sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (01/22/85)
Nestor Almendros is best known as a cinematographer, much sought-after by
directors to give their films his beautiful but effortless patina. Thus,
it is rather surprising to see his film, IMPROPER CONDUCT, directed along
with Orlando Jiminez Leal, a conventional documentary of "talking heads",
newsreels and voice-overs, looking deliberately rough-cut and without
the professional gloss of his Hollywood work, perhaps to let the power
of his subject speak for itself.
The phrase, "improper conduct", covers a multitude of vices in Castro's
Cuba, including that ultimate affront to machismo, homosexuality.
The film is a series of interviews with Cuban emigres detailing their
experiences of repression under the Castro regime. At first, it seems
to concentrate on the plight of gay people since the revolution, describing
the capricious behavior of the police, the prisons and the notorious
reeducation camps. But Almendros uses the particulars of one minority's
oppression as a mirror for the entire society: this is more than a
gay-rights tract (though it is a very effective one), for it presents
the issues of conformity, individualism and oppression in the most
universal way. It is a very depressing film to watch, filled as it is
with wrenching testimonies of lives disrupted and destroyed. The film
offers no answers, only the anger and despair of the two emigre
directors and their subjects.
IMPROPER CONDUCT has become an event of sorts in New York circles,
with debates about its accuracy and honesty flying back and forth
in the Village Voice and American Film magazine, New York being
one center for the unreconstructed Left. I know little about this
meta-discussion, though I intend to hunt through my library to
follow it--it should provide entertaining reading. But it all
seems rather irrelevant to the essentially personal (and strangely
non-political) testimony given by those interviewed in the film.
--
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbnccv.ARPAreiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (01/22/85)
The debate over this film has set up some strange alliances. Basically,
gays and conservatives are for this film, the far left against it. The
latter claim that 1). The abuses didn't really occur, 2). They were
unimportant in the face of the greater benefit of the revolution, 3).
Besides, the Cubans aren't doing it any more. The interesting thing is that
most of the articles against the film make all three of these arguments one
after another. A bit more amusement from the radical left.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiherrrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/23/85)
In Boston, the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) selects the movies for the theater where IMPROPER CONDUCT is screening. It's part of a Latin political film series. ICA notes handed out nimbly state: The controversy surrounding the film, however, has rendered IMPROPER CONDUCT something of an event, as hotly disputed, running debates concerning its accuracy & probity [my!] have continued for months in both THE VILLAGE VOICE and AMERICAN FILM. The attacks by the film's critics and the defense by the film's creators [& Cuban emigres, & Americans knowledge- able about Cuba, too?] are, in print, equally well-armed with statistics, historical data, and personal testimony. But are they equally well-argued? Obviously they can't be equally proven to be true. But ICA doesn't want to go into this, heavens forfend! Similarly, the film is, at once, both moving and convincing, and also highly questionable in some of its connections and conclusions [such as.....??]. Thus, implicitly (and perhaps unintentionally) [a dig here: the filmakers lack sophistica- tion or intellectual subtlety], IMPROPER CONDUCT raises fun- damental theoretical questions about documentary film's ability to convey political truths. I don't believe it! "Fundamental theoretical questions"! Viewers of IMPROPER CONDUCT (including the folks at ICA) are offered a lot more than an occasion to ruminate about documentary methodology or philosophical problems of perception & interpretation in the cinema: they're offered a reality utterly at odds with what they've wanted to believe about Castro, Cuba, & by extension any Third World muta- tion of revolutionary socialism, comparable I dare say to what Sol- zhenitsyn flung in the face of the myopic West in the early 1970s. I think I can anticipate most of what critics say about the film: I've read more than a few rebuttals by gay leftists about Cuba in the NYNative: the "arguments" advanced are typical stalinist apo- logetics, low in accuracy or logic, high in ad hominem attacks & Marxist jargon. The "statistics" and "historical data" probably come from the Fidelista press, here & around the world; & I bet the "personal testimony" consists of the myopic descriptions of Venceremos Brigadistas & leftist tourists who can nevertheless tell you a lot about what a Potemkin village, Cuban style, looks like. IRONIC NOTE: The day I saw the movie, January 21, was simultane- ously: -- Ronald Reagan's second inauguration -- the 203rd anniversary of the guillotining of Louis XVI at the height of the French Revolution (Jan. 21, 1792) -- the day the following news item appeared in the Boston Globe: US CUBANS FEAR DEPORTATION MIAMI -- Fear of being sent back to Cuba has kept more than half of Florida's estimated 100,000 boat- lift refugees from registering for permanent US residency, despite assurances they won't be deported, federal immigration officials say. About 125,000 Cubans arrived during the 1980 boat lift from the port of Mariel in Cuba, most of them fleeing Fidel Castro's communist regime. Their fates were in limbo until the end of 1984, when the US government re-enacted the dormant Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, allowing the refugees to become legal residents. (AP) [quoted without permission] I can understand emigre fears, giving the murderous policy of Immi- gration & Naturalization toward Central Americans. The Cubans will evidently need more time to learn the bizarre distinctions of cold war "morality" before they realize they're completely safe (but for the gays: who can predict when & where federal homophobia will strike?). "The people united will never be defeated." "The truth shall make you free." Ron RIzzo