LOVE and SUICIDE: The Biggest Little Picture

12 page Cover Story in Publics Magazine

Written by Walter Ryce

Interviews: Lisa Silvera and Walter Ryce

Images: Rick Delgado

Editors Note*

If you have not already done so, we implore you to see the independently produced film, LOVE and SUICIDE before the years’ end. This film will affect you deeply and unforgettably. When you have seen the film, please talk about it and encourage 5 more people to see it as well. Luis, Lisa, Bobbi, Demian, Jerry and Peter this is for you – from all of us at PUBLIC Magazine.

Courtship: There’s Something In The Air

We open on an exterior wide shot of a passenger plane cruising high above the cloud line. Destination: Cuba. Among the passengers is a small, close-knit American/Cuban-American film crew. They are anxious and eager. They are on their way to attend a screening of their film Anne B. Real at the Havana Film Festival. But they are also going to Cuba for another reason—a secret “mission”. With a small DVX camera the size of a lunch box in hand, and a tentative, unsanctioned plan in mind, they will, if fate and the Cuban government don’t intercede—film a movie there. It will be the first American narrative film shot on location in Cuba in nearly 50 years. It’s name; Love and Suicide.

The Seed: A Little Backstory

The idea originated with writer/producer/actor Luis Moro. Loosely based on a painful and unresolved relationship with his own father, as well as elements from lead actor Kamar De Los Reyes’ life, Luis wanted to tell a story about one of Cuba’s prodigal sons trekking back to his roots to find and face a past he had thus far denied. Luis also wanted to tell the story in Cuba, which, due to the U.S. embargo, made the prospect prohibitive and unlikely. That is, until Anne B. Real is accepted to participate in the Havana Film Festival. It gives the independent film crew the opening they need. It isn’t much time—about three weeks. But it might be enough.

Contact: Guerrilla Style

The Cuban customs checkpoint turns out to be anti-climactic. Their walkie-talkies are confiscated, but their Hi-Def DVX cameras and other equipment are allowed through. The film crew faithfully do the meet-and-greets and Q & A’s at the festival. But when not attending festival events, they use a combination of discretion, watchfulness, minimal equipment, and their Cuban lineage to blend into the bustling life of Havana. They shoot in the open as camouflage. They improvise. They shoot quickly and leave the scene quickly. The police are, thankfully, disinterested, even helpful. The crew get permission when they can, but when they can’t they shoot anyway. The way co-producer Bobbi-Miller Moro puts it, “We don’t quit.”

Using natural light and real Cubans going about their real lives, the small crew capture scenes that contain a quality of cinema verite—cinema of truth. Ordinary Cubans (“The most warm, loving and non-judgemental people you will ever encounter,” says Luis) lend help, enthusiasm, and act as a buffer between the Cuban authorities and the project. Day-by-day, hour-by-hour, they capture the pieces that will comprise Love and Suicide. Atypical of such a risky shoot, “completion of this film was divine, executed without one single hitch or problem,” says producer Peter Maez. When the film festival ends, so too does their filming schedule. Then it’s back to the USofA.

Gestation: The Recesses of Post-Production

So the hard part is over, right? Wrong. Next comes the task of assembling the 40+ hours of raw footage they’ve shot in Cuba (and location shots in New York) into something cohesive. The whole familia, along with Lab 601 Productions, shacks up together—commune style—in one, big house in Van Nuys, California. They live, cook, work, eat, clean, struggle, learn, and then work some more, in the orbit of Love and Suicide. The post-production ordeal consumes the small crew; it demands all their energy, it demands resolution. Co-Producer Peter Maez gives thanks, especially during this time, to “den mom” Bobbi Moro, who “held the fort down…as the fist of the production and the real matriarch of the film.”

The early drafts of the film are screened in front of friends and family in Miami, New York, and Alabama (yes, Alabama). It is then re-edited; storylines emerge, collide, morph, and submerge. The process is in such flux that Luis isolates himself from the operation until he can re-focus. When he returns, he brings Jorge “Jokes” Yanes with him, who brings a selection of choice Cuban salsa, merenge, Columbian, European, and post-modern songs to accompany the images from Havana. Luis orchestrates the young, technically proficient editors like a conductor. It all starts to take shape.

Birth: World, Meet Love and Suicide

Love and Suicide opens with various shots of life in Havana; aging architecture, old, classic cars, a mule-driven buggy, colourful people, small fishing boats, and simple commerce. Director Lisa France lets this montage set the tone. These shots are accompanied by a telling voice-over by Luis’ taxi driver character, Alberto: “I’ve seen the free world through the eyes of many tourists…no one is truly free.”

In an upscale New York apartment, the main character of the story, Tomas (Kamar De Los Reyes), drowns himself with booze and pills in an internal battle with unnamed demons. On the verge of losing this inner struggle, Tomas escapes to Cuba, holing up in a room at the Rivera Hotel. Soon, he encounters two people that will force him to re-evaluate himself in ways that he alone could not.

One such person is Cuban taxi driver Alberto, played by Luis with deadpan zeal, compassion, and machismo in a refreshing performance by the rarest of actors; a black Latino. Alberto takes an interest in Tomas right away, first as a curiosity, then as a taxi fare, and finally as a friend. The other fateful encounter is with a crimson-haired American tourist named Nina, played by Daisy McCrackin. Whereas Tomas is initially “serious” and angst-y, Nina’s bright-eyed openness pierces his shroud.

Alberto is enlisted to ferry the two yumas (foreigners) around—and into—the heart of Cuba. In tourist fashion, the unusual couple explore the whirlwind of sights, sounds, and culture around them. The vibrancy of the Cuban people defiantly shines on the decaying facades of the surrounding buildings. Alberto completes their experience by inviting the couple to his home for a warm, hearty family feast. Slowly, Tomas delves deeper into painful and buried layers of his self, including a confrontation with his Latin heritage, and a visit to his estranged father’s past. His two companions provide the prodding and support he will need.

After this colourful and potent tour through Cuba, the film cuts back to Tomas in New York, which seems big and imposing by comparison. Is this a flashback to the beginning? Was the beginning a flashforward to the end? This is a David Lynchian puzzle that invites speculating rather than solving—a structural warp in a film whose heart is in the big, juicy middle.

Luis Moro says of Love and Suicide’s overriding theme: “You cannot exist in this world in anger, and in resentment. Forgiveness is essential for survival.” That message has special significance in the Cuban exile community here in the States. It poses a challenge to let go of painful history in order to embrace the living people and enduring spirit of Cuba.

Growth: Walking, Talking, Marketing

As you read this, the contraband film is doing the rounds. In true guerrilla form that mirrors their shooting style in the streets of Havana, the team of Luis and Bobbi Moro, Peter Maez, and a host of other principals are hard at work trying to get the film seen. There have been screenings in Miami, New Mexico, and briefly in New York, where the appetite for the film is swelling. Key West, London (which happens to be the name of the Moros’ second child) and Los Angeles are next.

At each screening, the filmmakers meet with audience members, shaking hands, talking, and exchanging ideas, recollections, business cards, phone numbers, and hugs from grateful abuelitas (grandmothers). True to grassroots form, they encourage everyone who has seen the film to tell five others, creating a people-to-people network. One guerrilla marketing campaign promoting the movie had to be accomplished for about (don’t laugh) $600. On the other hand, Luis is able to compile a hefty email list of 45,000, and Bobbi maintains high internet visibility and juicy media contacts. The team is deeply grateful to “James” the visionary general manager of Miami’s Coconut Grove AMC Theatre, who championed the film and gave the filmmakers invaluable exposure for a surprisingly victorious 10-week run, which mirrors the happenings at a New Mexico screening. Big hopes for the immediate future rest on what happens at the Regency Fairfax Cinema in Los Angeles. L.A.; if they can make it there, they’ll make it anywhere.

Struggle: “Thank You For Not Going Into Politics”

Thank you for not going into politics. This is what one old Cuban woman says to Peter Maez as she exits the Love and Suicide screening at the AMC movie theatre in Coconut Grove. She goes on to explain that she hadn’t seen Cuba so clear, so immediate, in a film without the taint of politics. It was like going back to Cuba, she cries as she tells him this. Many cry at the end of the film; they sit through the credits, remembering, composing themselves.

The media is also reacting to Love and Suicide, though the press is skewed toward the political ramifications surrounding its creation and import; the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a letter of investigation and threatened fines; hard-line anti-Castro Cubans have expressed anger; the Cuban government remains strangely silent thus far, though they know of its existence. Still, the team knows that any publicity can help their cause, which is really three-fold; to increase distribution of the film, to show Cuba and its people without censor, and to protest the embargo. They don’t welcome trouble so much as they hope for dialogue, and they know how to spin attention into PR (getting banned “would be great for promotion,” says Bobbi).

But as artists, they get weary of the same sensational political angles that journalists cast their way. It seems the spiritual, familial, and human part of the story gets brushed aside to make room for the potential powder keg surrounding the film. The filmmakers are comfortable with the fact that the artistic and the political are irretrievably tied together in Love and Suicide. It was, after all, their intention.

“This film represents the epitome of free speech,” says Luis. Bobbi agrees, adding that “our rights as Americans, our rights as a human being” supersede the restrictions of the embargo. They believe they are in a position to bridge the rift between the United States and Cuba when (When!) the wall of the embargo comes tumbling down. They would be proud if the legacy of this film were to serve as the first volley that crashes through that wall, encouraging people to reach across the divide. Talk about ambition. Talk about hope.

Dreaming: To Be Continued…

An award-winning artist in her own right, Bobbi is “still blown away” about the prospect of Love and Suicide playing in her “hometown” of Los Angeles. Her enthusiasm is tempered by the high stakes and sacrifices that the project has engendered: “It’s like our baby. We want the best reception…on the other hand, you’re always tentative,” she says by phone from California. Her husband Luis is there, too. They are ordinary people; their lives have been elevated by the pull of their dreams. Luis cooks something in the kitchen. While conducting the phone interview, Bobbi nurses her baby. They are ordinary people, accomplishing something extraordinary.

Directed by Lisa France. Produced by Luis Moro, Demian Lichtenstien, Jerry Katell, & Peter Maez. Original Story by Luis Moro. Screenplay by Luis Moro & Lisa France. Director of Photography by Demian Lichtenstien. Executive Producer by Duane Wandless. Co-Producers Belinda Marment, Jesse Guma, Bobbi Miller-Moro & Cynthia Perez-Brown. 1st AD, Belinda Marment. Editors; Jorge “Jokes” Yanes & Bruno Breil. Associate Producer/Locations: Alberto Gonzalez. Sound design; Matt Mariano. Lead Actors; Kamar De Los Reyes (Tomas), Luis Moro (Alberto), & Daisy McCrackin (Nina). Lightstone Entertainment with Katell Productions in Association with LAB 601. Runtime: 90 minutes, Language: English & Certification: USA Un-Rated. www.morofilms.com & www.loveandsuicidethemovie.com

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