Esther Dita Kohn de Cohen, founder of the Anna Frank Space: (in the Holocaust, the family) "there were more or less about 500 people; we don't know exactly how many were killed, that was terrible”
Julio Emilio Moliné, co-director “Joan Baez in Latin America: There but for fortune” (clandestine documentary, 1981): “Joan received death threats, and was banned, persecuted…”
Elisa Lerner, writer: “Solitude is the writer's homeland”
Susy Dembo, visual artist: "Engraving is alchemical, it is magical"
Nava Semel, writer: And the Rat Laughed with Jane Fonda
José Pulido, poet: “I'm like a castaway clinging to his tongue”
Rolando Peña, visual artist: "We baptized the group in a bathtub, and the godfather was Andy Warhol"
Carlos Giménez, theater director: “Our country is the empire of consummated facts, of de facto culture”
Beatriz Iriart, poet: “By when I was 10, I was an old woman already. Writing poetry was a way of transmuting that pain”
Dinapiera Di Donato, poet: "Imagination creates versions of life, but I cannot understand life without a version."
María Lamadrid, founder of "África Vive": “We are the first disappeared people in Argentina”
Mariana Rondón, filmmaker: "During my childhood, I thought cinema was only one movie: Yellow Submarine"
Roland Streuli, photographer: “My life is color, I am not an opaque or black and white person”
Viviana Marcela Iriart (1958) is an Argentine-Venezuelan writer and interviewer. She studied journalism for a year in La Plata, Argentina, but for being a pacifist, she was exiled by the Argentine dictatorship in 1979. Venezuela granted her asylum, and four months later, at the age of 21, she wrote her first professional report... on Julio Cortázar, an interview included in this book.
She has published novels, plays, and three books on Carlos Giménez: ¡Bravo Carlos Giménez!, Carlos Giménez el genio irreverente, and María Teresa Castillo-Carlos Giménez-Caracas International Theater Festival 1973-1992.
She is the founder of the publishing house Escritoras Unidas & Cía. Editoras and the cultural blog of the same name.
INTERVIEWS, with graphic design by Jairo Carthy, is available on AMAZON in paperback and ebook versions: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F8RDDP2X
The interview you did to me came out really well given the chaotic circumstances we had to deal with. You really took into account some of the things I told you and I hope readers feel the dual authenticity of you work and my words.
The interview you did to me came out really well given the chaotic circumstances we had to deal with. You really took into account some of the things I told you and I hope readers feel the dual authenticity of you work and my words.
Julio Cortázar not only was kind enough to agree to an interview in Caracas in late September 1979, when I was a 21-year-old unknown exiled freelancer, writing for free for Semana - a dying magazine - but he was also extremely generous for sending me a letter to thank me for the interview once it had been published, saying beautiful words that only a wonderful person like him could write and that, of course, I did not deserve.
I signed the interview using a pseudonym (the name was chosen by the editor in chief) because Cortázar was one of the most famous and combative opponents of the Argentine dictatorship; my mother and my sisters were living in Argentina and I feared they could suffer retaliation. Cortázar, with his characteristic humanity, understood my fears when I explained the situation.
When we met at the Anauco Hilton Hotel lobby, we did not kiss in the cheek, in Argentine style, but shook hands instead, in Venezuelan style, because that was the first thing I had learned after ending up hovering in mid-air several times with the person I was trying to kiss staring back at me in surprise. Cortázar, who had been in Venezuela several times, seemed to know about this custom quite well.
He did not ask why I had been forced to live in exile and I did not tell him about it. I admired him too much to waste time talking about myself. I only wanted to hear his thoughts. He was with Carol Dunlop, who looked charming with her big tender eyes full of amazement like a little girl, and Cortázar was very patient when I attacked intellectuals who urged people to fight but hid behind their books when bombs started falling. Of course, he was not like that, but I had met so many who were during my last months in Argentina, while trying to run away, that intellectuals disgusted me. Cortázar, who seemed to intuitively know I was bleeding out in exile, responded to my attacks with patience and great gentleness.
He looked very young and handsome (and he was 65 years old), but he seemed to be a very sad man - although at some points in the interview I say he smiled like a child - he seemed very worried and physically exhausted.
When the interview finished and we were both standing, saying goodbye, when I saw that he was starting to walk and that he would be out of my life forever, I somehow plucked up the courage - even though I was extremely shy - to stop him and say:
- Cortázar, could I ask you a favor?
- Of course! —he answered kindly.
-Can I give you a kiss?
Cortázar burst out laughing with surprise and joy, and for the first time I saw his eyes sparkle happily. Carol, by his side, smiled at me with a knowing look in her big eyes.
- Sure! —he answered with a wonderful smile and leaned so that I could reach his cheek.
A kiss, an interview, a letter. Who could ask for more? Cortázar was my best gift in exile (together with Joan Báez, but that is another story).
What Cortázar did not know - and had no reason to know and actually never knew - was that I had been forced to live in exile for being a pacifist and the editor of a small, underground culture magazine, Machu-Picchu, where I had expressed my opposition to the war with Chile in September 1978. The result was persecution, secrecy, asylum at the Embassy of Venezuela in Buenos Aires and exile - in that order. And lacking any political militancy, I was very naive to think using a pseudonym was enough to hide from the dictatorship.
BecauseAlberto Boixadós, an Argentine writer who supported the dictatorship and whose book“Arte y Subversión” (Art and Subversion) includes a chapter dedicated to attacking Cortázar called “Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa. ¿Son francotiradores o constituyen ejército regular?” (Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa. Are they free agents or part of the regular army?), can be read - even today! - in the Argentine neo-Nazi blog calledWeltanschauungNS:
“Revolutionary passion leads him to distort the truth reaching the absurd.
In an interview to Cortázar performed by Viviana López Osornio for Semana magazine #581, November 1979, in a corner of the Anauco Hilton Hotel on the occasion of the first International Conference on Exile and Latin American Solidarity in the 70s, he answers: ‘For me what is and has been traumatic is a phenomenon which not everyone considers and which, in the case of an exiled artist, is fundamental. It's what I would call the cultural exile (…)”
First, how much Cortázar’s words bothered the Argentine dictatorship and its followers, because “Semana” was a bankrupt magazine (it closed a few months later) and therefore had very few readers and very little influence on Venezuelan political life, and because the interview had been performed by an absolutely unknown and insignificant person in 1979.
However in 1981, when the book came out, I was an active opponent of the dictatorship through my pro bono work at Amnesty International and the “Coordinator for Human Rights in Argentina” (created by part of the Argentine exiles in Venezuela); I had stopped using the pseudonym in 1979 and had become a small public figure - just as insignificant, but for the dictatorship any flea could mean the risk of getting a huge bump.
Second, that there were traitors among Argentine exiles in Caracas, because only the people around me knew that that interview to Cortázar had been performed by me and it had never been republished with my name. (Besides, in 1980 I adopted my mother's surname, Iriart, and I have been known by that name since then.) Who were those traitors?
Living in exile, among other things, was always like walking down a mined road - you never knew when you could explode into pieces, because the dictatorship never stopped persecuting us. Or if the helping hand that was extended to you was actually the one that was trying to kill you.
In the interview, Cortázar says sorrowfully: “Because here I can tell you this, but no one will listen to me in Argentina, nobody will read it. You can publish it, but unless someone takes it there by carrying it in their pocket, no one will be able to read it there.” I thought the same thing. How wrong we were! We had forgotten about traitors, handing our heads on a plate for money, envy, ambition, perversion or mere hatred.
Cortázar was not invited to Alfonsín's investiture when democracy returned to Argentina in December 1983. And if anyone deserved to be invited for how he had fought and for all he had given and all he had stopped doing for himself and sacrificed for Argentine democracy, it was him.
Cortázar was also betrayed by democracy.
And I only hope that traitors have been punished, either by justice or by life, and if they have not, so be it: they will always be a piece of shit under a military boot or a democratic shoe.
Cortázar is still one of the greatest writers of all times, in the whole world. One of the most loved human beings. And I live in peace.
And now that the letter he sent me in 1979 has become part of the book “Julio Cortázar: Cartas 1977-1984” (Julio Cortázar: 1977-1984 Letters), which contains 5 volumes with almost all the letters Cortázar wrote in his life, I can only say once again: Thank you, Cortázar, for letting me be part of your life.
Carlos Giménez (born in Córdoba, Argentina, on April 13, 1946, Aries) is the founder and director of the Caracas International Theater Festival, together with María Teresa Castillo, one of the major drivers of culture in
Venezuela, who has not hesitated to support him since 1971, when the first
festival was held, and who then hired him as Art Director for the Caracas
Athenaeum, an institution she has helped create and of which she is the
president.Carlos is also the founder and director of the Rajatabla
Group, with which he has traveled around the world, winning hundreds of
awards, and which put Venezuelan theater at the center of the global theatrical
stage.
Working
as a director since he was a teen, in 1965 he participated in the First
Nancy Theater Festival with his group El Juglar. He was
19 years old and he achieved something impossible at the time: without any
previous performances in Buenos Aires, he gained international exposure
directly from Córdoba to Europe. After that, they traveled to Poland, where the
group shared the Honorable Mention with East Germany in Warsaw
and received the First Prize in Krakow. Back in Argentina he
faced the indifference of the capital's theatrical world towards his
achievements in Europe. In response, Carlos created in Córdoba the First
National Theater Festival, but was excluded from its organization in 1967,
when political repression was starting in his country. This event decided him
to abandon his home country.
This
interview took place in the context of the Pirandello Festival, which is held in every auditorium and every
space within the Caracas Athenaeum, and which he is in charge of organizing.
According to Carlos Giménez, the “main idea for organizing the Festival
comes from the need to connect theater as a social event within the community
it is inserted in”—in this case, the significant Italian immigrant
population—, to involve private business in cultural activities, to take
culture to all social classes, all aspects in which Venezuelan theater has
stayed a bit on the sidelines. With this purpose, the Caracas Athenaeum plans
to organize annual festivals about other important figures in world
theater.
If you
had to create a minimal autobiography, what aspects of your life would you
choose?
My
arrival to Venezuela in November 1969. Because this defines a lot, not only
professional aspects in my life, but also personal aspects, that is, what I was
going to do with my life and my career.
Then, as
this event divided my life in two, going back to my experiences in Argentina,
one of the most important moments was my high school graduation in 1964 and my
departure to Europe. There I discovered a world that was completely unknown to
me and I was dazzled by it, which meant, at least for me, that I was not going
to stay locked within the parameters set by the city or the country I was born
in. I realized there was a mismatch between what I wanted and what my
environment, my habitat, gave me.
During
that time, I met Jack Lang, who is the director of the World Theater Festival
in Nancy, and now Minister of Culture in France, so that was how in 1964 I came
into contact with international festivals, which was going to be really
important, because Jack Lang invited us to participate in 1965 in the First
World Festival in Nancy. This invitation also extended to the group of people
who at that time were in Europe without having constituted the El Juglar group
yet - the creation of which is another important moment in my life, even though
El Juglar never had neither the influence nor the impact that Rajatabla has had
in Latin America. This participation was extremely important if we consider
that this group that went to the Nancy World Festival and to festivals in
Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, in 1965, was a provincial theatrical group that had
not left Córdoba to go to Buenos Aires, but to participate in these really
important events.
Moreover,
1965 was the year when all the movements which would have a huge impact in the
theatrical world started all at the same time, like Nancy, Grotowski, Eugenio
Barba, Jack Lang, Els Joglars from Barcelona and La Comuna from Portugal. In
Poland, we presented a play which won one of the awards of the International
Theatre Institute (ITI-UNESCO), called “El Otro Judas” (The Other Judas) from
Abelardo Castillo, one of the most eminent Argentine intellectuals from that
time and director of “El Escarabajo de Oro”. With this play that I directed we
won the Honorable Mention together with East Germany in Warsaw and, in Krakow,
we received the First Prize.
How important
was your success in Europe for your career?
It was
crucial. That moment and then the cold reception we had in Argentina when we
presented the same play decided me to leave my country.
And did
you come directly to Venezuela?
No, I
started in 1968 with what would be another fundamental event in my life: a tour
by land from Córdoba to Caracas, which took us 3 months. We went to the
main mining centers in Bolivia, where we presented our shows. I vividly
remember the experience we had in Chorolque, a peak that is 5,000 meters
above sea level and has the highest tin mine in the world. There, since there
was no electricity, we performed using the miners' lights - that is, surrounded
by 40 miners who provided us light with their helmets while we performed a
children's play. This tour meant a terrifying discovery of Latin America, not
just skin-deep. We came into contact with utter poverty in Latin America. We
also performed in fishing centers in Peru, we did a wonderful tour around Peru,
we performed in Colombia and in 1968 we arrived at the Manizales Festival. In
this festival, we presented a play called “La Querida Familia” (The Dear
Family), a baroque anthology by Ionesco, and the jury formed by Ernesto Sábato,
Pablo Neruda, Jack Lang, Miguel Ángel Asturias, awarded us the prize. However,
we still couldn't get to Venezuela - we only managed to do that after
participating in the Second Manizales Theater Festival in 1969, where we met
Omar Arrieche, Director of the Barquisimeto Educational Experimental Theater,
who got us a visa to enter by land.
When was
Rajatabla founded?
On
February 28, 1971, when “Tu país está feliz” (Your country is happy) was
premiered. At that moment we expressed our desire to form a group with a
regular cast, a permanent producer, our own auditorium for the long-term, which
would allow us to evolve our aesthetics and have a very unique repertoire based
on the needs of the group. All of these expectations were surpassed by the
reality of our work. At that time, some important things happened, like the
Caracas International Theater Festival.
Was
Rajatabla already part of the Athenaeum at that time?
Rajatabla
has always been dependent on the Athenaeum in a rather informal way, but with
the success we achieved with our performances—“Tu país está feliz”, “Don Mendo”
(Mr. Mendo)—and finally after presenting the first show we prepared with the
name of Rajatabla, which was “Venezuela tuya” (Your Venezuela) by Luis Britto
García, we became the regular cast in the Caracas Athenaeum.
How
important is the Caracas International Theater Festival considered in
Venezuela?
I
personally believe it is of critical importance, because it consolidates a
whole perspective and a philosophy regarding theater. However, this is a relatively
misunderstood fact in the Venezuelan context, because of the investment it
implies. It's true that it would be really beneficial for the country if the
government invested that money in other important priorities, such as creating
a National Theater School, a National Theater Company, but we know that's not
going to happen. Our country is the empire of consummated facts, of de facto
culture. Furthermore, I believe that this Festival projects and creates an
international relationship for Venezuelan theater, it opens up new structures,
it raises the level of reflection, it powers and qualifies the work of our
creators and it means opening up to incorporate an enormous class to theatrical
activity, especially young people.
We
remember that in 1979 you suffered a serious accident. What did it mean for
you?
That was
another fundamental event in my life. Because through that accident and through
the response and support I got, people's emotional attachment, I established an
important connection with the country.
This year
you're going to direct “Chuo Gil” in the United States. How are you preparing
for this new experience?
With
great enthusiasm, because it means entering the United States professional
theater, with a very important cast, within a different framework and with a
huge production team and an almost mechanical production. It means entering a
state in my profession that is perhaps less human but very interesting to go
through.
What do
you think are the most important values in your theatrical work?
Firstly,
I'm getting more and more terrified of formulas. I find it hard to rationalize
my work method. I can use 4 or 5 of Stanislavsky's concepts, introduce elements
from Brecht's technique, but I'm not an educator, I'm not a teacher.
But are there
specific formulas you reject?
No,
that's something I did at the beginning, but I'm rejecting less and less.
There's an already trodden path that you need to travel sooner or later. What's
wonderful about theater is that inapprehensible sense that you never know
what's going to happen, that intangible element for which an actor might
perform in a completely different way than on the previous day. There are some
topics that I'm invariably interested in, such as timelessness - theater is not
a video, it's not a movie, it's something absolutely temporary in essence. When
the curtain comes down, we know that we've seen a performance that will not be
repeated ever again. Another fundamental topic is that of space and time, and
the reaction to these two elements from the director, the actor and the
spectator. That is why I have paid special attention to staging and to keeping
away, as I believe great creators have done, from acting mechanically, from
reading the text in a literal way. For example, Stanislavski, who made a
comprehensive analysis of actors, did not dissociate the work of the actor
himself from external elements, for example smell - he said he wished smell
would come from the stage. And that is what I call paying attention to reading
plays non-literally.
Why have
you decided to set up “Tu país está feliz” again?
Because
my aesthetical proposition is not dissociated from my ideological proposition.
I want to set up not only that play but also the 20 shows I did there once
again. To perform a kind of live dive to see what happened with everything that
has been done before. Reflecting from a long distance allows you to see things
much more deeply, and personally it allows me to discover what hidden territory
I can tread on to make a new recreation. I've been accused of being reiterative
and it's true - I am a kind of Manichaean who has enclosed himself within a
series of personal codes and I will not be free until I have exhausted them.
They are like the ghosts I accept I'll have until I get free of them.
Note by VMI:
Although all articles about Carlos Giménez say he was born in Rosario, which is
true, when we interviewed him Carlos was very busy organizing the Pirandello
Festival, so he asked us to leave him the questions saying he would answer them
in writing. He loved writing and he did it very well. And he wrote:
“Carlos Giménez (born in Córdoba, Argentina, on April
13, 1946, Aries).”
People are not from where they were born but
from where they feel they were born. And he
is as Cordovan as he is Venezuelan.
"A day in my life is always a beautiful thing, because I am very happy to be alive. I have no intention of dying, I have the impression that I am immortal. I know I'm not, but the idea of death does not bother me, nor does it scare me. I deny its existence, so that helps me to live in a way ... how do I put it? Under the sun, sunny.
I am very glad to be alive, and there is a thing that few people think of: It is a wonderful miracle that we all are human beings, that we are in the top of the zoological scale, by purely genetic chance. Because you did not choose who you are. We come from a very long genetic chain and when I see a chicken or a fly also born of the same genetic chain, I marvel at being a man and not a chicken. I am a man, with all the good and bad that means. And I'm glad I have had a conscience, seeing with it as much as a conscience can see of the planet. And I won't say more to you."
He uttered those word after more than half an hour with us, telling us anecdotes and smiling, sometimes like a child. Yes, he is a human being like you and me, to speak he needs to move the mouth in the same way as you and I do. But he is Julio Cortazar .
