A well-known director, with the successful underground saga of Nicanor and numerous jobs as a scriptwriter, Eduardo del Llano had lit expectations with his first feature film. Thus a preview of the news that his film had not been admitted to the competition at the Festival de Cine de la Habana aroused interest. He speculated that the overlapping of the renaissance plot with today’s reality was the reason he was banned from the festival. The phrase “make no mistake, my film is great,” that I read on the blog of Del Llano did nothing but spur my curiosity.
My curiosity, coincidentally, was satisfied the day I read Eduardo del Llano’s response* to a critique from Orlando Luis Pardo. I looked up the review, I searched the counter-criticism, and as it was so hyper-critical, I was disposed to see Vinci.
Eduardo del Llano decides to respond with heavy artillery to the criticism of Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo. Were it me, I wouldn’t have cared for Orlando’s criticism. But after turning red, and green, taking a deep breath, and taking a diazepam to sleep that nights, as a creator I would be grateful there are people who look beyond what we saw, who point out defects where we imagine only virtues, because an artist without criticism is like a plant without water, if I may use a somewhat exaggerated and kitsch image.
To appeal, in response, to personal allusions that have nothing to do with Pardo’s text, neither improves Vinci nor leaves a good impression of Del Llano. When a work is made public, a part of it ceases to belong to its creator. Eduardo del Llano should draw lessons from this incident, and not stumble for a third time.
*Translator’s note:
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo’s film critique of Vinci is still being translated and will appear on this site; in short it panned the film. Eduardo del Llano wrote a lengthy response in which he suggested that the initials of Orlando’s name stand for an organization of “Latin American Pedophiles” and repeatedly addressed Orlando as “Pederast”; this response was printed in Jiribilla, the official magazine of Cuban culture.
February 24 2012
