Enrique Pineda Barnet, National Cinema Award 2007, returns behind the camera to fill a space in national cinematography that cannot be avoided: the dilemma of reconciliation among Cubans, between those who left and those others who stayed.

The subject matter, previously worked by Humberto Padrón in his medium-length movie Video de Familia, now covers new implications, more than the differences that separate each one of the members of this family, to the many reasons that can appeal to being united despite their disagreements.

La Anunciación becomes an opportune pretext for talking with the maestro of La Bella del Alhambra, who doesn’t want, this time, to create a movie as entertaining as that one, but prefers to concentrate his spell in the plans which, as scriptwriter of the film and director, he wanted for each one of his characters.

CN.- How did you arrive at conceiving the character of the mother?

EPB.- I have always seen the matriarchy as a social fact that greatly marks us; we inherited it mainly from Mother Spain: it is a phenomenon that since Bernarda Alba is present in all Spanish American literature and that also appears present in the Cuban mother. Since Mariana Grajales we can see the woman who propels her sons and tells them where they have to go, an attitude that is highlighted in the mother of Aire Frío, by Virgilio Piñera.

And this is one of the permanent hidden messages in La Anunciación, as I feel tremendous admiration for Virgilio’s work, and especially for Aire Frío, which was the first that I filmed (with Verónica Lynn playing the leading role of the mother) when I began to work in ICAIC (Cuban Film Institute). Verónica, who now is the head of this Cuban family, was also the mother of Rachel (Beatriz Valdés) in La Bella del Alhambra.

She is a very unusual mother, as I don’t like the little mother of the Mexican movies, self-sacrificing, who dies for the little children and cries all the time. I wanted to talk about the upbringing that the mother represents for her children, but also about the manipulation that many times she exerts on them.

CN.- What did it mean to film the majority of the scenes at the corner of 23 and 12, in Havana?

EPB.- The corner of 23 and 12 is like a great mother, from whom all things come, happiness and sorrow. In the same corner one can see the entry to the cemetery which leads us to death, and the ocean that speaks to us of life; and it is also society, which is the future, although in these moments it’s seen as a little impoverished.

CN.- There isn’t much future in La Anunciación, or is there?

EPB.- Yes there is. It is in Cristóbal, for not for nothing is he called that. The little boy is the discoverer par excellence, he is the one who seeks truth and defends it. Cristóbal breaks with all the manipulations, exploding, yelling and flying his kite.

In the character of Mayito is seen this youngest, long-suffering, generation, which from one moment to the next loses faith, hope and dreams; a generation that wants to protect itself, that wants to say how it thinks and is needing to say it, but doesn’t do it directly and only expresses it singing. At the same time he defends the right of his nephew to make decisions for himself.

The other two positions of the older brothers are opposite poles, who don’t reach the top but they’re there, incorporating First, - my short movie in which Héctor Noas also plays a leading role -, in that discourse about guilt and about who falls backwards. Between them there is that terrible anguish that has separated them, but also that love that unites them in spite of all they have suffered.

CN.- La Anunciación appears, by those coincidences of fate, 50 years since the founding of ICAIC. You, who were one of its pioneers, what do you feel looking backwards?

EPC.- When I made Mella (an historical film about the life of Cuban student leader Julio Antonio Mella), it was that I came up against the phrase “you have all future time to be better.” And sometimes another one sticks to me from a poem, by Bertolt Brecht, called To Posterity and which in essence says “we who struggle to make a kind world, we have not been able to be kind with ourselves, you who see us from the future, do so with benevolence.” He is not asking for pardon, he is asking for understanding. And then one cleanses many things, mainly of rancor, or of hatred, things totally damaging that don’t lead to anything.

And to understand ourselves, each still of La Anunciación calls for that judgment as the final maxim: “Love one another above all differences, as there’s no greater shelter than we ourselves.”