HBO to air Oliver Stone's revamped documentary on Castro
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, USA (AFP): The cable channel
Home Box Office will Wednesday air a revised version of Oliver Stone's
controversial documentary on Fidel Castro, after the director returned to Cuba
to update his work with the results of last year's crackdown on dissidents.
"Looking for Fidel" contains new material culled from 30 hours of interviews
with the Cuban leader and others in the wake of the crackdown and the summary
execution of three Cubans convicted of hijacking a ferry with the intent of
fleeing to the United States. HBO pulled the
documentary, then known as "Commandante," in May after Castro jailed 75
dissidents and ordered the executions. The
53-minute revised version is "very complete," HBO spokeswoman Lena Iny said.
"Oliver Stone returned to Cuba to re-interview Castro after the first film he
did. That one, yes, was incomplete because there was no mention" of the
crackdown, she said. "This film was intended
initially as just a 10-minute update ... but in the end he came back with 30
hours of material and he was able to question him on dissidents, on the
crackdown, and he challenges him pretty well, I think."
Stone had intended his documentary to be a humanized portrait of Castro, who
has ruled the Americas' only communist country with an iron fist since 1959,
defying a 40-year-old US embargo and attempts by Cuban exiles to overthrow
him. The original version of the film aired
earlier this year on the Canadian Broadcasting Company.
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