear? Of that there is nada.
—Miguel Pendás
FACTOID #210
When Ginger Rogers appeared for a tribute at the SFIFF in 1984 (’sporting hair with the color and richness of whipped butter,’ wrote the Examiner), she shocked the packed Castro Theatre crowd at her 1984 tribute when she griped, ’The filthy mouths we’re hearing in films today’I won’t pay to see these movies. I’d rather stay home and make jam.’
