To the master of the genre in our country, this 45th Festival dedicates the Juan Padrón in Memoriam Animation Forum.
The champion of cartoons made a cinema that, besides making us feel proud as Cubans, defended or addressed such sacred values as sovereignty and independence, love for our roots, the abject nature of betrayal, courage, solidarity, comradeship and collective thinking in terms of the greatest reason for any country: its emancipation and right to decide its destiny.
In addition to offering countless joys to children and the general public, his work advocated, above any other virtue, Cuban identity and patriotism. This is still valid today, and neither the current nor the previous generations deny it.
Those who were born in the 70s of the last century, as well as those who were born in the 21st century, can appreciate an Elpidio Valdés animated film with as much pleasure. That is a prerogative that today is not even guaranteed to the great universal classics.
In the endearing Colonel Valdés, under whose influence of warmth, humanity, greatness and defense of the homeland several generations of Cubans have grown up, part of our essence is crystallized.
The identification with the character is so great that even his phraseology is inscribed in the national imaginary.
In the stories of the "pillo manigüero" (cheeky copse boy), María Silvia, Palmiche and the troop of insurrectionists, there is also much of that wit, sparkle, wit, mental acuity and ingenuity, identity elements that come from their Spanish and African heritage.
The complete saga of Elpidio Valdés stands out for the drawing of characters denoting the multiraciality that characterizes us, to which Chinese and other nationalities are incorporated.
In Elpidio's universe, Padrón works the sometimes elusive line of the epic from the tessitura of the intimate, through films that bring out tenderness, emotion and faith. Knowing how to move with full mastery on a tightrope that only the great ones could cross represented one of the characteristics of the aforementioned group of animated films.
The saga of Elpidio Valdés (feature films and shorts) should not only be a cultural heritage of the Cuban nation, but also a possible ideological primer on how to approach the history of the island from our images. Through the character and the mambises who fought with him in the War of Independence, Padrón gave us a full-body portrait, physical and soul.
May the spirit of Elpidio be reincarnated in other national creations.
The also manager of Filminutos, Vampiros en La Habana and Más vampiros en La Habana, the Quinoscopios, the series Más se perdió en Cuba, or the short film Nikita chama boom, faced all his work with the joy and illusion of a child and the perfectionism of an aesthete. From such alchemy comes the rare metal of the enduring.
He was also a paradigm of the good management of cinematographic rhythm, something that seems simple, but is damnably difficult.
His cinema is reason and emotion, interpretation and proposal, sharpness and understanding of an art and of the spirit of a people like the Cuban people.
