CUBA: Luz Maria Collazo was Cuba’s first black model, a virtuoso of modern dance and star of the film “Soy Cuba” (I am Cuba) – a flop now considered a classic.
After sixty years since it was filmed, Collazo looks back with mixed feelings on a career of ups and downs marked by resilience, racism, and revolution.
Collazo, 79, claims to have a “very terrible memory,” which she attempts to jog using envelopes stuffed with pictures, posters for events, and magazine covers that she retrieves from drawers in her tiny Havana flat.
They are reminders of a career that began with the cultural explosion that occurred in the years after the 1959 revolution when there was a relative increase in freedom of expression following decades of brutal tyranny.
The attractive septuagenarian told AFP, “I was fortunate enough to be there throughout this moment of artistic energy.”
Collazo, who was reared in Havana but was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1943, was 15 years old when Fidel Castro’s revolution radically altered the island.
The driver and housewife’s daughter changed her mind about studying acting three years later. She remembered, “I spotted an ad in the papers” for a course at the National Theatre. She passed the entrance exam for both modern dance and ballet, which were both options.
When the time came, Collazo remarked, “I wanted to be an actor, but in the end, dance was what lured me.” Collazo later had a successful career as a dancer and teacher with various companies. But, in 1963, a chance encounter with the spouse of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Urusevsky on the streets of Havana changed her life forever.
I used to get my hair done weekly. While I was at the coffee shop, a woman approached me and asked me if I wanted to make a movie. I immediately replied, “Yes, sure, why not.” In 1958, director Mikhail Kalatozov, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was in Cuba with Urusevsky.
The two were responsible for a joint endeavour between the Soviet studios and Cuba’s ICAIC film institute to recognise the camaraderie between the communist allies.
Too ‘poetic’
Filmed in black and white over several months, “Soy Cuba” tells how Castro and his revolutionaries toppled tyrant Fulgencio Batista.
Collazo played a young woman who was compelled to work as a prostitute in casinos because she was destitute and had no other options because of systematic racism in Cuba. The modern movie is praised for its inventive filming methods.
Yet following the Cuban missile crisis, it received a poor response when published in 1964.
‘Exceptional at the time.’
The initial box office failure of the film did not deter Collazo from pursuing her dreams. Many years later, Collazo was stopped on the street again by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who was the creator of the legendary portrait of Che Guevara.
He asked her to pose for Korda.
“Choosing a black woman was uncommon at the time,” remarked Collazo, who later enjoyed a successful modelling career that included appearing in advertisements for Cuban rum.
She now feels “sadness” for the years that have passed and her uncertain, difficult financial status in Cuba. Seeing these images makes me feel incredibly nostalgic, Collazo sighed. “I feel fortunate to have travelled and worked as both a dancer and a model,” the dancer said.
