CAMAGÜEY.- José Denis (Pepe) Reyes is a native of Camagüey dedicated to artistic direction in Havana. To him, we owe a precious art direction for the opening show of the recent audiovisual exhibition El Almacén de la Imagen. He was also the art director of the television program Luces del Almacén, broadcasted through the Cultural News.
He spoke about his passion as a guest of the Coffea Arábiga section of that festival organized by the Hermanos Saíz Association, and Adelante was there to tell about his high sense of image.
─ What can we understand by art direction?
─ It's based on making physical the vision of a film. The production design is the art direction, taking the idea of a director or a script to the real part.
"The less the audience notices you, the more it works; that is to say, you can observe great productions and realize that it is a world of fiction but at the same time credible. It's all about making the implausible plausible.
"I remember with nostalgia a very short film that we made years ago in Camagüey, entitled El rojo y el negro. It was made with a budget of only 75 pesos, yet we dared to make it based on the 1950s, to design a street completely from that era. It's all about creativity and the tools to make it happen. This audiovisual became a great revelation, and it brought as a result a workshop that we gave one year at the University of the Arts ISA.
"We art directors deal with a whole series of requirements: how to design for a camera, how to make something look good on it. We design for a lens, not for life. There are many times when I arrive at the set and say, "look, that's up," but when I look at it on camera, she's the one who really decides what the truth is.
Along with Verónica Fernández and Jorge Campanería, he was a member of the central jury of the 30th edition of El Almacén de la Imagen. Photo: Alberto Santos
─ What do you think when a director entrusts you with the great challenge of bringing to the screen an idea he or she longs for?
─I´ve learned that there are no limits. I avoid telling a director that I am not capable of bringing his idea to life. All this without denying the occasions when they ask for things and I think: how can I make it happen?
"It's very satisfying when people say: but is it real, didn't it seem to me that there was art direction there? And when they answer no, that everything they witnessed was totally constructed, they are shocked, and that for me is a real pleasure".
─What other technical knowledge should an art director have?
─The art director has to know all the processes, from how to handle a drill, a saw, how to skate, how to age, etc. At the point where one acquires all the knowledge he or she knows how to make demands on those people.
"Let's remember that an art director designs, thinks, projects and others execute, without forgetting the team of people who work at your disposal, who are given the guidelines and ideas to put into practice".
New setting by Pepe Reyes for the lobby of the Casa del Joven Creador in Camagüey. Photo: Ricardo de la Paz
─ How is this knowledge managed? Does the academy train for that?
─In these last 10 years, the art direction got an incredible strength. Today most people want this position; however there is no department to support it. There is the department of editing, photography, production; in short, there is no art direction department anywhere in the country.
"After I graduated, I spent nine years working as an ISA professor. There I did everything I could and what I could not to try to create the art direction department. Even with Daniel Torres we managed to get an exchange between the students of scenic design and the International Film School to create environments and nurture one another, although the idea of the department never came to fruition.
"When it comes to achieving this knowledge, I have always said that work is learned by working squarely. It is not worth at all to sit in a classroom and listen to the classes, even write them down and forget them the next day. It's a matter of looking, since there are several tricks and solutions that they will never tell you, that's why you have to see it. I explain this because I lived it, many of the things I had no idea how they were done I had the opportunity to see the process and understand them.
"In the film Martí, el ojo del canario, by Fernando Pérez, Salustiano's store is really a winery of products from the basic basket. I remember that in one part there was a real ham hanging, but when I saw it on camera it was awful, so we decided to create it with patinated poly foam and it worked".
─Tell us about that other responsibility of yours when the shooting is over...
─It's the most frustrating thing. The assembly is very rich, since it is the creative part, where everything is at your disposal and is organized, but obviously when they are sets that require a great number of things, it takes a lot of care not to destroy any object. We rely a lot on antique dealers. In Havana there is a large network where we rent glassware, cutlery, napkins of different centuries, difficult to find and facilitates the assembly. We also have a department called Icaic Film Studios.
"Fionia" is one of my short films shot in Havana, based largely on "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. 90% of the protagonists are from Camagüey, the whole atmosphere in it is totally created, nothing real existed, everything was built, the walls, the floor, etc. There is a beautiful plane, it is the final plane where we paint a huge map on the wall. In it, we united several references, not only cinematographic, but also plastic. The kitchen was filmed in another place, there is the magic of the cinema of being able to make in different places and that everything seems to be one. It is one of the winning works of El Almacén de la Imagen".
─In the case of the future, have you been presented with any project that involves imagining it?
─I have found in several projects of very 'unbalanced' people, and when I refer to this I do not say it in a derogatory way because I like this kind of madness, to be daring, to say: I am going to do it because I am going to do it even if I do not have a budget.
"Some time ago I was making a medium-length film that was going to become a full-length film but for production reasons it was lost. It was called The Relentless Avenger. It was a compendium of many comics that were part of a story, everything was happening in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Cuba.
Together with renowned Cuban actor Luis Alberto García. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.
"In Havana we are preparing, or resuming, a very good project with a script by the director Carlos Peña, who has accompanied us during the Almacén. It has a lot to do with that futuristic Cuba with a certain symbolic, metaphorical sense of our country and the paths it is taking right now. It is being directed by José Luis Aparicio.
"Designing one's own reality is a big problem, but after it happened the first time, it has been a mental disaster for me. It is very simple to say that a film developed in the 15th century is going to be made, for me it is wonderful, I make it with enormous pleasure, everything flows very easily. But if they told me to make one based on 2020, Camagüey today, it would be very complicated not to say the worst, since designing the reality of life we live, interpreting it and passing it through an artistic filter is very difficult even though it seems to be easier.
Yunior Vergara, the actor who took us by the hand in the journey through the history of Cuban cinema, as part of the opening of the Warehouse. Photo: Alejandro Rodríguez Leiva.
One of Pepe Reyes' designs.
Translated by Mariam Heredia (Student)
Reviewed by Linet Acuña Quilez