After the success of its premiere in Madrid, the documentary Patria y vida: The Power of Music arrives this Thursday on Movistar Plus+, a Spanish pay television platform.
The first screening of the work in the capital of the European country took place last Monday afternoon at the Callao cinema, located on the central Gran Vía, where its director Beatriz Luengo, as well as the producer and her husband, the Cuban rapper Yotuel Romero, offered heartfelt words to the attendees.
"Eight months pregnant, I started recording my husband and we asked a wonderful cameraman who also joined us in Cuba, who was arrested for it, to film the boys from the San Isidro Movement and the other guys who are part of the song," Luengo stated before those present.
"I started recording the images out of fear; someone recommended that we record everything, and when I got to the room with the editors and saw everything we had, that fear multiplied for me, but so did my love," he stated to the EFE agency.
Along with six other people, including her partner Yotuel, she was also the one who composed "Patria y vida," the song that subverted from its very title the "homeland or death" slogan proclaimed by the late dictator Fidel Castro as the motto of the country after the Revolution he led over 60 years ago.
That is one of the focuses of the documentary, to demonstrate “that a song that had no support suddenly becomes an anthem and turns into a revolution and a word that thousands of people tattoo on themselves.”
Specifically, the material pays special attention to the rapper Maykel Osorbo and the independent plastic artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, both imprisoned in Cuban jails for their dissenting stance.
It also shows images taken on the island on July 11, 2021, during the massive protests against the regime, in which thousands of people chanted the phrase "Homeland and Life!" to demand the end of the dictatorship.
Starting from October 18, the documentary will arrive in: Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Murcia, Málaga, Cádiz, Sevilla, Tenerife, Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Jaén, Toledo, Oviedo, and Pamplona.
In 2023, the work won the Special Jury Award at the BendFilm festival, held in Oregon, United States.
What do you think?
COMMENTFiled under: