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VODKA LEMON AND CUBA LIBRE EXPLOSIVE COCKTAILS

The cinema shows with clarity how man is capable of facing pain and recreating it in art. That`s what the films Dreaming of Julia, directed by the Cuban Juan Gerard and Vodka Lemon, by the Curd Hiner Saleen, both exiled filmmakers, demonstrate.

The two directors participated in the debate at Clube da Mostra Star One on October 23rd, with Serginho Groisman as facilitator. Both filmmakers made fiction films having the hard experience of exile as their starting point.

Even far from their countries since he was ten, Gerard has lived in the USA and Saleen lives in France the two of them put in their films that which is most precious to them: their memories. In every film of mine there are traces of my childhood: smells, feelings, all that I have lived. They say the exile robs you of everything, except for your roots, says Saleen. Gerard sees Dreaming of Julia as a search for a lost paradise, that we all have. It was the images of my land and of my childhood which led me to make this film.

Although the themes of exile and political and religious intolerance have influenced both in a decisive way, Saleen and Gerard say that their works are not political banners. I made a film with a political aspect, but what interests me is human beings, says the Cuban. We, artists, have to remind everyone be he a German, a Brazilian, a Japanese, a Cuban that we are human beings. This is our function.

I didn`t think about politics when I wrote the script; I thought of my childhood, which I remember well, all in white except for the black dress my mother wore. This is how this story began, reveals Saleen. Born in the Curd area in Southern Iraq, Hiner Saleen doesn`t avoid the issue of politics and calls attention to the violence afflicting his people: Last century, we knew Communism, Fascism, Nazism, the Latin American dictatorships, but not much is said about the pan-Arab and pan-Turk ideologies, which persecute Curds and Armenians respectively, and want to destroy everything which is different.

In São Paulo, the two filmmakers were moved by the tolerance of a people formed with ethnic, cultural and religious mixture. I was impressed by this diversity. Countries like Turkey and Iraq have a lot to learn from São Paulo and Brazil, thinks Saleen.