Víctor Alfonso, creator of Yesapín García dies in Miami from cancer

July 9, 2024

Cuban filmmaker Víctor Alfonso Cedeño, creator of the charismatic animated character Yesapín García, died this Monday in Miami at age 41, after losing his battle against cancer.

Born in Cienfuegos in 1983, Alfonso Cedeño was an architect and cartoonist. Through the independent production company La Casita del Lobo, he created series such as Dany and el Club de los berracos.

Furthermore, he won numerous awards at the festivals of Cubanima, Caracol, Surimagen, Nuevos Realizadores, and Cubanacán.

His extensive filmography also includes Lavando calzoncillos (2012), Cositas malas (2018), and Invertebrados (2010), by Harold Díaz-Guzmán Casañas.

His death has shocked the filmmaking community on the island, as is the case with critic and essayist Juan Antonio García Borrero, for whom "Cuban cinema receives another very harsh blow".

"His willingness to create his own world greatly stimulated me, and from there, to launch himself into the struggle," added the also Cuban cinema researcher on his Facebook wall.

The Assembly of Filmmakers also said farewell to the filmmaker as someone who contributed so much to independent cinema and Cuban Animation, highlighting his greatest success, Yesapín García, "that foul-mouthed and sassy girl designed for the web, whose first episodes became a mass phenomenon rarely seen in our context".

On Facebook, the Assembly recalled that most of his film work was independent, carried out "with scarce resources and loyal friends". Likewise, it highlighted that Víctor was linked to the Young Exhibition and the guys from Cardumen, although "his films barely found exhibition spaces in our movie theaters".

He was "a talented and imaginative artist who knew how to look at, interpret and process from anthropology, irony and his own personal pain, the accurate image of a nation," states the Assembly of Filmmakers in its statement.

Alfonso Cedeño's work stands out for the excellent appropriation of Cuban youth slang from the 2010s, as well as the characterization of the characters, drawn from the new archetypes that make up the idiosyncrasy of today's adolescent.