For Isidro Estrada *
We just left the Chinese Ma Angel ** Argudín Ma has bowed to the human habit of dying, if the aggravating it at the wrong time when he had much to say. In Beijing, the capital of China who so loved, I light a stick of incense and pray for his memory. That his memory does not fade as the incense.
For many Cubans, the Chinese name of Ma will forever be synonymous with prisms, one TV spot in the 80's, once a week and about to close the day repositioning the documentary genre that always deserved pedestal both Cuban production, like much of what was then being done in other latitudes. The Chinese scored a point, proposing that breath of fresh air amid the throes of stagnation so prevalent in our small screen.
thanked often go to bed wearing as last images in the pupil the short those with whom Ma helped us discover the world. And to be better. So I started to admire him.
Maybe that's why, when by accident we met in person, sharing a couch in the cultural office of China Embassy in Havana, I readily agreed it was him. But as good Cubans, a few minutes we were tied to the conversation, with an air of lifelong neighbors.
Since that meeting I began to understand that Angel Ma, as well as talented filmmaker and critic of the audiovisual, was a gentleman. I hinted at his manner and soft-spoken, logical inheritance of his Asian roots, and I have ratified subsequent exchanges. Like the time that with sharp trial, but not hurt, I said my attempt at documentary about Latin music in China had to give scissors, "because you have many endings." Then agree on several occasions, usually when he enlisted in film preservation projects on China's memory in Cuba, charged with his usual modesty and a Sony camcorder pre-Flood times.
Nothing stopped him in his endeavors, and the usual practical difficulties or the apathy of some people. In those days he had suffered a stroke that kept him long days in the hospital Calixto Garcia - apparent prelude then took him forever. And he told me bitterly that no one in all that trance TV had remembered him. Poor memory counselor who is right?
The last time I saw him in mid-2007, we sat face to sip Buccaneers Coppelia and dreams of doing something together, pursuing our shared interest in China, where he had filmed "Spring Dragon", and where I came shortly thereafter, after a labor contract. I lost track.
I know that months later he moved to Miami and there opened a school of Reiki healing energy, this oriental therapy with a veneer of religion has many followers today.
Chinese Ma has been using its power to save souls, but if used with the same skill with which he designed prisms, I bet you will have left many patients had recovered and thanked viewers.
______________________ Notes blog editor:
Argudín Ma is also the producer of the documentary as Samuel Happiness (2006) and The return of the divas (2001), on the Chinese in Cuba.
See The return of the divas , Angel Ma Argudín Angel Ma
Argudín, Cuba 62, died in Miami, United States city where he lived since June 2008. At the time I publish this chronicle is to officiate at funeral services director of prisms in Florida Funeral Home. Ma
Argudín died this past Sunday, the victim of a stroke that kept him hospitalized, unconscious, for several days.
