Habana-Arte Nuevo de hacer ruinas En

HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS Havana – The New Art of Making Ruins Havana - A nova arte de construir ruínas

© raros media borchmeyer & hentschler gbr elisabethkirchstr. 3 10115 BERLIN tel +49.30.4404 3833 fax +49.30.4373 5382 email raros@raros.de

A portrait of the inhabited ruins of Havana and their strange blend of magic and demolition.

HAVANA – THE NEW ART OF MAKING RUINS captures the final moments of these buildings before they’re renovated – or simply collapse altogether.

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HAVANA – THE NEW ART OF MAKING RUINS A Film by Florian Borchmeyer and Matthias Hentschler Havana, capital of socialist Cuba. In the last years this city has become famous all over the world for the morbid charm of its flaking façades. Its beauty resides in the poetry of its ruins.

The ruins of Havana are far less poetic for the people who inhabit them. Houses frequently collapse causing fatalities. The decay of this city and its living quarters is a continual source of both danger and shame for its inhabitants.

The film portrays five persons in Havana who reside in buildings at various states of decay.

They all try to escape from a life which risks to become ruined by the fact of inhabiting a ruin.

Plumber Totico flees from the noisy inferno of his tenement in the center of Havana and spends his time with the pigeons on the flat roof. Homeless Reinaldo has found shelter in the rubbles of a theater in which once Caruso sang for Cuba’s high society. Misleidys, ex-wife of a millionaire, leaves behind the golden cage of her marriage in order to live in the debris of a formerly glamorous hotel. The expropriated landowner Nicanor struggles against the decay of his parental home and tries to live in his small personal space as if the socialist Revolution hadn’t ever taken place. Ponte, a writer, conceives a philosophy of the ruin to be able to explain and bear the gradual collapse of the city and the political system.

"HAVANA – THE NEW ART OF BUILDING RUINS” tells the stories of people who are waiting every day to be buried by the buildings they are living in. They suffer from living in ruins but nonetheless refuse to move out. Anywhere else but in Cuba, these buildings would have long ago been renovated, torn down, or turned into museums. Through this, the film presents the ambivalent admixture of magic and destruction. At the same time it captures the final moments of these buildings before they’re renovated – or simply collapse altogether.

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Production Details: Production year: Format: Country: Sound Mix: Runtime: Genre: Production Company:

2005/2006 HDCAM/ 35mm, Color Germany/Cuba DTS Digital 86’ Documentary raros media

CAST: Antonio José Ponte Ana Magdalena Bernal Totico Fernández Silvia Hernández Guzmán Nicanor del Campo Reinaldo Lottis Misleidys CREW: Directed and written by Producer D.o.P. Sound Editor 1st Ass. Camera A.D./ Prod. Assistant Assistant to Editor Set Photgrapher

Florian Borchmeyer Matthias Hentschler Tanja Trentmann Frank Schreiner Birgit Mild Mark Seeburger Geraldine Gramenz-Hohlbein Lena Pérez Naranjo Susanne Wagner Kay Itting

PREMIERES: World Premiere: Internationale Premiere: South American Premiere: North American Premiere:

Munich International Film Festival, July 2006 Locarno International Film Festival, August 2006 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, Sept. 2006 L. A. Latino Intl. Film Festival (LALIFF), Oct. 2006

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Director: Florian Borchmeyer Born in 1974 in Wasserburg am Inn/Germany. Studied Romance Languages and Literatures in Berlin, Paris and Havana. Ph. D. degree as a Doctor of Philosophy in 2006. Literature critic for the newpaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and collaborator of Munich International Film Festival. Has been shooting documentary and TV reportages since 1999. HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS is his first documentary cinema feature.

Filmography: 2001 ElekTrópico (20 min, Doc.) 2002 Loveparade: Masses in Motion (DVD, 90 min.)

2006 HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS (Doc., 86 min, 35mm) 2006 80 Years of Solitude – Cuba, Castro and the Arts (Doc., 35 min., TV)

Producer: Matthias Hentschler Born in 1973 in Berlin/Germany. Has been working as a TV reporter and film producer since 1997. In 1999, he founded the production company raros media together with Florian Borchmeyer. With this company, he produced both documentaries and international TV reportages with a special focus on Cuba for all important public and private broadcasting companies in Germany.

Filmography: 1998 TechnoSalsa (Doc., 60 min) 2001 ElekTrópico (Doc., 20 min) 2002 Loveparade: Masses in Motion (DVD, 90 min.)

2006 HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS (Doc., 86 min, 35mm) 2006 80 Years of Solitude – Cuba, Castro and the Arts (Doc., 35 min., TV)

Director of Photography: Tanja Trentmann Born in 1969 in Schwenningen/Black Forest , Germany. Studied Jounalism, German and Film in Berlin. Since 2001, she has been working as Director of photography in documentaries as well as in feature films. Her most recent work is the feature “Schroeder’s Wonderful World”

by Michael Schorr’s (“Schulze gets the Blues”). Member of the German Cimetographger’s Associacion Bundesverband Kamera (BVK).

Filmography: 2001 Mein Leben & Ich (TV-Series) 2001 Black Box BRD (Doc., 102 min.; 2nd Unit Camera) 2005 Surviving the Terror (80 min, Doc.) 2005 Mädchen am Sonntag (79 min, Doc.) 2006 HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS 2006 Schröders Wunderbare Welt (90 min., Fict.)

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Revolution of Ruins A Brief Introduction to German and Cuban “Ruinology” Bad Times for Ruins Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the goal of urban planners in Europe has been to get rid of the last architectural traces of the second world war and the following period of neglect during the times of Socialism: closing the wounds of memory in such a way as to leave no scar.

Construction sites sprung up everywhere and became the order of the day.

And it all comes tumbling down.

We see the reverse process occurring in Cuba. A drive towards large-scale renewal never occurred. Buildings, neglected during the decades of Castro’s rule, decay visibly in the damp, tropical climate of the island. In Germany the “new Berlin” grows ever skyward while in Cuba the old Havana”, the historic center of the country’s capital continues its slow collapse.

It’s not only the old colonial palaces that are subject to the ever-increasing process of barackization. Even the most modern buildings from the 20th century, including those dating from after the revolution, are slowly being transformed into ruins.

The Venice of the Turn of the Millennium The case is similar to what occurred during the previous Fin de Siècle. A longing for, and fascination with decay accompanied the building boom of the Gründerzeit, exemplified by Venice slowly sinking into its lagoon. The slick newness of our cities in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall is only one side of the coin. The aesthetic of the 90’s was also noticeably influenced, not least by the Wim Wenders film “Buena Vista Social Club” by the flaking facades and buildings of Havana. The effects of the film went so far that a kind of ruin-tourism developed in Cuba. Havana represents the Venice of our Fin de Siècle – or perhaps better our Fin de Millénaire.

Making Ruins as an Art Form?

If we are to look beyond their functional inadequacies and ascribe a unique aesthetic value to the ruins of Havana, then there must be a kind of unconscious artistic logic behind the gradual destruction of a building. Just as if the urban planners had taken it on as a secret goal to devote ever more of the city to the process of barackization, letting the private initiatives of the ruin-makers take their course, damaging the buildings and using them for anything but their original purposes. All of this occurs in such a way that a new kind of urban space emerges that despite, and perhaps even because of the absence of new building projects, possesses a beauty all its own. This point of view becomes absurd and borders on being condescending when one considers that these buildings are inhabited by people who would certainly prefer safe, intact housing and that every building collapse means death, injury and homelessness. These ruins can only be beautiful for those who don’t have to inhabit them.

The New Art of Building Ruins It is precisely this connection between man and ruin – and with it the inseparability of the ethical and aesthetic factors – that is the decisive feature of the ruins of five hundred years of Havana’s architectural history. The distinctive characteristic of the “classical ruins” is that 6

they emerge either out of active destruction or the abandonment of the buildings, meaning the death or disappearance of the inhabitants. In this regard, the beauty of an ancient Greek or Aztec temple is both a qualitatively different and perhaps less complex one. Even the World Trade Center, despite the novelty of the means of its destruction, is basically a classical ruin.

The new art of building ruins, on the other hand, is characterized by the fact that its destruction and the kind charm that results is brought about through the activity of people who neither want to nor can bring the process to a halt. The particularity of the ruins is expressed by the numerous connections of the available elements of construction and style. This doesn’t serve aesthetic aims, but rather to preserve in the building some semblance of usability and prevent its collapse. „Arte de inventar“ – “The art of invention” was something the Cubans learned well during the times of economic hardship. They use any available materials and improvise, piece by piece, what they could never afford to put together at once: the ars inveniendi as an ars vivendi.

The New Art of Thinking Ruins The Character of Havana’s inhabited ruins makes the city a kind of incarnation of the great dream of philosophers spanning centuries, in particular the German thinkers such as Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. These saw in ruins the highest stage of architectural completion, indeed a kind of ideal beauty embodying the inescapable traces of time in the erosion of the buildings. The transience of human creation and the power of nature to reclaim what man tried to tame become an immediate aesthetic experience. After the utopia of communism, the utopia of ruins found their ideal goal and their field of experimentation in Cuba and its capital Havana. The German apologists of ruins of the last centuries have unexpectedly given rise to a new generation of thinkers in the Caribbean. On this foundation, young Cuban artists and intellectuals have made the ruins of Havana, which represent the center of their lives, into the center of their thought. Some artists like the writer Antonio José Ponte describe themselves as “ruinologists”. What differentiates them from their European precursors is the fact that they don’t view the ruins of Havana from the comfortable distance of the external observer. Quite to the contrary, it is where they must live their daily lives.

The New Art of Filming Ruins HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS s is a documentary film about the ruins of Havana and their curious blend of beauty and destruction. Most documentary films in the strict sense focus on construction methods and architectural value – in other words trying to show how the buildings were before the transformation into ruins. What differentiates this film from a documentary about architecture in the strict sense is that, in contrast to “classical ruins”, the crumbling structures of Havana are still inhabited. It is impossible to consider these buildings without including the inhabitants, who are both witnesses and unintentionally a part of the cause of this ongoing process.

“The biggest perversion of a ruinologist,” said Antonio José Ponte, “ would be to look at the ruins of Havana only from the standpoint of urban renewal, merely as architecture in need of aesthetic or structural improvement, as if it were independent of people. Nobody will find an aban- doned coliseum or an acropolis in Havana. Nobody will ask themselves, as one may upon visiting the giant heads on Easter Island, ‘How did this get here? For what purpose?

And if it were the work of aliens? This is because here one sees the inhabitants everywhere taking over the architecture in the attempt to establish a minimal existence, exercising their

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most fundamental right as a human being – “to be”. And in the end, we ruinologists also belong to these inhabitants.

HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS portrays the ruins of Havana through the eyes of those who inhabit them. A mixture of private history, memories, fears and hopes for the future it presents the close relation between these lives and the buildings they’ve inhabited for decades. This opportunity is quite a privilege: what would an archeologist give to be able to interview one of the former inhabitants of Pompeii? At the same time this process conceals a deep sadness, which calls the pleasure of this same process into question. From the perspective of the inhabitants, the history of these ruins is also their own history, a history which shares in a process of slow but ongoing decline.

Contrasting a theory of ruins and their sublime ideal of beauty with the often painful reality of a life lived within ruins brings the paradox of the situation into relief. A ruinology, including this film can’t escape this. Exploring this makes clear how untenable both the idyllic, essentially tourist vision as well as any aesthetic romanticization of ruins really is.

The Ruins of HABANA – ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS span the entire history of Cuban architecture, from the colonial era up through the socialist revolution. Connecting these diverse moments in architectural history is the process of transformation into ruins to which all are subject. The days of all of these ruins are in a sense numbered. Regime change will come and with it an intensification of the wave of renovation and urban renewal which is already underway. The film also seeks to capture a unique historical moment, which may be out of reach in just a few years: before the renovation.

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Evaluation of the Reviewing Commitee of „Filmbewertungsstelle“ (German Film Evaluation Institute, Wiesbaden) Film title:

Havana - The New Art of Building Ruins - Arte nuevo de hacer ruinas

Prüf-Nr. 24 339-DVD

Contents:

Havanna’s edifices as seen through the current inhabitants

Key words:

Fascination and destruction Interesting interviews The poetry of decay Critical

Director:

Borchmeyer, Florian

Report of the Reviewing Committee:

The reviewing committee has unanimously awarded the film with the label „wertvoll“(worthwhile) The poetry of decay: In the past few years, Cuba has developed into the „Jurrasic Park“ of documentary films. Many recent films are German productions and show a picturesque though critical view of a land left behind in time, presented, however, through beautiful images of old American cars and dilapidated buildings.

Florian Borchmeyer’s film presents itself as a counterdraft to these picture-postcard productions. This is no romanticized view. He attempts to show the ruins of Havanna not through the eyes of the fascinated European traveller, but rather through the eyes of the inhabitants, whose entire land is in a state of slow decay. Through this, he creates various moods; for example, when he pairs Mahler’s „Film Music“ for Visconti’s „Death in Venice“ to the images of a decaying Havanna, after one of his interview partners makes the clear parallel between Thomas Mann’s decadence and that of today’s Cuba.

Primarily, however, this documentary, which could be perhaps better catagorized as a film essay, is most convincing intellectually. This poetic film essay captivates through its interesting thesis and characters. This thesis, put forth, argued and documented on an often rhetorically high niveau, is that Cuba has been allowed to decompose, or has been actively laid to waste, by the leadership, while this crumbling wall supports the current system. „We are the bogus ruins of an invasion that never occurred“, it is said there. Parallels to the English garden architecture of the 1700’s are drawn, where the upperclass created their own romantic, picturesque ruins.

One of Borchmeyer’s interviewees „lives“ in the ruins of a theater which was once one of the most magnificent buildings in Latin America. Black and white film footage, as well as sound clips, give testimony to the former grandeur of this theater. Even here, the film manages to maintain its analytical sharpness without losing itself in plaintive nostalgia.

The FBW Jury was impressed with the poetry and power of the film, especially in the way the Cubans interviewed were able to express themselves so poetically. One interviewee compares a building to an old woman wearing make-up; the aging skin is first noticed when one strokes her face.

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