My Life will always be an Editing Room
Miriam Talavera goes over memories of a profession that she reinvents every day in her editing room
By: Francisco Delgado
For the Cuban editor Miriam Talavera, the editing room is her life and the cinema her greatest passion. And this ideo-aesthetic concept is not only a memory refrain but also her bound for the art in general, the reason why she was awarded Cinema National Prize this 2018. This prize is awarded annually by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) to those distinguished by their trajectory and contribution of their audiovisual work.
Like other great cinema directors, such as Tomás Gutierrez Alea (Titón), Enrique Pineda Barnet, Rogelio París, etc, this woman discover herself in each staging and each shot she compiles for different stories. She is an artist but also an ¨unseen¨ participant in the dark hall and in her mediations with the audience.
With low tone, insightful smile and vast experience to his more than 70 years says: “I arrived at the cinema by accident, I finished the bachelor without any degree of trade and to top it” married “, when by the hazards of fate I got to know in the 1960s to a good friend on television who invited me to work in a position of “editor”. In my naivete, the function I had to perform was the supposed manual action of cutting and drawing “a belt”, but it turned out to be much more complex than I imagined.
He remembers in his beginnings in the profession with the collaborations of Pepe Taboada, when he had to re-synchronize the analog sound in the tapes, withdrawing the silences to achieve a parity between the words, the expressions of the faces and their physical articulations. So it happened to me on more than one occasion with the speeches of Fidel Castro, he affirms “I had to learn to observe with metaphorical sense his oratory vices so as not to fail in the ties and not to distort his ideas”.
The exercise of editing in the documentary genre with Nicolás Guillén Landrián in the workshop located at Linea and 18 Street, was undoubtedly a true school for this editor, who started working in cinema in the early sixties. Likewise, the postproduction of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea feature-films was very important for her: ¨To a certain extent¨ in 1983 and ¨Strawberry and Chocolate¨ in 1993; two films that were awarded the Coral Prize in the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana.
It was necessary to know its peculiarities in the handling of the aesthetic visuality and the narrative treatment of the work, warns Miriam with emphasis. “It was necessary to show a vast culture to interpret their concerns in the technical-artistic solutions, especially Titón, due to its peculiar sense for the detail of the composition of the planes and the verisimilitude with reality”
The general workers’ assemblies, to cite another example, had to refer to a certain sound context that the chambers of that time did not have integrated as those existing in the “digital era” and then it occurred to me to place a simulator of effects that will be detailed more certain verbal expressions in the characters and that was a real madness.
“I remember that there were long working days and ended up being very distressing for me.” In fact, once Nicolasito told me: “In the end you did not put me the hammers that I needed on the shot, but you convinced me”.
I like to reflect and at the same time listen to find precise solutions and venture even more creative imagination. I think that was the result of so many years of work and complicity with my film colleagues in these adventures for the cinema.
From the company of other directors such as Oscar Valdés, Pineda Barnet and Idelfonso Ramos, I learned to involve humanism, sensitivity and a true complicity for what you do with a lot of love every day: editing.
Go back to retry travel for that time and encourage those qualities in the new generations of filmmakers, it’s worth it. It is a luxury to have his films, books, interviews, testimonies, since many are unknown because they are not taken into account, neither in school nor in institutions.
You have to work hard to achieve a good sequence, a successful music and know how to cut where it goes. It is a nontransferable emotion that is often given by instinct and passion, but above all, because you believe in what you do and feel you have the truth in your hands.
So, the prize is not a merit, nor is it an act of gratitude. Rather it is the praise of many people who love you, value you and with great respect provide their greatest experiences in favor of a work that will follow a channel in the future, for my taste: “always in an editing room”.
Translated by ESTI