The documentary “Amara” will be shown at the Miami Film Festival

American director Hugo Perez is competing for an award in Miami Film Festival With a documentary film dedicated to the Cuban singer Omara Portondo, at an event taking place these days in the American city.

“Omara has her mysteries,” Perez says, explaining that the 91-year-old singer, a living legend of Cuban music, has a career that includes affiliation with the Las D’Aida quartet and the Buena Vista Social Club, “doesn’t he like to talk too much about the things he happened to him.

“At this point, no one will reveal anything,” he replied when Evie asked him about it. But Amara’s “suffering” is felt when she sings, says Perez, who explained that he framed the film as a musical theater in which the singer’s performances dominate the opinions of people close to or familiar with her work.

However, other musicians such as Diego El Segala, Chucho Valdes, Roberto Fonseca, and Arturo O’Farrell appear in this documentary that follows Omara through Mexico, Tokyo, New York, and Havana.

It was Ariel, the singer’s only son, who suggested Perez make a movie about his mother when the director visited him in Havana for a project about Cuban baseball players who played in African American leagues in the United States. States … as was the case with the father of the singer Bartolome Portondo.

“I thought about it one night and said yes,” recalls Perez, who thought a character at the height of Edith Piaf or Ella Fitzgerald deserved a documentary.

Omara Portuondo: “I intend to sing as long as I have a voice and people want to listen to me.”

Perez set himself the goal of letting the viewer know Amara’s character through her songs after realizing that this was the preference of the Cuban music “singer”, winner of the 2009 Latin Grammy Award and a Special Grammy Award. A Latin Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 AD in addition to many other privileges, including the Spanish Medal of Fine Arts.

Confirms Perez, who premiered architecture At a Documentary Film Festival in New York in late 2021.

Now the audiovisual material will have two performances, on Monday 7 March and Saturday 12 March, at the Miami International Festival, a city where – he knows – there are people who do not forgive the singer for staying in Cuba and not going into exile like other artists.

from singer twenty years or blame me He says he is a “very simple” person and has been “very good” with him, to the point that when he visits her in Havana he treats him like another member of his family.

Produced by Dana Kuznetzkopf and Frida Torresblanco, architecture It is an intimate documentary about a woman with seven decades of professional career and a similar weight in Cuban music.

On Vida, the international farewell tour that Omara Portuondo announced in February, Perez says it’s pure and good, but that it clearly can’t “go on as before”.

The documentary about Omara Portuondo will premiere at the New York Documentary Film Festival

“For me, singing is life, it’s my way of living,” Amara said when announcing that she would be returning to world performances.

Along the same lines, Perez told Efe that “cinema is a vice,” which puts him ahead of many other things, because it’s what he likes to do, author or co-author of documentaries like Once upon a time in Uganda And the No memory, no magicAmong other cinematic works.