Letters to Eloisa

Filmmaker Adriana Bosch has chronicled the lives and historical importance of countless figures throughout her three-decade career as producer or director for series like American Experience and Latino Americans and films such as Voices from Mariel. In this new, fascinating documentary she turns her lens to the legendary Cuban poet José Lezama Lima. Lima is widely considered to be one of most influential figures in Latin American literature in the twentieth century. In Bosch’s film, his life story is told through letters written to his sister Eloisa, living in exile, between 1961 and 1976. The film is a first-hand look at the transformative impact of politics on the family and society; and shows the struggle between Cuba’s revolutionary government and artists and intellectuals, as the space for creative freedom disappeared in Cuba during the first two decades of the revolution. By revealing Lima’s complex and ultimately tragic relationship to the Cuban revolutionary government, Letters to Eloisa is a window into a human soul crushed by repression and intolerance. (Miami Film Festival)