We sat down with the five filmmaking teams who brought their projects to Rough Cut Retreat to hear a little bit more about their films, their creative process, and how the retreat impacted their work. Here’s the first of five, featuring filmmaker Kim Hopkins.

Voices of the Sea takes us into the heart of a high-stakes family drama playing out in a remote Cuban fishing village. Director Kim Hopkins brought her project to the 2017 Rough Cut Retreat after completing the first major edit of the film. Here we talk with her about the project and her experience at Rough Cut.

 

TF: How did you get involved in this project and how did you meet your subjects?

KH: In the late 1990’s I helped form the documentary department at EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television) in Cuba. Whilst working with documentary students we often visited Playa Cajio, a fishing village, situated on the South coast. It was during these visits that I met with the fishermen and their families of Playa Cajio. It was then that the seed of an idea began to germinate. I knew all things Ernest Hemingway was an acceptable subject for the Cuban authorities to green light. I pondered, what if Hemingway had written ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ today? Fisherman Pita seemed to me to embody Hemingway’s old man. Oh, and I love fishing.

 

TF: How long did you spend shooting?

KH: A 3 person crew lived and filmed in Playa Cajio for 10 weeks, until we were turfed out by the Cuban military. Some time later, we then returned for 2 weeks to update the storylines.

 

 

TF: During the post-screening discussion we talked a lot about how you built a sense of community and place through the everyday scenes. I remember specifically we referenced how they resourcefully fixed their possessions (like sewing together a plastic chair with rope, or rebuilding a motor). Tell me a little about your process for constructing this sense of place through those scenes.

KH: Cubans are perhaps the most resourceful people on earth. They’ve had to be, with one of the most punitive and cruel embargos imposed on them for more than half a century. I’ve always been interested in how people live day to day, how the small stuff informs us as to how we survive hour by hour. In Cuba, one person sells the bread, another fishing bait, another hooks, or line, and yet another a belt to hold your pants up. This is how community is formed, by an army of Mr fix-its, and black market sellers. In one single day Pita (central character) counted 56 people that had passed through his kitchen. This at once introduced us to the community, and the locations.

 

TF: You gave the group attempting to leave Cuba a small camera to record their journey. What made you decide to do that, and was the group hesitant to film at all?

KH: Gaining the trust of those planning an illegal escape from Cuba was the most difficult thing. Usually, only immediate family or the closest of friends know about such plans, as nobody, not even in a small village know who the informers are. Because we were foreigners, and because we were perhaps the first people to give the villagers a voice, we gained trust. It seemed if Pita trusted us, that was good enough for the village. We knew that the illegal handcrafted boats contained about 20 people, and that those rafters came from all over the island. They didn’t even know each other. Therefore, we knew it would be impossible to get a consensus from the whole group to agree to one of us filming. We also knew, should we get caught trying to film an illegal escape, we might get accused of aiding and abetting people trafficking. None of us wanted to eat rice and beans for ten years in a Cuban prison. Therefore, Michel whom we’d gained some trust, offered to take with him a small domestic camera, one from the island that would not be immediately traced back to us should they get caught. We asked him to keep his fingers off the zoom, to hold shots, and to make sure both he and his wife were in some of the material. He was instructed, should they get caught, to jettison the camera overboard, but keep the micro-SD media card somewhere safe. Estrella his wife did just that.

 

TF: The footage from their journey is so intense. What was the process of watching it and deciding what to use like? Was it difficult to watch or decide what fit into the narrative?

KH: When we received the SD card back from the rafters, we fully expected about 5 minutes of material. You can imagine our joy at seeing nearly 4 hours were filmed. Michel and the other rafters felt a sense of duty to their countryfolk to record one of these dreadfully dangerous journeys. Michel and some of the other rafters did a great job of covering the central drama of their journey. Each day had coverage. When the engine failed, it was covered. When the engine was thrown overboard, it was covered. When the priest prayed for their salvation, it was covered. When I saw the material I had a real sense that it was people’s journalism, the camera was used as a political tool, and through the dialogue it was evident that the rafters were fully aware of its power. The material shot really chose itself.

 

TF: The international relations and politics of Cuba are very prominent in the story line. Can you talk a little about the situation and the group attempting to leave Cuba?

KH: From the onset, we wanted to make a film about ‘ordinary’ Cubans. What we call the Peso Cuban, those with no real access to the convertible Peso (CUC), which is effectively the dollar. It is mainly Peso Cubans who are driven into the sea, risking their lives for what they feel is a chance of a better life. The group that were on the filmed raft, were from all parts of the Island, there was a priest, a surgeon, a journalist, a fisherman, a sanitary worker, a farmer, a pregnant woman and a diabetic housewife. I guess they all had their own reasons for attempting this perilous journey, whether is be; economic, political, the American dream, or simply family reunification. We know several of them had attempted the journey many times before.

 

TF: So we have this odyssey plot, people journeying far away with harrowing struggles along the way, but we also have this captivating “land” plot, in which we get connected to this central character Pita. In it he really embodies the community, especially the fishing community. Tell me more about his role in the film and how he, and his wife, became your central character(s)?

KH: I know it’s not really the thing to admit to in the documentary community, but I always ‘cast’ my films. I had an idea that was loosely based on Hemingway’s ‘The old Man and the Sea’. I was looking for Hemingway’s old man, the embodiment of Santiago. A subsistence fisherman, somebody who rows out to sea each day, somebody who has those deep creases in the back of his neck, and scars on his hands. When I met Pita, I immediately knew I wanted to film him. I have a simple philosophy, if I over-film somebody, because I just can’t turn the camera off, that’s always for me the clincher. Then, when he spoke, I knew it. His voice came from the depths of the ocean, or from smoking since he was 7 years old. Pita, is a big man in Playa Cajio, the king of coffee. He shares everything he has, much to his wife Mariela’s frustration. Pita for me seemed to personify everything I love about Cuba, its grit, its patina, the romance, the pride, the generosity, and the sheer bloody minded determination in the face of overwhelming odds. Mariela personifies perhaps the new Cuba, those looking to the future. She is beautiful, but melancholy. She is frustrated, but has hope. She is torn between surviving in the now, and building for the next generation. Between them there was this elephant in the room, in the shape of the American dream.

 

TF: When editing, how did you weave together these two stories to make a cohesive film?

KH: I always seem to make films that have two narratives running in parallel. I set out to make a simple film about a subsistence fisherman. When the rafters’ story presented itself to me, I knew it was going to be both a blessing and a curse. The emotional drive of the film resides with the relationship between Pita & Mariela, but the dramatic drive of the film resides with the rafters’ quest. Somehow Leah (editor) and myself knew each section of the story had to propel us further along, a kind of emotional and dramatic checkerboarding in which each would inform the other. The rest was a suck it and see.

 

TF: The relationship between Pita and Mariela is really tense in the film. When building the portrait of their relationship how did you decide what moments to include in the film and what to exclude?

KH: This is a difficult question as both Leah (editor) and myself are still wrestling with this. I think the eureka moment was when Leah suggested that Mariela’s quest should not be solely set around her conflict about leaving or staying, rather that she was trying to reconcile her feelings of being trapped. This is a subtle difference, but one that informed the emotional journey of the film.

 

TF: They both have this sense of marital perseverance for the sake of their children set against Mariela’s waning attraction to her husband and her desire for a better future for her kids. There’s a scene where they’re having a very frank conversation about the differences between each other and she says “the name, the gender, and the age gap.” Can you expand on this moment for me? It feels pivotal in the film.

KH: Gender politics play a part, most especially when western sensibilities cast judgement on different cultural norms. It was important to us that Pita doesn’t come over as some male sage, with a wisdom that his wife lacks, simply because he’s a man. Rather, for us, it is simply Pita is a lot older than his wife, and his life experience had informed him of their reality. Pita has two generations of family in America, and he knows their reality. For Pita, it is simple, he’s pragmatic, ‘you can have your dreams and I will support you as much as I can.’ In the meantime, ‘I’m going to deal in the here and now, in our reality, and if the dream fails, the elder boys will know how to feed themselves’. If the dream succeeds, then great. The interesting thing about this scene is, it reflects on my own life. My partner is a lot younger than myself, and we have this very same conflict. It’s a generation thing.

 

TF: Can you talk about the score you used in the film? It’s a very distinct sound that runs throughout the entire film.

KH: We felt that a Latin American sound track was important, but we wanted to steer clear of anything Buena Vista’ish. We searched out music that was sparse and reflective, so the lapping of the waves or the rattling of an old yank tank would always push through.

 

TF: What stage of post-production were you in when you came to Rough Cut? Had other people seen the film or were you pretty far along in the feedback process?

KH: We were at late rough cut stage, we felt structurally we were nearly there, but had some very specific questions we wanted feedback on. The only people outside the team that had seen the film were a few very close filmmaker friends, including a screenwriter.

 

TF: During the retreat, you got some feedback from a bunch of different filmmakers, what was some of the best feedback you got and how has it impacted your film so far?

KH: As mentioned, we had some specific niggles and wanted to test them with a very eminent bunch of filmmakers. Interestingly, our main niggle was never raised, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying to address it. The main overarching takeaway from the retreat was giving both Leah (editor) and myself a new sense of courage of our convictions. We were very happy, that the consensus was to be braver, be more lyrical.

 

 

Rough Cut Retreat is a collaborative project from True/False Film Fest and Catapult Film Fund that strives to give filmmakers with new projects dedicated time, mentorship, and feedback to help their work move from a rough cut to a final cut.