03 Sep The Empire of Images: How ‘Epicentro’ Fails to View Cuba

BY KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR

“Utopia means both good place and no place,” meditates Academy Award nominated filmmaker Hubert Sauper in his latest feature documentary Epicentro. The film was awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Throughout Epicentro, the Austrian director muses on the history of US filmmaking and imperialism through interviews on the streets of Cuba. Sauper speaks to a wide range of characters on his theoretical journey, from mothers to children to the eldery. Special interviews include Oona Castilla Chaplin, the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, and legendary Cuban animator Juan Padrón.

The film opens with a scene of a man smoking a cigar; behind him, we see the blue ocean and sky. A stereotypical image of Cuba reminiscent of ‎Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. The film then zooms out, above the hemisphere, looking down upon the earth from space. From satellites, the island of Cuba cannot be seen among a mass of lights. Sauper posits that Cuba’s lack of visibility is due to the “bright heat and power of empire. The empire of images and imagination.” This quote points to the thesis of the film — historically, film and photography  have been used to advance both the real and imagined US empire. Sauper acknowledges this by stating that both the first war captured on film and the first American flag planted overseas took place in Cuba.

In order to understand the thesis and context of the film, however, the viewer must understand the history of the sinking of the USS Maine. In February 1898, the USS Maine sank in Havana Harbor, killing 260 out of the less than 400 American crew members on the ship. The explosion was believed to have been instigated by Spain and led to the US declaring the Spanish-American War. The war lasted three months. It ended with the Treaty of Paris granting the US the first of its overseas imperial territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The US occupied Havana for four years with an American flag raised in the heart of the city. In 1976, American naval investigators found that the USS Maine explosion was, most likely, caused by an internal ship fire.

Film and images played a major role in the Spanish-American War. For example, during the war, Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Rider” military service became an American symbol of heroic freedom-fighting; meanwhile, in Cuba, Roosevelt represented the tyranny of US imperialism. Additionally, the Library of Congress features actual footage and reenactments of events during the Spanish-American War, including that of the wreckage of the USS Maine. With the aid of this footage (some of the first footage of war ever captured on film), the USS Maine was used as an excuse for the US to declare war on Spain and begin their global empire which, as the film points out, includes an American flag on the moon. “The boat was the symbol of colonization in America. The train was the symbol of colonialism in Africa. The camera is the symbol of colonialism of the United States. The cinema produced in Hollywood, ‘industrial cinema,’ has won the war. It changed the world!”

The US flag still remains in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay, the US military’s prison on the island. The prison is notorious for its inhumane treatment and torture of inmates. The history of US violence on Cuban soil is also enacted through commercial tourism on the island. In a scene evocative of Alejandro Joderowski’s Holy Mountain, Sauper depicts a swarm of white foreigners photographing a young Afro Cuban boy getting a haircut. In another scene, a white American man photographs a young Black boy in exchange for a pen from New York City. The tourist states, “The conditions that they have is pretty tragic, but I guess under the circumstances you have no choice. I gave him a pen from New York City. He’s really excited about it. He can write his name. This other girl wanted money for photographs, but I’m never going to pay for a photograph because to be photographed by me is an honour.”

Throughout the film, Sauper interviews a group of Afro Cuban children in Havana–who he calls “little prophets”–about the imperialism of the US. The children are knowledgeable about Cuban history but sometimes fumble to remember key facts and dates. During a film screening about the USS Maine, the children are astute to the lie that the US liberated Cuba with a resounding choir of “nos” filling the space.

While Sauper makes pointed critiques of US imperialism, the film itself does not provide authority for the Cubans to counter Sauper’s narratives. Epicentro serves more as a thought exercise than a film about Havana and the people most impacted by US imperialism. Sauper focuses more on what Cuba means to the US empire: “Havana means heaven, a dwelling place of angels, and it was the epicenter of three distopian chapters of history – the slave trade, colonization, and globalization of power. The ingredients of the modern empire.”

Instead of centering the stories of Cuba, the film focuses heavily on the US empire. Much like the satellite images of the world, it fails to view the island. Epicentro is an auteur film that focuses on stringing together half conversations to fulfill the thesis of the filmmaker. While the film is not imperialist, it does hold strong authority over the images of Havana in favor of a meditative practice. 

In fact, while pointing out the power of US cinema as a vehicle for the empire, the film largely ignores Cuba’s rich filmmaking history. Cuba’s Golden Age of cinema followed the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Cuba is also home to one of the best filmmaking universities in the Caribbean called Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV). The film does not delve deeply into the history and politics of Cuba. Instead, the film relies heavily on fragments of conversations and interviews with young children, who are not always the best equipped to explain a concept. Ultimately, Epicentro is little more than an auteur’s thought experiment on US imperialism and Hollywood.

Kristal Sotomayor is a bilingual Latinx freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker, and festival programmer based in Philadelphia. They serve as Programming Director for the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival and Co-Founder of ¡Presente! Media Collective. Kristal has written for ITVS, WHYY, AL DÍA, and Documentary Magazine.