Video De Familia
By Miguel Coyula • Jan 28th, 2007 • Category: DramaThis no-budget multi-award winning Cuban film caused a sensation when it Premiered in Havana because its honesty on breaking an often taboo subject in Cuban filmography: A family divided because of political differences and subsequent exile of one its members. A young homosexual man who has kept his sexual preference a secret from everyone except his sister (Yipsia Torres) emigrated to the US. Cuban veteran actor Enrique Molina plays the dogmatic father, Veronica Lynn his mother who strives to keep the family together. Together they decide to send a video letter to Miami.
The story begins when the family decides to send the exiled homosexual son a video letter. Things go wrong as a few secrets are unleashed during the making of the home video. One of the first things that grabs you by the neck
is the bravura of the performances. The film was shot in 5 long un-interrupted takes crammed inside one small apartment with a handheld shaky VHS camera. But if this sounds suspicious, please do yourself a favor and see it. Video de Familia is a perfect marriage of style and content: It’s dirty visual aesthetic is perfectly justifiable by the story, which is after all, a video letter (meant to be shot by someone that doesn’t know much about filmmaking) But It’s also a tour de force of narrative control and what microcinema is about in terms soaking emotions with the most limited resources. This film elicited tears from almost all the members of the audience that attended its limited theatrical release in Cuba.
It is an important film because it calls for a reunion as the only way to make things work in a country usually stubborn when it comes to politics. In the last 47 years certain Cubans shared a sad history of sacrificing family ties to preserve ideological convictions. Video de Familia’s humanistic intentions are as noble as the honesty of their moving portrayal.
Four stars
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Miguel Coyula is the director of the $2,000 sci-fi epic Red Cockroaches. His next project is Memorias del Desarrollo, a follow-up to the Cuban classic Memorias del Subdesarrollo (1968), based on the novel by Cuban writer Edmundo Desnoes
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