`CHANGE WILL COME FOR PRAGMATIC, NOT POLITICAL, REASONS'
When Nat Chediak first saw his fellow Cuban-Americans' euphoria over
Fidel Castro's departure from power, he was wary. And he recalled a line
from a Russian poet who had spent time in Cuba: ``The lion who is raised
in a cage weeps for the cage.''
Chediak -- Grammy-winning record producer, author of a dictionary of
Latin jazz and founding director of the Miami International Film
Festival -- knows about how arts and politics intersect in Cuba.
''It's going to take a while to detect a significant change in the arts,
even after Castro's death,'' he said. ``Change will come for pragmatic,
not political, reasons -- because it will be good business.''
He cites the example of Spanish filmmakers under dictator Francisco
Franco who were expert at ''loading their work with symbolism that were
cries for freedom.'' Yet, when freedom came, Chediak said, some of those
filmmakers fumbled.
And he notes that based on his experience with the Miami film festival,
Cuban filmmakers have been more tentative than others from communist
nations.
''We chronicled the collapse of the Iron Curtain in the festival's
offerings,'' Chediak says. ``The Iron Curtain filmmakers made ballsier
films than their Cuban counterparts.''
-- ENRIQUE
FERNANDEZ
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