Rincón de San Lázaro

In Cuba on December 17th, year after year, thousands of Cuban devotees go on a pilgrimage to St. Lázaro's church in the town of Rincón, where there still live the few last victims of leprosy. It is a wild, dramatic view of the sick, the needy or the simple devotee, some marching on their knees, some dragging their bodies to reach the saint's altar, while men and women make business out of it, selling purple candles, flowers, relics, holy cards, food, and beverages, as the police tries to control the whole scene. Made by Leopoldo López Salgado, a Nicaraguan graduate of the film school created by Gabriel García Márquez, in the town of San Antonio de Los Baños in 1986, "Rincón de San Lázaro" is different from the official documentary of this practice, which was registered by the Cuban Film Institute in "Acerca de un personaje que unos llaman San Lázaro y otros llaman Babalú...", in its usual way, with a narrator reading images for the viewer: in this student film there are no commentary or interpretations of the people's devotion or their seemingly masochistic behaviors. The images and direct sound need no explanation. This and the perceptive eye of López Salgado, the images by Patricio Riquelme and Vicente Ferraz, the sound by Cristóbal Condoreno, and Alberto Ponce's film editing, are the evidence that makes this short an extraordinary student work. Bravo!