Mirroring Love and Pain – Interview with Cuban Director David Bim
A series of interruptions to the electrical service in Cuba occurred since February 2024. For example in October 2024, a total nationwide blackout occurred due to the failure of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant. And the situation is still not stabilized. Of course, this is only a partial problem of a propaganda system running out of steam. And that’s why the country needs strong artistic voices. One such artist is Davis Bim, whom I interviewed on the occasion of his (not only FIPRESCI) award at the Visions du Réel festival. Online, by appointment at a time and place where David will have a stable internet connection and still with occasional signal outages.
Štěpánka Zapata: I e-meet you at school. What is your professional background? This movie is your first feature, but the style is quite strong and steady for a debut.
David Bim: I am directing the 6-month Fiction Film Programme FICCLAB at EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV), which was founded among others by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1987, and it was the first film school in Latin America. It is located in San Antonio de Los Baños, Artemisa Province, Cuba. The students in this international programme are developing their first features. I am also a graduate at this school. 10 years ago I started to develop here this movie – To the West, in Zapata. The title refers to the region in which the film is set and to some form of navigation of where the main character Landi is and where he is going.
ŠZ: What does cinema mean to you?
DB: Cinema for me is not an amalgamation of all the arts. It is a specific kind of art.I have a theory that it is the art through which humankind and its history speaks. I often give my students an example: When you take the first artistic expression in the Cave of Altamira in Spain – what exactly do you see there? And the first answer is: the bison. But I urge them not to try to use the language, but to really look. Then they see a formy with 8 legs, which means it’s moving. That was the purpose of the depiction. These people needed to express something spiritual, they needed to capture the bison alive. They wanted to preserve the moment. This is also a reason why parents record their children, they know that time is changing and they will grow up and transform. I think humans are different from other living species, because we know about our finality and that makes our life more transcendental. We are asking ourselves, what is after. And if we don’t know, the main question is: What is now? And the presence and finality can be represented by the cinematography. It’s like when the Lumière brothers made their first movie. The moment is recorded. We don’t have a record of the first tone or painting.
And this recording of the moment was also the purpose in the case of my film.I tried to be united with them in one time and space and to capture what life here in Cuba means. These characters are heroes without knowing they are and without even wanting to be. I wasn’t trying to put down any of my beliefs or give the audience answers. There is no one way to understand life. We can agree with Plato, Nietzsche, Kirkegaard and Spinoza, and it is ok. To me, the meaning of life is simply to be alive. It’s an expression. And this expression is always in motion. That’s why cinema belongs to us, humans.
Are there any cinematic influences that directly inspired the shape of your movie?
My great inspiration is John Ford. I admire his poetry of little things. But I don’t know if it can be considered as a direct influence. I love Roberto Rossellini, he has no excuses. And the sensitivity of Passolini is like the art of Da Vinci. But for my filmmaking I see the reference more in the literature. I love William Faulkner, he is very hypnotic. In film, I need to feel the coherence of sequences and ellipses. And that, for me, is what the consistency of mirroring represents in this film. I don’t think I was thinking of other filmmakers when I was shooting, but they live in me because I love cinema.
How did you meet your characters – Landi, Mercedes and Denis, or did they meet you? Did you know each other before filming?
My passion is to travel alone and read in some calm places. And that’s the time when I can see all these souls that inspire me. I usually set a destination and then go back home step by step and let myself be surprised by people and experiences. And one such person was Mercedes. She brought me a coffee that day. It was many years ago. And we talked. I talk a lot, but Mercedes was crazy and talked about everything and nothing. It took hours. So I started going back there. Suddenly I had a Mercedes in my life. And as our relationship began to develop, she asked me once to take care of Denis. It took three hours and we started to understand each other and became friends. Denis is autistic and doesn’t get along with everyone, but he considers me a brother.
I didn’t expect it, I expected to learn something. Things were tough with Landi at the time because he hadn’t come back from the jungle. I understood how Mercedes felt. I tried to respect that and didn’t ask too many questions. In cases like this, you don’t want to know the secrets of the people you love, because in a regime like Cuba, you don’t want to betray someone. Then I also started spending time with Landi, and once I went into the jungle with him. And I was shocked by it all. They both are from the most vulnerable part of society, not only because of the lack of money, but also because of the time. For them, time always means a countdown. Time doesn’t belong to them. Their existence is forgotten.
Do you see any mythological essence in their story?
I saw the situation as the Myth of Sisyphus. You roll the stone to the top of the mountain and when you finally get there, it tumbles into the valley on the other side. You can do it endlessly as a cycle. I remember when the priest always told us as children that if we didn’t behave, we would go to hell. I asked how much time I would have to spend there. And he said it’s for eternity. And here I see the eternity of pain that never ends. It’s like a mirror in another mirror. But they still have faith in salvation.
How was the filming in the jungle?
I had entered the jungle with Landi many times over the years, but I still had no idea how to shoot it. But I began to see the film as a mirror, with the first part looking into the second part and vice versa. What Landi does in the jungle is accompanied by what Mercedes does at home. And also Denis when he imitates with his hands the mythical duel with some creature. The scene with the crocodile is also mirroring in the the scene with the crocodile is also mirrored in the scene when Landi plays with Denis in the water and imitates the crocodile.
I made this film only by myself. And they were used to me, so they didn’t often notice the filming. There are only two moments when one of the protagonists looks into the camera. The first one is in the swamp when Landi is hunting a crocodile and loses control of the situation. He looks at me with the sight – we are in danger, and you should take care of yourself because I can’t take care of you. And Denis once gave me a very similar direct look on the beach, but it was a positive one.
I was worrying very much about my small Sony Alpha A7S II camera and little gymball, because all the time during the rain in the swamp I was filming with the umbrella in my mouth. And the storm was pretty strong. I also struggled with not having a place to charge batteries. I had to take care of everything myself because Landi was busy hunting.
What I consider to be a very strong point of the film is, among other things, the sound – full of birds and jungle sounds as well as human breath. How was it created?
I didn’t have such powerful microphones on location, so part of it is finished in post-production. But what I did over the years was that I collected all the ambient sounds – early in the morning, later, all the time. I had a recording device with me that didn’t consume much battery. After I started to post-produce a database with foley effects, it was a huge number of gigabytes. It helped me understand the relationship between Landi and Mercedes and the space around them. They live in a very concrete world that surrounds them and I felt the need to preserve that.
As for the breathing, when I was observing them all these years, I was listening to the breathing, but I didn’t have it recorded. Eventually my family and I saved up some money and managed to get Landi and Mercedes into our film school. And we finished the breath sound in post-production.
The filmmaking took about 8 years to make. Could you summarize how much of the preparation, shooting and post-production took?
It was 5 years of preparation and visits. 90% of the actual filming then took place within 1 month, during the pandemic. Post-production lasted about a year. The result was 5 hours of raw material. Then the moment came when I got a producer and we went to present this material, reduced to 2 hours, on Paris Doc. We won with this pich and got the opportunity to do the final mix in Paris within 5 days. After Paris Doc it took another 3 months of final edit and corrections.
And then we all met the film at Vision du Réel…
Štěpánka Zapata
©FIPRESCI 2025