Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.10.1.0140
• Pages: 140-143
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Cliff DuRand

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 10.1 SprIng 2018

FILM REVIEW

Ian Padron (Dir.), Habanastation. ICAIC. 2011. 1hr 35mins

Reviewed by Cliff DuRand

The film sensation of 2011 in Cuba was Habanastation, directed by Ian Padron.

Its treatment of the theme of social inequality touched a public nerve and the

film broke all box office records on the island. Eventually, in recognition of its

undoubted quality, the film became Cuba’s nomination for an Oscar in the same

year. It is the touching story of a developing friendship between two boys from

very different social backgrounds: one from a materially comfortable family liv-

ing in Miramar, the other living in a ‘poor’ barrio of Havana. For many foreign

viewers, it is a shocking window into economic inequality in Cuba. For Cubans,

it was a welcome public acknowledgement of a well-known reality.

However, many of the comments made about Habanastation overlook what

makes it a powerful revolutionary film. For it is a contrast between the humanly

impoverished and alienated world of a ‘middle class’1 boy who is an only child

in a nuclear family with no friends except his playstation games that his father

brings back from his travels abroad and, on the contrary, the rich community

life of a boy from the ‘barrio’. It is the latter that is held up as the more humanly

fulfilling life.

The film brought back memories of the African American ghettos of Baltimore

and other US cities, which once also nourished such communities. Prior to hous-

ing desegregation, Black ghettos were multi-class societies with a vibrant social

life, where poor and better off lived next to each other, where youth had role

models of success among their friends and resources were shared.

In those days, I taught at a Black university in Baltimore. The ghetto in west

Baltimore was such a community. African American doctors, lawyers, teachers,

and other professionals lived next door to school janitors, numbers runners, and

so on. There were entertainers and ministers and respectable businessmen such

as undertakers along with independent entrepreneurs in the informal economy

of the drug pushers and prostitutes.

All of these made up the community. And it was a community in the literal

sense of the term – a common unity bound together by racial segregation and a

shared culture. There were class differences to be sure. But, these were secondary

to a shared racial identity and life situation imposed by the racism of White