The Padilla Case, a documentary that seeks to "stir consciences" about freedoms in Cuba

March 18, 2023

The film, which uses original video fragments from 1971 -until now unknown to the general public - sheds light on the controversial self-incrimination of poet Heberto Padilla, an event that ended the romance between left-wing intellectuals and the then young Cuban Revolution.

Rare images of poet Heberto Padilla's "self-criticism" in 1971 after being detained for his "counterrevolutionary stance" are reviving the conversation about censorship in Cuba through El Caso Padilla, a documentary that according to its director, Pavel Giroud, seeks to "stir consciences".

The film, winner of the best documentary award within the Miami Film Festival selection, has just been nominated for the 2023 Platino Awards for Iberoamerican Cinema, Cuba's only representation in the competition, which this year will be led by the acclaimed "Argentina 1985".

"I feel that I didn't choose to make this film, but rather this film chose me," the Cuban Giroud assured Voice of America from Madrid, where he has lived for several years.

Padilla (1932-2000) stood out as one of the most representative voices of a generation of intellectuals and artists that flourished during the early years of the Revolution led by Fidel Castro. However, like many of his contemporaries, the poet and professor was singled out for his "anti-revolutionary stance" and his discourse outside strict official parameters.

The film uses archival images to narrate the events surrounding Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, his arrest by State Security in Havana and his now famous "self-criticism," in 1971, which served as a watershed in the relationship between international intellectuals and Fidel Castro's Revolution.
The film uses archival images to narrate the events surrounding Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, his arrest by State Security in Havana and his now famous "self-criticism," in 1971, which served as a watershed in the relationship between international intellectuals and Fidel Castro's Revolution.
The publication of his poetry collection Fuera de Juego (1968) was the beginning of Padilla's downfall, who was arrested by Cuban State Security in 1971 after a poetry recital titled Provocaciones. The poet spent 38 days in jail. His wife, Belkis Cuza, was also arrested for two days.

His arrest provoked protests from famous intellectuals of the time who until that moment had expressed their support for Castro and his movement. Names such as Julio Cortázar, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Jean-Paul Sartre, Susan Sontag and Mario Vargas Llosa signed a letter addressed to Fidel Castro.

Padilla's now famous self-incrimination took place in April 1971, only hours after being released. For many it recalled the so-called "Moscow trials," the famous purges of the Stalinist era. It was the beginning of the end of the romance of progressive intellectuals with the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the beginning of what later came to be called the "gray five years," where censorship clipped the wings of creativity and art on the island.

Several of those present that night in the 1970s, including Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Norberto Fuentes, described the moment extensively in later works, and transcripts were known, but not the recordings, which had not been revealed to the general public until now.

According to Giroud's theory, at some point during the 1980s or early 1990s, inspired by Soviet perestroika and the "rectification of errors," copies were made for the purpose of discussing them but, according to the filmmaker "it is evident that when they saw it, they understood that there was no possible debate. Then, most likely, from those copies, other copies were made," he explains.

"What happens is that I was the one who decided to do something with those tapes," affirms Giroud, considered one of the most important directors of contemporary Cuban cinema, author of films such as La edad de la Peseta (2006) and El Acompañante (2015).

His first approach to the history and life of Heberto Padilla was through La Mala Memoria, a biographical novel that the writer published from exile in the United States. Then he began to read his poetry collections and other works that spoke of the "Padilla Case," as the international press baptized it.

Giroud was inspired by Padilla's "self-criticism" to write the screenplay for a short for a collaboration with the now defunct Cuban artist collective "Los Carpinteros."

"Then the material falls into my hands and I said: 'this is a gift from heaven and a request for me to make the film. It was then that I decided to make it. I hesitated, I entered into that ethical dilemma and in the end I decided to make the film and let the sun rise wherever it rises'".

For the director, the "dilemma" was how to approach the subject "take it as it is or make a film". Giroud opted for the latter.

"It motivated me a lot to do it, I felt that I obviously had something very valuable in my hands, but I also calculated that if what I wanted was to show a truth about Cuba, which is a very true truth, which is not a fact of the past, which is not a distant historical fact, but rather repeats itself every day, it was going to be more effective if I made a good rigorous, professional film, that could navigate through the most important festivals in the world and then they had a journey or a destiny on platforms," he detailed.

The premiere of El Caso Padilla raised controversy from its announcement and had mixed reactions, the most heated among those who demanded the full publication of the tapes and even accused Giroud of "kidnapping national memory".

"I understand people who think: you are not the one to tell me what I have to see, it's true, but we calculated and it is that by revealing the film, the impact that would have as news was going to generate much more effect, than hanging materials on YouTube or on any other platform where anyone could denounce it and dismantle it," insisted the filmmaker.

Instead of simply releasing the recordings, Giroud preferred to put them in context, supporting them with other tapes and archival interviews that give a more complete vision of the circumstances that led Padilla to deny himself and his work.

"When I had the tapes it wasn't very difficult for me to imagine the film I wanted to tell, then I imposed on myself doing it only with archival material," Giroud indicated, who faced a problem because, as he adds, "in Cuba they were never going to give archives for a project like this".

Shortly after the premiere of El Caso Padilla, Cuban poet Jorge Ferrer published Padilla's confession on his blog El tono de la voz.

"These film documents have remained hidden for decades. I share them, because the hands that have delivered them to me authorize me to do so. And because the shared history obliges me to do so, which is at once mine and that of all," wrote Ferrer without revealing the source of the tapes either.

In the recordings, you see a sweaty Padilla, at times euphoric, at times nervous, denying himself and his work. a "lamentable spectacle, but not because of Padilla, but because of those who forced him to erase himself in exchange for freedom," Raquel Carmenate, a young Cuban who attended the documentary screening organized by the Florida International University, assured VOA.