Renowned Cuban filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet died on the morning of Tuesday, January 12, at the age of 87.
Director, screenwriter, writer and great communicator, Pineda Barnet transcended with films such as The Beauty of the Alhambra (1989) i I am Cuba (1963), of which he co-wrote with the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
National Prize of Cinema in the year 2006 by the set of its work, given by the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Institute of the Art and the Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC), Pineda Barnet realized an extensive race like scriptwriter, actor and director of documentaries and fiction feature films.
In 2016, the director received the Choir of Honor during the 38th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, in recognition of all his filmography that includes more than twenty titles including feature films and short fiction, as well as documentaries, among which it stands out Giselle, The only ballet film made in Latin America and considered one of the most successful shootings in the world of ballet.
Born in Havana on October 28, 1933, Pineda Barnet demonstrated talent for various artistic disciplines from an early age. At the age of 20 he was deserving of the important National Prize of Literature Alfonso Hernandez Catá (1953) with the book of The seven tales for before a suicide.
Anxious creator and possessor of a voracious curiosity, he devoted himself to exploring various artistic manifestations from a very young age, forays into theatrical performance, dance, ballet, poetry and narrative, in addition to having exercised a meritorious pedagogical task.
Founder of the Societat Cultural El nostre Temps, created in 1950 by a group of young teachers and students, with the aim of creating an institution to help spread cultured music, Pineda Barnet came into contact with intellectuals and artists from avant-garde of those years.
In those days, he joined the Teatre Estudi group, taking his first steps in drama and directing, which earned him a career as a filmmaker. As an actor, he starred in the play Lila the butterfly, By Rolando Ferrer, with the Masks Company. His work The Trial of Quimbumbia he received a mention in the 1960 House of the Americas Award.
His time in the media also dates back to the 1950s, when Pineda Barnet worked in radio and television, writing and directing various programs. His work as a publicist in those days earned him awards and recognitions that thickened his experience and consolidated techniques that, alongside theater, contributed to the fluidity of his cinematic images.
At the end of 1962 he joined the ICAIC, where he developed his passion for cinema in heterogeneous works of fiction and documentaries of various lengths. With the direction of Giselle, a film that premiered in 1964, Pineda Barnet tried, in his own words “to set for the future the creation of Alicia Alonso and her group in Giselle”, forcing the technique cinematic to interweave it in the language of dance.
Of this same year dates its collaboration like co-scriptwriter in the film of Mikhail Kalatazov I am Cuba, a jewel of the cinematography by its photography and its impressive plans sequences, that flood the film of a poetic atmosphere which goes beyond the historical chronicle it seeks to narrate and makes it a rarity of a genius unique to cinema.
Considered alongside Santiago Álvarez and Nicolás Guillen Landrián as one of the island’s experimental documentarians, Pineda Barnet is recognized as one of the pioneers of video art in Cuba. In this line, his visual experiment entitled Cosmorama stands out, a sort of visual poem made in collaboration with the plastic artist Sandu Darie that innovates in the technique of the assembly and in the fusion of the images of the kinetic artist with a band original sound.
The originality in the assembly and the sound tracks became patent in other films his of experimentation, like Youth R-2 (1968), MS (Better Service) and the Yam, both of 1970. formal innovations, these works highlighted a keen sense of humor and satire, aimed at criticizing aspects of Cuban reality.
Without renouncing experimentation in the language of cinema, Pineda Barnet made films committed to the revolutionary history of the nation, such as Mella and Aquella llarga nit. But it is certainly The Beauty of the Alhambra that earned him unanimous critical and public acclaim.
Inspired by the novel Song of Rachel, by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, the film narrates the hectic life of Rachel, a chorister who longs to become a star and achieves fame at the renowned Alhambra Theater in Havana of the 20s.
Combining elements of melodrama and musicals, 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 of Cubania, earned him a resounding box office success, with two million viewers in two weeks. For La Bella de l’Alhambra, Pineda Barnet won the Goya Award from the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1990.
Universities in Puerto Rico, Spain, the United States and other American countries considered him a professor of important courses in directing, acting and drama. He shares his work as a filmmaker with that of a professor at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños. The New York Havana Film Festival in 2010 paid tribute to the Cuban filmmaker and playwright for his work in life.
“Ever since I got used to reason, since I remember myself 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 wasn’t going to be an athlete, or a politician, or a mathematician and yes I had to be an artist, I was very clear about that, even though I still didn’t know the branch of art I was going to dedicate myself to “, he stated in an interview conducted in 2015 by Ibermedia digital.
“I don’t marry with a single idea, I don’t get into cages, I don’t get into boxes, I don’t get into molds. I think that alternative cinema is possible and very necessary, I think that within all trends there are always possibilities rich, interesting and constructive possible “said one of the strongest filmmakers in 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 the Havana Film Festival: “In my childhood I dreamed of having, for me only, a planet, an asteroid where to cultivate a rose forever. But life did not allow me to be this little prince. As an adult, I did not get to fight layer battles and swords. Now as an adult, very adult, almost late, The French Government grants me this emblematic condition which I am grateful for and promise to fulfill, Knight of Art, Aesthetics and Ethics to shoot the arrow on the horizon. “