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Father's story draws her closer to Cuba
The filmmaking debut
of a Cuban-American woman raised in Miami
is both a family portrait and a polarizing
political essay.
By Rene Rodriguez. rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com.
Posted in The
Miami Herald on May. 07, 2007.
Vivien Lesnik Weisman was 8 years old when
she went through a bout of insomnia -- which
turned out to be one of the best things
that ever happened to her.
''I would wake up in the middle of the
night and climb into bed with my dad and
we'd watch Ruby Keeler musicals on TV until
three o'clock in the morning,'' Lesnik Weisman
recalls about her childhood in Little Havana.
"My dad was always busy doing his thing
and I had never really had much time alone
with him, so those late nights were very
special for me.''
They also helped shape her life. After
studying law, political science and art
history in college, Lesnik Weisman, 45,
is now a filmmaker -- she's so movie crazy,
she uses Ennio Morricone's theme for The
Good, The Bad and the Ugly as the ring tone
on her cellphone -- and she traces her passion
for film back to those late nights watching
42nd Street and Footlight Parade with her
father, Max.
And it is her father -- who became an intimate
friend of Fidel Castro while a teenager,
and whose liberal political views toward
Cuba have earned him the wrath of Miami's
Cuban exile groups -- who became the subject
of Lesnik Weisman's directorial debut, The
Man of Two Havanas.
SHIFTING FOCUS
The documentary, which premiered last week
at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York,
is both a biographical portrait of her father's
extraordinary life and an account of Lesnik
Weisman's journey to discovering her passion
for her cultural heritage.
Shot over a 2 ½-year period, The
Man of Two Havanas alternates between a
conversational, first-person narrative in
which Lesnik Weisman talks about the indifference
she felt toward her birthplace while growing
up in Miami's cafe con leche generation,
and a more formal structure blending interviews
with Max and other subjects with historical
and TV news footage.
As it recounts Max's participation in the
Cuban Revolution of 1958, his subsequent
disillusion with Castro's government and
eventual exile to Miami, and his efforts
against the U.S. embargo of the island,
The Man of Two Havanas also becomes a political
film, which has the potential to irk some
South Florida viewers.
''I haven't seen the movie, but any film
that is against the embargo will generate
a negative reaction in Miami, since there
is a significant majority here that believes
that is a viable political strategy,'' says
Alejandro Rios, director of the Cuban Cinema
Series at Miami Dade College. "But
we have also matured enough as a city to
be able to sit down and watch a movie with
that thesis and then talk about it intelligently.''
Rios says when he premiered the anti-embargo
documentary Our House in Havana in 2000
before it was aired on PBS, the reaction
was "explosive, but in the form of
a passionate debate. But that movie centered
on a woman who lives in Washington, D.C.
Max is someone who lives in Miami and is
well-known here, so it makes it trickier.''
Well-known within the Cuban-American community,
Max published the general interest magazine
Replica for two decades in Miami, during
which time his offices were bombed 11 times
by radical groups unhappy with its political
commentary. He is now the director and political
commentator on the news magazine show Radio
Miami, heard on Union Radio 1450 AM from
6-7 a.m. weekdays.
''When Vivien first came to me with the
idea for the movie, I went along with it
mostly to please her,'' Max Lesnik says.
"I didn't believe there was a story
there that was more about a family than
politics. But when I saw the movie, I realized
the politics really didn't come first. It
is my story, but it is also a story about
a daughter and a father and her process
of picking up the torch and starting to
identify as a Cuban for the first time in
her life.''
MIAMI SCREENING?
Lesnik Weisman says despite the polarizing
effect her father has on a segment of Miami's
exile groups, she is eager to screen the
film in South Florida, but is concentrating
first on hitting the film festival circuit
and securing a national theatrical release.
''I think some people will love the movie
and some people will hate it,'' she speculates.
"The Miami community is not a monolith
and there is a silent majority that is probably
not in favor of the embargo -- meaning they
don't really care, because it's not at the
forefront of their minds, they're not well-versed
on what it means.''
Lesnik Weisman, who lives in Santa Monica,
says that pretty much describes the person
she used to be before she made the movie.
''I grew up not really caring about the
Cuban issue, despite being the daughter
of Max Lesnik,'' she says. "Hopefully,
politics aside, the movie will be able to
tap into my generation of Cuban Americans
in the same way, people who feel Cuba is
a part of their life, but it is not as integral
to them as it is to their parents.''
The Man of Two Havanas ends with footage
of Lesnik Weisman being interviewed by TV
news crews while filming her father at a
political demonstration. For a brief moment,
as a reporter asks about her personal stance
on the embargo, Lesnik Weisman speaks passionately
and eloquently against U.S. policy toward
the island, while Max, caught at the edge
of the frame and unaware he's being filmed,
looks on smiling and beaming with obvious
pride.
It's a perfect ending for a movie about
a woman who, in the process of getting to
know her father better, ends up discovering
a passion inside her she did not know existed.
'When I started filming, my mother was
always saying 'no cojas lucha con la pelicula'
(don't fret too much over the movie) because
no one cares about Cuba,'' Lesnik Weisman
says. "She has seen my father dedicate
his life to this cause, and she doesn't
want to see me go down that road and put
a lot of emotional investment in the success
or failure of this film. So I listened to
her. This is the movie I wanted to make,
I did the best I could, and now it's more
of a spiritual conviction than anything
else. If I let things run their course,
I think the movie will find its place.''
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