Villa Bianca
Iniala dreaming Southern Thailand's hottest design-led escape is dreaming big, well beyond its beachside location. by max crosbie-jones hen the Kardashians recently rocked up for a week of R&R at Iniala Beach House, what did they do first? Did they drop their mountain of Louis Vuitton luggage in the lobby and rush to check out the ice white room by Spanish design superstar Jaime Hayon? Or coo over the whimsical, crockery-lined courtyard by the Campana Brothers? Or maybe they went to see the Warhols? None of the above: they did what any excitable holidaymaker would do when they first arrive in palm-fringed paradise and went to scope out the beach. That’s fair enough, given that this intimate boutique resort overlooks a winsome slice of Phang Nga’s quiet Natai beach (and they were, of course, on holiday). But one hopes that during their stay they took some time out from basting themselves to explore properly: Iniala might be an opulent beach retreat first and foremost but it’s also an eclectic showroom of white-hot contemporary art and international design. With beds hanging from ceilings, bathtubs glowing like disco lights and exciting art on display in most rooms, it’s a rare example of what can be achieved when the designers are given carte blanche and the dream isn’t emasculated by the budget.
069
The Collector Villa's living room by the Campana Brothers
070
Its creator, the wealthy British entrepreneur and philanthropist Mark Weingard, has long been interested in hotel service. One of his business successes was founding Hotel IQ, a company specialising in hotel service audits. Philanthropy is another one of his deep and abiding passions (this has been the case ever since he had three close brushes with death – this humbling tale is a whole other story). At Iniala – his first hotel – these twin obsessions combine with a thoughtfully curated blend of interior design, art and gastronomy to create something über-slick and entirely original. The one-percenters and A-listers who stay here enjoy pillow menus, a personal butler, inclusive meals, and six hours of massage treatments a day – and they get to enjoy such overthe-top mod-cons while warm with the knowledge that 10 per cent of the whopping price tag goes to Mark’s charity the Inspirasia Foundation, which
funds health, disability and education projects in Thailand, Indonesia and India. But while the attention to service and charitable philosophy are the result of Mark’s vision, and his alone, Iniala’s wow factor took collaboration, and lots of it. When he first hit upon the idea of converting his private Thai villa into a beach house residence, the first person he enlisted the services of was Graham Lamb, an architect whose list of credits includes Bed Supperclub. He remodelled the existing wooden structure and surrounded it with organically inspired contemporary structures. The result is a lush, compact complex linked by paths and featuring three self-contained villas, each with three suites and their own private spa, outdoor lounge area and slate-lined pool. He also added a restaurant topped by a penthouse. Once the structures were in place, then came the task of
filling them. Mark apparently spent two years scouring magazines and websites to find his designer shortlist, and then recruited a director of art and design, Flor Nahmad, to manage the intricate consultation process. Art, too, was high up on his wish list, and for this he turned to Steven Pettifor, a well-established Bangkok-based curator. Lots of research trips, long meetings and sign-offs later and the results are eclectic. Each villa stands alone as a unique, designled blend of flamboyance and functionality. The Villa Siam by preeminent Thai designer and furniture maker Eggarat Wongchart, for example, is inspired by Buddhism, with everything from the natureinspired motifs to the works by
Thai artists meant to instil a sort of calm mindfulness. Perhaps its most striking feature is its spa shaped like a giant temple bell, replete with shimmering gold leaf walls inlaid with stencilled Buddhist texts. Others may prefer the beachfront Siamese Twins suites located a few steps away, where the use of sinuously woven bamboo trellis above the floating cocoon beds creates a ceiling that resembles a stormy sky, or maybe (depending on how many glasses of freeflow wine you’ve had) a bioorganic, H. R. Giger-esque lifeform. The most exciting villa in terms of international design is the Collector’s Villa, where a central courtyard by Brazil’s Campana Brothers leads to rooms designed by them and three other big names.
The Siamese Twin Suite by Eggarat Wongchart
T H E M A G A Z I N E
With beds hanging from ceilings, bathtubs glowing like disco lights and exciting art on display in most rooms, Iniala is a rare example of what can be achieved when the designers are given carte blanche and the dream isn’t emasculated by the budget.
Among them is the room that, according to Flor, caused the most controversy: a lascivious boudoir suite designed by Mark Brazier-Jones, an acclaimed British designer who creates fantastical Neo-Baroque furnishings out of copper, bronze and brass. Other rooms include a spa inlaid with gleaming mother-of-pearl, a private cinema soundproofed with coconut matting, and a living room accented with traditional Thai blue and white porcelain, all by the Campanas, and a suite filled with stunning warped wood furniture by Irish craftsmen Joseph Walsh. For Flor, working with the latter was particularly rewarding. Not only was this the first time he had designed an interior, his perfectionism The Carpenter's Chamber by Joseph Walsh
P A C E S
The Villa Siam's open-plan living room
was also infectious. “He took a lot of convincing but was one of my favourites to work with because he was so into all the small details, and he took care of everything from colour and lighting to the position of each piece,” she explains. Indeed, the room is a marvel: filled with twelve of his truly unique pieces, including a particularly dazzling bed with a protrusion that extends like a giant wishbone over the mattress. How does he get wood to appear as if it can fold as effortlessly as a piece of crushed velvet? It’s a “secret that nobody can reproduce,” explains Flor, but entails bending thin slices of ash wood along their natural contours. Also drawing you in is the art. Though it takes a backseat in the Collector’s Villa, elsewhere it is front and centre, used to respond to the theme or lend character and volume. The very space-age looking white living room in Villa Siam includes some seductive close-up photos
071
of brightly coloured Buddha idols by Manit Sriwanichpoom, and textile artist Jakkai Siributr’s tapestry of delicately crocheted monk talismans; whereas Villa Bianca, with its cleaner, more minimal interiors by Spain’s A-cero and Russia’s Philosophy of Design, includes some exciting pieces from Indonesia. Among them is a set of Arin Dwihartanto's bold abstract paintings, which are made using volcanic ash collected from Java's Mount Merapi and have a glossy resin finish that matches the gleam of the slick white modular furnishings. More works fill the impossibly slick restaurant, Aziamendi (also by a A-cero), and the new gallery, which opened back in April. While there are Thai pieces, including a pastoral, sitespecific glass mosaic by Maitree Sriboon in the lobby, and even some Warhol screen prints hanging in the gym, most of the work hails from Indonesia. This is partly due to Mark’s
T H E M A G A Z I N E
Four months after it opened, the reason for this is only now becoming clear: most of the art and design is for sale. “We have a deal As other Inialas with all the designers that the pieces they designed for us are emerge over the exclusive to us – we have the years, not only will rights to distribute and sell we work with them,” explains Flor, who will galleries in different manage the roll-out of Iniala cities, but we’ll Design in late 2014. As well as also have a cross-flow distributing signature Iniala designs (think Jaime Hayon of our art between bedside lamps and “bling” our spaces. designer pool tables inlaid with hundreds of thousands of Swarovski crystals), the hope is also to create interiors for new Inialas (Malta and Barcelona are both in the pipeline) and private clients. They hope also strong philanthropic ties to to team up with other designers the country, and also the warm that fit the Iniala credo. welcome he received during a A similar strategy applies research trip to Java’s fledging to the art side of things. One annual art fair Art Jog. “After of the artists they met and doing a number of art fairs he commissioned during their was growing a little bit wary and wondering how we were going to trips in Indonesia was Entang Wiharso, a sculptor whose find our niche as an art hotel,” gleaming brass and aluminium explains Steven during my art tour, which is available to guests sculptures of human figures channel something of the on request. “Until then he’d hellish inner torment of Bosch, been going to a lot of fairs in Singapore and Hong Kong, and but still look great mounted they’re kind of brash and big and on a wall (as they are in the unless you’re already ingratiated penthouse and restaurant). According to Steven, Entang into that system or community it’s hard to just jump into. But at is one of a select group of Art Jog it was a lot easier to meet established and emerging artists that Mark is keen to people and get to know them. work closely with as the Iniala We met a couple of key people brand spawns creative tentacles. who knew everyone and were Already this shape-shifting very open to introducing us to into art representation and them.” Indeed, speaking to Flor and dealing is underway: on the fringes of the region's biggest Steven it’s clear that forging art fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, strong bonds with artists and Iniala hosted its first ever popdesigners was at the forefront up dinner and exhibition. of Iniala’s gameplan right from In a room at the Mandarin the start. As she puts it: “The Oriental Hotel, wealthy ones that we didn’t like at the beginning, who we thought were investment bankers dined on food by Aziamendi's head chef going to be difficult to work Eneko Atxa while surrounded with, we didn’t work with.”
P A C E S
Band of Sober - Pray, 2013, acrylic on canvas by Uji Handoko "Hahan" Eko Saputro
by canvases and small resin sculptures by Indonesian Pop artist Uji Handoko "Hahan" Eko Saputro. The event was “almost a sell-out,” says Steven. Couldn’t collaborating with artists directly in this manner put some gallery’s noses out of joint? The move sideways is delicate, he admits, as some galleries might think that they are being cut out of the loop. But the motivation is logistical rather than predatory: “If you want to be doing these kinds of projects around the world, you can’t work through the gallery all the time. It’s too complicated. So, it’s about choosing the right projects to work with galleries or to work directly with artists,” he says. Plus, they might be able to help spread the word. “Not so many have the resources to take an artist beyond the local scene, but we hope to help push the artist beyond it.” Time will tell how these embryonic projects pan out.
As with the hotel, which is currently renting out individual suites as well as three-suite villas (with low-season rates for a villa starting from US$3,250 a night, the skeptic would say its hardly surprising), tweaks will be necessary. There is no guarantee that the art and design arms will pay its keep, and if it doesn’t it could, possibly, be shelved entirely. “Whatever the Iniala project, service is always going to be a part, philanthropy is always going to be a part, but whether the art, design and gastronomy parts will translate to every project, we will have to take it on a case-by-case basis,” says Steven. “Hopefully, though, as other Inialas emerge over the years, not only will we work with galleries in different cities, but we’ll also have a cross-flow of our art between our spaces.” This is clearly a hotel to watch, and preferably from within. www.iniala.com
100
Being Anna Sui
What would it be like to be Anna Sui for a day, to be the head of a fashion empire? We talk to the designer about her inspirations and motivations, and what it took to make it this far.
by chomwan weeraworawit / portraits by apisak vithyanond
T HE M A G A Z I N E
102
anhattan’s Garment District is where the New York fashion industry was born. It is also where Anna Sui began her fashion career, where she created her rich, alluring world, and where the line between good girl and bad girl appears blurred and mysterious. Anna Sui's quiet headquarters are situated in the heart of the bustling world of fabric showrooms, ateliers and designer studios that is the Garment District. Waiting here in a plush faux-Victorian chair, I’m eager to know how the woman behind this fashion empire was able to create a brand that is still as relevant today as it was when she opened the doors of her first boutique on Greene Street, Soho, in 1991. On the table, an Anna Sui coffee-table book depicts a time when the “supers” owned the runway. The fashion back then was fun and eclectic, a little bit of everything creating a statement in its own right. The woman behind this vision is known for sporting a similar look, one that's always been in line with her brand. Anna Sui, with her shiny, black hair, perfectly even bangs and trademark red lips, is as striking in real life as she is in pictures. When she walks into the room to meet me, she radiates a certain energy and as she speaks she conveys a contagious passion for all she creates. She tells me her story right from the beginning. The Anna Sui story is your archetypal tale of pursuing your dreams. The designer knew as a child, around the age of four or five, that she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her childhood and adolescence were subsequently geared toward making that dream a reality. She tells me how she once read an
h e
I N T E R V I E W
article about two young ladies who went to Parsons School of Design in NYC and later went to Paris where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton opened a boutique for them. The story awakened something within her and from that day on she wanted nothing else from life but to follow in their footsteps. “As a I kid I always thought, ‘I have to go to Parsons! How do I go to Parsons? I’m just this kid from Detroit, Michigan. How do I do that?’” Anna got her wish, of course. But Anna Sui the brand, and Paris, for that matter, weren't to come yet. First she worked for a sportswear brand called Charlie’s Girls. “It was a great first job,” she says. “I had my own design room with sewers and a patternmaker. After that, everyone knew that I must be a really good worker because she had a reputation for being one of the toughest bosses in the business.” Anna then went on to work for a couple of big companies before starting out on her own. After that, a trip to Paris with one of her close friends, fashion photographer Steven Meisel, consolidated her resolve to start up an eponymous line. One of the first stops on that Paris trip was to pick up Madonna at the Ritz and take her to the Gaultier show. “I remember going into her hotel room and seeing these shopping racks filled with clothes from every designer in Paris. I just thought, ‘She’s so lucky they are gifting her with all these beautiful things.’ When she came out of her bedroom, she already had her coat on and we went to the show, and then when she sat down and took off her coat. She said, ‘Anna, I
Anna always knew she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her whole childhood and adolescence were geared toward making that dream a reality.
103
T HE M A G A Z I N E
h e
I N T E R V I E W
Soon an ambiguous element emerged in her designs. People were asking themselves: does this Anna Sui depict a good girl or a bad girl?
104
have a surprise for you.’ And she was wearing my dress! “That gave me so much confidence because she had every designer in the world giving her things and she was wearing my dress. When we got back from Paris, Steven said to me, ‘Now it’s your turn, you have to do a show.’” This was a turning point. In 1991, Anna put on her first show – on the very same block that Anna Sui HQ sits on today, 38th and 8th Avenue. Helped by friends – Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista helped her muster all the models she needed – the show was a success. Anna Sui was immediately on the map and her first shop followed a few years later. Looking back, Anna believes it was fate, or magic. “I had dinner with a friend of mine who was working at Calvin Klein and he said to me, ‘I’m a psychic, you have to open a store.’ I said, ‘A store?! I can hardly afford to pay for my collection, I’m freelancing.’ He said, ‘You have to showcase your collection because you are creating your own world.’ So I went down to Soho and I found the space for the first store on Greene Street.” The Greene Street store is where Anna Sui the brand came into being – a world of red floors, purple walls, carved black lacquer roses, and dolly heads. “My friends and I made dolly heads while I was waiting to hear if I would get the lease,” she recalls. “We created those decorations out of necessity, but they went on to become the icons of the brand.” What her psychic friend told her proved to be true. Once
Anna Sui was introduced to the world, word quickly spread. Before long, her boutiques were appearing in department stores. nna’s world is both rock-and-roll and ultra-feminine. It has always been this way. “When I decided to go out on my own, my main goal was to design for rockstars and people who went to rock concerts,” she says. “But then it evolved very quickly when all the models were wearing my clothes and I could see the stores needed other things.” Soon a nostalgic vintage influence, laced with an elusive, ambiguous element, emerged in her designs – people began asking themselves whether this Anna Sui depicts a “good girl” or a “bad girl.” This split persona was then and remains now a continuous thread throughout the entire brand and all its products. How did her trademark colours – red and purple – become so prominent in the Anna Sui world? “I remember seeing a movie where the girl was a princess and she had a lavender RollsRoyce,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘What a cool colour’ and I asked my mother to make me a dress in lavender and my birthday cake had to have lavender roses. I decided that it would be my favourite colour from then on because it was cooler than pink.” As to whether she has a muse, she says, “I think people can tell from my fashion that I love fashion. I love other designers; I am so
T HE M A G A Z I N E
h e
I N T E R V I E W
I put as much excitement in a tube of lipstick as I would in a dress. That is why there's an obsession with my packaging.
inspired by the ‘60s and ‘70s designers – Mary Quant, Betsey Johnson, BIBA, Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes. Fashion history, too; in some moments I am looking at Poiret, Chanel and Schiaparelli. I love fashion so I like exploring that and doing the research, finding out more, going to a museum and discovering something I didn’t know.” The success of Anna Sui, of course, is down to more than just great design and passion for fashion. On the business side of things, Anna changed the game for fashion designers in how she approached her licensing. Around the time she was putting on her first show, the city of New York was promoting fashion week and invited the international press to its shows. New York designers were hot at the time, in Japan in particular. As it happened, the head of Isetan saw Anna Sui's designs and was keen to license her collection through the cosmetic arm, Albion – she agreed. It was one of twelve licences she would sign. Looking back now on Japan’s influence on fashion in the 1990s, you can see how strategic this collaboration was in building the brand into the global force it is today. At the same time, Anna Sui was approached by the German company Wella to do fragrances. She recalls: “The head of Wella in the USA went down to my store with his daughter and she said, ‘See, Dad, this is what I’m talking about; this is what you need to do!’” Anna suggested to the two companies – Wella and Isetan – that they could work together and that the licences be global. Initially the brands were hesitant to collaborate, as
the practice at the time was unorthodox, but Anna’s reponse was simply: “Let’s see if it can happen!” “There were bumps along the way,” she says, “but that’s really how I became a global brand.” Anna Sui cosmetics are today available throughout the world and have developed quite the cult following, especially among tweens. Young women can't seem to get enough of the black lacquered roses that adorn her beauty items. The cosmetics function as an accessible point for young consumers – one that aesthetically embodies the Anna Sui brand. Anna says she saw it as her job to “put as much excitement in a tube of lipstick as I would in a dress. That is why there is an obsession with my packaging, the tubes, the texture of the lipstick, the scent. All those things mean that the customer can get the same thrill from a tube of my lipstick as from my fashion.” A good example of this is Anna Sui’s nail polish – not only does it have a distinctive black rose motif carved on the lid but also something even more unusual: a scent. Nail polishes don’t usually have a nice smell, but Anna Sui’s do. How did that come about? In this case, technology married whimsy: Albion had developed the ability to add scent to its cosmetic products and Anna was smitten with tea roses. “I would go to the farmers’ market every weekend at Union Square where they have these lavender tea roses,” she says. “I would put them in my bedroom and close the door and the whole room would smell of tea roses.”
105
T HE M A G A Z I N E
106
hat is clear from these stories is that Anna has always been ready to explore new models and adopt new methods whenever they’re viable. It is equally interesting to get her take on the world today, her views on the way we’re now all über-connected thanks to the Internet and social media. “Information travels so fast and that’s the biggest challenge today – how do you stay on top of that?” she says. “It’s like running on top of a ball: you can’t stop, you need to keep moving constantly – it’s hard. I don’t know how people do it.” Despite her acknowledgment that one must adapt to stay on top of things in an evermodernising world, Anna’s global empire has not seen her wave good-bye to her original home in the Garment District. The district remains integral to her business, not only for the headquarters but also for the fact that a lot of her clothes are still made there. But more importantly, the attachment is personal and shapes Anna's philosophy. “This is where I learned my craft, and going back to my first job, one of my tasks was to find fabrics for the collections,” she says. “I learned how to do that here. When I see a fabric, it speaks to me and it tells me what I can do with it and that is why it is so important for a designer to find her resources and medium. And the other thing I tell my students and young designers is that you need to learn your craft, to know how things are made, to understand how fabric drapes. Again, technology is changing that, but when you see really beautiful clothes, you know the person behind them understands what to do with the fabrics and shapes.”
h e
I N T E R V I E W
The fact that Anna has not left the district shows her loyalty to New York, the town that made her. But although her brand remains quintessentially New York, she tends to find her inspiration elsewhere, anywhere. Her Fall/Winter 2014 collection, for example, is inspired by her travels to Asia in the past year. “I loved going to Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and I love that whole Peranakan culture; it was almost super-Chinese, almost slightly exaggerated, and the colours are a little different.” Many a designer has probably picked up this reference and used it, but it’s the way Anna uses it that makes it distinctively hers. “‘How can I make this whole look really cool?’” she wonders out loud, vocalising her internal process. “I had seen this silent film that Anna Mae Wong made in England called Piccadilly and the styling for it is so great. I went back to look at it again and in the opening scenes she’s dressed in black-and-white T-shirts with these miniskirts and Mary Janes and a little beret. And I thought, ‘She’s dressed exactly how Mary Quant was when I met her. I met Mary Quant a few years ago and I was so impressed with how she still has her look even though she’s older, and I thought, ‘How can I have this fantasy of dressing Anna Mae Wong but also make it swinging-‘60s, very Mod and Biba-esque?’ That’s how I preceded with the collection, so you see a mix of those two ideas. I think that’s what I’m known for, putting together these very different thought processes and then it coming out very Anna Sui.” Perhaps it is this juxtaposition of different elements that
When you see beautiful clothes, you know the person behind them understands what to do with the fabrics and shapes.
107
108
T HE M A G A Z I N E
h e
I N T E R V I E W
I've always said to young people who want to be designers, you can always find your own way. It is never exactly like the way somebody else did it. has contributed significantly to the longevity of her brand. “I think people pick up on things that they are in tune with and it reminds them of something – something in the past, something new. So I think that has been part of the success of my brand – many people can identify with it.” She is now reaching even more people and the future is currently on her mind. A collaboration with Italian sports brand FILA in China is in its second season, and her fragrances are now being distributed to India, the Middle East and China. Over in Russia, a new fragrance will hopefully soon be released. Unlike many of the other international labels today, Anna Sui still belongs very much to Anna. Privately owned labels are becoming rarer these days as smaller houses are bought out, swallowed up by luxury conglomerates. This has changed the international landscape drastically from when Anna started out. “I think it is more difficult today because everything just costs that much more, especially real estate, especially in New York. I was lucky because at the time when I started, real estate was at a low. I don’t know how easy it would be without a lot of backing today. But again, as I’ve always said to students and young people who want to be designers, you can always find your own way. It is never exactly like the way somebody else did it, and you really are a product of your time and you can’t change that.” It’s still possible to make it as a fledgling designer today, she points out. “It just happens in a different way from
when I started, and you just have to be flexible to that.” As our meeting comes to a close, we arrive at the question of what it is like to be an Asian designer today. Interestingly, this is a dialogue Anna had not engaged in until the SEA of Luxury Conference in Singapore last November. “That conference was the first time I participated in the topic and I think that it is something that is really important right now. It’s just the way I did it and the times allowed for it. That’s what is happening right now with Asian designers. I don’t think we were in the economic or cultural situation before for this to happen for Asia; now it’s the time, it will shift again.” Anna refers to a recent CNN programme about African designers. “They are doing amazing things. That’s evolution, and I’m lucky to be a part of that and it’s an exciting thing. It’s something that happened for me.” Today, Asia is what is “happening” – and the question is: when is a big designer going to emerge from Asia? To Anna it could be “any minute now.” After all, she says, Asian students dominate the design schools, and much of the relevant technological developments and manufacturing happens in Asia. “It is such an exciting moment for young Asian designers,” she says, “It’s all about to happen for them.” If what will happen is anything like what happened for Anna Sui then they should brace themselves. Exciting times are ahead.
109
Foreign movies were a hit with local audiences long before Thailand began producing its own
Reel History
As the Thai Film Archive celebrates its 30th anniversary, themagazine goes behind-the-scenes to see what is being done to safeguard and share the Kingdom’s piecemeal movie heritage. by max crosbie-jones / photos by benya hegenbarth t didn’t go quietly. There was a struggle. But now it’s official: celluloid film is dead. While you were busy watching the latest blockbuster in one of Thailand’s fridge-cool cinemas, a revolution was taking place behind you in the projection room. Back in May it was announced that all of the Kingdom’s cinemas – every last one, even venerable independents such as the Scala – have now made the switch to digital projection. Not out of choice, but necessity, as all the film-processing labs that used to produce the 35mm prints of theatrical releases have shut up shop. But while one battle has been lost, another still rages on a less public front – the battle to save old film so that it can be preserved, restored and disseminated for the benefit of future generations. This battle is, of course, nothing new. It is almost as old as film itself. Ever since the introduction of projection cinema by the Lumière Brothers back in 1895, the whole world has been playing a catch-up game with the deterioration of the stock on which images – and later sound, too – were recorded. But the truth is that some parts of it have played that game more readily than others. Though there were skeptics, Europe and North America began establishing archives
197
The archive’s museum is a replica of the old Sikrung Film Studios
198
as early as the 1930s, only three decades after film was invented and popularised. Here in Asia they came later. Not because of a snobbish rejection of this new medium (Thai audiences, for one, lapped it up) so much as indifference and sheer distraction. For some countries, there were more pressing matters – world wars, civil wars, political turmoil – to worry about. Eventually, though, film archives did began popping up. Iran, China and India launched theirs in 1949, 1958 and 1964 respectively. Japan, undoubtedly one of the best among Asian nations at safeguarding its cultural heritage, only started preserving film systematically in the 1970s; and Hong Kong, one of the most prolific moviemaking hubs in the world, didn’t start until 1993. Faring even worse is the Philippines, which only established a fully-fledged film archive in 2011. As for Thailand, its film archive opened in 1984 and then only due to
the perseverance of one man: an unassuming film reviewer turned steely film archivist, Dome Sukwong. Of course, we shouldn’t get too hung up on such comparisons. While the year an archive was founded is interesting for demarking the point when a country sat up and took notice of the film heritage issue, a more accurate litmus test of the state of its film history is the number of reels it has stashed away for safekeeping, and their condition. By this measure, Thailand is in a bad way, even by lacklustre Asian standards, with many of its surviving film prints from the latter half of the twentieth century in distressingly poor condition, and many early ones missing – gone, probably forever. “Only one percent of preWorld War II films survive,” Dome tells me while we sit in the foyer of the archive’s cinema. “Around 100 were made, and only one survives, Pridi Phanomyong’s 1941 epic Prachao
Chang Phuak (The King of the White Elephant).” Let’s put that figure in perspective. Muak Pliw (Hat in the Breeze), a comic short from 1905 in which a man chases his hat down a windy street – lost. Siam’s first commercial, narrative motion picture, 1912’s A Siamese Elopement – lost. Numerous documentaries and newsreels on the activities of the royal family and government produced by the Royal Siamese Railway Film Unit – lost. Thailand’s first “talkie” (sound film), 1927’s Long Tang (Going Astray) – lost. All the films produced by Sikrung Film Company, the film production house which produced the majority of post-absolutist era films out of a studio complex in Dome Sukwong, the Thai Film Archive’s founder and director
Thailand’s film heritage is in a bad way, even by lacklustre Asian standards, with many of the surviving prints of films from the latter half of the twentieth century in distressingly poor condition, and many early ones missing.
T H E M A G A Z I N E
E R E
&
N O W
Visitors get a free tour of the museum: an Aladdin’s cave of old signage, posters, costumes and props
199
Bangkapi – lost. All that are left of these and countless other prewar silent movies and ‘talkies’ are short fragments, and the adverts and synopses found in mildewed old newspapers and film books. Why does so little survive from the early years? “Probably because the film archive started too late,” explains the Thai Film Archive’s deputy director Chalida Uabumrungrit, who stands alone as the only Thai to have been trained in film preservation in the West. “1981, when Dome started rescuing movies around the country, was still too late for many things.” She’s referring, of course, to film’s tendency to decay when not stored properly, especially in hot, dusty, humid climates such as Thailand’s. A lack of appropriate storage facilities means that much of the unstable, highly flammable cellulose nitrate film stock that these early films were shot on had likely already crumbled or gone up in flames by the time
the rescue mission started. In a sinister twist, other films may have been destroyed in a cavalier manner, often by their creator. Back in the early twentieth century, it was fairly commonplace for film to be recycled when the crowds had stopped coming (this is perhaps best captured by the 1927 Australian silent movie Terms of his Natural Life, in which a ship stuffed full of old film stock by the producers is set ablaze). And while Dome doesn’t think the practice of recycling nitrate film to extract silver or even create nail polish was prevalent here, one of his interviews of the nascent Thai film industry’s old hands did garner the admission that some reels were recycled “to produce gunpowder.” Talk about going out with a bang. o frame the Thai Film Archive’s predicament only in these pessimistic terms would be doing it a disservice. Thirty years after it was founded,
today it is focussed on the battle it faces as it tries to adapt to the 21st century, not dwelling on the many losses. On the day I headed out to the archive in Salaya, I found a facility humming with life and new possibilities. Because the aforementioned film-processing labs have closed down, cans containing reels from the post war-era up to the present day are stacking up thick and fast. More importantly, a new state-of-the-art facility that will finally give them the space and equipment they need to care for them properly is being built on the archive’s backlot. Due for completion in October, phase one includes a new film development and treatment lab, a film-restoration lab, a digital 4K scanner (so they can convert and restore film digitally), and, perhaps most importantly of all, capacious temperature and humidity-controlled storage vaults with room for up to around 10,000 cans. Phase two – a “mediateque” and 400-
seat cinema – will be unveiled in three years. All this is a far cry from the “old days,” which weren’t so long ago at all. Until June 2009, when it was reclassified as a public organisation (until then it had been ensconsed under the wing of the Department of Fine Arts), Dome had scraped by with only three staff and a meagre annual budget of only 3 million baht. It did have the ability to inspect, clean and catalogue film, but it was, to quote an article from the mid-2000s, “often treated as little more than a dumping ground for old film.” Using a telecine scanner it could also transfer those reels that were in good condition (some were even released on DVDs funded by the Pridi Banomyong Institute or Thai Film Foundation). But throughout its history the restoration of frail, decomposing film was always out of reach, as the archive didn’t have the funds to purchase the necessary equipment. This rendered
T H E M A G A Z I N E
We have more than 8,000 reels in our non-fiction collection, which includes educational films, newsreels, home movies, cartoons, advertisements, and sporting events. There are lots of interesting films that people don’t know about yet.”
200
Imported film stock and editing equipment
it somewhat ineffective as a “public” body, as it meant that it didn’t have newly restored films to showcase. It also meant that lovers of old Thai cinema, especially films from the 50s, 60s and 70s, had no choice but to watch their favourite old movies through a curtain of pops, scratches and other distracting imperfections, as many distributors were content to put out DVD and VCD releases made from ravaged prints. Now, though, things are looking up. Bolstered by an annual budget of somewhere between 50 and 60 million baht, the archive will soon install the equipment it needs to do Thailand’s film heritage justice. Rather than just spending all their time cleaning
E R E
&
N O W
and cataloguing, staff are being sent abroad for training (“to see that they’re not alone in the world,” as Dome puts it). Thanks to the early efforts of Dome, and the archive’s Movie Rescue Unit (“Don’t Throw Film Away!” reads a slogan on the collection van) and openarmed acquisitions policy – unlike some archives, they accept home movies as well as films – there is also no shortage of material to get working on. “We have approximately 1,500 feature films, around 1,000 of which are negatives,” Chalida explains. “We also have more than 8,000 reels in our non-fiction collection, which includes educational films, newsreels, home movies, cartoons, advertisements, and sporting events. There are lots
of interesting films that people don’t know about yet.” But where to start? Many of the reels they choose to restore first are likely to be on the archive’s Movie Registry List, which is a list of highpriority films that they began compiling three years ago. Each year another 25 cine-treasures are added – from fragments such as the 25-metre strip of negative (about one minute) that survives of the first feature to be produced by and star Thais, 1927’s Chok Song Chan, to early newsreels and crowdpleasing classics such as Luk Isan and Plae Kao. According to Chalida, Dome got the idea from the United States, but tweaked it. Unlike in the US, where films are submitted to the country’s National Film
Preservation Board by private archives or collectors in the hope of winning grants, the Thai Film Archive uses the registry as an internal tool that brings the public into the fold. “They can submit films too, but there are a lot of unknown films that are important so we also submit our own shortlist. A committee then finalises the list,” she says. “We’re trying to achieve a balance between films that people know and love, and those that are important or need urgent restoration.” s well as excitement about the new storage facilities and digital preservation workflow, I also found hope. Though it gets increasingly unlikely as time wears on, there
is always the chance that the best discoveries are still to come. “We always say that a film is never lost; it just hasn’t been found yet,” says Chalida at one point. To outsiders this might sound naive, as if she’s burying her head in the sand, but she’s not being hopelessly quixotic. Old films are being found all the time, often thousands of miles from their country of origin. To name one recent example, a print of a “lost” silent Chinese film from 1927, The Cave of the Silken Web, was found at the National Library of Norway in late 2013. Directed by Dan Duyu, a magazine illustrator and painter of calendar girl posters, it was an exciting find. As the blog Soft Film puts it:“Featuring elaborate costumes and sets, optical effects, underwater Stills are all that remain of many “lost” films
Early cameras and some of the early adopters who used them
photography, and scantily clad women, The Cave of the Silken Web helped set the stage for a rich tradition of fantasy filmmaking that would eventually come to abundant fruition in Hong Kong and Taiwan.” A rare surviving print of the first known Japanese animation, Namakura-gatana, or The Blunt Samurai Sword, was also stumbled upon at an antique market in Osaka. And an even more miraculous find – 826 rolls of nitrate film dating back to the Edwardian era – literally landed on the doorstep of the UK’s British Film Institute back in July 2000. Recorded on them were 28 hours of moving images of Britain’s working class at the turn of the century, all of it shot by roving filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, or Mitchell & Kenyon as they were better known. For 70 long years, this evocative lost world of paperboys hawking their wares and soot-covered men gruffly staring at the camera as they
201
walked out of factory gates had been sitting in the basement of a shop in Blackburn. Could such lucky finds also reshape our understanding of Thai film history? The short answer is: they already have. One of two films that the recently defunct Technicolour Thailand film lab restored free of charge for the archives back in the mid2000s was the aforementioned Prachao Chang Phuak (The King of the White Elephant). But with the original negative destroyed during World War II, this wouldn’t have happened at all had a damaged 16mm print not been found at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Other serendipitous finds include the acquisition of the 35mm negatives of the eminently watchable films made by Rattana D. Pestonji, the late ThaiPersian director that Dome, like many, considers the father of modern Thai cinema. These were tracked down to a Rank Film Laboratory in the UK by
T H E M A G A Z I N E
The archive’s old storage facility is full to bursting
202
the archive in the mid-1990s, and swiftly repatriated (available on DVD, they are currently the most bankable/enjoyable jewels of the archive). And just recently the missing piece in his oeuvre has shown up, says Chalida. “We have been hoping we would find a copy of his first film, Santi Veena from 1954. After 20 years of it being lost, we have found a copy in Russia. We’re trying to get it and are now in the process of planning its restoration.” he Thai Film Archive might be shaping up as one of the more robust archives in Asia, but its battles are far from over. For one, the closure of the local film-processing labs means that from now on it will be forced to store any film it restores digitally on hard disk, something its reluctant to do. In other words, that popping new restoration of that old 16mm schlock-fest starring Mitr Chaibancha or Sombat Metanee
will, unless they enlist the services of a foreign film lab or buy the equipment themselves, be stored as a digital soup of ones and zeros, not a tangible film print. The ethical and aesthetic implications of this are dividing film archivists and purists around the world – “Films born on film should be kept and shown on film,” is Dome’s take on the matter. Like many, he and Chalida wonder how stable and durable digital media really is, and worry they are going to have to “keep migrating” to new formats to keep up with technology. Safely preserving film in a world that has turned its back on film is one fight; actually getting it seen is another. To put it another way, if it is to live up to its motto, “Cinema Enlightens,” the archive needs to reach out to the people who are open to being enlightened. Currently this is being done with limited success. Films are screened in the archive’s cinema on most days, but due to its location in
E R E
&
N O W
Nakhon Pathom’s Salaya district – about 50km from Bangkok – the audiences are modest. Meanwhile, the archive does also have a Youtube channel that is gaining in popularity, but this is made up mostly of old news footage, not the films that are more likely to excite audiences. Is there a solution? Chalida would eventually like to see the archive’s collection being offered online in a slicker and more comprehensive manner – something similar to the British Film Institute’s new video-ondemand service. Launched in October 2013, this nationwide service offers a mix of free and pay-per-view content, including hundreds of films and the full 28 hours of Mitchell and Kenyon footage. Once it begins digitising film, something similar is certainly within the Thai Film Archive’s grasp, although there are issues that would need to be addressed. “We need people to develop that kind of platform,” she says. Then there are the rights issues. “We are in a difficult situation when it comes to copyright. It might be easy for individuals to put things online these days, but for an institution it’s not that easy. We have to be careful. On one hand we really want to put it out there, but on the other, we have to learn the limit about what we can put up.” Thai notions of courtesy and fair play would also muddy the waters. “Some films we own the copyright to but others think they own the rights, too,” she says. “It’s the Thai way – sometimes you need to ask nicely for permission when actually you don’t need to ask nicely for permission.” These issues would have to be bashed out over tables, at meetings with distributors, directors, solicitors and family estates, but the benefits of success would be obvious.
One way in which the Thai Film Archive will definitely be able to increase its reach is by going on the road. On the shopping list along with the 4K scanner is a “Cinemobile,” a truck that can expand outwards to create a 100-seat cinema. The plan is to tour the country, screening its collection to school children and the public. And, wherever possible, on film. “With the mobile cinema we can take film to people who cannot come here, some of whom have never experienced cinema. Now we are drawing up plans for where to go, because maybe it can substitute the disappearing of old cinemas,” says Chalida. For anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing an old Thai movie projected as originally intended – in a darkened cinema, with a whirring projector atomising a crisp moving image onto the screen – a touring “Cinemobile” is an exciting prospect. After a stroke of serendipity late last year, I happen to count myself among the lucky ones. In November 2013 I stumbled across a free screening of an old Thai classic from 1961, The Boat House, at Singapore’s National Museum. It had been restored, along with The King of the White Elephant, by Technicolour at the Thai Film Archive’s request and was now being shown as part of Film Restoration School Asia, as an example of what can be achieved. It was a gloriously colourful and camp thing to behold – 125 minutes of stirring songs, romantic overtures, and hammy gun fights presented in vivid, retina-bursting Technicolour. No pops, stains or annoying hisses. What exactly am I getting at? Restorations like this prove that, while celluloid’s big battle might be lost, the small victories are still worth fighting for.
230
Red-Hot Caribbean Sensual Cuba still moves to the rhythms of history. by keith mundy
231
A view of the El Capitolio dome
232
cross the yellow ochre walls of the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, bullet holes pockmark the surfaces. All is serene, because it’s now a museum of the Cuban Revolution. But on a baking-hot July 26, 1953, while the old port city revelled in its annual carnival, this was the bloody scene of the first battle in that revolt. After severe setbacks, the rebellion – called the 26th of July Movement– culminated in the taking of Havana at the other end of the Caribbean’s largest island in January 1959. The Cuban authorities take great care of all the crucial sites in the progress of the revolution, consecrating them as beautifully kept museums, not least because some of the people who lead that struggle are still in power, most notably the two Castro brothers who headed the Moncada attack.
Raul Castro is president of Cuba, and his long-serving predecessor, the extraordinary Fidel Castro, although retired, is still an influence behind the scenes. An eminence rogue, you might say, who keeps the revolutionary flame burning. The Moncada Barracks and July 26 have become the most iconic place and the most iconic date in the revolutionary legend that all Cuban schoolchildren learn about, and all Cubans get reminded of each year as the heat reaches fever pitch in the height of the tropical summer. Hotter than anywhere else on the island, set beside the Caribbean on Cuba’s most southerly stretch of coast, Santiago de Cuba ramps up the heat even more with not one but two major festivals involving lots of music and dancing. Held in early July as the heat rises, A typical Havanan street
The syncretic religion of Santería is a mix of Yorùbá tribal beliefs and Roman Catholicism
one is actually called the Fire Festival (Fiesta del Fuego), a pan-Caribbean celebration of music and dance, in the streets and in theatres, with some academic, artistic and literary events on the side. But the really hot stuff comes with carnival at the end of the month, when the streets are filled with Santiaguero music groups, drummers and dancers, and impromptu conga parades rock the neighbourhoods, while outlandishly dressed characters preen and prance in the carnival procession. Climaxing on July 26, the most beautiful event is the dancing in front of the town hall in Cespedes Park, where Afro-Cuban dance groups perform anti-slavery dramas in multi-coloured costumes evoking the colonial era. It was from the balcony of the historic blue-and-white town hall that Fidel Castro, relishing the extraordinary moment, gave his victory speech on New Year’s Day, 1959. The Moncada attack was a complete failure, with most of the assailants killed and the rest
captured. But Fidel Castro lived to fight again, setting up a guerrilla base in the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains to the west of Santiago, with a band that included the soonto-be legendary Che Guevara. Breaking out in mid-1958, Comandante Che led a daring thrust into central Cuba to capture the strategic city of Santa Clara. City of Che Guevara’s men fought their way to the main east-west railway line and derailed a trainload of troops and arms, smashing the dictator Batista’s plan to halt the rebel advance on Havana, after which he fled the country. At the spot, now a calm suburban level crossing, stands a dramatic museum of the event. Beside the track, a zig-zag of freight wagons artfully resembles a derailment. Climbing inside them, you see the multimedia story of the Battle of Santa Clara. The decisive battle made Santa Clara a sacred revolutionary city with a vast Revolution Square, overlooked by a huge Che statue,
T H E M A G A Z I N E
R A V E L
233
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The cathedral of Havana San Cristobal
All of Old Havana is a World Heritage Site, with historic buildings constantly being restored after decades of neglect, some with major rebuilding, others with mere facelifts.
FACT FILE Flights Air France – KLM has daily flights to Havana via Paris or Amsterdam, details at www.airfrance.co.th and www.klm.com/thailand . Three airlines operate internal flights to Santiago de Cuba, including Cubana, details at www.cubana.cu . Hotels Hotel Casa Granda (Heredia 201, Santiago de Cuba; www. hotelcasagranda.com). Ideally situated on the main square, this classic grand hotel was where Graham Greene wrote part of Our Man In Havana. Hotel Habana Libre (Calle L, Vedado, Havana; www.hotelhabanalibre. com ). Originally the Habana Hilton, occupied by Castro’s government in its first months, this is a gem of 1950s interior design. 234
Festivals Fiesta del Fuego, Santiago de Cuba, 3-9 July, 2014. A celebration of Caribbean arts. Santiago Carnival, 21-29 July, 2014. An explosion of drum rhythms, music and dance with colourful parades and dramatic performances. Havana Carnival, weekends in late July and early August: street parties, parades, music and dancing. Cubadanza, Havana, early August: a showcase of the best of Cuban dance.
El Capitolio, Gran Teatro and the Inglaterra Hotel
T H E M A G A Z I N E
R A V E L
Cuba is the country that has always produced the best smokes. Many of Havana’s great cigar factories date from the 19th century and, amazingly, so do their methods. And workers can puff however many they like at work.
Staircase at the entrance to La Guarida restaurant
seven metres of black bronze standing on a high stone-built platform. Under the platform, a museum commemorates the core revolutionary band of the Sierra Maestra. A special section is dedicated to Che’s life, including a real gem of revolutionary couture: the tight-fitting, zipup, collarless jacket he wears in Alberto Korda’s iconic 1960 photograph of the world’s most famous guerrilla. In great contrast, Santa Clara’s central square is a quaint haven with many neoclassical buildings, plus one modern oddity. Looming out of the 1950s, ten storeys of pastel green concrete, is the Hotel Santa Clara Libre, hosting the city’s leading cinema. In 2004 the cinema gave the Cuban premiere of The Motorcycle Diaries, attended by Gael García Bernal who played the young Che in that fine Latin American road movie. The day after the battle, Che’s rebels set out for Havana along the main highway, through a landscape of endless sugar-cane
fields, and that is still the way it is when you take the Carretera Central today. No major town comes into view for hours until the “Pearl of the Caribbean” appears from out of the cane field ocean. Have a Havana Havana has had many lives. A city imbued with music, over its 500-year history it has danced in turn to the tune of gold, tobacco, sugar, gambling and revolution. Out of this has come a city of wide and fascinating contrasts, a city whose buildings tell its story. Walk from the 16th-century forts past the 19th-century cigar factories and 20th-century grand hotels to Revolution Square and you have had a living history lesson. Founded in 1519, Havana became the most important transit point for the riches of the Spanish empire, its great natural harbour ringed by fortresses and thronged with gold-carrying galleons. In 1589, it was made the island’s capital with a coat of
arms showing three castles above a gold key – “The Key of the Old World to the New World.” Long before North America had even its smallest colony, Havana was a great port. Those fortresses still line the harbour entrance, sentinels to today’s oil tankers, sugar freighters and cruise liners. A little way back lies the Plaza de Armas, power centre of old Cuba, and the Plaza de la Catedral, the heart of Old Havana, as the historic centre is called. Enriched by tobacco and sugar trading, 17th and 18th century Habaneros built fine churches and palaces in stone which remain to this day, architectural treasures of the New World. All of Old Havana is a World Heritage Site, with historic buildings constantly being restored after decades of neglect, some with major rebuilding, others with mere facelifts. Mansions, convents and town houses from the 16th to 19th centuries line the narrow streets gleaming as if
built only yesterday, but still much of the old town is crumbling, home to 60,000 citizens on pitifully low salaries. Havana’s most iconic product is the cigar, for what else are the world’s finest cigars called but “Havanas”? The place where Europeans first encountered tobacco, Cuba is the country that has always produced the best smokes. Many of Havana’s great cigar factories date from the 19th century and, amazingly, so do their methods. Visit one today and you see rows and rows of men and women at wooden workbenches dextrously hand-cutting and rolling the world’s finest cigars. And smoking them too, for they can puff however many they like as they work. In the city centre, the brownand-white stucco façade of 235 the Partagas cigar factory faces the neoclassical grandeur of the Capitol, a near replica of Washington’s, and a telling symbol of 20th-century Cuba. After the Spanish-American War of 1898 brought independence from Spain, the USA took a whip hand to Cuban affairs, and here in the neo-Renaissance grandeur of the Capitol, a corrupt legislature did Washington’s bidding, while the American Mafia built a casinoand-brothel culture. Vice and graft money filled the pockets of the powerful and Havana was the largest, loveliest and most sumptuous city in the Caribbean. Sin City Dubbed “the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean,” Havana became America’s tropical playground for sin-soaked vacations. Hollywood’s Carmen Miranda, pineapple atop her head, had a Week-End In Havana in 1941. Movie stars partied by the pool – Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich and many more – while the iconic
T H E M A G A Z I N E
Sloppy Joe’s bar was packed with American merrymakers. (Last year, Sloppy Joe’s had an amazing resurrection after half a century of closure, its mahogany bar – “the longest in Latin America” – buffed to a high sheen and looking just as it used to, according to an octogenarian neighbour.) Into the ‘50s, even as Castro’s revolution stirred and the dictator Batista’s repression intensified, the dice kept rolling and the vice kept booming, with the Mafia building new casino hotels in incongruous highrise styles that towered over the traditional elegance of Havana. The Riviera, the Capri, the Deauville all rang to the sound of spinning roulette wheels and orchestras pumping out the mambo and the cha-cha-cha,
R A V E L
while mulatta hookers exercised their charms on the enchanted gringos. The biggest of the new hotels dominated Vedado, the 20th century suburb at the eastern end of the Malecon seafront boulevard, and still do. In fact, only Havana’s governmental district has seen major new buildings since the 1960s. The jewel sits four-square upon a rise overlooking the sea, the massive Hotel Nacional, a monument to the 1920s and a clone of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, now upgraded to modern luxury standards. Very much in character, George Raft, the star of gangster movies, had a penthouse atop the Capri and was the greeter at its casino. Just emerged from a total renovation, the Capri still
Calle Obispo, a famous pedestrianised street
236 A backstreet barber shop
glories in its 1950s decor, the cabaret in the Salon Rojo – Red Room – again shimmers, but the gaming is long gone. Raft would feel bereft, but comforted by all the finned Chevrolet and Buick classics rumbling past, the 1950s American gas guzzlers that Cubans keep on the road by any means possible. In its January 20, 1958, issue, Time magazine recorded the scene in its heyday. “Sparing neither velvet draperies, nor soft polish on exotic wood, nor white silk for the crapshooters’ dinner jackets, the new casinos of Havana rate as the hemisphere’s most alluring and elegant. Says a dice man in the deep-carpeted gaming room of the Hotel Nacional: ‘We are getting bigger bets than Las Vegas. All the real big Eastern crapshooters are coming down here to take a crack at us’. And for all the real big Eastern hoods, running Havana gambling looks to be this winter’s richest bonanza.”
Dance, dance, dance While the rest of the country remained backward and poor, the capital swilled Bacardi and swayed to the mambo, nowhere more sensuously and more dramatically than at the spectacular Tropicana cabaret. Amazingly, you still can, as long as you skip the Bacardi and order Caney rum instead, the brand now produced in the confiscated Bacardi distillery, or Havana Club, another brand belonging to the state. “The greatest show under the stars,” the Tropicana is an immense open-air cabaret – two orchestras and a tight combo, a huge stage, well over a hundred dancers, and royal palms towering over it all strung with coloured lights. It’s been a state enterprise for half a century – surely the world’s sexiest governmental operation – with stunning Afro-Cuban showgirls pulsating to red-hot rhythms, sensationally costumed and halfnaked at the same time, flashing
237
Buildings at the end of Paseo del Prado
While the rest of the country remained backward and poor, the capital swilled Bacardi and swayed to the mambo.
R A V E L
Cubans in general were thankful for the revolution that eventually brought higher standards of welfare and education, but not for the chronic economic failure, which has caused crumbling homes and near-universal poverty.
A typical street scene
238
sensual smiles and flicking ostrich feathers in your face. The casinos – reviled symbols of Cuba’s corruption – were all shut down soon after the Revolution, cueing their kingpin, the mobster Meyer Lansky, to lament, “I crapped out.” But Fidel Castro was pragmatic over the Tropicana, turning it into a money-spinner for the nation instead of the mob, and thankful we visitors can be, because there is no better tropical kitsch in this world, along with the superb musicianship that seems to come out of Cubans’ bones, no matter what they’re playing. Cubans in general were thankful for the revolution that eventually brought them high standards of welfare and education, but not for the chronic economic failure, which has preserved Cuba’s traditional form, but caused crumbling homes and near-universal poverty. Unique in the romance of its colonial cities untouched by traffic jams and brash commercialism, the island is a time-warp with a magnetic
attraction for visitors, but the locals are somewhat less charmed by the nostalgia of it all. On the downbeat Speaking Spanish, you can sense their frustrations through the fog of evasion that they put up, fearing denunciation for knocking the regime. In Cuba, the walls have ears. The regime’s fans, who have no problem voicing their views, will habitually say that Cuba’s deficiencies are all the fault of the Yankees. Anti-Americanism, or rather anti-Washingtonism, is a constant riff of official Cuba, dramatised on the Havana seafront with a huge billboard that faces across the sea to Florida. On it, a cartoon revolutionary shouts to Uncle Sam: “Messrs. Imperialists, we have absolutely no fear of you!” For decades until 2005, the message faced the nearby US Interests Section, the de facto American embassy, the words glowing in neon by night.
A fortune teller smokes a Cuban cigar
In his 1953 trial for the Moncada attack, Fidel Castro gave a four-hour defence speech which famously ended with the words, “History will absolve me”. After the revolutionary regime’s break with its colossal neighbour and the US blockade which still continues, wags have loved to reply, “But not geography.” Cuba has been marked for half a century by a stand-off with the world’s greatest power, with no end in sight. But change is surely coming, for Cubans are weary of being poverty-stricken socialists. In their half-millennium of history, they have danced to many tunes, and they want some new steps now. What moves will Cuba make next? And who will be laying down the beat?
photo: ©corbis / profile
T H E M A G A Z I N E
Revolutionary Destinations When odious regimes fall to idealistic rebels, the world enjoys the view. Many capitals around the world have seen dramatic takeovers followed by radical transformations. Here are three such revolutionary destinations.
Managua, Nicaragua Elsewhere in Latin America, despite Cuba’s encouragement, revolution only occurred in one country, Nicaragua. Rather more of a ragtag band than Castro’s guerrillas, the Sandinista rebel forces chipped away at the brutal Somoza regime until it crumbled and fell, capturing the capital, Managua, in 1979, in a jubilant procession recalling the taking of Havana. Their prize was a ghostly city whose centre had been levelled by a catastrophic earthquake in 1972. Sprawling between an extinct volcano and a greasy lake, the ruined downtown had become overgrown and deserted. Still today the area is largely greenery, whilst downtown activity has shifted elsewhere. With most of its monuments dating to recent decades and marking the Sandinista struggle in some way, Managua is one of the world’s more oddball capitals. Lately it has regained some commercial dynamism, with casinos a surprising feature. The top tourist draws are the eerie shell of the quake-battered cathedral and ziplining across the flooded volcano crater.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Or Panic Button City, you might have said on April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese tanks clattered into Saigon, its then name, before the last US officials had time to make a safe exit. Captured on TV, the desperate scenes on the US embassy roof as helicopters winched up fleeing staff are burned into the memory of all those watching. Initially emptied of all its economic dynamism and chillingly renamed Ho Chi Minh City, in the 21st century Vietnam’s commercial capital has bounced back with a rediscovered enthusiasm, driving the nation’s recovery. Swarms of motorcycles pack the streets with a dizzying energy, and a once low-rise city reaches for the sky with new luxury hotels and office blocks. Dong Khoi Street, the focus of French colonial social life and American War-time nightlife, is now a swish avenue lined with chic restaurants and designer stores. And the French-built Opera House boasts new stucco and paint.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia For a century the drowsy capital of an archaic regime, in 1974 Addis Ababa had a rude awakening. Emperor Haile Selassie and his fawning court, the last exemplars of an ancient and exotic ruling class, were ousted by a military coup led by the Derg council, and a brutal Marxist revolution followed. When that was overthrown in 1991, Addis Ababa gained a more normal kind of African regime, but this city remains a one-off, a sprawl of villages and commercial centres punctuated with striking monuments that speak of its tumultuous history. Haile Selassie’s medieval-style rule is commemorated in his old palace, now Addis Ababa University, and in the city’s neobaroque cathedral; the imperial Lion of Judah gets both traditional and modernist statues; Africa Hall evokes the heady days of optimistic post-colonial Africa; the National Theatre enshrines the new cultural pride of the same period; the towering Derg monument expresses Marxist-Leninist triumphalism; and Italy’s fascist occupation gets vengeful recognition too.