Daniel Díaz Torres

Cuban filmmaker, director of documentaries and fiction films.

Daniel Díaz Torres was born in La Habana. In 1961 he joined the Literacy Campaign in the Sierra del Escambray. Licensed in Political Sciences in 1978, he had already been working since 1968 as a film critic for the Cinematographic Information Center of the ICAIC—he published texts in magazines and newspapers such as Cine Cubano, El Caimán Barbudo, Bohemia and Granma—while also teaching seminars on film technique and history at the universities of Oriente and La Habana.

Starting in 1971, while producing television pieces, he participated as an assistant director in some of the most outstanding Cuban films of that decade, such as Los días del agua (1971, Manuel Octavio Gómez), El hombre de Maisinicú (1973) and Río Negro (1977) by Manuel Pérez, or De cierta manera (1974), Sara Gómez). In 1975 he was promoted to documentary director and became associated with the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano, of which he was subdirector-producer from 1977 to 1981, a period in which he produced a total of ninety editions.

His documentary production includes, among other works, La casa de Mario (1978), an interview with Mario Sarol, a peasant from the Sierra Maestra and collaborator of the Rebel Army; Los dueños del río (1980), about the operators of cayucas on the Toa River, in the easternmost part of Cuba, and Madera (1980), a poetic synthesis of the lives of forestry workers in Baracoa. The latter two won second coral prize at the II International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.

His first feature film Jíbaros (1982), a version of the documentary of the same name that he shot two years earlier in El Escambray, owes much to his years of literacy work, as well as to his repeated film work in that mountainous zone in central Cuba. The screenplay, by Norberto Fuentes, is based on an idea by the director himself, to whom the story was told by an old hunter before being interviewed for the documentary. With the performances of experienced actors Salvador Wood, Adolfo Llauradó and René de la Cruz, Jíbaros was well received by critics and the general public, although it was pointed out that there were inconsistencies in some of its parts.

Two years later Díaz Torres presented Otra mujer (1986), a film that tells the story of Eugenia—Mirtha Ibarra—a working woman who rises above herself in a social context undergoing change. Well adapted to the film representation patterns of the decade, the film was well received by critics who noted the positive treatment of the characters: its director emphasized negative attitudes rather than negative characters, thereby making the audience reflect.

But it is not until the presentation of Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas in 1990 that fame and also controversy come to the work of Daniel Díaz Torres. With an original screenplay by the group Nos-y-otros, directed by Eduardo del Llano, and with the collaboration of Jesús Díaz—also author of the screenplay for Otra mujer—and the director himself, the film was in theaters for four days in La Habana, only two in other provinces of Cuba, and was then immediately withdrawn.

This unique comedy that narrates the vicissitudes of Alicia, a theater instructor sent to Maravillas de Novera, a town where curious inhabitants live—people removed from their posts—intended, according to its makers, to analyze certain forms of behavior such as the limited participation of individuals in society and false unanimity, which paralyzes the capacity to act in order to develop life itself and to undertake social tasks. Hence Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas had a significant ethical foundation: to encourage men who, under difficult conditions, were quickly inclined toward pessimism. However, articles such as "La suspicacia del rebaño" or "Alicia, un festín para los rajados," which appeared in the press, characterized it as a work of demotivating morality. This case brought once again to debate the question of artistic freedom against political demands according to the historical context, much discussed at the beginning of the 1960s.

Following this work came a medium-length film with a screenplay by Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, Quiéreme y verás (1995), the story of three frustrated bank robbers who, in La Habana of 1990, recall their failed action 35 years earlier; and two comedies less controversial than the previous one that enjoyed broad public favor: Kleines Tropicana (1997), which aligns with the police and espionage genre, and Hacerse el sueco (2000), an amusing story of a sui generis Havana thief in the style of Robin Hood.

With Camino al Edén, a film from 2007, Daniel Díaz Torres ventured for the first time into a historical period production. The action takes place in colonial Cuba at the end of the nineteenth century between a Spanish woman, her maid and a mambí during the 1895 war. However, as its director has stated, this film is more a work about human feelings than about the struggles for Cuban independence, hence the motif of war is treated in an intimate manner from the basic argument of a love story. The screenplay, by Arturo Infante, had its main inspiration in a passage from a book written by Enrique Loynaz del Castillo where a character appears similar to the protagonist. One of the most celebrated aspects of the film is the cinematography direction by Raúl Pérez Ureta, who has performed that function in most of Díaz Torres's film productions.

His most recent work to date is Lisanka (2009), a comedy that returns to the early years of the Cuban Revolution, specifically to 1962 where, in the context of the Cold War, an enthusiastic town—Veredas del Guayabal—receives a group of Soviets who will work in a missile unit. In these circumstances unfolds the romantic "square" between Lisanka, the film's protagonist, and her three suitors, Sergio, Aurelio and Volodia. Although of less critical sharpness and plot inventiveness, this film bears certain similarities to Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, and returns us to parodic comedies in a tone of tragicomedy, so characteristic of this director.

Although he has been a prolific author of documentaries and fiction films, Díaz Torres has also engaged in teaching: since 1986 he has worked as a professor at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños in the specialty of directing.

Main Works

1978 La casa de Mario (documentary)

1980 Madera (documentary)

Los dueños del río (documentary)

1984 Jíbaro (fiction feature film)

1986 Otra mujer (fiction feature film)

1990 Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (fiction feature film) screenplay in collaboration with the group Nos-y-otros and Jesús Díaz

1995 Quiéreme y verás (fiction medium-length film)

1997 Kleines Tropicana (fiction feature film), screenplay in collaboration with Eduardo del Llano

2000 Hacerse el sueco (fiction feature film)

2007 Camino al Edén (fiction feature film)

2009 Lisanka (fiction feature film) screenplay in collaboration with Eduardo del Llano

2012 La película de Ana (Fiction)

Awards

La casa de Mario

Selected among the most significant films of the year. Annual Selection of Critics. La Habana, Cuba, 1978.
Noticiero No. 902

Special Recognition (newsreel). Film Section. July 26 Contest of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC). La Habana, Cuba, 1978.
Encuentro en Texas

Council Prize (Popular Power) of Budapest. V International Festival of Sports Films. Budapest, Hungary, 1979.
Noticiero No. 966

Diploma of Honor (for its participation in the development of the Revolution). VI Cinematographic Festival, Tashkent, USSR, 1980.
Prize (Cinema) (Embassy of Peru Events). July 26 Contest of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), La Habana, Cuba, 1981.
Los dueños del río

Photography Mention to Raúl Pérez Ureta. II Contest of the Film, Radio and Television Section of the UNEAC (National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), La Habana, Cuba, 1980.
Selected among the most significant films of the year. Annual Selection of Critics, La Habana, Cuba, 1980.
Second Coral Prize. II International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, La Habana, Cuba, 1980.
Madera

Second coral prize. II International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, La Habana, Cuba, 1980.
Selected among the most significant films of the year. Annual Selection of Critics, La Habana, Cuba, 1980.
Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas

Special Mention Interjury Berlin Festival, 1991.
Peace Committee Prize. Berlin Festival, 1991.
Special Mention. Montevideo Festival, 1992.
Quiéreme y verás

Audience Prize. Innsbruck Festival, 1995.
Prize of the Italian Criticism Association. Festival of New Latin American Cinema, 1995.
Fiction Prize. Fribourg Festival, 1995.
Grand Prize. Fribourg Festival, 1995.
Kleines Tropicana

Hubert Bals Foundation Screenplay Prize, Rotterdam.
Nominated for the Goya Prize of the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts. 1998.
Kikito Prize. Music (Edesio Alejandro) International Festival of Gramado, Brazil, 1998.
Kikito Prize. Editing (Mirita Lores).
Special Jury Prize. XIX International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, La Habana, Cuba, 1997.
Audience Prize. Innsbruck Festival, 1998.
Hacerse el sueco

Audience Prize. III Ibero-American Film Festival. Santa Cruz de Bolivia, 2001.
Audience Prize. International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. La Habana, 2000.
Audience Prize. Fribourg Festival, 2001.