Sergio Corrieri, the David and the man from Maisinicú, beyond "Memorias…"

August 8, 2018

When it seems that emotions rest in a remote corner of routine, a documentary awakens us to yesterdays, almost faded, and then a joy appears with the spirit and image of an anonymous hero, The man of Maisinicú.

Corrieri, as he was always affectionately called, became known to my generation through that television series that stopped the time of all Cuban families back then, the David from In silence it had to be.

Almost two decades have passed and today we have before us the true story of the man, the actor, the theater director, the undisputed protagonist of an era in cinema and the virtuoso intellectual who surprises us with three poetry collections (The Nineties, Personal Matters, Of the sea and the fish) and a book of stories about Jaimanitas beach, where his childhood took place (Also the imagined), a legacy he left us when he passed away at 69 years old. Two other unpublished poetry collections and a short novel about the early years of the Escambray Theater Group remained.

"Sergio Corrieri has been, unquestionably, one of the great actors of Cuban theater and cinema during the second half of the twentieth century; however, his imprint in both media is practically unknown to the younger generations of Cubans and sometimes even a bit forgotten by his contemporaries".

Thus spoke Luisa Marisy, the director, during the premiere of the Cuban documentary Sergio Corrieri, beyond "Memories…". A graduate in History and Social Sciences, she is unknown as a filmmaker; however, she has over 20 audiovisuals to her credit and an important artistic and intellectual trajectory.

Today, together with her production team, she is revealed to us as the "discoverer" of one of the most recognized personalities of Cuban culture because it was for her "the fulfillment of a debt of love with my father Sergio Corrieri, the man who through his example contributed to my human and artistic formation".

With script by Luisa Marisy and José Ramón Marcos, production by Javier González, original music by Polito Ibáñez, Adalberto Roque as director of photography and Normando Torres in artistic direction, editing by Claudia Balmaseda and Jorge E. González Cruz and animators Alejandro Bustillo and Jorge González Cruz, these 64 minutes reach us with valuable testimonies from family members and close friends to reveal affections and memories of a genuine maker of everyday art, who by being simple and authentic not only left their mark on the lives of their contemporaries but converted him into a man of his time.

"We went to the Escambray Theater Group, and there came the second great discussion with my father because after the first time, since he had already had success as an actor and appeared in cinema and all that, and the neighbors would tell him 'I saw your son', and well the old man was already happy, satisfied that his son had (laughter) been successful as an actor, and when in '68 I tell him: 'Hey, I'm leaving'. 'What do you mean you're leaving, where are you going?'. And I tell him: 'To Escambray'. 'What for?'. I say: 'To do theater'. He says: 'Ah, you're crazy'." Thus Sergio Corrieri himself recounts it, with a cheerful and jovial face, almost ready to embrace, seeming to jump out of the screen.

A gift embellishes the proposal: original images recovered from the experiences of the Escambray Theater Group, where their performances were taken shortly after the struggle against bandits ended, then filmed as memories by Rogelio París and collected in the documentary From Escambray the peasant.

Black and white images that adorn the visuality of a story still pending to be told—which is there in the hills and in those who witnessed the birth of a theater never seen before in the newly born post-revolutionary Cuba—, and which Marisy shows us as part of her father's history.

Valuable testimonies that go beyond paternal legend save us from oblivion to convert this documentary into a jewel of Cuban audiovisual, in that it rescues little-known images and almost tucked away in fragrant drawers of memory, still latent in the soul of many of those who can still tell that story.

That is why this meeting with the press was organized at the Cinematographic Cultural Center Fresa y Chocolate with members of the staff and personalities close to the work of the great intellectual, theater artist and actor that Corrieri was.

"The family's will was always to achieve a documentary during my father's lifetime—Luisa Marisy recounted—, but his sudden illness made it impossible". His presence then takes as its axis his poems and some statements he himself made for the television program Cubans in the foreground.

This audiovisual is privileged with fragments of legendary performances by Corrieri alongside other greats of the Cuban stage such as Fernando Echevarría, Pedro Rentería, Flora Lauten, Albio Paz, Carlos Pérez, Mario Balmaseda, Raúl Pomares, Reinaldo Miravalles, Eslinda Núñez and Deisy Granados.

"To guide the different stages of the documentary we have selected some of his poems, which read by Víctor Casaus, also a poet and filmmaker, gradually reveal the concerns, anxieties and loves of Sergio Corrieri", explained its director.

Administrative and political responsibilities, foreign to his calling, kept the actor away from his world during the last twenty years of his life. Several questions would then come to popular imagination at his absence. Where has this great actor gone? Where will the Sergio of Memories... be? What has become of the actor who played the man of Maisinicú? Why don't we see on screen the David from the series In silence it had to be? Some of those answers you will find in this documentary.

Let it serve then for the learning of those who are beginning and for the sublime evocation of my generation the documentary by Luisa Marisy Sergio Corrieri, beyond "Memories…".