Leonardo da Vinci, as imagined by Eduardo del Llano

Mireya Castañeda

THE Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) has hosted a special showing of Vinci, the first feature length film by director, screenwriter and actor Eduardo del Llano (Moscow, 1962).

Del Lleno is well known for his extensive work as a screenwriter: Alicia en el pueblo de maravillas (1990); Kleines Tropikana (1997) and Hacerse el sueco, all directed by Daniel Díaz Torres, and La vida es silbar (1998) and Madrigal, both by Fernando Pérez.

In a press conference at ICAIC headquarters, Del Llano explained that Vinci

began as a medium length piece which expanded to 62 minutes, 20 seconds, "a long short," he said with his usual sense of humor.

He indicated that the idea emerged in 2006, when he was writing the script for a Spanish film Óscar: una pasión surrealista, directed by Lucas Fernández, about the life of artist Oscar Domínguez from the Canary Islands, a film in which Jorge Perugorría and Victoria Abril also participated.

"The Spanish director asked me to write a biography of Leonardo da Vinci and the research took me a year. I learned about some very interesting aspects of his life, like when he was imprisoned. Two more years went by and in the end the project wasn’t concretized. When I returned from Spain, I presented a less ambitious script to ICAIC and this film was done. The shooting took three weeks."

The story in the film took place in Florence in 1476 at the time when 24-year-old

Leonardo was an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop. "We speculated about the young Leonardo’s days in prison, accused of sodomy, a crime which, although considered minor, was shameful and humiliating for the time. It appears to have been an anonymous accusation and he was sentenced to a few months in prison."

"This is the historical event, Del Llano indicated, "and my film is about what could have happened inside the prison. I include some characters who may have been with him, or not. It isn’t a biography. It has to do with the role of art in the life of a human being, about what function art serves, without pretending to say anything new or definitive."

The film was shot in just one location, a cell recreated in Havana’s San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress and has only four actors. "It has all the veracity we could recreate and I’m pleased with the visual result; it is what we had in mind based on paintings from the era."

As for the actors, Del Llano affirmed that he is very happy with his choices: Héctor Medina has created an excellent characterization of Leonardo; Manuel Romero is Luigi, a common delinquent who to some degree is impressed with his new cellmate; Carlos Gonzalvo is Piero, another ruffian, perhaps someone with less intellectual prowess and the one who is most affected given the film’s thesis as to the utility or influence of beauty on people who have nothing to do with any of this, and finally the great actor Fernando Echevarría, who plays the jailer.

Vinci has three virtues. The first being the collaboration of Roberto Fabelo, National Prize for Visual Arts, who did the charcoal drawings for the cell walls, attempting to capture the spirit of the young artist; portraits of prisoners and other subjects of particular symbolism within the film, such as birds and landscapes, reflecting all of da Vinci iconography, works which could have been done by an adolescent Leonardo.

Next is the music, from Argentine composer Osvaldo Montes (who has done sound tracks for films such as El lado oscuro del corazón, by Eliseo Subiela and Tango feroz, by Marcelo Piñeyro) performed by the Cuban ancient music group Ars Longa.

The third asset is the photography, by Raúl Pérez Ureta, 2010 National Prize for Film winner, who once again demonstrated his strengths in composition and lighting, getting the most out of the one location.