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24 / 05 / 2004
Carlos Bosch: “Although it deals with the subject of Cuba, the story of Balseros is universal”
The producer of the award-winning documentary on 1994’s Cuban emigration defends journalistic integrity
The most widely-known documentary on the wave of Cuban migration from the summer of 1994 has managed what few productions on the subject have succeeded in doing: pleasing those who live in La Havana and Miami and winning awards on both sides of the Florida Straights. In Cube, the documentary was given the 2002 Film Festival’s Jury Prize and weeks later received an award from the public in the Miami Festival.
The Catalan producer Carlos Bosch commented that Balseros, a work that originally started out as a newspaper feature in 1994 and later converted into a documentary in 2001, “is a universal story” in spite of being set in Cuba. “In the future, I’d like for anybody anywhere to be able to see the film and understand it although they may be unaware of the details of the historical facts being narrated”, he emphasized this afternoon in the Dialogue “TV Citizens (Input 2004)”.
“We have to be honest when it comes to journalism, to produce real journalism”, specified Bosch. In this sense, he added that the protagonists of the stories have acted in good faith, collaborating without the need for commercial agreements. To this respect, he warned on the dangers of the present trend, especially in the United States, to pay for testimonies, which puts the authenticity of documentaries at risk.
“Balseros”, nominated for an Oscar and already shown in 70 cinema festivals world wide, is an example of a co-production between TV de Cataluña with financial support from the Instituto Catalán de Industrias Culturales.
The producer explained that he had no major difficulties in filming the work in Cuba and keeping track of the characters over the last few years, but he commented on the problems he had getting access to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, where the United States had been holding Cuban boat people for several months before allowing them to enter US territory.
Bosch emphasized the differences between producing a journalistic report and fiction thus: “there are scenes of real life that you cannot put in a film of fiction because they would seem unreal and nobody would believe them”.
The Dialogue Input 2004 began yesterday at the Forum and will continue until 28th May. Excerpts from public television programs from various countries will also be shown.
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