2023-11-25 23:40:24
Space With its own light of the Fidel Castro Center had the renowned Cuban director and photographer Roberto Chile as a guest this week.
Disciple of Korda, Corrales and Salas; Chile is a man who, along with many other artists, is part of the iconography of the Revolution in its genesis.
The small room of the Fidel Center became intimate with the anecdotes of the soldier with camera at the ready who accompanied the Commander everywhere, throughout all of Fidel’s tours.
Along the roads of the Sierra, through the cities, through the factories, through all the corners that the historical leader visited during the revolutionary process.
“When I look at the audience, there are essentially friends of mine, colleagues who live and who ultimately know part of my work and many of them also had the privilege of sharing with Fidel,” said the creator of the lens in the presentation of an unpublished filmography as a tribute. to the seventh anniversary of Fidel’s physical disappearance.
The Scout is an unpublished short film that honors the men who protected the Commander, with whom Roberto Chile strengthened ties due to the particularities of their profession.
“They helped me and I took care of them, they took me out of a crowd and put me in front so I could film,” Chile said.
This was the first presentation of material that had never come to light, also evidenced by Fidel’s meeting with his closest staff a few days after he became ill.
“They belong to me and to a certain extent I belong to them”, Fidel’s words that protect the graphic testimony of Chile, describing Fidel’s close bond with his escort family.
“From the depths of my heart, thank you,” Fidel expresses in this beautiful and short documentary to the men who accompanied him for much of his revolutionary life.
Roberto Chile. Photo: Yaimi Ravelo
Roberto Chile remembered the arrival of the boy Elián to Cuba as one of the most important moments of his career; his camera was the only one authorized to document this historical event in the great battle of ideas that was being fought at that time.
The director recounted Fidel’s request to make an hour and a half documentary about this event. The Commander was informed that the material – according to Chile – would not last the time he requested to project it in the Round Table space.
Fidel arrives at a protocol house where Chile was recording the boy playing, he approaches him, touches him on the shoulder and asks:
-“They told me that you say this doesn’t take an hour and a half,” Fidel questions.
-“Yes Commander, one hour; an hour and a half is not enough,” Chile responds.
-“Perfect, we covered the other half hour with two colleagues and you at the Table,” Fidel solves.
Chile described this task as the most difficult task assigned to him by the Commander. The humble artist of Cuban photography exceeds shyness in front of cameras and recognition, qualities that bring him closer to all generations of photographers on the island.
Roberto Chile. Photo: Yaimi Ravelo
In the space With its own light with Roberto Chile as a guest, another moment of impact was when he described Fidel’s physical disappearance from human and professional closeness.
They granted him the well-deserved duty of accompanying Fidel until the last moment.
“I wanted to go in the caravan to Santiago, it was my moral obligation to be with him until that last moment.
“The journey lasted seven days, we slept about three hours a day, the crowd was not summoned, the cell phones lit up at night and the shout of the entire town saying ‘I am Fidel.’ We felt the revolutionary enthusiasm present, at that moment he demonstrated that men are useful even after they are dead, because he united an entire country in a single cause, which is the Revolution,” Chile recalled.
Fidel’s mark on this man with a noble heart transcends time and borders after death.
Roberto Chile. Photo: Yaimi Ravelo
In one of his most recent documentaries “Sacha, a child from Chernobyl”, made together with the Cuban journalist Maribel Acosta, produced by the Argentine media accredited in Cuba Summary Latinoamericano, he had the opportunity to travel to Chernobyl and film Olga, the mother Ukrainian woman who is seen in archival images exchanging her cap with Fidel’s upon arriving in Cuba so that her son could receive treatment along with the thousands of boys and girls who recovered in Tarará.
“We went to Olga’s house, she had her cap hooked there – Fidel’s – she gave us great human warmth, she cried and greeted us, Chile said.
“He told us that he had seen that image on television that was circulating everywhere, it was very emotional to see that woman 30 years later, or even more so, keeping a cap with that signature that was barely visible. But she said it was one of the most exciting moments she experienced in her entire life.
“And there is Fidel, it is the mark he leaves on the people.”
May the human work of Chile serve to pay tribute to all the men and women of Fidel.
Taken from Latin American Summary
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