A Cuban friend and I attended the USC portion of the Cuban Women Filmmakers U.S. Showcase tour last night. It was a mammoth display of shameless hypocrisy, the very pinnacle of castrolandia’s atheist, godless twisted revolutionary culture, wrapped up in an ugly radical feminist package for dissemination in the U.S.
On display were three Cuban women filmmakers, all playing their orchestrated roles to perfection. Marina Ochoa, as the older, kindly motherly figure, sharing her struggles back in the day—hint, hint pre-Castro Cuba, where there were no film schools, opportunities for women, and now of course it’s all free! There was Milena Almira, a recent grad of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center, as the ingénue, no doubt for the comfort of young women in the audience, and in the lead, Claudia Rojas as the avant-garde decadent, the Andy Warhol want-to-be. (More on her later in the post.)
Before they turned off the lights and rolled the film, they informed us that there would be some violence, that some might find disturbing, or some such words. I’m not prudish, but nothing in my life experience prepared me for this deeply disturbing display. It was the most hateful, violent conclave of anti-male radical feminist, anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian tradition she-fest imaginable. We witnessed scenes of horrific human depravity, and sadly, I think an ad. An ad for atheist ideology, for the most depraved sex tourism conjured up by dark forces, and in referencing the Afro-Cuba Yoruba tradition, for the most sinister proclivities of racism. This should have come not with a general warning of violence, but a triple-X alarm. One of the shorts, contained horrific images in the style of slasher pornography. I found all but one short in the hour-long compilation boring, amateurish, and pointless, and that one not for artistry, but shock value, La Bestia.
An excerpt from the synopsis of La Bestia provides a clue, but it doesn’t prepare you for the nightmare portrayed:
“From that moment on, an uncontrollable thirst of revenge takes hold of her body and soul. A combination of magic realism, eroticism, and extreme terror that explores dark spaces of human nature.”
Dark spaces indeed, so dark no normal person would ever imagine it, much less choose to view such horror. The cast of La Bestia includes a child actress, a girl of about 7 or so, as just a child of the family, crying out for her mother, she is with ears and eyes, not a participant in the worst, however she too takes her revenge in the final scenes. (One more example of the terrible abuse of children allowed by the Castro regime.) I can’t imagine how they were allowed to show this on a college campus, after all, it’s not every day that one is able to view “slasher porn” screened at the USC School of Cinema. As a parent, I would not be pleased to know that this is what the almost $60,000 a year in tuition and other costs pays for.
The filmmakers took turns giving their spiel, each of course reminding the audience of how poor Cuba is—no money you know—but how as artists they struggle and strive out of love for all the high noble causes; justice, equality for women, an end to paternalism, etc. Anti-paternalism in the cult land of Fidel, or is it now Raul, or still Che? Whatever. The horror of these shorts should drive any sane person, women especially, running, screaming back into the arms of protective paternalism, but no of course it’s twisted… this is all the fault of that tradition. Never mind the facts, the statistics on family and health, crime, etc., that say otherwise. Sadly, my impression was that for the most part, I think the audience bought what they were selling.
I’ll single out Claudia Rojas since it’s obvious she wants to be a star. She described in detail an afternoon with her friend Queen Nzinga Maxwell, Womb Warrior, (whatever the hell that is) an artist who paints with her menstrual blood, (yes, that sick) and some connection with Assata Shakur (revolution?). I haven’t figured that out yet. I couldn’t keep up with her hedonistic narrative, but got that it’s about freeing yourself; take your clothes off, morph into, please forgive me for repeating this… La Caridad Del Cobre, then into whoever the Orisha goddess of Yoruba is. All of this delivered with a teasing smile and breathlessness to encourage the audience, and to remind us of how uninhibited and hip she is, leading us to the finale, no graphic detail necessary, as the audience gets it, the one word that will conquer all and bring world peace and justice…wait for it… LOVE, sweet love… you know, that’s what it’s all about.
They allowed three questions, I was chosen for one of them. I began citing human rights violations in Cuba, and the panel and audience immediately tried to shout me down, but I persisted and finished my statement and question, asking if there were plans to document the human rights violations and political prisoners in Cuba.
The collective reply was a non-answer, not worth repeating.
It was a sickening, orchestrated display. Pure evil. Their purpose, unspoken, was clear. Come to Cuba, come to Cuba where anything, anything you desire can happen; just bring money—no God of morality imposing rules of restraint here. This is what the Castro regime has done to the once great civil society of Cuba; they are now slaves, servicing, quite literally, the lowest human depravities.
I gained one invaluable affirmation from this event: my belief that communism is an evil, godless ideology, and that we must fight against it with everything we have.
More on the tour here.