The multidisciplinary artist Jorge Luis Camacho (Cárdenas, Cuba, 1956) recently presented the trilogy entitled Cuban Symphony, a family saga that reviews from the beginning of the revolution to the arrival of a possible democracy.
Camacho studied music and percussion in his country, then he trained as an actor at the Higher Institute of Art in Havana. Later, he worked as an actor on Cuban television.
In the eighties he emigrated to Paris, France, where he currently resides. He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique. In the European country, he made his way into acting from theater, film and television, playing mostly villains.
Writing has always been present in his life and for a period he was a screenwriter; he also founded the first association of French screenwriters. In addition, he has directed documentaries and written two feature films for cinema. His film Habana Eva was directed by Fina Torres and won various awards.
In the musical field, he served as a singer in Latin jazz, jazz and salsa orchestras.
A career sealed by art, where today Camacho seeks to venture into his role as a writer. From France we spoke with the artist through a video call about his career and the desire for a possible democracy in Cuba.
He left his native Cuba for France in 1981. Is there something that he longs for today about the land where he was born?
Yes. I have a 18-year-old son in France, so it is very difficult to leave that country, but I would love to see Cuba transform. I have the dream of writing the fourth part of Sinfonía Cubana, which would be the real change and how it would be implemented. Frankly I think I can do it.
How did you make your way into the universe of letters?
I was a bit lucky actually. I started writing scripts in French and I was the only founding scriptwriter of the Association of French Writers who was not French, but at some point I stopped liking that, I did it for the remuneration rather than for interest. I started dreaming of becoming an artist and not a technician. With all due respect to my colleagues, for me a screenwriter was more of a high-level technician. I know that literature has a human and economic cost because it is a different world, but at some point in my life I wanted to venture as a writer. This path is difficult because the loneliness of the writer costs me a lot, but I want to dedicate myself to this until my heart stops beating.
Let’s talk about his trilogy ‘Cuban Symphony’. How did the inspiration to produce this writing come about? How long did it take you to do it?
The time was approximately six years, taking into account that I did not work constantly because I had to work in other things to be able to earn a living, and I had to take care of my son who was small, but the idea of writing this story I have had since I published my first novel called La Resaca, which does not exist in Spanish, only in French and Portuguese; now I am going to edit it in Spanish on Amazon because I have recovered the rights of the other publishers. The fact is that Sinfonía Cubana arises when they ask me for an article about my vision of Miami in an American newspaper; In my writing I mentioned my perspective on that state and expressed the following: ‘I hope that, somewhere under a ceiling fan, a Cuban Homer is writing The Odyssey of us.’ Later, I became what I described. In reality, there is no one who has written about the entire Cuban revolution, even going further to see what might happen next. In this writing, reality is mixed with science fiction and that allows readers to receive the story easily. The books can be found on Amazon, in digital it has a cost of $ 5 and in the printed format $ 9.
Taking into account the very agitated times that Cuba is currently living, you mentioned in your book a possible democracy, how far do you see a change in the Cuban political system?
“It is random to foresee what is going to happen at the moment in Cuba; We are in the phase of repression like any dictatorship, but the repression will generate more pain, pressure and rebellion; I think democracy will come very soon ”,
JORGE LUIS CAMACHO,
WRITER, ACTOR AND MUSICIAN.
While writing Symphony Cubana III I asked many Cuban friends: ‘How do you see the end of the dictatorship in Cuba?’ Most responded that it would take a long time. Some even claimed that it would have no end. Recently, during an interview, a journalist told me that there were dictatorships that came to stay and that the Cuban seemed to be one of those, another told me that the end of the dictatorship envisaged in my trilogy was science fiction. The Cuban reality proves the opposite. Cuban Symphony too. It is random to foresee what is going to happen at the moment; we are in the phase of repression like any dictatorship, but the repression will generate more pain, pressure and rebellion; I believe that democracy in Cuba will come very soon.
Let’s talk about his time as an apprentice. How was your training process in Cuba? Why did you decide to study music?
I studied music because from a very young age I started playing it as an amateur; later for reasons that are not worth explaining, he stopped satisfying me and I started doing theater when I came to France. The actor is the artist who is worst exported from his context because he always played villains, cocaine traffickers; In other words, Shakespeare was not for me, while in my country it would have been. I was the founder of the Higher Institute of Art of Cuba, I was supposed to be one of the actors who would make a prominent career in my country, but Cuba became a dictatorship that was gaining strength over the years. I can say that I worked as an actor on television in France and then I went behind the camera, where it was not seen so much that I was a foreigner; later the theater came and I started a process where I wanted to be myself and now I find myself in that.
You have been in France for approximately 40 years, but when arriving in a foreign country, what challenges does a migrant face? How did you break through?
When I arrived in France, I did it with my first wife, with a suitcase loaded with dreams; it is a moment where everything becomes possible. We both had artistic training, she was a pianist and I was an actor. For a long time I worked in any occupation so that she could continue playing the piano because unlike actors, a pianist who does not play is lost. France is a country that gives you many opportunities and you feel capable of changing the world and I actually changed it; I did many things and although that period of my life has passed, now I am in a new phase as a writer. I am writing my next novel.
Now that you mention that you are working on a new piece, could you give us a preview of what it is about?
It’s about slavery and music.
You use social denunciation in ‘Sinfonía Cubana’ and now you will do it in your next book. Do you think that art should be used for this?
In certain contexts it may and in others it may not. I mean that when you are the son of a dictatorship such as the Cubans, it is very difficult not to interfere in politics. Perhaps people from other countries do not address these issues and make a different art, but I think that all of us who suffered a dictatorship ended up talking about these issues.
Being an actor in both theater, film and television, in which of these three disciplines do you consider the most difficult to carry out an interpretation and why?
The most difficult thing is always the theater because there are no cuts. Theater is king, it is where an actor is really made.
What are your assessments of the development of theater and cinema in Latin America?
Latin America has a very strong television and a very weak cinema. The Latin American public does not see his cinema; however, he consumes a lot of television. This does not happen in France, people consume local television, but they go to the movies a lot. What happens is that few films are made in Latin America, there are countries that do not produce any films a year and those that are made find a fairly modest audience in the midst of competitions with the rest of the cinematographies.
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