He returns to Miami what has always been his, and with the years, bad memory and the turbulence of immediacy, this city seemed to have forgotten, or did not remember. Friendsfilmed 4 decades ago in Miami, will be shown this Sunday, June 30 at 3:45 pm in Coral Gables Art Cinema.
Fiction feature film, written and directed by Ivan Acosta and produced by Camilo Vila, Friends It tells in a tragicomedy key the adventures of a Marielito (Rubén Rabasa) and his “friends” (Lucy Pereda, Lillian Hurst, David Joseph Martínez and Reynaldo Medida, protagonist of The Super) that he finds in the United States, where there is no shortage of disagreements.
Now Miami can enjoy what belongs to it. And ensure that new generations, even young filmmakers, are not unaware of part of their cinematographic heritage. Friends It began to be written in New York in 1984, it was filmed in Miami in 1985 and although it was released in another city, at the beginning of 1986, it is worth noting that the inspiration for the film also arose in Miami.
In mid-April 1980, Acosta, a playwright and filmmaker exiled in Manhattan, presented his play in the City of the Sun Not all of them are. Then he was “lucky enough to meet” some of the first exiles of the Mariel exodus. That brief, but highly valuable testimonial encounter, and the documentary In your own words by Jorge Ulla, key in the filmography of the exile: they were two important impulses to make Friends.
Every time Acosta comes to Miami he can’t help but visit the Versailles restaurant and order a coffee at its famous “little window”, that successful commercial invention. cubic. It was early morning and he told his friend, the Argentine photographer Gabriel Murcia, let’s go to Versailles.
“A black car arrived and four young men got out, very poorly dressed, disheveled and sunburned. I talked to them a little while we enjoyed coffee. The man who was bringing them looked at me and said: “These men just arrived 6 hours ago, but right now there are thousands arriving in Key West. Thousands and thousands are coming.” It was obvious that they had just touched American soil. By the way, the man who accompanied them turned out to be Napoleon Vilaboa, known in exile for his activities in favor of a dialogue with the tyranny,” recalls Acosta, author of almost twenty plays, including The Superwhose film version is considered a classic of exile.
As he drank his coffee and listened to the Marielitos (named after the seaport through which this exodus took place), he thought that what he was seeing and feeling should be expressed in a film and he stored it in his memory: “It was very shocking and emotional to hear them speak. A few minutes that I will never forget,” admits Acosta, for whom El Mariel is a phenomenon that helps us understand the oppression of totalitarian systems. “Every society must be aware of the pain, frustration and fear that communism produces. I myself had to escape as a young boy with my family and a group of friends. Many times the only thing you can do is escape, if you are lucky enough to be able to do so.”
Remember that when El Mariel, thanks to several television stations broadcasting the news, the world was able to see, for the first time, demonstrations of thousands of Cubans crowded into boats shouting for freedom. “Some were not good citizens, as happens in all exoduses. Others were rejected. But the vast majority of the Marielitos proved to be good and prosperous people.”
In 2018 I interviewed him for the Academy of Cuban History in Exile and he confessed to me that when in 1983 he saw Scarfacedirected by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone, was very upset: “That film presents all the Marielitos as gangsters, murderers, rapists, unscrupulous drug addicts. Instead, Friends “It raises the issue of brotherhood and the kindness of Cubans. It denounces the abuses in Cuba’s political prisons, the suffering of the Marielitos, some of whom are rejected by their compatriots because of the fear created by the regime’s propaganda by sending thousands of mentally ill people and dangerous criminals among the decent families who were fleeing to freedom. It has a profound and humane argument. And since my style is to combine drama with touches of humor, people have a lot of fun and at the same time they take away a dramatic message.”
In 1985, The Miami Herald published a front-page article about the film, where the headline read: “Friends the other face of Scarface (Friendsthe other side of Scarface)” refers to another version of the Marielitos, different from the one starring Al Pacino.
Like many Cubans, Acosta is convinced that the various exoduses have served Castroism as an escape valve to avoid popular explosions on the island: “There have been so many exoduses. Camarioca, the Freedom Flights, the Waiver visas, the taking of the Peruvian Embassy, El Mariel, the rafters of ’94, the crossings from Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico. It is very sad to see how the population of a country looks for any means to escape from a miserable and pathetic situation. Many of us saved our lives while the regime continues to outrage the nation,” he told me in that talk, published in the CubanAmerican Yearbook and other means.
A year later, while preparing his interview for the 15-episode series “Mariel 40 years old” from Radio Televisión Martí, told me something that I will never forget: “I wanted to film Guantanamobut fate wanted me to film Friends and you can’t fight against fate.”
These days we have returned to that idea. The film that Acosta planned to film in the mid-80s was Guantanamobased on true stories that brought together the protagonist, a former revolutionary who throws himself away from indoctrination and throws himself into the bay to reach the Guantánamo Naval Base in search of freedom, long before the Exodus of the Raftsmen.
“That’s how the life of a filmmaker is sometimes, you think you’re going to shoot one story and you end up shooting another, as happened to me with Friends. I am happy to be returning with this film to Miami, where we filmed it so many years ago. And I know that we will succeed in producing Guantanamoa little-known story from our history.”
Not many know – and even fewer will understand – that although the director and producer of Friends They sent it to the Miami Film Festival, the organizers did not schedule the film. “Something unheard of. Almost 40 years later we returned with the film to Miami,” she says, smiling.
