My film premiered Saturday. In the audience were the Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations, his wife and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). It was amazing and we even had a standing ovation.

Sandra Levinson, from the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City came and sent me a note afterwards, part of which I wanted to share:

I wish MY daddy were alive to see this movie. It would have helped him understand ME a little better (though he would have said YOU’RE not Cuban, you’re JEWISH, why aren’t you doing this for ISRAEL?). Once he wrote me a letter that ended with: “My daughter, I too sit on the left side of the bench, but I fear that you are sitting so close to the edge you might fall off, and that would hurt your mother and me terribly.” I suppose he wrote that after the Center was blown up by a bomb, with me in it, though he never in his lifetime referred to it directly (I never told my parents but I suppose someone might have). Max had the support of three terrific people through all those 11 bombings. Amazing. Well, you Vivien have a great family and now have made a great movie, one that will ensure that this family’s experiences are not forgotten.

Here are some photos from the premiere. It’s me and my dad and one with Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Killer lives happily ever after, in Miami of course

In my documentary film, The Man of Two Havanas, my father, Max Lesnik, says, “Miami is like a hell where everything is inverted, murder is characterized as heroic, acts of terrorism as acts of heroism…”

He is referring to Luis Posada Carriles, who is not in the news today. He was not in the news today, nor was he in the news last Thursday when he was released from jail and whisked to Miami. However, he was in the news in Cuba because he masterminded the downing of a Cuban jetliner killing 73 innocents including the entire Cuban fencing team. This was the first act of airline terrorism in our hemisphere. The very first, I promise. Check it out…

So why was Luis Posada released rather than held under the provisions of the Patriot Act? Isn’t that what is for? If you sneeze in Kabul, you might just find yourself in Guantanamo, if you’re lucky… If not, in an underground cell in the outskirts of Cairo. But if you are Luis Posada, the darling of the right wing Cuban-American Congresspersons from Florida, trained and coddled by the CIA, then perhaps 73 dead way back in 1976 is just not enough to invoke The Patriot Act.

Well then, how about his most recent charge? Luis Posada waltzed into Miami after having been pardoned by the outgoing president of Panama, who coincidentally, summers in Key Biscayne; where the Cuban-American right wing elite meet and greet presidents and skillfully broker deals on behalf of their own.

But wait, what was the charge in Panama? Wasn’t he just trying to kill Fidel Castro, communist anti-American thorn in our side for 47 years and counting? Well, yes, kind of… in fact, he was attempting to blow up a University auditorium where Castro was scheduled to speak to a packed house. Authorities confiscated 33 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives. For those of you not in the know, 33 pounds of C-4 would have blown the auditorium to smithereens and sent hundreds of Panamanian students to their deaths.

But this too, is not enough for the Bush administration to invoke the provisions of The Patriot Act. After all, its not like they were American college students, right?

The Bush Administration wants Luis Posada to just go away. He’s an embarrassment and shows up “The War on Terror” for what it is- a political tool. The Patriot Act is applied selectively. It is liberally applied to our enemies and conveniently overlooked for our friends. This double standard is shown in high relief for all the world to see. But no one is seeing because the mainstream media has fallen silent on the case of Luis Posada Carriles.

With shootings on our own campuses by gun wielding kids on anti-depressants, who cares about a couple of hundred Panamanian students, let alone a couple of dozen Cuban fencers?

Nope, case closed. Nothing to see here folks. This story just has no legs. And because of this, Luis Posada Carriles will soon be walking around Miami where he belongs, a hero, for all the world to see.

On another note, the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival, featuring Al Gore, was a testament to what one individual can do with dedication, vision and well… he is pretty brilliant too. As Martin Scorsese said as he introduced our former president, “Before Al Gore, global warming was an inconvenient theory, now it is an inconvenient truth.” “President Gore” has changed the debate on the environment and now together we can all change the landscape.

The opening of The Tribeca Film Festival was a joyful celebration. A coming together of art and music and a message, and boy do those S.O.S. people know how to deliver a message. SOS, for those of you not in the know, was one of the sponsors of the evening and they announced worldwide concerts across the world on 7/7/07 ala Live Aid called “Live Earth”.

The evening began with S.O.S. in Morse code, a musical arrangement that was chilling and effective and really beautiful at the same time. Don’t you love it when those Madison Avenue people make you feel things you swear you are too sophisticated to feel?
Well, Mr. President… we know you’ve had enough of presidential politics but we are going to draft you and you will be reelected and the people will finally have their say.
Incidentally, I do understand saving the planet is a full time job…but if you have the time to catch a movie at the festival, my movie, The Man of Two Havanas, features some of the bastards (Oops! sorry Tipper) who stole our election. Love to see you there.

For Cinephiles Only:

My documentary, The Man of Two Havanas, is my attempt to understand why my dad always put Cuba and his public life above his family. Well, namely ME.

Well, that’s not really all that it is about…

It is also about his friendship with Castro (they made a revolution together), his subsequent breakup and reunion.

Well that’s not really all it’s about either…

It’s also about the fact that I grew up as the daughter of the number one target of the anti-Castro terrorists. So why a movie? Why not an essay, a magazine article or even a book? Well, simply, because I can.

But wait just a minute. My film idols were never the Maysles Brothers, but rather Antonioni and Bunuel. Their films could not be further from the documentary form. Antonioni, with his cinematic or aesthetic climax, rarely coinciding with the dramatic one; and Bunuel…well, the Bunuel I love is poetry in motion…not at all suited for documentary treatment.

So what is a filmmaker trained at UCLA by Polish genius Jerzy Antczak obsessed with the art of the moving master doing with a camera glued to a tripod in a living room in Miami interviewing her dad?
Well, I’m doing the best I can.

My idea was this: let my father tell his story and see what happens. Not much of a plan. No storyboards, no shot list, no script. Jesus, no script!! What the hell am I doing? When is the director showing up? So this is documentary filmmaking?

After hours and hours of torturing my dad in our living room in Miami and following him around the two Havanas, I had 160 hours of footage and a Final Cut Pro that kept crashing and deleting. But I had a secret weapon: a kickass editor, Tirsa Hackshaw.

As my eyes glazed over watching the endless parade of pictures I had an aha! moment. We need a story to tell this story. We need structure. Oh right, we need a script. Hmm…interesting. But even with all of that there was still something missing.

The missing element was me. I was missing. The time had come to make this massive blob my own, to use all of my skills as well as Antonioni’s and Bunuel’s and the Maysles’ Brothers and Warhol’s and any other artist I had devoured, dissected and internalized. Hmmm… The director, working in a great partnership with the editor and a script, and viola, it’s a movie!

Well not exactly. Many cuts later, 36 cuts, caffeinated nights and 1 & 1/2 years, something began to take shape. And finally, my movie is complete and ready for its world premiere, not sheltered by the mountains of Utah, but at the Tribeca Film Festival in front of the most film savvy, Film Forum attending, sophisticated and critical audiences in America.

And there’s even a moving master, courtesy of archival footage from “I am Cuba” (”Soy Cuba” 1964). And because this blog is for Cinephiles only, I know I don’t need to explain the reference.
Wish me luck!

One of the contributors in my documentary, The Man of Two Havanas, journalist Ann Louise Bardach …you may have heard of her, she’s on NPR all the time… quotes Einstein as saying: “Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Yep! This pretty much sums up U.S. Cuba policy for the last 47 years. The words STUPID and CRUEL also come to mind.

As Americans, we don’t know jack about Cuba. We do know that there is a bearded boogieman named Castro who runs the place, but not much more. But that’s okay, because Cuba doesn’t really affect us. Right? And with wars, genocide, stolen elections, poverty, AIDS, Lindsay, Brad and Angelina…well, who has the time to give a damn about Cuba?

But for me, a Cuban-American, and the daughter of a man obsessed with the singular idea of reuniting the two Havanas, I thought, I better start giving a damn!

But I get ahead of myself.

Okay, here’s the situation. I was born in Havana. That makes me Cuban. But, I was raised in little Havana, which makes me Cuban-American. However, since I don’t see Castro as the root of all evil in the universe, nor would I strangle him with my bare hands given the opportunity, I am not your typical Cuban-American. I must be Norwegian. I always have been Norwegian. And I really don’t care.

My dad, Max Lesnik, on the other hand, is not Norwegian and he does give a shit. Back in Havana, he was a revolutionary and fought alongside his best buddy, Fidel Castro.

Then he had a beef with Castro over the Soviet Union and it was Miami, here we come.

My dad had a third position…he was both against the Cuban government, as well as against the U.S. policy towards Cuba. But wait a minute, no third position allowed! Whose side are you on? You’re either with us or you’re against us. He was basically against everyone and everybody was against him. That was not unusual. Welcome to my childhood.

Just as we’re getting used to this, he changed his mind again. Now he wanted dialogue. He wanted to talk to Castro. That’s when the shit hit the fan.

Bombings, death threats and drive by shootings would typically scare the shit out of somebody and make them shut the fuck up, but not my dad….

By the way… who would do this to us? We were Americans now. Surely, it must be the Communists, right? Wrong. And get this, ’cause it is a bit complicated. My father became the focal point of the anti-Castro terrorists. These were Cubans who left Cuba, hated Castro, and would do anything to get rid of him. Including bomb and kill moderate voices like my dad’s within the Cuban-American community. These terrorists, they were American. Well, Cuban-American to be exact. Oh right….they were trained by the CIA.

Terrorism in America did not begin on September 11th. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a reign of terror in Miami. There were as many as seven bombings in one day and hundreds per year. The culprits were not Communists. They were Americans. And my family was at the epicenter. Bombs away…