I have known Jorge Luis Sanchez for 20 years and he has always dreamed about his first full-length fiction film. I also wanted to see his dream come true. For that reason, now that El Benny is released, I recall when I met him.

It was in the 80s, during one of the first courses on assistant directors that the Cuban Institute on Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) organized and there were about 15 of a group that were selected from amongst numerous applicants. The obligatory question was if we had some idea how to make a movie. I remember that the first person said that he wanted to make a movie about "the solitude". Another preferred to make it about "unhappiness". A lot of them wanted to make it about "self-destruction", and the rest wanted to make it about "life".Without a doubt, all of them were big topics, but pure abstraction and no stories.

When it was Jose Luis' turn, he told about 5 stories in a row without stopping: one was on the illusions and prejudices of a couple before university; another on the "frikies"; another on the marginal neighbourhoods; another on the poet Julián del Casal; and the last one, was the history of his family (to which Benny More belonged). In this moment, I felt that Jorge Luis had a universe inside to describe.

Then I had the chance that this story teller to be assistant of my first movie "Clandestinos" and from that moment on to Madagascar, we shared the same doubts, the same wishes, and the same film illusions. I can say that in all my movies there is a part, a contribution of Jorge Luis Sanchez's talent. For that reason, I also consider El Benny as a movie that is sentimentally mine.

Beyond the personal feeling and the critical observations - of which there will be -, we don't forget that it is his first time; I wrote these lines with the conviction that we are in the presence of a Cuban movie with a setting in truly magnificent images (and sounds), with a show's sense that is not very frequent in our cinema and with a factory smoothness only acheived by those who know the intricacies of the film language. Jorge Luis Sánchez has demonstrated with his first movie that he is a genuine artist.

Fernando Pérez, Cinema: Charles Chaplin
Premier of the Film
Havana, Cuba, July 22th, 2006

Available in our Cuban Video Store the DVD/CD El Benny and the CD that contains the tracks of this honouring Cuban film.