Renowned Cuban filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet passed away on Tuesday morning, January 12, at the age of 87.
Director, screenwriter, writer and great communicator, Pineda Barnet has transcended with films such as The beauty of the Alhambra (1989) and I’m Cuba (1963), about which he co-wrote with the Russian poet Evgeny Evtushenko.
Pineda Barnet had a long career as a screenwriter, actor and director of documentaries and feature films, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Institute of Art and Film Industry (ICAIC) in 2006 for his set of works.
In 2016, the director received the Choir of Honor at the 38th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, in gratitude for all his filmography, which includes more than twenty titles, including feature films and short films. fiction, as well as documentaries, among which he highlights Giselle, the only ballet film made in Latin America and considered one of the most successful films in the ballet world.
Born in Havana on October 28, 1933, Pineda Barnet has demonstrated talent for various artistic disciplines from an early age. At the age of 20 he was awarded the important National Prize for Literature Alfonso Hernández Catá (1953) with the book The seven stories before suicide.
Anxious creator and possessor of a curious voracious, he dedicated himself to exploring various artistic manifestations from an early age, venturing into theater, dance, ballet, poetry and narrative performances, in addition to carrying out a meritorious pedagogical work.
Founder of the Nuestro Tiempo Cultural Society, created in 1950 by a group of young teachers and students, in order to create an institution that would help spread the word of cult music, Pineda Barnet came into contact with avant-garde intellectuals and artists of those years. .
At that time, he joined the Teatro Estudio group, taking the first steps in dramaturgy and editing that deserved so much for his career as a filmmaker. As an actor, he played in the play The butterfly bat, by Rolando Ferrer, with Las Mascaras Company. His work The Quimbumbia trial he received a mention in the 1960 Casa de las Américas award.
His time in the media dates back to the 1950s, when Pineda Barnet worked in radio and television, writing screenplays and directing various programs. His work as a publicist at the time earned him awards and recognitions that enhanced his experience and strengthened techniques that, together with theater, contributed to the fluidity of his cinematic images.
At the end of 1962 he joined ICAIC, where he developed his passion for cinema in heterogeneous works of fiction and documentaries of different lengths. Directed by Giselle, a film that premiered in 1964, Pineda Barnet tried, in her own words, to “fix for the future the creation of Alicia Alonso and her group in Giselle”, forcing the cinematic technique to embed it in language. of dance.
His collaboration as co-writer in Mikhail Kalatazov’s film Soy Cuba dates from the same year, a jewel of cinematography for photography and its impressive sequences, which flood the film with a poetic atmosphere that goes beyond the historical chronicle. that he is trying to tell a story and turn it into a rarity of a unique genius in cinema.
Considered along with Santiago Álvarez and Nicolás Guillen Landrián as one of the island’s experimental documentary producers, Pineda Barnet is recognized as one of the pioneers of video art in Cuba. In this direction, his visual experiment entitled Cosmorama stands out, a kind of visual poem made in collaboration with the plastic 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 of the montage and the soundtracks were evident in his other experimental films, such as Juventud R-2 (1968), MS (Best Service) and El Ñame, both from 1970. In addition to formal innovations, these works stood out. sense of humor and satire, aimed at criticizing aspects of Cuban reality.
Without giving up experimentation in cinematic language, Pineda Barnet made films dedicated to the revolutionary history of the nation, such as Mella and Aquella long night. But, without a doubt, La Bella del Alhambra is the film that brought him unanimous recognition from critics and audiences.
Inspired by the novel Canción de Rachel, by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, the film tells the hectic life of Rachel, a showgirl who longs to become a star and became famous at the famous Alhambra Theater in Havana in the 1920s.
Combining elements of melodrama and music, the film is a tribute to the tradition of vernacular theater and Cuban music. His excellent artistic and acting direction, as well as his representation in Cuba, brought him a resounding success at the box office, with two million viewers in two weeks. For La Bella del Alhambra, Pineda Barnet won the 1990 Goya Award from the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The universities of Puerto Rico, Spain, the United States and other American countries have considered him a professor of important courses in directing, acting and drama. He shares his work as a filmmaker with that of a teacher at the San Antonio de los Baños International Film and Television School. The Havana Film Festival in New York in 2010 paid tribute to the Cuban filmmaker and playwright for his life’s work.
“From the moment I remember, from the moment I remember thinking, I knew all my preferences and also all the things I didn’t like. At the age of five, I knew perfectly well that I would not be an athlete, a politician, a mathematician and I would be an artist, that was very clear to me, although I still did not know the branch of art to which I would dedicate myself “, he declared. in an interview conducted in 2015 by Ibermedia digital.
“I don’t marry any idea, I don’t go into cages, I don’t go into boxes, I don’t go into shapes. I believe that alternative cinema is possible and very necessary, I believe that in all trends there are always rich, interesting and constructive possibilities possible “, said one of the most solid filmmakers of Cuban cinema.
When he received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres ”(Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) he expressed, according to the website of Havana Film Festival: “As a child, I dreamed of having, just for myself, a planet, an asteroid where I could grow a rose forever. But life did not allow me to be that little prince. As an adult, I failed to fight head and sword. Now, as an adult, very adult, almost late, the French government grants me this emblematic condition which I thank and promise to fulfill, Knight of Art, Aesthetics and Ethics to launch the arrow to the horizon. “