León Rodríguez Ichaso

León Ichaso was born in La Habana in a family of renowned writers, journalists, and artists. His father, Justo Rodríguez Santos, was one of Cuba's most respected poets and a pioneer of open television and radio, and his mother Antonia Ichaso had a radio program in the 1940s.

León emigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1963, along with his mother, when he was 14 years old. His father (a member of the Grupo Orígenes, author of "Los naipes conjurados" and "La epopeya del Moncada") remained in La Habana working in television, until in 1968 he took the same path as his son and ex-wife. León had by then finished high school in Miami and was beginning to make Super 8 films. Soon, upon moving to New York, he became associated with poets, visual artists, and filmmakers like Andy Warhol. León —who would adopt his mother's surname in his professional career— was still just beginning but was fortunate enough to find talented, creative, and bohemian people who, without intending to, would inspire him to make films.

León Ichaso is known as a director who specialized in bold urban realism. He first made his mark with the Spanish-language independent feature film, El Super (1979), based on an off-Broadway play about an immigrant building superintendent trying to make his way in New York City.

The filmmaker took six years to follow up this work, but Crossover Dreams (1985) was a good first attempt at a somewhat more conventional film. The film was a powerful look at different but mixed Latino American communities, life in the neighborhood, and the powerful drive of salsa music.

Brought into the Hollywood scene, Ichaso found his talent for telling difficult stories of the big city in action television series (for example, Miami Vice, Crime Story, The Equalizer) and television movies such as The Fear Inside, The Take, A Table at Ciro's, and Un beso para morirse. Later, Ichaso directed Sugar Hill (1993), starring Wesley Snipes, a character study tied to a violent crime drama of a drug empire in New York.

In the Dominican Republic and Cuba in 1996, Ichaso made Azúcar Amarga (Bitter Sugar), a Spanish-language film about a disillusioned Cuban communist.

Over the following years, Ichaso worked on several television films, some of which were adaptations of acclaimed works. Zooman (Showtime, 1995) was an adaptation of an off-Broadway play that deals with a family confronting the murder of a child.

Execution of Justice (Showtime, 1999) also derives from a Broadway play that details the events behind the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Although told from the perspective of the killer, Dan White, Ichaso's film remained neutral and demonstrated that the questions surrounding a highly charged event cannot be reduced to simple answers.

Next, Ichaso tackled a couple of small-screen biographies Ali: An American Hero (Fox, 2000) and Hendrix (Showtime, 2000).

Later he wrote and directed the acclaimed feature film biography Piñero (2001), about the life of Puerto Rican author Miguel Piñero, who had the soul of a poet but lived the life of a thief. Ichaso employed a collage-like approach to the author's life, which included flashbacks, drug-induced dreams, and scenes of theatrical performances to create a portrait of an intriguing, though difficult, person.

After working again for Showtime (Sleeper Cell, 2005), Cane, The Cleaner (A&E), Persons Unknown (Fox / Televisa 2008 and 2009), developing his own future projects ("Monk") and teaching film directing in France, in 2004, Ichaso began working on the screenplay for the biography of salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, El Cantante. This was filmed in 2006 and stars Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.

His latest film Paraíso, filmed in Miami in 2008, premiered at the Miami International Film Festival 2009 in March 2009.