By Elena V. Molina
Translated by George Bert Henson
ENGLISH | SPANISH
Interviews
A group of people respond to the same interview question: “What is democracy?” Later the recording of their voices and faces is cut into small pieces and ordered in such a way that they give a continuous speech written by the editor. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of the image is inevitable and the effect of their faces, visible for a second on the surface of the celluloid, able to say only a word-contraction-article, is reminiscent of someone drowning gasping for air.
Scriptwriters
Two people being interviewed are opponents who make up part of the same game system. They disagree in matters of oppressor and oppressed. The One has the truth, against the Other and the world. The ironic Other calmly does his own thing and smiles. The One, frustrated and cranky, makes threats the whole time and talks about himself a lot. The Other smiles. They’re litigating authorship. The reporter seems sure which one is right.
Sortie de secours | Emergency Exit
A woman appears running in a basement | runs into the person who was waiting for her | they argue | and she chooses one of the exits. The pursuer appears. He utters the name and points to the door. He utters the name (averting his eyes). Utters the name (shouts). Utters the name (doesn’t move his lips). Utters the name and trembles. Utters the name (grabbing his head) and then shoots himself with a gun. Utters the name as he falls. The woman who is waiting stares straight ahead.
He Who Doesn’t Speak
Someone in a café is about to speak. The image freezes. Someone in a car’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone in an auditorium’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone walking on the sidewalk’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone in a movie theater’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone in a club’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone in the shower’s about to speak. The image freezes. Someone’s about to speak. The image freezes.
Security Camera
People cross at the corner and look to the left. Cars pass on the right without stopping for the girls thumbing a ride. The camera focuses on them, on their license plate number. A man with a sunflower is standing in the middle of the frame. He interrupts traffic. They come and take him away.
Another day: the same people cross at the corner looking to the left. Cars pass on the right. The girls and the camera focus on the book being held by the man who’s walking in the middle of traffic, interrupting it. They come and take him away.
The next day a man walks from left to right shouting at cars and passersby. They interrupt traffic, they are going to kill him.
Manolito’s Show
At a café, one radio station follows another. Manolito switches from one to the next, receiving different signals at each table. People buy coffee and listen to him. They ask about the antenna he’s using, ask him to play an FM station. At one table there’s only interference. He remembers the sound of the electroshocks.
The Hole
The Hall-Runner wants to get out of the Hole. There’s one door after another. He’s a loner who’s chasing the picture in the books. He never leaves the place. From time to time he visits the Dreamer and his plants. There he stares at the books all day and night, and goes out again. The stairs lead to hallways. There’s one hallway after another. He has never seen the Architect’s plans but at the end he finds an exit. It leads to the ocean. The Hall-Runner dives into the water.
Country House
Against a backdrop of white walls, a nude teenage girl walks by a man who’s doing zazen. She goes out to the patio, squats over a drain and urinates. Rattled, the man flees. Every day she appears in a different room interrupting his routine. Someone knocks on the door. The man doesn’t answer it. She crosses the threshold eating oranges.
Cuban writer and filmmaker Elena V. Molina (Cuba 1988) currently resides in Barcelona where she is the managing editor for Linkgua publishing. In her spare time, she is the Creative Director of the Muestra de Cine Independiente Cubano de Barcelona. In Cuba she was, together with Raul Flores, the cofounder and publisher of the literary magazine 33 y 1/3 from 2005-2011. Since 2007 she has collaborated in the organization and programming of Cuban film festivals and exhibits in Cuba, Argentina, Germany, and Spain. She studied Audiovisual Communication in Havana and Buenos Aires.
George Bert Henson is a translator of contemporary Spanish prose. His translations include works by some of Latin America’s and Spain’s most notable writers, including Sergio Pitol, Elena Poniatowska, Andrés Neuman, Claudia Salazar, Miguel Barnet, and Leonardo Padura, and have appeared variously in Words Without Borders, Buenos Aires Review, Bomb, Asymptote, The Kenyon Review, and World Literature Today, where he is a contributing editor. His translations of Sergio Pitol’s The Art of Flight and The Journey were published last year by Deep Vellum Publishing. George teaches in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Translation Studies. He holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas.
