P.O.V. - Our House In Havana



Our House In Havana By Stephen Olsson Premiered: July 25, 2000
After 40 years, Silvia Morini returns to the palatial house of her youth in Cuba, where her nostalgia for a pre-Castro world confronts modern Cuban reality. Filmmaker Stephen Olsson presents Silvia's tapestry of rose-colored memories, history, culture, and tragi-comic encounters, contrasting sharply with recollections from working-class Cubans. Yet as Silvia discovers an evolving Cuba, she herself undergoes a surprising change-not entirely altering her political outlook but becoming, as she puts it, "more human."

Ask The Filmmakers
Post a question for Shari Roberson and Michael Camerini

What's Your P.O.V.?
Share your comments about the issues raised by this film

Lourdes Rios

Courtesy of WNET

Transcript: My name is Lourdes Rios and I'm Cuban American, born in Miami, Florida. I have been living in New York City for about 9 months now. I just saw Our House in Havana. Lots of mixed emotions. I am the first generation born in The States.

My parents exiled from Cuba, 1958 approximately, and just seeing a lot of those images makes me really angry, nostalgic, sad, happy, wishing I could relive some of the moments that they've described to me. My mom got married in her house. My mother was born in her house. She did come from an affluent background, much like Sylvia, but married my father from the country, rural sugar cane fields, tobacco leaves, the works. Polar opposites coming together.

I saw a lot of those contrasts in the film and I wish I could see it but my mother made me vow not to go to Cuba while Fidel is there. Her brother was assassinated by Cuban Revolutionaries and you can imagine the trauma that goes with that and she really doesn't want me to go back per her fear that something might happen to me. I don't want to see a Gap or McDonald's or Burger King on every corner. I want to go while it's still somewhat real in that way.

So I was delighted to see the film because it presented a lot of contrasts via Cuba of the '50s as I've learned from my parents and have seen pictures of and yet also see present day Cuba. It is hard to look at because I really long to be there with all my heart and hopefully one day I shall.

James Graham

Courtesy of WNET

Transcript: My name is James Graham. I am from New York. Pure New York. Brooklyn, New York. I just saw Our House in Havana. I didn't really care for it. I am a writer/translator of Latin American writers. I am always happy when any effort is made, any approach is made to Latin America because of the American ignorance of Latin America is so total but for me it was a film without a great deal of resonance.

The central character was someone who seemed to have been preserved in amber, their insights into both their exile and the life of Cuba in all its complexity don't seem to have deepened over the last 39 years.

She still seemed to be a very upper class person which is fine. Somebody has to be upper class, right? We can't be so someone should be. But no particular insight into society, just, you know, 'I'm so unhappy that the plants at he yacht club are not being properly watered!' Is that what we're interested in? I don't know.

Ellie Shodell

Courtesy of WNET

Transcript: I am Ellie Shodell from Port Washington, New York. I have just seen the P.O.V. Our House in Havana. As an oral historian I was swept away by the amount of field work, the amount of ethnographic sensitivity of the film makers, by the message about exiles in a strange country, which is the United States, visiting their old home, the trauma, the emotionality that Sylvia felt upon going back.

We have returned from Cuba ourselves recently and the film just struck so many true notes, the complexities were handled with simple directness. Sylvia was a woman I could identify with, somebody who is going through life changes, who is able to reflect upon her past.

Sylvia, to me, is a heroine because she left the United States not knowing what she was going to find, brave enough to look into her past, not knowing what to expect and sort of being anti-Cuban and anti-Castro in her opening moments.

By the end of the film she had fallen in love with the Cuban people, I think she had a new perspective on openness between the Cubans there, the Cubans here, the American people. She, I think, felt great sadness leaving Cuba not so much because of freedom - which is why she thinks she was sad upon leaving Cuba - but because she had left her family, she had left her roots and at this stage of life is trying to find a new identify for herself and her son, figure out her place in the greater scheme of things, just replacing a void in her life that I don't think she ever really knew was as deep as it was.

So I have just lost my mother, which is sad to say, I felt Sylvia's pain, I felt her grief and I think it's because of her lack of having the extended family, the memory of her parents, her grandparents having lived in that land and in that house.

Noris Gomez

Courtesy of WNET

Transcript: My name is Noris Gomez and I live in North Bergen, New Jersey. I enjoyed the film too. I was born in Cuba. I came here when I was a year old. I went back, like Sylvia, in 1979 with my father, and pretty much lived what Sylvia did with my dad, and, like her son, I didn't lose my past there, but perhaps the future.

I liked it because it was a light film. It wasn't heavy into the politics. Of course one major political point of the movie was about the embargo which I also agree should be lifted, and is not working like Sylvia said. You don't have to be a communist to want the embargo to be lifted, you can just be more human. So I enjoyed it, thank you.

Daniel Greenberg

Courtesy of WNET

Transcript: My name is Daniel Greenberg and I teach Latin American history at Pace University in New York City. I just saw the film Our House in Havana.

I thought it was a very important film and an excellent film because it puts forth a view about Cuba which is seldom found in the media in the United States. It's very eye opening in that it puts the question of contemporary Cuba and the Cuban revolution in kind of a broad contex. Especially it shows that Cuba today is the result of what it was before 1959, which was a country very dominated by a wealthy local class and also very much a colony, economically speaking, of the United States and that there were people who were part of the dominant group, including Ms. Morini, and she is a perfect example of the attitudes of the folks who ruled Cuba until 1959.

It also shows the other side, it shows the poor people, the great mass of dispossessed and poor in Cuba who have benefited from the revolution. I really appreciated also that it shows the terrible effects of the North American blockade. So I tend to use it in my teaching.

We have so few materials that show the other side that is other than what the American media and the American government tell about Cuba, which is very hostile to the Cuban government, the revolution and I intend to use it in my teaching. I thank you for making the film. It is a wonderful contribution to what we know about Cuba and it will help the people in this country learn about it.

Transcript:

Stephen Olsson, Filmmaker: This is about a woman's journey back to the country and the neighborhood and the house that she grew up in. There's a famous saying, "You can't go home again." Sylvia was trying to go home.

Sylvia Morini: This is our house. This is our house here. That's where I was born.

Stephen Olsson: Many Cubans in the United States say, "We can't support Cuba. We can't go back." Sylvie went back to see for herself and her life was changed by meeting other 68 year-olds who went through the revolution. What happens when someone from one background meets the other? Sylvia's story is one story of two million Cuban exiles, but by penetrating one person's story you hope to sort of shed light on the millions of people who've been displaced from their homeland.

" Our House in Havana is a subtle, moving, and surprisingly artful account...It is also further evidence that the quality nonfiction fare to be found on PBS...is perhaps the best and most engrossing television there is today... "
John Koch, The Boston Globe

" An impressive achievement... "
Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post

" Our House in Havana offers a subtler and more complex view of Cuba than the typical left-of-center portrait of the island nation. "
Michael Fox, Release Print

PRESS RELEASE (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

PHOTOS
To view an image, click on a thumbnail below.

Please note: Photos are for press and private use only. All rights reserved. All uses of the photos must be credited as indicated below. For additional information on rights and clearance issues, contact povcomm@pov.org.