Movies - Balseros

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	Movies - Balseros

Balseros (Rafters) is a 2002 Spanish documentary co-directed by Carles Bosch and Josep Maria Domènech about Cubans leaving during the Período Especial after the financial support of the former USSR stopped. This resulted in so much poverty that in 1994 50,000 Cubans left, unimpeded by the Cuban government, using anything they could find or build to get to the nearest land, Florida in the USA. This even included hijacking a ferry, but most left with improvised rafts, which were often not quite seaworthy. As the documentary explains, these were not political but economic refugees.

The documentary consists largely of interviews with the raftbuilders (the 'Balseros'), and traces over the course of seven years the lives of seven of those refugees, from the building of their rafts to their attempts at building new lives in America, giving insight in daily life in Cuba in those years (including some beautiful cinematography and sometimes amusing moments) and in the USA. The documentary is 2 hours long The first half is filmed in Cuba, with in the end some scenes of the rafters' months long detention in Guantanamo Bay, where lotteries were used to decide who would be allowed to go to the US. All the while, their families didn't know about their whereabouts. The last hour is about the lives of those who managed to get to the USA, how they are distributed over the country. These people were filmed again seven years later, showing their difficulties adapting to a new type of society and the resulting homesickness, a "human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds".

Awards

Best Foreign Documentary and Memory Documentary Award at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana, 2002
Best Documentary in Spanish Language at the Ajijic Festival Internacional de Cine, Mexico, 2002
Winner of the IDA Awards (International Documentary Association), 2003
Nominated for an Academy award. 2004
Winner of the Peabody Awards, 2004
Winner of an Emmy for Cinematography by Josep Maria Domènech (Best Photography), 2005

Specs

Produced by: Bausan Films & TVC
Directors: Carles Bosch & Josep Mª Domènech
Scripts: David Trueba & Carles Bosch
Director de fotografía: Josep Mª Domènech
Producer: Loris Omedes
Executive Producer: Mª José Solera
Executive Producer TVC: Tom Roca
Director of Production: Tono Folguera
Production Manager: Richard Schweid
Music : Lucrecia
Sound: Juan Sánchez "Cuti"
Editing: Ernest Blasi
Graphics: Philip Stanton
Language: Spanish & English
Budget: 770.000 €

Sources

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Balseros ]

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