Suite Habana

Last night I had the privilege of watching an independent film called “Suite Habana” that one of the faculty participants in this year’s Hispanic Theological Initiative, Dr. Ada María Isasi-Diáz, had brought back with her from Cuba. It’s a powerful film, made up of interlaced vignettes of the daily lives of several people in Havana. There is virtually no spoken language in it, but the rhythm of the people’s activities and of the city around them makes a vivid music.

I was struck, in particular, by the way in which each of the participants in the film worked very hard physically at various jobs (construction, street seller of peanuts, railroad construction, and so on) but also was very creative in art-filled ways in their spare time. One is a painter, one a shadow-hand puppet maker, one a ballet dancer, one a drag queen, one a saxophonist, and so on. The film draws you into their lives in a meditative way, and the photography is beautiful. I felt like the camera had captured the heat of the island, the wisps of breeze causing curtains to sway, the humidity of torrential rain, the joy in a small boy's face, the lines carved in an old woman's face... for me it was an experience of the sacred.

There was one element of the film that puzzled me (although I'm sure there were many layers and references that I didn't "catch"), and that had to do with a succession of people who were clearly keeping an organized vigil (one at a time) in front of a bronze statue that looked remarkably like John Lennon. I need to talk with some colleagues here today and figure out what that element of the film might be about.