Cuban Filmmaker, Pavel Giroud Interview:
Taking the World by Storm with El Acompañante (The Companion) & Playing Lecuona
What an international whirlwind year for an independent Cuban filmmaker living in Madrid. He has never aimed for Hollywood nor the Cannes Film Festival, but has been officially submitted by Cuba to represent his country for a 2017 Academy Award in Best Foreign Film and to Spain for their version of the Oscar, the Goya 2017 Awards. As you read this, Pavel Giroud Eirea is screening his narrative film, El Acompañante (The Companion) in Paris and throughout the country where long lines of ticket holders await to enter theaters. This
film opened the Havana Film Festival NY and his documentary feature, Playing Lecuona premiered in NYC with a live Q&A with the preeminent Dominican, Latin jazz pianist, Michel Camilo who was prominently featured in the film playing music by one of the greatest 20th century Cuban pianists and composers, Ernesto Lecuona. Though Pavel is Cuban, he lives and works in Spain where he often travels to Cuban shooting his feature films.
I first met Pavel in 1999 in Havana at the behest of a Cuban friend who insisted we had to meet because of shared passions as filmmakers. My trip to Cuba was also an emotional journey since I had not been back to my mother’s homeland since we fled the country when I was two years old in January 1961 when relations first broke between the U.S. and Cuba. Here I was going back to a country with such strong emotional significance, attending this time around the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema – the best Latin American film festival in the world – founded and run by Pavel’s uncle, Ivan Giroud. When Pavel and I met we clicked. So much so that I sponsored him through the State Department to realize his dream of coming to New York City where he came to live with me for three months in the summer of 2000 to Manhattan’s Times Square. When I interviewed him recently as he returned to NYC, I took jabs at him for spending three months watching TV on my couch and he firmly shared that watching much TV in the States gave him many ideas for the short films he produced afterwards that shaped his career early on.
at the Havana Film Festival NY with (l-r) Luciano Castillo from Camagüey, Cuba, film critic, programmer & historian; TíoLouie and Pavel Giroud’s uncle, Iván Giroud, Director of the Havana International Film Festival Cuba.
After he won the Best Screenplay award at the Havana Film Festival NY for El Acompañante (The Companion), I sat down with Pavel for a Spanish-language interview which I translated to English.
TíoLouie: I see you are no longer living in Cuba, rather in Madrid?
Pavel Giroud: Yes, I’ve been living in Spain for the last few years with my Cuban wife and five-year-old son.
TíoLouie: How was the process of creating the feature film, El Acompañante (The Companion)?
Pavel: I got fully immersed in the process and research. It was an impulse beyond the emotional. It was something to see that people who are HIV-infected didn’t hold a grudge in life. It was a six-year process in which I matured. On a personal note, in the beginning I wasn’t married and now I have a child. I had to explore a particular disease in the context of the era – the ‘80’s, which is different from now, as well as medications administered then. I also had no idea about boxing, which was pivotal to the life and background of the companion who worked in this sanatorium. I interviewed Miguel Angel who now lives in Switzerland and wrote about Cuban sanatoriums for the HIV/AIDS-infected of that era, as well as military personnel who guarded very methodically these institutions, the patients and the doctors who worked there.
TíoLouie interviews Pavel Giroud on the set of the Spanish-language, “Oye, Prime Latino Media Radio”
TíoLouie: What was the reaction to your film by people who actually lived it in one role or the other in 1980’s Cuba?
Pavel: When Cubans who lived it then saw my film they felt it was well represented of the era and what they lived. There were even people who were HIV-infected living in the state-run sanatoriums who are still alive today shared an overwhelming, supportive response.
TíoLouie: What are you working on next?
Pavel: I am developing four films taking place in Cuba.
TíoLouie: Though you live in Europe, why do you continue returning to Cuba to conduct film projects and why don’t you just remain?
Pavel: I remain in Spain to be more connected to the world and literally to the Internet, which is very poor in Cuba. But also I also return to Cuba that has me very connected to my mom.
TíoLouie: Has your film played in Cuba and how was it received?
Pavel: It played for two days in the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana in December. The leading newspaper in Cuba, Granma destroyed it with one comment. It said that it looked like a mediocre U.S. film. But the theaters during the Festival were packed with lines wrapped around the block and people waiting two hours to go inside.
TíoLouie: How has the gay community that was most associated with the HIV/AIDS crisis in that era responded to your film?
Pavel: The gay community and activists, as well as people who were interned in sanatoriums are the ones who have most supported my film. Without even making much of an outreach, gay film festivals have been inviting me to screen the film.
TíoLouie: What struck a chord most in you when making this film project?
Pavel: What moved me most was that all the suffering at the hands of the state-sanctioned sanatoriums for the HIV/AIDS-infected population had nothing to do with the gay community, rather infected “machos” who fought in the Cuban military when sent to Africa. In the 1960’s, Che Guevara led the campaign to liberate the Congo from what was seen as imperialist, Belgian colonial control and influence. Then Cuba went on to export its military to other African countries in its fight against apartheid and in support of guerrilla factions in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Angola. Young Cubans, 20 years of age had sexual relations with African prostitutes and contracted the HIV-infection. And then, again, there is always that subset of closeted soldiers who engaged in man-to-man sex. However, initially in Cuba when the HIV/AIDS crisis broke out it was centered in the gay community.
TíoLouie: How is your style directing narrative films?
Pavel: I direct each actor differently and it has nothing to do with whether they are a man or woman. I first have to explore how I go with each one. I had a lot of rehearsal time with the cast in my house before we started rolling. That helped a lot. I asked them to hold back a little – like a gesture or look. I prefer the subtleties in actors, like Robert De Niro.
TíoLouie: Being Cuban, how does your style differ from Cuban cinema?
Pavel: Cuban cinema is performed loudly – that would torment me. I’m angling for another type of actualization. To create a connection with the spectator I had to draw on that. Also, in sanatoriums people spoke softly and there was plenty of paranoia to go around.
TíoLouie: How was it raising funding to complete your project?
Pavel: It was difficult. There are international funds. I had to have a certificate from the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) in my country, but it was denied – they did not support me. My Producer tapped into countries like France and Colombia that do support foreign productions. Luckily, I had a Cuban producer and others that were with me through to the end because they were in love with the project.
TíoLouie: There were two underlying subtexts to your movie. There was boxing, due to the companion for the lead protagonist being a former boxer and in the ending there is a major boxing scene, plus HIV/AIDS. But was there something else that defined the film?
Pavel: It was the value of friendship and the inclusion of human dignity. Boxing and HIV/AIDS was a pretext. The most difficult thing in this world is coexisting – inclusion. Look at this point through what is happening with human migration around the world – the convergence of politics and social groups. It was about ignorance in general through ignorance about the disease.
Pavel Giroud, center in the back, at a dinner party with guests in his honor at the Manhattan home of TíoLouie
TíoLouie: What $0.10 worth of advice do you have for filmmakers working with musicians to score for a film?
Pavel: It’s about working with different musicians for different music. The same happens when placing music in your film that is a very delicate matter in achieving that subtlety and emotiveness – to elicit emotion with subtleties is difficult. It should not rob the protagonist unless you want to do so. Often times the soundtrack by itself does not work, because it works exclusively with the picture. It’s very important to work with musicians that know how to work with a film and value it.
TíoLouie: What $0.10 worth of advice do you have for a Director in working with actors?
Pavel: You have to have set in your mind that the actor is not a marionette – absolutely not! The actor should know the character well and its limits and to provide them with free rein for creativity. I find that through that strategy I get good results. And the more liberty I have given the actor, the greater benefits gained. In my film, I wanted the dialogue between the actors to be natural.
TíoLouie: What $0.10 worth of advice do you have for certain missteps for a Director to avoid?
Pavel: Every film is an experience unto itself. But more importantly, avoid censoring yourself. Later on they can censor you, such as poor critical reviews by the public. During the act of creation the only thing vital is you exposing yourself unequivocally and unconditionally. You cannot censor yourself.
Trailer to feature, El Acompañante (The Companion):
Trailer to documentary, Playing Lecuona:
For more info, visit the website of Pavel Giroud: www.pavelgiroud.com
@TIO LOUIE/Louis E. Perego Moreno
Louis E. Perego Moreno/@TioLouie
Founder & Executive Producer of PRIME LATINO MEDIA, the largest East Coast network of Latino multimedia-makers, actors and musicians in bilingual Latino and mainstream media, digital and entertainment. An interactive Content/Impact Producer and Educator who for the past 34 years has owned Skyline Features, a bilingual multimedia and educational production company developing documentaries, television programming and advertising commercials featuring Latinos, Blacks, Women, Urban Youth and LGBT.
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