Through the Wall of Words: The Ruinous Cuban Body in Fernando Pérez’s Film La pared de las palabras (2014)

Hosek J.R.

Renowned Cuban filmmaker Fernando Pérez’s films are known for capturing the pulse of street-level life in Havana. Produced independently of the Cuban Film Institute, La pared de las palabras (The Wall of Words) (2014) expresses the im/possibilities and necessity of communication in precarity. The lyrical, gritty feature depicts multiple practices of being and interdependence in conditions of vulnerability. The Berlin Wall ciphers impoverished interaction and stasis as impediments that in turn engender situational privation and limit human potential and engagement. Valorizing change, La pared deploys the Berlin Wall to speak about straitened conditions in the Heimat of Cuba and by extension in society today.