The second programme of Bodies Adrift traces the Villaverde filmmaking couple trajectory from revolutionary Cuba in the early 1960s to the experimental underground scene of 1970s New York. Beginning with The Park (1963), filmed in one of Havana’s epicentres, and continuing through a series of intimate works made in exile, the session reveals their continuous reinvention of cinematic form and production methods. Moving from institutional filmmaking to a radically independent practice shot on 16mm with minimal resources, the Villaverdes remained at the margins of the cultural movements they inhabited. Their Cuban films were often censored or scarcely exhibited, while their US output has only recently begun to be discovered through restorations by the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

Across these films runs a persistent attention to lives situated at the edges of societal structures: the elderly figures wandering through The Park; immigrants navigating displacement (A Lady’s Home Journal, 1972); and women confronting domestic roles and gender violence (Blanca Putica, 1973; Poor Cinderella, 1978). As the filmmakers moved from Cuba to the United States, their cinema shifted from observing bodies in public space to examining their own within the private confines of home. The result is a body of work that quietly resists grand historical narratives in favour of the fragile, everyday experiences of those who remain on the margins.

Programme

El parque (The Park) dir. Fernando Villaverde, Cuba 1963, 25 min.
Blanca Putica (A Girl in Love) dir. Miñuca Villaverde, USA/Cuba 1973, 14 min.
Poor Cinderella, Still Ironing Her Husband Shirt dir. Miñuca Villaverde, USA 1978, 7 min.
A Lady’s Home Journal dir. Fernando Villaverde, Miñuca Villaverde, USA 1972, 20 min.

Total runtime: 67 min.