By clothing-bag, 30/09/2022

That immense light, between spoilers and deadlines (part I) - Ips Cuba

Un torrente imparable, una subjetividad ardiente y centrada, Rubens Riol (Pinar del Río, 1985) sabe lo que quiere desde hace tiempo: escribir sobre cine y, si no, ver muchas películas y toda suerte de audiovisual, escribir siempre. Aunque se presente como investigador y ensayista, crítico y promotor, Riol es un escritor.Esa luz inmensa, entre spoilers y deadlines (Parte I) - IPS Cuba Esa luz inmensa, entre spoilers y deadlines (Parte I) - IPS Cuba

Being one of the most media Cuban critics - and not because it lies now in the United States -, manages to return to the cinema from multiple paths, as revealed in the introductory words of the ambush of the hedgehog, next appearance book: “The different creaturesin which I have metamorphosed without giving up my critical work: cinephile, dilentant, voyeur, journalist, reporter, columnist, narrator, postcritical, blogger, promoter, cineclubist, professor, essayist, programmer, jury, accommodating, projectionist and paparazzi, untilCorn Rositas Seller."

You have to have a very liberal ego to confess in this way.I know that he is like that.Which does not prevent him from continuously demanding what he sees and writes.

Pinar del Río insists every so often to contribute another outstanding critic, not only for the national context.Susply, Rubens Riol does not stop interacting with the seventh art.

Daniel Céspedes: If cinephilia does not attract you as a child, do you think it caught you later?

Rubens Riol: In my case, it is already an irreversible process that began since childhood.If the aliens ever abduct me, I am almost certain that they would not be able to loot even one of my film memories.The cinema is nailed to my DNA, it is an inseparable part of my biography.I could even swear that the concept of cinebistration (Luxury Dinner-And-A-Movie Theater with Reserved Seating) is related to the maternal uterus.That was my first dark room (some will understand the analogy).Since then, I always turn off the lights and I accommodate.I am an audiovisualis homo.Check that word exists, because my Latin is not optimal and, much less, reliable (laughs).

In the introduction of my book Narro anecdotes that close me with the character of Toto in Cinema Paradiso (1990), endearing film by Giuseppe Tornatore.There we intuit that if one fails to understand prematurely what cinema is, at least he enjoys it, he enjoys it.Devotion for moving images can be discovered at any age.Even sport (another cultural expression that awakens blind passions) reaches many through a screen.The truth is, I don't know anyone who opposes a television or film soleaz time.

DC: Is the film critic a writer?

RR: Of course.Writer is not just the one who conceives fiction.The literature is full of niches, as the labels are delimited for each of its creators.I not only studied art history, but I worked at a Miami bookstore and currently I understand much better how that industry works;To the point of ending up writing a book for children, without sure what my skills were as a narrator, although very convinced of the story I wanted to tell.I think that courage has given me the cinema, due to so many stories and characters.It is like a model and inspiring force that illuminates the way.

Very few people consume in depth film criticism.I think that in addition to those who formed this guild, some departments in universities and a couple of enthusiasts who are still interested in movie books, almost nobody spends a penny to read what we think.Another luck has run the digital press and websites such as Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, which do drag a legion of mirations, but not necessarily scholars.

The subject or gender does not matter.What makes you a writer is the fact of publishing what you write, either about thermonuclear radiation or the Manateí reproductive cycles.But being a real writer, beyond the trade, of the occupation, implies a gift, a talent, and not all have the same ability to communicate with beauty and clarity.Style and creativity are essential, as well as evoking images that exceed the dictates of common sense.There are also mediocre writers.The danger is at the level of editorial demand and in the conformism of some readers.

DC: What is being a film critic?

RR: Being a film critic is an alienating aberration, a conflict and, at the same time, a privilege, an abracadabra, a profession, a great responsibility.Without critics or film journalists, the film industry would deflate because we are a primary link, an effective intermediary between studies and the spectator.Our role in society is to guide, disseminate, promote, recommend, interpret, value and share.We are a kind of referee that - for better or worse - decides the rules of the game, I mean here to consumption.Obviously, before we advertising, but our opinion also decides the ratings, as well as the success or failure of sales at the box office.

The film critic has some angel and a little demon.We have fans and detractors, but we are - at the end of the day - a necessary evil.However, it is a work that demands readings, specialization, technical knowledge, appropriation of language, general culture.Many times we help ourselves from other disciplines such as psychoanalysis, narratology, semiotics, sociology and gender studies, to address and contextualize certain problems.

What does not like me is when a critic stands in paladin of taste, limiting himself to sanctioning, disqualifying and mortifying free, without building anything, without contributing anything, without arguing, without fulfilling his function.Hence, for a long time, I invented three categories to distinguish the temperaments of those who chose this task:

1) critical-critical: self-taught or academic training, but with its own style, high sense of professional ethics, lucid, sensitive, informed, charismatic, versatile and with the feet on the ground;

2) critical-critical: dark, hermetic, indecipherable, narcissistic and egolatra, who writes for himself and boasts of his knowledge, while vomiting seized words without thinking about the limitations of the average receiver;and finally

Esa luz inmensa, entre spoilers y deadlines (Parte I) - IPS Cuba

3) Critical-critical: frustrated bureaucrat, acid humor and censor, cynical, manipulative, mediocre, mediocre, without commitment or love for the profession.There are in these last two examples a complex and diverse fauna to organize a very disastrous union (laughs).

DC: Usually, how long do you take a criticism?

RR: While I lived in Havana, there was never too much rush, because whenever I had a press assignment or for a specialized publication, they facilitated the DVD in advance;So the writing was rest, almost never in a hurry.In Miami, I have been a collaborator of El Nuevo Herald with a frequency of twice a week and sometimes up to three.When you have such a contract, you are forced to develop all the skills you did not have.Luckily, one has technology and the Internet to delve into references and searches, as well as to establish other types of associations, if it were relevant.

At the beginning I almost never took notes, I didn't do it in my student times either.I trust the paths that open for interpretation after each plane, each sequence, each phrase said by the characters.It is intuitive, like a mechanism that generates suspicions automatically;Hence the corpus of ideas that then develops, in general, from the synthesis.

Answering your question, I usually write quite fast, at a speed that scares me, taking into account, especially - and I am not ashamed to say it - that I use a single finger of each hand, because I never learned typing.In my house, in Pinar del Río, the first computer has not yet arrived today.

If I write a three -paragraph comment for my Facebook blog, driven by the good impression that a movie caused me, I can take 8 to 10 minutes.If it is a review for an official medium, just under an hour.I think the time you take written is determined by the degree of urgency or immediacy so you need to publish the article.It is clear that to form an opinion about a film, a sample or a festival, before we have dedicated some time to see the material (s), to read, to think, to investigate.In this way, when you feel to write, the speech flows organically, without the need to fight the stopwatch.

In my case, the only thing I must solve before starting writing a text is the title.If I have not conceived it, I cannot advance.That's where the hypothesis, tone and keys that will subsequently guide the analysis live together.For me the title is like a GPS, without that I don't know what direction to take.Details like that I take them seriously, because I hate recycling and bet on originality.Fortunately, Spanish is a generous language and I can always think of something new.Another factor that could stop my.

DC: What would you not do in a text about cinema?

RR: confess that I have not seen the movie, or the trailer or that I go to bed with the director.Ethics is a very valuable attribute to survive in this medium.Otherwise, one can make a fool of or receive an ultimatum.I also learned that if a few days have passed since the premiere, you should not tell the end (laughs).

Thus it happened to me with the Argentine Marco Berger, director and screenwriter of films such as Plan B (2009), Hawaii (2013), after I published in the newspaper of the Havana Film Festival, an optimistic criticism about absent (2011), his film in competition that year.When greeting him on the street and telling him my name, I realized that I had read my article and felt it counter, because when I refer to the argument and its elliptical structure, I mentioned that one of the leading characters died in the middle of the tape, because if notI played that turn point in my analysis, it was very difficult to give any opinion about it.I apologized and gave me a photo together.Today I only use spoilers when it comes to an essay for specialized publication, since there the interpretation must be deeper and the reader, in general, has already seen the film.So this does not generate any conflict of interest.

DC: Interviews, reviews, comment, essays and all this with the addition of the promotion.There are intellectuals who fail to relate it to the term promoter.

RR: Modesty apart, I consider myself an intellectual because I studied a humanities career and, often, I produce critical ideas and reflections associated with the world of culture: specifically about visual arts and cinema.I would not be lying to say that everything I wrote until today has been published somewhere, with the aspiration to influence public opinion.

Certainly, there are still prejudices about promotion (it is seen as if it were an antonym of specialized criticism). Yo mismo reaccioné mal una vez cuando, en medio de un festival, urgía entrevistar a un director de cine extranjero y me buscaron a mí, alegando que yo podía salvar la situación porque era “periodista".I refused immediately and even felt a bit offended, as if they had reduced me in category.Perhaps it was due to a rapture of immaturity or complexed by the laziness of that cultural journalism, plethoric of phrases made, common places and concept errors;that confuses the receptors and disorient them, deforming popular taste, the aesthetic conscience of crowds.

However, today I understand that it can be critical from journalism, when there is quality of thought and commitment to seriousness, rigor.Promotion is an inseparable quality of our management, writing in favor or against.You are letting consumers know whether or not it is worth buying an entrance to go to the movies.It is about commenting on an artistic fact and arguing reasons in the form of invitation, such as a suggestion.Thus you contribute to mobilize courage depending on the well -being and spiritual growth of the other.This simple gesture involves a high educational value (civilizational), much healthier and more relevant than the exhibitionism of cultsimal references in the form of a monologue.Promotion should not be seen as a loss of glamor or neurons.Intelligence does not evaporate, it is stolen.Today I can say without chills that I am a born promoter.

I created two cineclubes in the time I worked as a professor at the San Gerónimo University College of Havana: Rosebud (2011-2012) and the equilateral project, Cine-Debate for Cultural Diversity (2012-2015).Exercises that promoted and coordinated, entirely, through social networks.There they paraded: Fernando Pérez, Enrique Colina, Lester Hamlet, Abelardo Estorino, Adria Santana, Alina Rodríguez, Francisco López Sacha, Luis Alberto García, Laura de la UZ, Caleb Casas, among many others.

My creativity always stayed on, I could campaign and reach people.Thanks also to DR.Eusebio Leal, which gave me the budget and the movie theaters of the building to program my monthly debates.This experience reached some relevance not only as an alternative teaching project, but also for its positive effect on the community of Old Havana, and led me to participate in events in province, festivals and congresses.I could even say that thanks to these projects I arrived in Mexico and then to the United States.After all, the promotion cannot be so bad, because he saved my career and my life from tedium.

On the other hand, I have seen how the opinion of film critics in the United States is treated and respected.When I read a criticism, however brief, in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Variety or The Hollywood Reporter, I feel the great influence of these journalists on the decision of the cinephiles.The English language seems ideal for me to emit value judgments: the descriptions are striking, blunt adjectives, short sentences.It is as if the gringos condensate the stormy force of an essay on a simple telegram.However, each phrase has impregnated the promotion virus, without regrets or scruples.At that level I want to get.

DC: How do you make the cinephile do not question the trained viewer?

RR: When I sit to watch a movie I think they accompany me both: the cinephile (idiot cherub) and the critic (impertinent diablillo), they are my naivety and my reasoning, tied to the same lug.The first enjoys, entertains, gets carried away, is excited, applaud;The second is more Apollonian, he hopes to leave the cinema, thoughtful, seeking his reservations and disagreements.One is easier to please, the other is stricter.One prefers to see horror films and the other foreign cinema.This bipolarity begins to worry (laughs).Where these roles have been invested has been with the filmography of the Italian director Luca Guadagnino.

While the cinephile prefers to see two and a half hours of multilingual and gore in Suspiria, the critic hugs the curtain and cries without comfort with the dramatic beauty of Call Me by your name name.Critics, despite so much culture, are not armored;There are stories that, for their cinematographic strength, directly appeal to our sensitivity, to the human being that we are, and not to the analyzing, frigid and ruthless machine that sees movies like a strenuous work routine.We are not naive spectators, but neither waterproof executioners;In any case, discreet consumers, wise, empowered.

El cinéfilo no tiene una “VOZ" (no sabe cómo articular el discurso), esa habilidad le pertenece al crítico.It is an exclusive power of his kingdom.Sometimes the critic writes in silence, at dawn, after supplying the cinephile a good calm.UF, you have left me right now with a tremendous identity crisis.

DC: When you still didn't start writing about cinema, what did it mean to read beyond the flashlight, your countryman and then colleague Frank Padrón?

RR: It was the year 2000 and my tenth grade began as a scholarship student of the IPVCE Federico Engels, in Pinar del Río.I need to expand my horizons beyond textbooks and adolescents literature;I also worried what my career would be, because I was in a pre -university of exact sciences, despite leaning for the humanities.Any Friday I gave 10 pesos to a friend of the group that was semi -interns to buy me a book in the city and - by chance - brought me beyond the flashlight, by Frank Padrón.Leying it I discovered that I wanted to be a film critic.I was fascinated by language, the fact of being able to explain a movie.I was interested in deciphering that peculiar universe.

I grew up inside a neighborhood cinema in consolation of the South, where my grandmother worked as a cleaning assistant.There - with just 10 or 12 years - I was part of a circle of interest, in which they taught me to rewind 35 mm movies, to tie the tapes when the roll was split, and even, until the Matinée of Sundays projectsThe children of the town.So my fuss for Frank's book did not arise from nothing, I already knew the mystery of cinema.From then on I gave myself the task of investigating.That's why I studied art history at the University of Havana, and a day I saw Frank running through the H and 21 Park, I asked for an autograph;It was like a signal.That same year (2005), I published my first film criticism in a student magazine and asked to do my thesis in a Cuban cinema theme.In 2014, he and I agreed at the Gibara Film Festival and since then we maintain a good friendship and exchange books.I feel very pleased that this flashlight still alumn me.

DC: Tell me about your influences of film critics and other cultural references for your training, your writing ...

RR: More than dedicating myself to exhaustively reading other film critics, I always preferred post -structuralist theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes and Judith Butler, as well as the genius of George Bataille, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mijaíl BowSusan Sontag, Umberto Eco, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.All of them, pillars of Western thought that their hormonal conjectures, breaking and organic texts bequeathed us.

I do not write even as none of them, but of all that mejunje, of that breeding ground, I have nurtured for my academic research and essays - mostly - unpublished.Their voices have been vital as the theoretical platform of my own searches, giving consistency to my analysis linked to problematization in art and cinema of issues such as the representation of the body, nudity, eroticism, pornography, obscenity and eschatology(Scale of obsessions that I have been stroking secretly for more than a decade, all about to emerge in the form of books).

As for critics, chroniclers or cinema historians, I once read some loose text by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Román Gubern, Cabrera Infante or David Bordwell, but just out of curiosity, I don't think they had too much influence on myway of writing.Instead, I have read all my Cuban colleagues, film critics, I collect their books and even list them as they come to my hands.Rufo Caballero was the only one who whispered uppercase ideas about cinematographic analysis.There are those who claim that my writing emulates with yours, but I resist believing that possible.If I inherited something, in any case, it will have been the restlessness, the point of view, the taste for irony and the ability to create phosphorescent titles.

When I approach the plastic arts, sometimes I want to imitate the vocabulary and syntax of José Martí.To get there from figurative language, one would have to immolate or be a true poet.But his style shuds me.This does not mean that I am a student of his work.

DC: What is your film book by another author, who reread and would have even liked to write it?

RR: Sedition on the catwalk.How postmodern cinema (2001), from Rufo Caballero, for the freedom of language, its epistemological complexity and academic and exemplary systematization of a fed up and controversial phenomenon.That book is my paradigm.Or, film sex. Visitaciones y goces de un peregrino (2012), de Alberto Garrandés, un “derrame cerebral" de estilo, narratividad, erudición y fetichismo.

DC: How was Rufo Caballero first as a teacher and then as a friend?

RR: Before being my teacher, I had read it a lot.I became addicted to his publications.He underlined his euphemisms, his contributions to Spanish, he was looking for him with the despair of the dying man who screams for his penultimate dose of morphine.At first it seemed to me a high, squeaky, metatrancoso, insolent writer, but with some convictions here to Mars.

After hearing it explain in the Conference Hall the keys to deciphering deep discourse in a film or the infinite possibilities of symptomatic criticism such as flaunt and fable, I was pregnant forever from his ideas, his thought system.So, like the first -time lover, I fell into an abyss of fascination.Now, his speech was full of grace and poison, charisma and wisdom, domain, pomp, humanity and success.

Rufo was not my friend.I arrived too late to your life.Perhaps I saw him even sometimes outside the classroom, one of them in La Salle Zero (monthly space on video care that he coordinated in the French Alliance);After there we shared a taxi and took the opportunity to ask for advice on my future doctoral project, still pending.The other occasion was in his apartment on San Lázaro Street, I was only going to give work of other students, but I was enough for the fence.

Without realizing it, he had become my mentor and I in his star student, his last disciple. Me pidió presentar uno de sus libros en la Calle de Madera, una reseña para Juventud Rebelde y varios ensayos para su sección “De Película", en la revista Cine Cubano.But we never went to the cinema, or Coppelia, or Villa Coral de la UNEAC or the disco.From him I keep a video and several photos, 15 of his printed volumes, digital files of the hard drive of his work computer (thanks to Mayra Pastrana) and my posthumous tribute to his intellectual work, the caress of the whip.Rufo Caballero: an impossible idol (2016), my first book, that monument of gratitude and duel that I could dedicate to my teacher.(2019)

(To be continue…)

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