Cuban-American filmmaker risks punishment for going to Cuba to make movie

Vanessa Arrington, Canadian Press

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban-American filmmaker Luis Moro expressed his disdain for the long-standing U.S. trade and travel restrictions against Cuba in a very public way: he made a movie there.

Moro's Love and Suicide was shown recently in New Jersey after having been screened last year in Los Angeles, Miami Beach and the Bahamas.

The film, linked as it is to Moro's personal crusade against the U.S. embargo, led U.S. officials to investigate Moro for possible violation of U.S. laws that make it almost impossible for most Americans to legally visit communist Cuba.

View Larger Image

Cuban-American director Luis Moro. (AP Photo/Tim Larsen)

If officials act against him, Moro says he will refuse to pay any fines, even if it means jail time.

"It's a farce - the embargo has not worked, and it is not going to work," Moro said of the policy imposed since the early 1960s. "I'm committed to fighting this to the end."

Moro, who left Cuba with his mother at the age of five, says his campaign doesn't mean he favours the Cuban government or its leader Fidel Castro.

"I'm not pro-Castro. I'm anti-embargo," he said by telephone from Los Angeles.

A writer, actor and producer, Moro travelled to Havana in December 2003 to attend a film festival showing one of his movies.

He took the opportunity to shoot Love and Suicide, directed (and co-written with Moro) by Lisa France, using a small digital camera.

Days after the movie was shown at the American Black Film Festival in Miami Beach in July, the U.S. Department of the Treasury notified Moro his trip to Cuba was being investigated.

Moro said he refused the department's request for details about his travels, saying he has the right to travel freely.

The department can impose fines of up to $65,000 US for Americans travelling to Cuba without a special licence. Typical fines for first-time violators are about $7,500, according to Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.

While U.S. law let Cuban-Americans like Moro visit the island without a special permit until 2004, it authorized family visits - not filmmaking.

Millerwise declined to comment on Moro, saying policy doesn't allow discussion of individual cases.

Moro said ordinary Cubans on the island suffer most from the sanctions, which were tightened in 2004. The number of U.S. visitors, including those of Cuban origin, slipped to about 108,000 last year from about 200,000 in 2003, according to a Cuban government report, which did not say how many were considered legal by U.S. authorities.

The strongest backers of the embargo have been Cubans who fled the country after the Castro-led revolution came to power in 1959, often losing their property. Moro says it's time to move on.

The exiles "will never get their land back," he said. "Just like the Seminole Indians won't get Florida back, and Texas won't be returned to Mexico."

"How many generations, how many families, have been ruined because of personal vendettas?" he asked.