The Cuban film “In the Wrong Body” (“En el Cuerpo Equivocado”) had its U.S. premier at San Francisco State University's Knuth Hall Nov. 3. It had its Los Angeles premier at the Downtown Independent Theater Nov. 9. The film tour made an additional stop at the Art Theater of Long Beach on Nov. 12.
ANSWER, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, and the Clinica Martin-Baro organized the San Francisco screening. The SFSU College of Ethnic Studies, Latina/o Studies Department, Cuba Educational Project and Union Salvadorena de Estudiantes Universitarios co-sponsored the event. Around 200 people attended.
Cuba has made significant progress in promoting acceptance of transgender individuals, although deeply rooted prejudices remain to some degree. That was the message filmmaker Marilyn Solaya brought to the West Coast premiers.
Solaya was flown to the U.S. from Cuba by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), of which the Party for Socialism and Liberation is a member. ANSWER had planned to fly both Solaya and Susel to the United States for the premiers. Unfortunately, Susel could not come because she was still mourning for her mother, who died earlier this year. Susel had devoted the past 10 years to providing care for her.
Solaya was only barely able to attend, as the U.S. government delayed approving her visa. She arrived in the United States less than 24 hours before the screening was scheduled to begin.
“In the Wrong Body” takes viewers into the private life of Mavi Susel, who received the first sex-reassignment surgery in Cuba in 1988. Filmed 20 years later, it shows Susel as she goes through the routines of her daily life, while baring her soul about the misunderstanding and scorn she has faced as a transgender person. At several points she expresses regret that her struggle with social rejection prevented her from studying and having a career.
Solaya combines this real-life footage with re-created scenes from Susel's childhood, which dramatize her rejection by her father, taunting and abuse by schoolmates and a rape in the boys' locker room. In another dramatic scene, a young Susel, walks barefoot and alone down a hospital corridor and into an operating room. Looking like an angel entering heaven, she contemplates the bright lights over the surgical table and peacefully lies down on the cold steel.
At different points in the film Solaya uses mannequins as a metaphor for the way people judge others by their outward form. She then takes us into a mannequin factory where the workers are dressed like surgeons, to drive home the idea that genders, "masculinities and femininities," are social constructs.
Solaya read a moving statement by Susel, in which she exhorted the crowd to transcend gender, and to evaluate themselves as “human beings” rather than as “men and or women.”
After the film showings, Solaya took questions from the audiences, which included supporters of the Cuban Revolution as well as students and workers from the LGBT community. She said that although the documentary was filmed in just 18 days, it was the product of nine years of research, during which she and Mavi Susel became close friends.
Solaya explained that just as in other countries, Cuba has a legacy of racism, patriarchy and homophobia that the Cuban government and people have been taking measures to overcome. Especially since the latter part of the 1980s, when CENESEX (National Sexual Education Center of Cuba) was created, the government has made progress in educating the public about LGBT oppression. Sixteen more sex-reassignment operations, all paid for by the socialist state, have been performed since Mavi Susel bravely fought for her right to be seen by society as the woman she had always been.
In the past four years, Cuba has held an annual “Day Against Homophobia!”
The audiences loudly applauded the film and its director.
The ANSWER Coalition and the National Committee to Free the Five, along with other organizations, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, are hosting Marilyn Solaya's U.S. film tour. These organizations will continue to hold screenings of the documentary in coming weeks and months to raise workers’ consciousness about transgender rights and the accomplishments of socialism in Cuba.
