Improper Conduct 35 years later: A portrait of Cuban communist intolerance

“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965

On May 11, 2019 the political police in Cuba beat down and arrested Cuban gay rights activists who carried out an independent gay pride march in Havana. Today, Saturday, September 28, 2019 a restored version of Néstor Almendros (1930-1992) and Orlando Jiménez Leal's film Improper Conduct (Conducta Impropia) was shown at 2:30pm at the Mid-Manhattan Library at 42nd Street. The screening was followed by a lively Q&A with the director of the film, Orlando Jiménez Leal.  

Exterior of the New York Public Library where the film was screened today.

Caribbean Connections in partnership with the Cuban Cultural Center of New York cohosted the film retrospective. CARIBBEAN CONNECTIONS is a program, of the New York Public Library, "celebrating the history and culture of people of Caribbean descent, exploring their contributions in the performing and visual arts, literature, politics, and more." The Cuban Cultural Center of New York was founded in 1972 with the objectives "to rescue, preserve and promote Cuban and Cuban-American culture in a framework of freedom without any type of censorship and also to foster new developments in the arts with Cuban, Cuban American artists or other artists who are interested in Cuban culture."

Perla Rozencvaig, (CCC NY), Orlando Jiménez Leal, Librarian Alison Quammie

April 11th marked the 35th anniversary of the release of Improper Conduct, the film that exposed communist intolerance to gays and lesbians in Cuba. Reinaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla, Caracol, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Susan Sontag, Armando Valladares, Ana Maria Simo, Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Franqui, Martha Frayde, and René Ariza are among the well known figures interviewed in the documentary.  In 1984 the film was first screened in Paris. In an interview published in the Spanish publication, Faro y Vigo Jiménez Leal explained how this restored version and anniversary screening came to be:

It was restructured, the titles were changed, the colors were fixed; It is a shorter version now because they were edited out about twenty minutes. We left it at an hour and a half but it is still a feature film, "said Jiménez Leal in an interview with Efe. "A filmmaker friend, Eliecer Jiménez, and I discovered a master that was here in my office in good condition; We saw that (the discovery) coincided with the 35th anniversary and decided to make a restored version of the film," details the Cuban filmmaker of 77 years, of which, he said, he has spent 57 exiled." 

Orlando Jiménez Leal explained the continuing importance of this documentary, "It's a film against intolerance. Intolerance will always exist, and therefore, Improper Conduct will always be relevant."

Néstor Almendros (L), Orlando Jiménez Leal (ctr) & Michel Pion work on ‘Improper Conduct’.  El Nuevo Herald.

This documentary came into being out of an event that first inspired the filmmakers to make a fictional comedy. Ten dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba defected during a tour stop in Paris. The fillmmakers started to interview the ballet dancers, and the people who had helped them to develop the script. The interviews were so powerful that they decided to make this documentary instead.

Over 70 persons attended the 35th anniversary screening of Improper Conduct.

Here is my take on the documentary from 2018 and how it fits into the Cuban context. Below is the official trailer of the restored film.