When Venezuelan-born Gladys Bensimon attended her first meeting of Cuban ex-political prisoners in Union City two years ago, she was so taken by the men’s stories that she began to film them. To finance the completion of her film, a fundraiser has been scheduled for Oct. 9.
The local award-winning producer and director came upon the meeting by chance, through the recommendation of her friend Manuel Khon, founder of the group “Save Venezuela.” At first, she says, she “didn’t know where it was going,” but two years and 30 hours of footage later, she and co-producer Drew Oberholtzer are preparing to share the men’s stories in their yet-unreleased documentary, “Celebrating Life in Union.”
The fundraiser is being held today (Sunday, Oct. 9).
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Much of her work focuses on the struggles and migrations of people who found themselves suddenly exiled from their own countries, as does her latest project, “Crossing Our Borders,” about the Venezuelan dictatorship. It received the “Best Documentary” award at the 2010 Hoboken International Film Festival and has been aired on such major networks as CNN, Univision and Fox News.
So when Bensimon walked through the doors of the Union de Ex-Presos Politicos Cubanos (UEPPC) on 43rd Street in Union City, she knew she had discovered her next project.
A home for exiles
In the 1970s, a few prison survivors fled to the states and wound up in Union City. They were somehow able to maintain a strong network of communication with those they left behind. As more and more prisoners were released over the years, those who had already established themselves offered their homes and their resources to each new arrival, and eventually the UEPPC was founded.
According to the UEPPC’s website, one of its initial missions was “to establish a site where [they] could continue the democratic, civic, political and cultural education of [their] members.”
With her documentary, Bensimon hopes to extend this mission beyond the association. She strongly believes in the power of education – in particular, through the visual medium of film – to change people, and to “prevent [them] from falling into the same trap over and over again.” This is how the plight of the Cuban ex-political prisoners became her newest project.
“To understand it, people really have to see it,” she said. “I feel like it’s become my duty. If I’m able to get their stories out, then perhaps someone will have helped them at last.”
The meetings
When Bensimon went to her first meeting, the walls were replete with photographs of Cubans who had fought and died for their country’s political freedom. She found herself amongst a roomful of men in their mid-sixties, seventies, and eighties who shared a strong and tragic bond: all of them had stood up to Fidel Castro and the regime that had overthrown their former government. And all of them had been arrested, tortured and thrown in jail for over a decade for their resistance activities when they were mere teenagers.
Yet here they were after over half a century, united once more: helping each other, laughing together, planning together, and hoping one day to see their country free again.
“You don’t feel sorry for them when you speak with them,” Bensimon said. “You feel as if you are surrounded by a loving family – a very strong brotherhood – with no sense of a ‘poor me’ attitude at all. This association is their home.”
Funds needed to finish film
While Bensimon and Oberholtzer have been able to personally finance the project thus far, they need around $16,000 more to begin the post-production required to distribute the film.
They will hold their first fundraiser at Las Palmas Restaurant in West New York on Oct. 9 at 10 a.m. Bensimon urges the community to “come out and support this beautiful brotherhood of survivors” in the hopes that the documentary will help to bring about the sort of political change they have struggled and suffered for all of their lives.
“Timing is everything,” she insisted. “They’re dying now, and no one knows the details: neither the torture and humiliation or the triumphs and successes they’ve been through.”
For more information, please visit the documentary’s website at www.celebratinglifeinunion.com.
Gennarose Pope may be reached at editorial@hudsonreporter.com.