Epicentro Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
Why Watch Epicentro?
- It’s an interesting outsider’s perspective of a forgotten country
- To meet anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist locals
- Watch a filmmaker unwittingly become part of the cycle of exploitation
From: Cuba, North America Watch: Trailer, IMDb, Website Next: The Project of the Century, I Am Cuba, Let it Burn
A Forgotten Country
Epicentro starts with a quick introduction to Cuba. To outsiders, it’s an outcast island in the Caribbean that most of the world has forgotten about since it lost it’s Cold War stage. Now, it only enters the world’s news cycle every four years with the U.S. election cycle, as each party reinforces their views on whether they should open up trade with the country or keep it closed. It’s ability to integrate into the global market is dictated by others.
Meeting the Locals
The camera follows some of this forgotten country’s citizens: a few prostitutes and their children. It follows them observationally at first; following them going about their lives at school, at home, and wandering the city. They give us a window into the Cuba psyche with their mature discussions on the topics of imperialism and colonialism. Things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to debate with a 12 year old.
You could assume that they’re just patriotically brainwashed, like kids in North Korea or the U.S. But their conversation also shows their self-awareness of their own country’s poverty and problems – something that is rarely taught or grasped by elementary or middle school children around the rest of the world.
The Problems of Tourism
The kids are also our witness to the exploitative incursions of foreign tourism that is turning their country, and them, into an exotic attraction. They see tourists riding in fancy pastel colored cars and staying in fancy hotels that they could never afford. These high spending tourists bear similarities to the U.S. tourists that used the country as a playground before the revolution (as depicted in I Am Cuba). There’s also the tourists that come to see a bit of the country frozen in time before it’s potentially modernized by it’s introduction to the global market. Whilst perhaps unintentionally, they’ve turned the country and it’s people into animals at a zoo. They exploit their poverty and the country’s dilapidation to boost their Instagram feed. Like the U.S. sticking a flag on the moon, they come, take their pictures, spend their money in fancy hotels, and leave, without consideration for the country or the people they’ve left preserved in poverty.
The worst example of this behavior, is a scene in which a creepy middle aged white man from the U.S. takes pictures of kids in alleys and on the street. In exchange, he gives them a pen, telling the camera that he hates giving people money, as it should be “an honor to have me take their picture”. It indicates that their only worth to him is their ability to look poor and as a white foreigner, he has a free pass to festishize them for his own gain.
Becoming a Part of the Problem
The superiority complex of the foreigners disturbed me more and more as the film progressed as it became clear that the filmmaker was part of the problem. Just like the tourists, the director has come to Cuba to shoot the isolated country before it’s opened up. He wants to capture a piece of the country before it disappears. Like the creepy photographer, he even rewards the kids he interviews with meals and visits to his fancy hotel.
Just like the tourists he criticizes, he’ll leave when he’s had his fill (once the film is complete). Also, because he gets the privilege of portraying the Cuba he wants to show, in choosing which scenes to keep and cut out, he actually furthers the exoticism of the country, perhaps more so than the tourists. He’s motivated to show a Cuba that intrigues his audience, perhaps instead of the real Cuba that an outsider could never capture.
What to Watch Next
For more films on Cuba, I’d strongly recommend watching both The Project of the Century and Lucia. Together, these two Cuban made films tell a complete story of the country from Spanish colonization to the decline of hope today. For another outsider’s view of the country, check out the brilliantly revolutionary I Am Cuba.
You could also watch Hale County, This Morning This Evening from the U.S. or Let it Burn from Brazil for two more films that document the lives of forgotten people living in poverty.
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