PERSPECTIVES ON EXILE

PERSPECTIVES ON EXILE AND CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT IN MONTES-­BRADLEY´S DOCUMENTARIES ON WRITERS, ARTISTS AND SOCIAL ACTIVISTS 1996 -­ 2016

EDUARDO MONTES-­BRADLEY Regent´s Lecturer, 2015-­2016 Graduate School of Education and Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) February, 23rd 2016 Carnesale Commons, Hermosa Room.

1

Objective: Montes-­Bradley will share and discuss his experience behind the camera documenting exile, and cultural displacement in biographical portrayals of intellectuals, artists and social activists.

Over the last twenty years Montes-­Bradley’s has produced nearly sixty documentary films in Latin America, Europe and in the United States. Some of the names, and themes associated with his work are Héctor Tizón, Afro-­Brazilian Culture, Ernesto Che Guevara, Slavery and the University of Virginia, Jorge Luis Borges, Rita Dove, Brazilian Literature, Julio Cortázar, African American Diaspora, and Evita Perón.

On March 6th, “Monroe Hill” a documentary exploring the early years in the life of President James Monroe will screen in the Official Selection at the Richmond Int’l Film Festival;; and on on May 24th the British Academy will present “Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement” as part of the Civil Rights Documentary Cinema and the 1960s: Transatlantic Conversations on History, Race and Rights.

2

My name is Eduardo Montes-­Bradley, During the last twenty years I have applied my efforts as a documentary filmmaker to explore the life-­stories and the perspectives on life in writers, artists, social activist and other endangered species.

This invitation by the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA has been a unique opportunity me to revisit some of the films made after 1996, and perhaps to draw new conclusions on past concerns and interests.

I would like express my sincere gratitude to Wasserman Dean Marcelo Suarez-­Orosco, to Distinguished Professor of Education

and UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education Dr. Carlos Alberto Torres, for proposing my name to the Regents Lecturer Program, to Professor Louis Gomez, Chair of the Education Department and to Chancellor Gene Block, for the extending the invitation. And to all of you, faculty, students and friends.

3

I A few weeks back I was drawing a blanc looking for ways to introduce my self, and share with you some of the most memorable experiences of the last twenty years behind the camera.

I probably looked baffled when my eleven-­year-­old son suggested we went to the movies to see Ron Howard’s “In The Heart of the Sea”.

So we did…

In the first few minutes of the film I learned that Melville, looking for inspiration for his novel, one about a whale and a sailor named Ishamel, is about to interview Mr. Nickerson, formerly a teenage cabin boy on board the Whale-­Ship Essex.

Ron Howard’ choice is a creative license. In fact, we know that Melville’s inspiration came not from an interview with Mr. Nickerson but from the cornicle publish a year after the events by the first mate on board the Essex Mr. Owen Chase.

Now, does it really matter whether Melville gather his vision from Mr. Nickerson or from Mr. Chase, or ultimately WHY Ron Howard decided to go with an improbable dialogue with the former?

Most likely not.

What probably should matter is the fact that they are all referring back to documented evidence.

Evidence that is never brought into question: The Essex was sunk by a massive sperm-­whale in the South Pacific on November 20, 1820.

4

As a documentary filmmaker my greatest concern has always been with the interpretation of the facts.

Face with the choice I would rather meet with Mr. Nickerson and Mr. Chase over a glass of rum in Nantucket than having to prove or otherwise disprove of the existence of a giant-­whale in the South Pacific.

Let Phillip Cousteau chase after the cetacean and give me the firsthand account of the castaway anytime

5

II

With the exception of “Samba on Your Feet” documentary inspired in one of the most popular legacies of the of the Afro-­Brazilian cultural traditions in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and the work commissioned by the University of Virginia concerning the African-­American enslaved at UVa, my films have consistently focus on individuals: writers, artists, social activist and as I pointed out before, other endangered species.

According to Pilar Roca of the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil my choice of subjects is linked to the fact that intellectuals can be easily identified as occupying the archetypical space previously reserved to priests, and as such they convey a global vision of the values and convictions of society.

Furthermore, Pilar Roca is of the idea that many of these values and convictions on my films seem to be constantly crossed by the paradigm of exile and cultural displacement.

I believe that Pilar Roca’s might be correct and that my “Synagogue of the Iconoclasts” -­paraphrasing the title of one of my favourite novels by Rodolfo Wilcox-­ is one inhabited by everyone who at one point of another stood at the other end of the camera lens.

Allow me to bring Walter Benjamin into the conversation: “To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.”

It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.” Benjamin will later conclude: “The only writer of history with

6

the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy.” To which I, modestly, would like to contribute a variable giving the circumstances: that not even the dead will be safe from a documentarian furnished with a camera and enough battery power to last the length of an interesting conversation.

And now that Walter Benjamin brought the dead into the equation, I would like to make a distinction between the documentaries I have made with living subjects, and documentaries I have made about subjects no longer available.

With the former the strategy is a one on one, a single voice, his or her own. Then of course the infinite resources of composition and editing will help transform, what otherwise could be a simple interview, into a more elevated form of portrayal, one with multiple layers.

In the other hand, when profiling subjects unavailable for makeup and hair my approach has consistently been the use of multiple voices, and perhaps even more layers.

“Soriano”, my first documentary in this period, was a portrayal of the last kind, and Osvaldo Soriano a writer, journalist, and a cultural icon of his generation.

His success as a writer was probably concomitant to his return from exile in 1983, a year that signalled the end of a decade of military rule and the return to democratic values in Argentina. It was an unparalleled period in the institutional life of the South American nation, characterized by a dominant euphoric feeling that many

7

compared to the so call “destape” that follow the death of General Francisco Franco and the establishment of republican principles in Spain.

Unfortunately, I missed most of that excitement myself. Although I visited Buenos Aires a few times during that period, I was not unable to break away from the life I had created for myself here, in the United States.

In more than one way, Soriano will become a vehicle in the late 1990´s to understand that period, to learn about new aspects of the culture of a country and a society that was slowly sleeping away from under my feet.

I would also like to note that prior to making the decision to move forward with the film on Soriano I knew very little about his work as a journalist and writer. I see in biographical documentaries an extraordinary excuse to learn, and to explore.

A documentary portrayal should be, I believe, a recipe for the iconography of the subject. If the journey is successful, we would have provided others in the future with the reference material for the interpretation of the content.

The first time I heard of Osvaldo Soriano was while browsing for something to read on the plane at the gift shop of the International airport in Buenos Aires. The book I found and bought was “El ojo de la patria” which would probably translate as “The Private Eye of the Homeland”.

8

It was a spy novel, a spoof with film noire undertones in which a peripatetic agent of the Argentine Secret Service was still operating in the European theatre without the support or recognition of his government.

That novel did not make a great impression with the critics, or academia, or my friends. But it did generate great interest in me, and even more: I thoroughly enjoyed and made me want to know more: more about Soriano, more about cultural, and institutional transformations that had taken place in Argentina during a period of my life in which I felt detached, suspended, nomadic and drifting.

The documentary Soriano was shot on Super 16mm, and had a price tag of 120K which I afforded myself at first and for which I was later compensated with an award from the Ministry of Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts in Argentina.

I spent nearly six months traveling with a crew of two through Europe, visiting the places where Soriano had lived, meeting some of his friends in exile, discovering locations that had inspired dramatic situations and characters in his novels which I was now beginning to read as we moved along.

During those six months wandering and wondering, I truly felt I was Julio Carrie, the intelligence agent operating in the shadows without the support of his government, trying to understand Soriano’s paradox, and my own exile. Footnotes on Julio Carrie: The secret agent turn out to be real, and I discovered his gravesite next to that of Oscar Wilde in the very Parisian cemetery Pere Lachaise.

9

I will make two more documentary on dead writers: Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. Unlike Soriano, Borges and Cortázar were not only revered and admire by the many, but also by the few, in academia.

These films were polyphonic reconstructions, not so much aimed at the biographical perspective, but rather focus in very specific aspects their work and the creation of their public identity.

The first was called “Harto The Borges” a title with two possible interpretations in Spanish either TOO MUCH OF BORGES, or FEDUP WITH BORGES. To my surprise, the film also had a theatrical release and would even be invited to screen at the "Luso-­ Hispanic Presence in the Changing Cultural Landscape of America" conference at Yale University, at the University of Virginia, at Salamanca and other prestigious academic centres.

I believe that with “Harto the Borges” I learned of the potential of documentary portrayals as bibliographical evidence, as reference materials. These films, I though back then, could eventually become a valuable reserve.

The title of the third film on this initial trilogy was “Cortázar: preliminary notes for a documentary”. Worth noticing perhaps is the fact that the film preceded the biographical essay later published by Random House Mondadori. It was interesting for me to think on this reversal process in which the film was now generating the printed version.

10

I believed that with Soriano, Borges and Cortázar I exhausted my predilection for dead writers and was now ready to approach warmer subjects…

The Providence delivered the first and his name was Ishmael. No whale here, but perhaps the most significant exiled I have ever encountered and explored. Ishmael’s fortune was that of Aeneas (anias), who unlike Ulyses did not find his way back.

The deliverance:

I was having a double expresso a reading the newspaper in a shopping centre in Miami, probably my most decadent confession thus far. In Miami shopping centres are often the only refuge to the miserable heat. Suddenly I detected a face somewhat familiar.

It was a estrange vision: the man, probably in his late seventies looked like a hybrid between Mark Twain and Joseph Stalin.

Dignifying look, a thick moustache, white guayabera and linen trousers. I got up and started to follow this vision until suddenly I lost it as quick as I had found it.

To my surprise he was waiting for me at the table were I went back.

He was sitting on the chair I had previously occupied, and was holding the newspaper I was reading. The first words to come out of his mouth were: “—Why are you following me?

11

Hi name was Ismael Viñas, a revered intellectual, a polemist, founder of the Left in the Post Peronism, and protagonist of some of the most colourful political transformations of the 20th century in Latin America: From the slaughter of anarchist workers in Patagonia, to the rise of Fascism, the fall of Peronism, the Cuban Revolution, the rise and fall of Salvador Allende in Chile, the adventures of Ernesto Che Guevara.

In 1976 Ismale Viñas went into exile and banished. His name became associated with several legends of triumph and even betrayal.

The film we made together was an effort to reconstruct his life life and in the process I gained a good friend and an extraordinary perspective of Latin American political and cultural affairs.

The film premiered at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival and the screening was an opportunity to summon several of his friends: Leon Rozitchner, Juan José Sebrelli, Thomas Eloy Martinez and his brother David Viñas came to the screening that night for a virtual repatriation.

Ismael died in Miami 2014 without ever setting a foot back in Buenos Aires. He was pretty much disposed, living without his books, and deprived of the company of his life long friends.

I once asked asked Ismael why? His replay was as laconic as the first words he pronounced when we first met: He said, “— There is no return, there is no back, only a place and if the people you love are not there anymore, then the place doesn´t exist outside of the realm of your imagination”

12

The documentary on Ismael Viñas was followed by nearly 30 other films on political and literary figures of the Argentina. I literarily went into a frenzy trying to record and interpret as much as I could before it was too late.

I recent years I had the opportunity to meet Luis Harss the man who from West Virginia coined the term “Latin American Boom” in the early 60´s, and inaugurated the cannon with his book “Los Nuestros” introducing to the Outside World the first ten founding authors including Gabriel García Marquez, Cortázar, Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa to name just a few.

Harss is another Aeneas, he lives in a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by Amish and dairy farms. But when you walk into his house you find yourself involved in a unique world, one that is irreplaceable, a world that I´m now trying to capture on film as well.

In a recent conversation with Luis, he told me that my recent exploration of the African American Diaspora with films on Julian Bond, Rita Dove and others might be a sign that my experience as a castaway is entering a new path.

According to Harss, exploring the “host” culture with a critical eye might be a sign that one is coming to terms with the past. If Harss is right, I might also be on my way to become Aeneas.

But there is more to exile than the idea of the he-­she who returns and he-­she who does not, there is also the way in which we influence each other. Ways in which the HOST culture and the DISPLACED culture articulate with one another and with everything in between.

13

I can think of two interesting examples of this correlation outside of my own work: The first is The Postman, Il Postino, the Italian film by Michael Radford based on Antonio Skármeta’s novel in which Chilean poet Pablo Neruda exiled in a virtually deserted island in the gulf of Naples meets Mario Ruoppolo, the postman who delivers Neruda´s mail in exile.

Eventually Neruda returns to Chile, and he forgets all about Mario.

However, Mario’s has made a dramatic change because of his encounter with the South American poet. He falls in love, joins a political cause, and he dies defending his ideas, which where very close to Neruda’s ideas who in many ways is the one who father the new Mario.

In this example the DISPLACE has immediate and direct consequences in his HOST. Otherwise nothing seems to happen to Neruda, or Neruda’s poetry.

The second example could be that of Federico García Lorca in New York where the DISPLACED will reinvent himself and his poetry. In New York Lorca discovers a new way of writing which will distance him from tradition and folklore just as Mario was distance from tradition and folklore by the presence of Neruda. And Lorca will also embrace a new awareness over his sexuality as he explores the alien universe of Harlem and the African American Men, the same way that Mario embrace a utopian and romantic paradigm of revolution.

14

In both chronicles, the agency susceptible of transformation is tradition, and folklore, regardless of whether the tradition and folklore stands with the host or the displace.

Perhaps we should be reminded of the tragic end of Lorca, and also of the tragic end of of Mario, the postman. Transgression of the unwritten rules of folklore might get you in trouble if the prevailing winds blowing your way are those of national-­preservation.

We spoke of AEneas or Ulysses, Garcia Lorca or Mario Ruoppolo and we should also consider the many variables left out of the of this introduction. We should think of internal exile so frequent in the diaspora on the American intellectualism, and the many other forms of alienation that could so easily be compared to the epic nature of the classic definitions of exile without the glory and glamour.

On my portrayals on Latin American intellectuals I worked with the initial concept of extraterritoriality which served to defined cultural displacement in the 20th Century.

The idea that cultural displacement and exile is restricted to a concept of extra-­territoriality is changing, and it is more and more becoming an issue of communications.

I believe we need to pay close attention to the sophisticated forms of displacement, forms that will continue to grow beyond geographical limitations In a late 19 century folk tell by Sholen Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman solves the riddle of exile by saying he’s taking his little town (his stetle) of Anatevka under his hat, today we are seeing thousands of

15

men woman and children are crossing frontiers with their little stettle in a memory chip, and iPhone, and I’m fascinated by this new forms of extraterritoriality, by this new means of integration. Still very little has changed since Judah Halevi wrote a thousand years ago:

“My heart is in the East and I am at The edge of the West.

Then how can I Taste what I eat, How can I enjoy it?

How can I fulfill My vows and pledges When Zion is In the domain of Edom And I am In the Bonds of Arabia?

16

III In 2012 and 2013 I worked US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Rita Dove in a film in which she recalls a family trip from Akron, Ohio to Mexico City. The journey suggest the reverse of the Great Migration depicted by Jacob Lawrence.

It was very interesting to hear Rita talk about the relief she felt when her family arrived in Mexico after crossing the segregated states Alabama and Florida in a country thorn by the racial divide. However, the same Mexicans family that welcome a Cadillac filled with the African American in 1968 was turning their backs on their own blacks, Indians from the nearby mountains, campesinos, and refugees from Central America, from that other south of the border.

The conversation with Rita Dove made a swift turn underline the fascination we all have for the exotic and yet more tolerable forms of discrimination by which we alienate the other, by which we banish the other facilitating their path to alienation.

17

I think we should start wrapping this monologue very soon and allow time for for a conversation.

But before we call it a day, I want to pay tribute to the films I never made, and probably never will, to the conversations that didn’t happen.

I would have giving anything to meet Langston Hughes at a party in Shanghai, or after his release from jail in Tokyo, or in USSR with his troupe of African American actors from Harlem corrupting the post imperial fragility of the beautiful muscovite woman, and men.

Or Dean Reed, the Red Elvis who defected to the Soviet Union but kept on paying US taxes just in case.

Or Jose Kaplan the piano man who felt in love, and died in the arms of a beautiful woman in Paraiba.

Or my uncle Kadish, who after crossing the Urals and the Atlantic met Fate at the hands of a drunken anti-­Semitic though at the train station in Rosario.

Or Alberto Soriano the composer from Bahia who wrote symphonies on paper napkins at Bar La Paz and then give them away, like that one about a certain water fountains in Buenos Aires that he dedicated to my father.

Or Miguel Angeles Estrella the concertist jailed in Montevideo who continued to play Schuman, and Shubert, Bach and Chopin in his imaginary piano while the notes danced around his infinite solitude.

Or my great uncle Ricardo who helped carry Diego Rivera’s coffin to the cemetery.

18

Or Lev Nassimbaum the Jew that became Muslim before Edward Said was Edward Said, and now rests his soul in Positano Or Franco Lucentini who one day opened the accordion gates, and jump into the elevator shaft, thus ending the exile of the last known átopo in Torino.

Thank you very much for your infinite patience, and let us all be reminded that every individual must think of himself as if he or she personally came out of Egypt.

Eduardo Montes-­Bradley Los Angeles, February 2016

19