Juan Carlos Tabio, Cuban Cinema and the Waiting List

director, Juan Carlos Tabio, is justly celebrated for his comic satires, like Plaff, of daily life and its human and bureaucratic follies, as well as for several memorable collaborations, including Strawberry and Chocolate, with the great Tomas Gutierrez Alea. His films often feature sophisticated play with narrative conventions and expectations and always, despite their comic, even slapstick, style, offer thoughtful consideration of serious themes. I spoke with Tabio after his latest film, Waiting List (Lista de espera) premiered in North America at the Festival in Toronto in September, 2000. interview was helpfully arranged by Augusta Dwyer, of the Festival's Press Office, who also ably translated our conversation. Waiting List is an often hilarious tale of group of passengers waiting for bus that never comes. characters offer cross-section of types facing the frustrations of everyday life -- shortages, bureaucratic confusion and indifference, the constant need to cope and improvise. After interminable delays, the passengers decide to take on the situation themselves. They try to fix broken bus and begin to transform the station itself. Romances bloom, secret desires and ambitions are revealed, the selfish interests of the few give way to the collective spirit of the many. decrepit bus station becomes idyllic, too beautiful for the characters to leave. film subtly takes us into dream, collective dream, of transformation and imagination. When reality, of course, asserts itself with shock, the characters and that reality are not quite the same as they were. film frankly confronts what it is to be and daily try to answer the question, as one character puts it, Is this socia list country or capitalist country that we here? But it also aspires to universal address, in the spirit of Bunuel, whose narrative conundrums are amusingly evoked by several characters, where we are teased and provoked by the fragile but powerful relationships between humanity's real and imaginary constructions. Tabio is an eloquent and confident man. He is pleased that this film has already opened with great success in Spain, is scheduled for release throughout Latin America and has played to appreciative audiences in Cuba, despite limited number of prints in distribution there. We began by discussing the state of cinema, since the Special Period of crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuban cinema was in total crisis, for three years, not single film was made. But he noted that all Latin American filmmakers also faced great difficulties. There has been improvement in this situation; there are three films in post-production and one filming in Havana right now. He predicted that in few years, Cuba may be making 10 or 12 films year, more than before the crisis. Part of the solution has been the development of co-productions which provide needed financing and, crucially, allow distribution around the world. This new film is co-production between ICAIC, the Film Institute, nd Spanish, Mexican and German producers. Although co-productions are often seen as dominating process of cultural globalization, Tabio insisted that 1 am making the films I want, that this is an authentic cultural product. He says that his producers have lot of respect for creation, nothing is ever imposed and the film is the results of dialogue. He does concede that not all producers are the same and there is still a crisis for cinema all over the world brought on by video, television and powerful economic forces. Waiting List is dedicated to Titon, nickname for Alea, the most famed of filmmakers, and Tabio spoke eloquently of his very good friend and collaborator: The legacy of Alea is way of looking at reality as form of collective consciousness; the idea of the artist to give back an image of reality that is the most complex and provocative possible. …

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