Senel Paz at the delivery of the 2020 National Film Award.
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Words at the award ceremony of the National Film Award to Paco Prats and Senel Paz, at the House of the New Latin American Film Festival.
I want to be brief. When Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba … I’d better turn a few pages.
This is a ceremony between friends, family, a pretext to evoke and love Paco Prats, and for you as friends to accompany us, his family and me, to receive this Award that we so deserve … according to the jury.
So, dear Paco, you are here with us, excited and happy, with your nobility, your talent and your example of tireless worker and faithful companion, and continuing with all the dolls that we will continue to make.
As for me, wearing a yellow jacket, I remember the first time I entered a movie theater at the age of twelve, back in my town. The show had already started and I went from the outside light to the legs of some horses that were coming at me. It was the Indians fleeing from The Lone Ranger in the episode of the week. Next, something that really seems invented or a program prepared especially for me by Luciano Catillo or Iván Giroud, I saw The chimera of gold as my first feature film. From then on my prayers for a better life always conclude: “In the name of Chaplin, of the son and of the holy spirit.” Who keep in mind A girlfriend for David, the first film I wrote, you will remember that it includes a quote from this film, the passage of the girls when they visit Charlot in the cabin and forget the glove, and that it is my personal tribute to that moment of discovery and amazement.
I’ve said it before and today is a good opportunity to repeat it: Cuban cinema taught me not only to be a film but also to be Cuban, to know and love our history, to understand and incorporate the mestizo character of our culture and identity. , to love the physical and spiritual spaces, present and past, of our country, and to assimilate its character at times melodramatic, at times tragic and always humorous. As a spectator, he placed me in front of a sustained exercise of freedom. I felt the freedom in the creation of Lucy, in Memories of underdevelopment, in The man from Misinicú, in Madagascar, in Looking for Chano Pozo, in Alice in wonder town, in The Ilusion Y To half voice, in The work of the century and in The english teacher, and, most importantly, I have just seen it in the future, in the projects that participated in the Writing and Development modality of the first call for our Cuban Cinema Promotion Fund and that will be the next titles of our cinema.
When I arrived in Havana at the age of sixteen and under circumstances that found no biography but equivalences in A girlfriend for DavidAs a peasant in front of the great and inhospitable city, I made two firm resolutions: to ride a bus on each of the existing routes sometime, and to enter each and every one of the city’s movie theaters that appeared on the list. of the billboard. Today it would be enough to walk along 23rd Street, but then it was not an easy task. I think I fulfilled both aspirations above ninety percent. I never went from passenger to bus driver, but somehow I went from the space of the spectators to that of the filmmakers and here I fell in love for the second time with cinema: this time with the filmmakers, with those who made the films, and in particular of his sense of freedom and the permanent disposition to defend and build it every day in work and life. I am proud, happy, to be one more in this guild. And grateful that, with this Award, you recognize me as someone who has worked alongside you.
I’m finishing. I know that many people think or comment under their breath whether I have gone crazy or the Prize will have gone to my head when I put on this yellow jacket. I leave the explanation for last.
I am missing the thanks and an announcement, which I will make together with my colleague, the writer and screenwriter Arturo Arango. *
From the hand of Paco, thanks to everyone, those who are not in the room and to you, as kind and masked as The Lone Ranger and who have challenged the Covid to accompany me; a special thought for the directors who have allowed me to work with them, represented this afternoon by Gerardo Chijona; for the other collaborators of the films, some as great as them like José María Vitier, and for the actors and actresses – who must be mentioned separately because they have their ego – and who have represented for me the magnet, the greatest motivation and challenge to get closer to cinematographic art.
About the painting I have received, what to say? I have always had admiration for José Omar’s work, and for Jose Omar and Vivian, his partner. They know it very well. José is a lifelong friend in cultural ups and downs. I even wanted to win the Film Award to see if I was lucky enough to be awarded a work by José Omar, and now it is coming true. I will find the best wall in my house.
An even more special recognition for Rebeca, my daily and tireless inspiring filmmaker, and a final one for a Latin American and universal man who united like few others the two passions that also accompany me, who bet and worked very hard for our Latin American cinema: Gabriel García Márquez , of whom in these moments I feel symbolically clothed because I wear his jacket, now mine, yellow like his butterflies …
Now, according to the script, they can clap if they want to.
* Senel Paz and Arturo Arango announced that, together with the producer Lía Rodríguez, they will carry out in the first quarter of next year the second edition of the Workshop 6g-Havana Scripts, this time with projects selected from the winners and participants of the Writing and Development modalities of the first call of the Cuban Cinema Development Fund, under the slogan: “That movie that you are going to make in freedom, that has a good script” .
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