Yolanda Benet

Born in Cienfuegos, Yolanda Benet moved with her parents to Havana while still a teenager. Little by little she became accustomed to the capital and became a professional in the world of imaging. She worked for 25 years in Cuba as a producer and assistant director of film and television.

She began working at ICAIC in 1962 on the film "Soy Cuba" as production secretary, and after filming was completed, she was offered the opportunity to take a course and assume the position of script girl.

As a script girl, she has worked on many films, including: "Manuela", "El robo", "La tierra y el cielo", "Patty Candela", "La salación", "Soy Cuba", "Por cuanto", "Arrecifes", "La primera carga al machete", "La última cena", "Río negro", "El desertor", "El extraño caso de Rachel K", among others.

She was constantly improving herself to do excellent work, which is why she worked in the departments of makeup, laboratories, film archives, and others.

From the 1970s onward, she taught courses to train new script girls. After completing this course, she went on to work as a producer at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), and also worked as an assistant director and advisor on various programs such as theater, stories, and telenovelas. (More than 30 novels and serials as first assistant at ICRT and as producer at ICRT Film Studios, as well as making documentaries and fiction shorts).

During her time working in television, she taught new courses to train and teach script girls for television and video production.

Between 1990 and 1996, she was invited to participate in various telenovela and screenwriting technique workshops at Rede Globo in Brazil.

Since 1996, she has been periodically invited to participate as a co-screenwriter for several documentaries about Latin America by Miramar Productions of New York.

At the "50th Anniversary of ICAIC", we cannot overlook a script girl like her, whose work has contributed to the development of Cuban Cinema.

She was the wife of Pablo Milanés and the inspiration for the famous song Yolanda. They have three beautiful daughters: Lynn, Liam, and Suylén. "We have 7 grandchildren together."

The three girls studied music. Lynn is a flutist and also a professional singer. A natural decorator, she transforms spaces very well, in that she is very much like me."

Suylen sings when life inspires her, but she is so intense that she could run a music company and produce a festival of the caliber of "Proposiciones".

Liam: Graduated in choral direction, she has preferred, due to her shyness, the business life in the world of music, but she sings from time to time as she has a very beautiful voice. And the grandchildren are always together, because they formed a united family, also counting Pablo's other children.

Pablo and Yolanda have found a beautiful balance, that of being together whenever they can to enjoy the family they have created, through good times and bad. To my question about how she was able to rebuild her life beyond the myth, she answered: "By being eternally 'Me'."