Octavio Cortázar Returns to Life in Patricio Wood Documentary

December 14, 2022

Like a magician or spiritualist, filmmaker Patricio Wood brought back to life the distinguished Cuban filmmaker Octavio Cortázar, the protagonist of a documentary that was selected for the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.

"That is Octavio's Life," blends fiction and reality through archival materials and testimonies from filmmakers who shared his professional life such as Manolo Pérez, Raúl Rodríguez, Manuel Herrera, Enrique Pineda, and Luis Lacosta.

According to Wood's explanation on the Cubanow Streaming program, to bring this project to life he relied on unpublished materials such as "two life interviews that he gave to different people and that they gave to me," in which they applied different restoration techniques because the audio was in poor condition.

In this way, he ensured "having the best Octavio possible speaking about his life, something that was very rare," since he always kept his personal or family life away from media spotlight.

For this reason, the audiovisual respects the wishes of the creator of titles such as Guardafronteras (1980), Derecho de Asilo (1994), and more than twenty documentaries, who dedicated more than six decades to cinema.

Over the course of 30 minutes, the film narrates the prolific trajectory of the artist (1935-2008), who "left very important work for us Cubans, he quickly understood the type of cinema that should be made," Wood noted.

According to Wood, who is also an actor, with this release he settles a personal debt, since at age 14 he had the opportunity to star in Cortázar's first feature film: El brigadista.

The project "speaks about the life of one of the creators who is part of that select group of founders of Cuban cinema, a man who gave great importance to documentary."

"It is an intention in the film's aesthetics to keep him alive, to have him there, to bring him to life, speaking with me helping me direct the work, giving me advice," he emphasized.