Ek(bo)- frasis

PM - Saba Cabrera, Orlando Jiménez
A short film, noir, not because of its genre but its subject matter, its material, gray-scale celluloid, its setting, night. This film was quashed by the (post)-revolutionary censors, and, to this day remains hard to get one's hands upon. If I were to choose a select qualifier, innocence, not irreverence would be my choice. There is no implicit critique, no blatant protest, there is simply life, a life that ceased to exist, upon the imposition of sameness. There is nothing so tragic as the loss of difference, perhaps the censors knew this, and feared not for the content of the film itself (which, if described as libertine, or counter-revoultionary, could only be done so by one who has not indeed witnessed it) but rather its capacity to evoke a world that was quickly evanescing into the recesses of memories (or the fantasies of mythical midnight Havana for those of us to come).

Here are the words that came to me, trance-like, in the semi-darkness of the classroom, with breath held, and eyes trained on a flickering screen.

Noche conguera
grados de gris
guayaberas
granosa imagen
de luz difusa

cadera cadente
candente
espirales exuberantes

silbando, dehilvanando
el humo entre
labios gruesos
güiro
desgarrado de gestos
escotes
y razones
contrastes latentes
irreverentes, constantes...

decadencia
de cadencia
de cada encía
sonriente
luz blanca
la larga, negra, noche
habanera.