© Iván Acosta
Playwright, documentalist, composer and film and theater director, Iván Acosta was born in Santiago de Cuba (1943). He left the island in 1961. He studied film at New York University and social studies at the New School for Social Research. His first stage work was Grito 71, a rock-and-roll musical that was very well received by American critics. He wrote and directed the short film El ataúd in 1975 and in 1984 he directed the film Amigos, which recounts the adventures of a Cuban who arrives in the US during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. However, it is his play, El Super, premiered in New York on November 5, 1977, that gives him international celebrity, giving rise to the homonymous film shot by León Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal in 1979. Both the work theater and its film adaptation are considered two classics of the cultural production of the Cuban diaspora. Other dramatic pieces, films and documentaries include Recojan las serpentinas que se acabó el carnaval, No son todos los que están, Un cubiche en la luna, Rosa y el ajusticiador del canalla (dramatic piece and film), Union City, City of Dreams, Cómo se forma una rumba, Cándido, Manos de fuego, and Guantánamo. His last film, Detrás de mis ojos, captures hours and hours of video, shot from his apartment´s terrace at Hell’s Kitchen, on the terrorist attacks against New York City on 9/11/2001.
Iván Acosta has also contributed to the promotion of Cuban culture in particular and Latin culture in general in the United States as founder and president of the Cuban Cultural Center in New York and as director and producer of the Latin Jazz USA entity under the musical direction of maestro Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill (1921-2001), offering Cuban and Latin jazz concerts in prestigious venues in New York and Miami, such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach, Gusman Hall and the James Night Center in Miami.
Filmography
1985: Amigos
2003: How to Create a Rumba (Short)
2005: Candido: Hands of Fire (Video documentary)
2009: Rosa y el ajusticiador del canalla (Feature)
2021: Detrás de mis ojos
Nominations and Awards
Amigos
- Gold Hugo Nominee, Chicago International Film Festival, USA, 1986
Based on an interview conducted by Eliecer Jiménez Almeida
