Vivir en junio con la lengua afuera

To Live in June with Your Tongue Hanging out

Forum Expanded 2019

Though he first supported the Cuban revolution as a young man, Reinaldo Arenas spent much of his adult life on the island as a persona non grata because of his open homosexuality and politically dissident views. While his work was banned inside the country, his manuscripts were smuggled out by friends and won prizes abroad. To this day, his novels and poems are absent from Cuban libraries, bookstores, and schools. In the 1970s he would organize secret literary gatherings in Havana’s Lenin Park and share his writings with friends. When he escaped from arrest in 1974, he spent months in the park as a fugitive and drafted his memoir, “Before Night Falls”.
Fusco returns to Arenas’s hiding place to restore a sense of historical memory to what is now a virtually abandoned site. With the help of journal entries written by one of the friends who helped Arenas while he was a fugitive, Fusco was able to locate and shoot in the spot where Arenas hid, wrote, and fished for food. The three Cuban artists in the film attempt to commit to memory one of Arenas’s most famous poems about yearning for a homeland that has been ripped away from those who fought to free it.

by Coco Fusco
with Amaury Pacheco, Iris Ruiz, Lynn Cruz USA / Cuba 2018 Spanish 24’ Colour World premiere | Documentary form

With

Amaury Pacheco
Iris Ruiz
Lynn Cruz

Crew

Written and Directed by	Coco Fusco
Cinematography	Raphael Lyon
Editing	Jessie Stead
Music	EOS Quartet
Sound Design	Raphael Lyon
Sound	Jessie Stead
Production Manager	Yanelys Nuñez-Leyva
Producer	Coco Fusco

Produced by

Coco Fusco

Coco Fusco

Coco Fusco, born in New York, USA in 1960, is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her performances and videos have been presented at biennials and museums worldwide.

Filmography

1988 Havana Postmodern: The New Cuban Art; 30 min. 1993 The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey; 31 min. 1995 Pochonovela; 27 min. 2001 Els Segadors (The Reapers); 22 min. 2002 Dolores from 10 to 10; 98 min. 2004 a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert; 31 min. 2006 Operation Atropos; 59 min. 2011 La Plaza Vacia (The Empty Plaza); 11 min. 2013 And Then the Sea Will Talk to You; 45 min. 2015 La Confesión (The Confession); 30 min. · La botella al mar de María Elena (The Message in a Bottle from María Elena); 44 min. 2016 TED Ethology: Primate Visions of the Human Mind; 49 min. 2018 Vivir en junio con la lengua afuera (To Live in June with Your Tongue Hanging out)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2019