The filmmaker uses the conversation with his friend as an excuse to create one of the most moving portraits of Havana ever made.
14ymedio, Federico Hernandez Aguilar, San Salvador, 8 March 2025 — On February 27th there were tears at Miami Dade College’s Koubek Center. As part of the Cuban film series of the Miami Film Festival, there was a screening of En un rincón del alma [In One Corner of the Soul], a documentary that allows us to recover, in the final stages of his life, the endearing words of the talented writer Eliseo ’Lichi’ Alberto Diego, in the house in Mexico City where he died on 31 July 2011, at the age of 59.
The large audience erupted in applause and moans, victims of the same emotional impact that the film causes wherever it is shown. Why? Because Jorge Dalton, the director, also the son of a great poet, makes the conversation with his friend Lichi a wonderful excuse to create one of the most moving portraits ever made of Havana, that luminous melting pot of ambiguities and wonders, lyricism and contradictions, which make it unique as a city and as a human experience.
The Salvadoran writer Jorge Ávalos, one of the most penetrating art critics in Central America, has written that En un rincón del alma “is constructed as an elegy in two voices: two friends meet and talk about the Cuba they knew and, in doing so, allow us to witness a hard-won wisdom.”
Nothing more and nothing less could be expected from Eliseo Alberto, born in 1951 into a family of artists and writers founded by the prodigious Eliseo Diego (1920-1994), his father, and the discreet editor Bella García-Marruz (1921-2006), Fina’s sister. Both belonging to the Orígenes group, perhaps the best artistic collective of the last century in Cuba, their son Lichi not only kept beautiful memories of his famous family, but also evoked a literary and cultural environment that, apart from ceasing to exist, has never been able to be emulated.
The friendship between Lichi and Jorge began at that time. Although they were not from the same generation, they quickly became friends.
“My film begins,” says Jorge Dalton, the youngest son of the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton (1935-1975), “with a sequence shot that exactly reproduces my entrance into that wonderful house and into the world that each of its inhabitants represented. Eliseo, dad, was like an English lord, an extraordinary man with a monumental body of work. Someone for whom I placed two red roses inside his coffin when he died in Mexico. I seem to be seeing him when he said to me: “Speedy González, pour me another whiskey before it’s too late.”
The friendship between Lichi and Jorge began at that time. Although they were not from the same generation, they quickly bonded without any pretentiousness, as they shared a penchant for wandering and easy laughter.
“I even had the privilege,” Dalton says, “of living with him for a while in Mexico, when he lived in an apartment on Pacifico Street in Coyoacán. Despite coming from a refined literary background, Lichi was also a man who loved the streets and good wine; he had a sketchy profile, he loved the night as much as he loved women, just like my father, whom I define as a cat on the roof. Lichi also had a great sense of humor, and was at the same time sad, melancholic, like all lovers, with a heart always on the verge of bursting. I think that all the Diegos suffered from that melancholy, like a dagger ready to kill them. My film colleague, Ernesto Fundora, says that Eliseo Alberto knew how to balance high culture and popular culture very well.”
In December 2009, Jorge Dalton and his wife Susy Caula were on a trip to Mexico and visited Lichi. During the conversation, the novelist asked his friend to film him, as he wanted to make a documentary with the title of one of his famous books: Informe contra mí mismo [Report Against Myself]. Taken by surprise, Jorge, who only had a small home camera with him, asked for time to write a formal proposal. But one thing led to another and on the very last day of that year they spent the whole time recording Lichi, whose anecdotes and reflections make the film come together from beginning to end.
Back in San Salvador, Jorge and Susy received a call from their friend telling them that he was suffering from kidney failure. “Then,” says Dalton, “at the end of 2010 we visited him again and I was shocked to see him so deteriorated. Even so, he wanted to continue talking in front of the camera, aware of his imminent departure from this world. I filmed him a little, but I refused to let him appear in that physical state. A few months later he died. Then Susy convinced me to discard the idea of donating that long conversation with Lichi to a cultural entity and that we should do something with it instead.”
“But I do not rule out,” says Jorge Dalton, “that one day it could be exhibited there, as it should be.”
This is how, in 2016, En un rincón del alma was completed , classified by international critics as one of the most outstanding documentaries made about Cuba in the last half century. At the same time, of course, it is among the 200 Cuban films that are banned on the island.
“But I do not rule out,” says Jorge Dalton, “that one day it may be exhibited there, as it should be. Not only because Eliseo Alberto deserves it, but because Cubans should get to know better this writer who loved his country so much. He has been one of the most beloved people born on the island, a unique being whose tender friendship was one of the best gifts that life has given me. I still have not been able to recover from his loss.”
For now, Lichi Diego and Jorge Dalton have received their ovation in Miami, where many share with them that nostalgia — painful and poetic at the same time — for the fascinating Cuba of bustling and joyful culture, of literary exuberance without boundaries. But the day of reunion will come. The time of embrace will come.
Note: The documentary is available online and, in small format, below.
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