Miel para Oshún.

My first screening of Humberto Solás' Lucía (1968) in that class completely changed my life. The intrigues and emotional excess of Mexican movies, telenovelas, and music nourished my childhood and adolescent propensity to daydream about alternative personas that helped me

survive the rough edges of my quotidian reality. The early 1980s closure of the last theater in San Francisco that played Mexican movies marked the end both of my youth and my experiences watching Spanish language films in the comforting darkness of the theater where for over three hours (double bills were always programmed) the audience bonded as a community through our shared spectatorship.

Some ten years later Lucía reunited me to Latin American cinema and renewed my love for movies in my mother tongue. The baroque stylistic virtuosity of each of the three parts of Lucía (1895, 1932, 196-) swept me off my theater seat as if I were being transported by the ferocious winds of a hurricane that I'd never experienced living in earthquake country. That screening was a revelation. It felt like a calling to look into film for guidelines about my future. With my eyes transfixed on the screen, I felt completely identified with the sexually repressed Lucía of 1895. It was like Lucía 1895 c'est moi. So when she rips open Rafael's (her boyfriend's) shirt after a belabored cat and mouse game, and the music suddenly swells and erupts as Lucía devours his virile chest with her kisses, I felt she was acting out for me the erotic desires that my strict Catholic upbringing kept me from fulfilling. So I credit Lucía for inspiring me to pursue a Ph D in Latin American film and literature. Today, I try to spark in my students the passion I still feel for the potential transformative power that audiovisual media can produce.

Lucía opened my eyes to a militant, anti-imperialist filmmaking practice of which I had no previous knowledge. These films broke from classic Hollywood narrative conventions through their experimental visual design (often characterized by combining documentary and narrative styles) and because their primary function was not profit but to assist in consciousness-raising and social change. With the institutionalization of the New Latin American Cinema in the late 1980s debates at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana addressed the achievements and limitations of this new cinema. (2)

A line of inquiry especially relevant for situating Solás' films concerns the re-evaluation of old Latin American melodramas that were so vehemently rejected by critics and filmmakers involved in the production of this new cinema. (3) Melodrama was broadly understood as an aesthetic of excess, the polar opposite of realism; a de-historicized and politically conservative meta-genre primarily concerned with domestic issues and personal/individual conflicts. Melodrama was devaluated because it was considered to be an imitation of Hollywood conventions and thought to contribute to cultural colonization and thus reproduced the status quo; because it relied heavily on emotional manipulation that prevented a distance necessary for social critique; and because of a general distrust of mass media since it was viewed as the secular version of the proverbial opium for the people. Critics asked why Latin Americans love and get so much pleasure from melodrama; what about melodrama makes it, hands down, the most popular aesthetic; and how did it contribute to the development of unique Latin American national film cultures. (4)

		Lucia.

His most recent film Miel para Oshún (2001) is also a family melodrama. Bathed in yellow hues, it follows (almost literally through the extensive use of hand held cameras) an exiled Cuban's return to his homeland, seeking a reunion with his mother who remained on the Island. This film marks the end of a cycle and a new beginning in Solás' career. His new film does not use the trope of woman as allegory for the nation. Instead like his polemical Un Día de Noviembre (1972) and Un Hombre de Éxito (1986), the central protagonist is a man.

This new film is a return to the maternal origins on many levels, including casting. Actress Adela Legrá, who was the lead in Manuela and who also played the 1960s Lucia, resurfaces in Miel para Oshún after a long absence as the mother of the long lost son who was forcibly taken from her by her husband and sent to Miami. In a self-reflexive citation to Lucía, Legrá appears in the film's final sequence wearing the same work clothing (large winged hat, white head shawl) she wore in that film. Miel para Oshún thus comes full circle quoting perhaps the most widely circulated image of Lucía: the 1960s Cubana peasant with a clear sense of her agency as a political subject.

Solás' melodramas are different from the melodramas of the "old" cinemas precisely because they situate the individual's personal conflicts within a historical context that does not conceal material and socio-cultural conditions. Instead by weaving politics and feelings into a complex tapestry, Solás highlights the polemical emotions that traverse the many historical periods of the Cuban people's struggles to secure respect and political autonomy. Using a historical materialist approach to his subject matter, Solás creates politically charged melodramas that aim simultaneously straight for the heart and to our critical thinking faculties. This is just one of the many pleasures that await the spectator fortunate enough to have access to Solás' films.

1. For an overview of the New Latin American cinema see Ana M. López, "An 'Other' Cinema: The New Latin American Cinema" in New Latin American Cinema, Volume One, Michael T. Martin, editor. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.

2. See Patricia Aufderheide, "Latin American Cinema and the Rhetoric of Cultural Nationalism: Controversies at Havana in 1987 and 1989," Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12.4.

3. See Enrique Colina and Daniel Díaz Torres, "Ideología del Melodrama en el Viejo Cine Latinoamericano," Cine Cubano, 73-74-75 (1971).

4. See Reynaldo González, "Lágrimas de Celuloide: Una nueva lectura para el melodrama cinematográfico latinoamericano," IX Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano: Cine Latinoamericano Años 30-40-50. Mexico City: UNAM, 1990.

5. For a recent overview of Solás' career see Rufo Caballero, A Solas con Solás. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1999.