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Luis Leonel León is a Cuban journalist, filmmaker, writer and television director exiled in United States, where he has made documentary films, prime time shows for Hispanic television stations, and writes for South Florida's newspapers.
FROM BUENAVISTA TO ARROYO NARANJO
León was born on April 7, 1971, in the Buenavista neighborhood of Havana. In his adolescence he moved with his parents to the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, where he was part of the Carlos Enríquez literature workshop with the advice of the writer José Ramón Fajardo. He later entered the Enrique José Varona Pre-University Institute in the La Víbora neighborhood.
In Cuba At the end of the 1980s, he published his first poems in a literary bulletin directed by Fajardo, influenced "by avant-garde poets in Europe, by the Beat generation, and by voices from Latin America such as Jorge Luis Borges, César Vallejo, and José Martí." From those years he began to link to organizations opposed to the Cuban Revolution and to write contestatory texts.
After completing his compulsory military service, in the early 1990s he continued his academic training in areas such as radio journalism and stage direction, and at the same time began working as a scriptwriter and producer at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television. On Radio Ciudad de La Habana he presented the segment "Pretextos" on literature in the program "Todo Terreno S.A." At Radio Metropolitana he wrote and directed spaces such as "Una imagen posible", "A propósito", "A esta hora", among others.
At the same time he graduated as a director at the Faculty of Audiovisual Media of Instituto Superior de Arte. In his debut documentary, "El color de las confesiones" (The Color of Confessions, 1999), "through scenes from the life of the painter Reynaldo López Hernández, two constant themes appear in his work made in Cuba: the investigation of the reasons that generate creation and the nonconformity of the artists with the sociopolitical context."
HABANECERES
His second film, "Habaneceres" (2001), was selected as the best documentary of the year by the Cuban Association of Cinematographic Press. According to Grethel Delgado of Diario Las Américas, "His material is thoughtful, it says a lot where it leaves out, because it relies on gestures and the way his interviewees speak to complete the anxiety of the special period, the surviving life of the 90s in the island. That narrative intuition of the documentary makes it even more valuable, in addition to its undeniable historical weight, because it captures the tone of an era, the collective pain in a city as peculiar as Havana."
In the show "En profundidad" of Radio and Television Martí (OCB), the journalist Alfredo Jacomino affirms: "Luis Leonel did not experience splendor in Havana, he could not witness the charm (neither of the store nor of the adjective) and still he loves it. And he who wants something, even if he is old and battered, deserves a bow."
LA GRACIA DE VOLVER
In the 2000s he left radio to pursue his career as a filmmaker and television director. In 2004 he moved to Spain as curator of an independent exhibition of Cuban cinema entitled "Otras imágenes posibles". That year he recorded in Tenerife "La gracia de volver" (The Grace of Returning), about the Cuban writer Dulce María Loynaz. The documentary is inspired by her travel novel A summer in Tenerife and presents interviews with Canarian personalities who met the poet during her trips to the island and who appear mentioned in her work.
In 2005 he began to work professionally on the CHTV channel and a year later he co-founded the Canal Habana (Havana Channel), where he created cultural programs such as "Donde va la Habana" y "Breves Estaciones", and presented independent short films made on the island. In Cubavisión Internacional he created the "Contraplano" program, about the history of Cuban cinema, and in Educational Channel 2 he created "Páginas compartidas", about literature. Later he moved to Venezuela to work on cultural documentaries, and two years later he moved to Colombia, where he lived for a year before settling in the United States.
EXILE IN USA
In the United States he has worked as a journalist and opinion columnist on cultural and sociopolitical issues, especially on his native country, for media such as El Nuevo Herald, Diario Las Américas, El Nacional, La Gaceta de la Iberosfera and PanAm Post.
He has produced opinion programs (The mirror, The analysis, Simply Karen, Karen at 8) and entertainment (The Alexis Valdés show, The scratch, The Tony Benítez show, On the air) for the América TeVe (channel 41), Mega TV, MiraTV and GenTV (channel 8).
For Radio Television Martí (United States Agency for Global Media USAGM) wrote and directed programs and special documentary series linked to the history of Cuba and its exiles, such as "Brigada 2506, héroes cubanos" (Brigade 2506, Cuban Heroes), starring participants in the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961; "Mariel 40 años" (Mariel 40 years), a recount of the 1980 exodus through which more than 140,000 Cubans left the island; and "8×8, mujeres cubanas en búsqueda de la libertad" (Cuban women in search of freedom), testimonies of eight dissident women on the island. Her last production for this medium financed by the US government was the program "El análisis" (The analysis), hosted by the Cuban-American journalist Karen Caballero, a concept created by León to generate debates about the presidential elections in the United States in 2020.
COLECCIÓN FUGAS
In 2017, León launched his "Colección Fugas", editorial project at the Miami International Book Fair, dedicated to "Cuban writers from the diaspora, those who write, live and do their work outside of Cuba, outside the regime." León considers that "in exile the best of Cuban letters has been written. A phenomenon that by the way is not exclusive to the last six decades, when Castroism has shattered and intervened in the national culture, pushing thousands of creators into exile." From earlier times we have been doomed to flight. The first three titles are "El Super (40 years edition)", a play by Iván Acosta made into a film by Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jimenez Leal; "Witch poker and other stories (50 years edition)", stories by Carlos Alberto Montaner; and the novel "Escaped from Paradise" by Armando de Armas. The collection, hosted by the Spanish publishers La Palma and Hurón Azul, was presented at the Madrid Book Fair.
THE SAHARA AND CANDIDO
In 2021 León published previews of two films in production: "Arena en los ojos", about the Western Sahara conflict, a project conceived at the beginning of this century when the filmmaker filmed scenes for the documentary Destinos in that area of North Africa; and "Cándido, el rey de las 3 congas", dedicated to the life and work of Cuban percussionist Cándido Camero. This film about Cándido is part of the "Cubanos on the other side" series, created by León to rescue stories of Cubans in the diaspora, with episodes starring José Basulto, Edmundo Desnoes, Iván Acosta, Mike Porcel, Adrián (Nómada) Morales, Maria Elena Cruz Varela, Andy Pruna, Félix Ismael Rodríguez, Zoé Valdés, Julio Shiling, among others.
