Well-known Cuban filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet died on the morning of this Tuesday, January 12, at the age of 87.
Director, screenwriter, writer and great communicator, Pineda Barnet transcended with films such as The beauty of the Alhambra (1989) and I am Cuba (1963), of which he co-wrote with the Russian poet Yevgueni Yevtushenko.
National Film Award in 2006 for the set of his work, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Institute of Art and the Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC), Pineda Barnet had an extensive career as a screenwriter, actor and director of documentaries and feature films from fiction .
In 2016, the director received the Coral of Honor at the 38th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, in recognition of all his filmography, which includes more than twenty titles, including feature films and short fiction, as well as documentaries, including highlights Giselle, the only ballet film made in Latin America and considered one of the most successful recordings in the ballet world.
Born in Havana on October 28, 1933, Pineda Barnet showed talent for various artistic disciplines from an early age. At the age of 20 he received the important Alfonso Hernández Catá National Literature Prize (1953) with the book by The Seven Stories for a Suicide.
A restless creator and possessor of a voracious curiosity, he devoted himself to exploring various artistic manifestations from a very early age, venturing into theater performances, dance, ballet, poetry and storytelling, in addition to a meritorious pedagogical work.
Founder of the Nuestra Tiempo Cultural Society, founded in 1950 by a group of young teachers and students, with the goal of establishing an institution that would help disseminate the cultivated music, Pineda Barnet came into contact with avant-garde intellectuals and artists of those years.
By this time he joined the group of Teatro Estudio and took his first steps in the dramaturgy and staging direction that were worth so much to his career as a filmmaker. As an actor, he starred in the play Lilac the butterfly, by Rolando Ferrer, with the Las Mascaras company. His work The Trial of Quimbumbia received mention in the Casa de las Américas 1960 prize
His time in the media also dates back to the 1950s, years when Pineda Barnet worked on radio and television, wrote scripts and directed several programs. His work as a publicist at the time earned awards and recognitions that enhanced his experience and consolidated techniques that, along with the theater, contributed to the fluidity of his cinematographic images.
In late 1962 he joined ICAIC, where he developed his passion for cinema in heterogeneous works of fiction and documentaries of various lengths. Directing Giselle, a film that premiered in 1964, Pineda Barnet tried, in his own words, “to capture the creation of Alicia Alonso and her group in Giselle for the future,” and forced the cinematographic technique to make it. imbricate in language. of dance.
His collaboration as co-screenwriter in Mijail Kalatazov’s film Soy Cuba dates back to the same year, a jewel of cinematography for its photography and its impressive sequences, which flood the film with a poetic atmosphere that goes beyond historical chronicle. that it tries to tell and makes it a rarity of genius that is unique in the movie.
Considered one of the island’s experimental documentary makers along with Santiago Álvarez and Nicolás Guillen Landrián, Pineda Barnet is recognized as one of the pioneers of video art in Cuba. In this sense, his visual experiment Cosmorama stands out, a kind of visual poem created in collaboration with the visual artist Sandú Darié, who innovates in the editing technique and in the fusion of the images of the kinetic artist with an original soundtrack.
The originality in the editing and soundtracks was evident in other experimental films of his, such as Juventud R-2 (1968), MS (Best Service) and El Ñame, both from 1970. In addition to the formal innovations, these works stood out. a keen sense of humor and satire, aimed at criticizing aspects of Cuban reality.
Without giving up experimentation in cinematographic language, Pineda Barnet made films about the nation’s revolutionary history, such as Mella and Aquella long night. But without a doubt, La Bella del Alhambra is the film that earned him unanimous recognition from critics and audiences.
Inspired by the novel Canción de Rachel, by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, the film chronicles the hectic life of Rachel, a showgirl longing to become a star who rose to fame at Havana’s famous Alhambra theater in the 1920s.
The film combines elements of melodrama and musicals and pays homage to the tradition of folk theater and Cuban music. His excellent artistic and acting direction, as well as his representation from Cuba, earned him a resounding box-office success, attracting two million viewers in two weeks. In 1990, Pineda Barnet won the Goya Award from the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences for La Bella del Alhambra.
Universities in Puerto Rico, Spain, the United States and other countries in America considered him a professor of major courses in directing, acting, and dramaturgy. He shares his work as a filmmaker with that of a professor at the San Antonio de los Baños International School of Film and Television. The Havana Film Festival in New York in 2010 paid tribute to the Cuban filmmaker and playwright for his life’s work.
“Ever since I can remember, since I remember thinking of myself, I’ve known all my preferences and all the things I didn’t like. When I was five I knew very well that I was not going to be an athlete, or a politician, or a mathematician, and I was going to be an artist, that was very clear to me, although I still did not know which branch of art I would devote myself ”He stated. in an interview in 2015 Ibermedia digital.
“I don’t marry any idea, I don’t come in cages, I don’t come in boxes, I don’t come in molds. I think alternative cinema is possible and very necessary, I believe that within all trends there are always rich, interesting and constructive possibilities possible, ”said one of the most solid filmmakers of Cuban cinematography.
When he received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres ”(Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters), he said according to the website of the Havana Film Festival: “In my childhood I dreamed of having, just for myself, a planet, an asteroid where I could grow a rose forever. But life didn’t allow me to be that little prince. As an adult I was not able to fight cape and sword fights. Now as an adult, very grown up, almost late, the French government grants me this symbolic condition that I thank and pledge to fulfill, knight of art, aesthetics and ethics to launch the arrow to the horizon. “