By Jackie Jauregui
Science fiction is based on reality, so Cuban writer-director Miguel Coyula felt it was only natural to draw upon and expand dictator Fidel Castro’s vision for his 2021 film Corazón Azul.
The film, which Coyula also co-produced, imagines a reality where Fidel Castro creates an intelligent genetically-modified race to uphold his socialist order.
“I always felt that Fidel Castro was like a mad scientist in the sense that he was always experimenting with a cow that would produce the best meat and the best milk or the hydroponic tomatoes,” Coyula told a UC Santa Barbara audience. “He would pour all the resources of the country into this. So, I thought if he had the technology to actually do it with humans, he could have done it, probably.”
As part of its Global series, UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted a screening and post-screening conversation with both Coyula and actor and producer Lynn Cruz. The Spanish and Portuguese department’s Kiley Guyton Acosta and Cristina Venegas from Film and Media Studies — both scholars of Latin American culture — moderated the discussion.
(From left to right) Latin America scholars Christina Venegas and Kiley Guyton Acosta, with writer-director Miguel Coyula and actress Lynn Cruz, discussing their film Corazón Azul after a screening at UCSB’s Pollack Theater.
In the film, scientists lose control over Castro’s experiment. The genetically-altered race is a dark and emotionally-detached group who are misfits in their society and revolt with extreme violence and terrorism. In the process, Elena — one of the experiment’s products — attempts to uncover her own humanness in her murky origin story.
It was a challenge to create a science-fiction drama with such a complex premise, the director said, but what was even more challenging was its necessarily clandestine production. Cuban cinema is censored, so Coyula and Cruz had to make the film without permits, and therefore without the government’s knowledge in order to retain control of the project. Artistic collaborator Cruz said the two struggled for a decade to make an independent film in the shadows.
“The biggest challenge to me was to be an actor — since I was producer, assistant director, and costume designer,” she said. “What we didn't have on budget, we dedicated with time. It was the biggest, best resource that we had. [Miguel and I] were just two people most of the time,” she said.
Film scholar Cristina Venegas cited a 2019 decree that declared artists could be recognized and even receive financial support from the Cuban government. Even so, Coyula decided against registering as an artist in his country. Although it offered the opportunity to have his film subsidized, it would have meant removing the parts of the script that were critical of the regime.
“The only way to achieve complete freedom was to simply be outside of any radar and continue working the way I did before,” he said. “You cannot have a depiction of Fidel Castro that is negative and have it approved. To be independent is to be independent in form and content.”
Because it satirizes the failures of world leaders such as Castro, Corazón Azul has even been censored beyond Cuba’s borders.
Coyula recounted that three days before the Minsk International Film Festival, Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s film commission declared the film to be pornography and said it could not be shown. Then they changed their minds and bought the filmmaker a ticket. When Coyula arrived, he found they had taken the film out of the main competition and placed it in the ‘new filmmaker’ category — but he was 44, so didn’t fit the category.
“When I got to the website, [I saw] they changed the age limit for being a young filmmaker to 45. And when I got to the theater, there were just five strong guys in the front row and nobody else in the audience,” Coyula recalled, explaining how he was sidelined.
(From left to right) filmmaker Matthew David Roe, actress Lynn Cruz, Christina Venegas, writer-director Miguel Coyula, and Kiley Guyton Acosta after a Corazón Azul panel discussion hosted by UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center.
Even the Cuban diaspora in the United States rejected the film. Coyula believes it didn’t play at the Miami International Film Festival because organizers considered him a communist. But, as someone who doesn’t subscribe to any particular political ideology, he said he made the intentional choice to not be partisan when writing this film.
Recalling a film school teacher’s advice, he said, “When you do a film that is dealing with a political matter, always make sure you upset everybody that’s involved in a conflict. Otherwise, you end up making propaganda for one another.”
Jackie Jauregui is a third-year Political Science and Spanish major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.