Asiel Babastro's "Ámame como soy yo" clip is among the 15 most interesting of 2020 according to Rolling Stone Colombia

October 3, 2020

The video clip for the song "Ámame como soy yo", directed by Cuban filmmaker Asiel Babastro, was included in the list of the 15 most interesting clips of 2020 compiled by Rolling Stone Colombia magazine.

The song was recorded by Orishas together with Spanish singer Beatriz Luengo and Lebanese violinist Ara Malikian and the video premiered last May. Rolling Stone described Babastro as "one of the most important music video directors in Cuba" and praised his work with artists such as Fito Páez, Omara Portuondo and Lila Downs.

"The author considers himself a self-taught person with solid semiotic foundation," the legendary publication states. It refers to the video's description on YouTube, in which it is defined as "a kind of found footage, a mix of photographs, pastiches, documentary images, films that settle and reconstruct part of Cuba's history, too polarized, where the creator saw fit to gather some fragments turning it into a chronicle at times poem, notes for the construction of island man and the condiments that make Orishas the ajiaco that characterizes the Cuban, and therefore his music".

One afternoon I met Orlando Cruzata in my town, Morón (Ciego de Ávila). A friend brought us together and he saw my videos. He told me it was good work, that it deserved to be on Lucas and for me the heavens were opening. Before I was taking it as a game; being there gave me a wake-up call to take it seriously. My life has been a continuous journey: guitar, visual arts, and camera, then poetry and trova. Until my friends convinced me that the only thing I was good at was that, behind the lens. At first I didn't know how to channel all that, until I found myself and I'm still taming myself. But the exact moment was when I set out to make a documentary and they told me everything was wrong.

I believe that developing a work is difficult everywhere. Perhaps in Cuba it's easier. Everyone wants success from day one, but that costs, and it's almost never the portion you ask for. A creator belongs to his place and is made there. My work, if not in Cuba, cannot be, even if I make it somewhere else. I've won awards and I've also lost them. At the time, I've been critical of the juries in the competitions I've participated in because they weren't as logical and adjusted to the aesthetic criteria expected of them, but I understand that awards are made of complicity and complacency, and they are more strategic than fair.