Making a film in Cuba is a perilous business, especially when your producer scarpers without paying any of the hotel or production bills. While on location shooting his documentary feature Midnight in Cuba (which screened yesterday in Panorama), young American filmmaker Dimitri Falk experienced every kind of logistical nightmare imaginable. At one stage, he was even thrown into prison by the Cuban authorities for eight days. "They only let me go when I managed to convince them that the same guy who had swindled them had swindled me too," he says.
Midnight in Cuba (right) was the first documentary to gain unrestricted access to Cuba since the revolution. Falk set out to chart the lives of four youngsters from Havana. One is an aspiring boxer, one a dancer who dreams of going to Spain, one a would-be rock star, and one a teenager from an outlying village who has been forced into prostitution. Falk, who shot the film himself, wanted to escape from the clichés which cloud most reportage about Cuba, and to provide an insight into the experiences of a 'lost generation'. Sometimes, he acknowledges, he had to bluff to get his way: "The authorities wanted me to film all sorts of official events. To please them, I would pretend to do it, but most times I wouldn't even load the camera."
The 29-year-old director is currently planning a new film, but this time it won't be a documentary. He describes the project as "a drama along the lines of Midnight Cowboy". GM
[Home ] [Content] ] [The Team ] [Comments ]
