WEBVTT

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When I met my grandfather,
he was already very old

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and could no longer walk.

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However,
he still had a strong aura,

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having been one of the most
handsome film producers of his time.

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On one of the few days I got to
spend with him, he gave me a silver coin

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and told me to wait until I found an
important purpose to invest it in.

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One day,
years after he passed away,

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I turned on the TV and there I saw
him walk for the first time in my life.

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He was in Havana,
shooting two movies at once

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with several of his closest friends.

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That day, even though I had already
lost the coin he had given me,

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I knew deep inside that only I could
recover my grandfather\'s movies,

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and that it was the mission he had
given me when I was still a child.

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Through this mission, I met one of
my best friends, with whom I work now.

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Peter and I knew that the making of
the first two films

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of El Santo, idol of the masses,

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was full of fascinating anecdotes

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and that we would relish going to Havana

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to attempt to recreate the journey
that my grandfather and his friends made,

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to shed a light on

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why one of the most important figures of
Mexican popular culture,

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the Silver-Masked Man,
made his film debut in Havana,

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days before Fidel Castro
wrapped up the revolution,

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starting, outside of Mexico,

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one of the most important chapters of
Mexican cinema.

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As we knew our stay
in Havana would be short,

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Lía, our Cuban production manager,

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went looking for several filming
locations, weeks prior to our arrival.

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On day one, she arranged to
take us to the most recognisable places.

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It was rather emotional to realise

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that several of those filming locations
looked identical.

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As if they were stuck in time.

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Roaming through the streets of Havana,
recognising the locations

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of Santo vs. Evil Brain and
Santo vs. Infernal Men,

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plunged me into
a deep state of nostalgia.

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I wasn\'t merely trying
to identify filming locations.

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Instead, I was searching for
traces of my grandfather.

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On the face of it, it may seem
that the lack of budget

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determined the production
circumstances of these two films,

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both having been shot
in the same city

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to take advantage of the proximity
of one location to another.

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However, now in Cuba,
we realised that nothing is easy

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with such heat and humidity.

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Numerous shots were captured
from various rooftops.

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I lost count of how many flights
of stairs we climbed

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to emulate the shots
they captured.

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While we were carrying iPhones
that weigh virtually nothing,

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they had to carry camera equipment
that would weight twenty kilos, at least.

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This is proof that I climbed up here.

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We\'ve all managed to get on the rooftops.

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Here we are.
Let\'s see if he sees me.

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I think they got on
the last building there.

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The warehouse can be seen behind.

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Exactly.

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That one behind.
Right behind the pier.

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We\'re onto something.

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We\'re onto something.

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Precisely because of their lack of budget,

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they had to split all responsibilities
amongst the few of them.

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And so, my grandfather,
in addition to his role of producer,

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was also credited as an actor
and a crew member.

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Seeing them dressed in full suits
throughout the film makes me suffer.

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How hot they must have felt!

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The Masked Man!

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These films are little-known,

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and I think that\'s why there aren\'t
many people questioning

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the inexplicable debut of El Santo

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in a place that is so alien to the popular
culture that had made him an idol,

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nor the fact that my grandfather
filmed in Havana

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when the revolution was in full swing.

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You see those arches?

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Those arches are over there.

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Here are the arches.

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It seems unbelievable to be in the same
restaurant where my grandfather had lunch

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seventy...
nearly seventy years ago,

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and I\'m going to sit in the very same spot.

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After that, I don\'t know...

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I feel like I\'m connecting with the past.

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Dr Campos? We\'re from the Bureau.

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Hold it!
Be careful.

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The Bureau?
What can I do for you?

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Nothing, thank you.

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We\'ve been assigned
to your protection.

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We have three locations.

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Here is La Roca.

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The doctor\'s house.

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The Capri Hotel.

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That one is the National Hotel.

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And, surely, they shot from
some of the rooftops there,

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or there.

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They did a lot of shots here.

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Let\'s see if the sign is still there.

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I think that my grandfather
would loved to have been a wrestler.

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That is why, in the first days of filming,

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he borrowed El Santo\'s suit
to walk around the hotel.

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El Santo was wearing a new leather cape
he had bought especially for the film.

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My grandfather, entranced by
wearing the wrestler\'s costume,

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jumped into the pool pretending
he was jumping from the ropes of the ring.

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In the end, Santo\'s new cape proved useless

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as there isn\'t a single shot in the films
where he actually wears it.

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I am very curious to know
what the people of Havana thought,

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in the midst of a military conflict,

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when they saw a masked man in tights
running from one place to another.

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It is extremely rare for people in Cuba
to recognise El Santo.

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They do not know him.

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He\'s the greatest Mexican wrestler.

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He\'s like a hero.
In Mexico, everyone knows him.

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Everyone has a photo of him in their home.

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He\'s very important.

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We are asking your permission.

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If you could let us take a picture.

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Real quick, we’ll be in and out.

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Okay, quickly.

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The alley where he appeared
for the first time ever on film

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should be a place of pilgrimage
for all fans,

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but here, in Havana,
they have never heard of him.

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Cuba has to be one of the very few places
on the American continent

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where wrestler movies were never shown.

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One of the few major scenes that
Santo has in those films

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takes place in the Collado distillery.

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It remains one of my favourite scenes
as it really is visually spectacular.

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Since there are no surviving
cast or crew members,

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it is difficult to get clear indications
to where some of those locations are.

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We totally depended on Lía,
and on the people of Havana,

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to help us find places
we know no longer exist.

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No, there.
Look, look!

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Next to the bushes.

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All of that.
That\'s where the old distillery was.

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It looked like this.

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Yes, it used to.

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Yes, back in my day, it looked like this.

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-Until the eighties.
-It\'s abandoned now.

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Nothing, there\'s nothing left inside.

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-What\'s the name...
-Chino!

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-Chino!
-What\'s up?

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Let\'s go.

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It cannot be.

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What have you found, Lía?

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What have you found?

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That building is where the police arrive.

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-You’ve got a great eye.
-About two weeks after filming started,

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when the Cuban crew realised
that my grandfather

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actually had no money, they
interrupted the shoot,

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and prohibited access to the material
that had been shot so far.

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For my grandfather, it was absolutely
essential to wrap both films

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as he had invested
the remainder of his savings.

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His career depended on it.

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He convinced Enrique Zambrano
and Joaquín Cordero

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to hand him all the money
they had left.

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With that sum, added to the little he had,
they threw a party in their hotel suite,

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making sure to tip 20 dollars to the staff
each time they would pop up for service.

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Thus circulating the rumour that they
had received a lot of money from Mexico,

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that they were going to live
like kings in Cuba.

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His strategy worked,

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and the rumour that the producers
had financing again spread like wildfire.

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Thanks to that trick,
filming resumed.

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However, the exposed film remained
locked away in the lab.

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Is this wall here?
We haven\'t seen it.

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That\'s my grandfather, by the way.

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Here.

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There used to be doors here
where those windows are.

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-People would enter here.
-And exit there.

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Only you could explain this.
I couldn\'t see it.

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This is here.

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-How can this be here?
-It is.

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Come, I\'ll show you.

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These windows were doors,
they opened

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and you went out to the beach.

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Then everything was opening
towards the beach…

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We haven\'t seen the beach yet.

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Yes, this could be the one.

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There was a jetty, and another there.

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The one over there had a roof.

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Sure it\'s here, you can see
the large wall behind.

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-This was here?
-Yes, it was.

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Where that fence is.
It\'s obscured by the parasols now.

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-It\'s obscured by the parasols.
-That\'s right.

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If there were no parasols,
you\'d see it.

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So, this part, the one with the bridges,
is around there.

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Because it all happened here.
I believe, the band played here.

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Yes, that\'s it.
What you see there was the mast.

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There used to be a tube.

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A sort of mast where they hoisted a flag.

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It did look like a ship.

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-We see the bridge behind.
-Yes, that’s right.

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Amazing. I only see it
because you’ve pointed it out.

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-I wouldn\'t know.
-Were the swings on the beach?

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I\'ve never seen them.

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The police! Let\'s go!

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There really is a before and after
the revolution in Cuba

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and it can be seen in those movies.

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If we treat them as historical documents,

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their value lies in the opportunity
they had to capture a Cuba

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that has ceased to be what it used
to be at that very moment.

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Recognising the luxurious beach clubs
of that time

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is much more difficult than we thought.

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One of the first Coca-Cola bottling factories
outside the United States

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was located in Cuba, but, by the beginning
of 1959 they had to shut down.

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Perhaps this Coca-Cola bottle is one of
the last ones bottled in Havana.

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Nowadays, there are only two
countries where you cannot get a Coke:

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North Korea and Cuba.

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Have a drink.

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Another location that
has changed a lot since 1958

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is the Coney Island amusement park.

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Opened in 1918, it was inspired by
its namesake in the Brooklyn borough.

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Of the original attractions,

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which were once visited by
international celebrities,

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none remains today.

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I don\'t know if the revolution
made it easier

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or more difficult to shoot those movies.

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Some of the locations should have been
full of passers-by,

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but, instead, they are deserted.

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Today, that void is still here.

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It is difficult to determine if
they actually had permits to film

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or if they simply broke into
some of the locations,

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taking advantage of the fact there was
no-one around to create any conflict.

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Being here makes me think a lot
about my grandfather.

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Being the person taking responsibility
for the entire crew,

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how could he be filming there, while
gunshots were being fired in the streets?

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Between 1952 and 1958 alone,

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more than 600 men and women ended up
at the Havana morgue

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after being either electrocuted,
beaten to death, hanged or shot.

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It\'s him! No doubt about it!

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Enrique, shoot!

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During their last days in Havana,
things began to get more difficult.

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It was clear that the revolutionaries
were going to triumph,

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which created social chaos, with
thousands of people taking to the streets.

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Random acts of violence would occur,

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resulting in the casinos being
targeted and destroyed

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since the majority of Cubans
perceived them as elitist places

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for rich people and foreigners.

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Of all the casinos in Cuba,

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the only surviving gambling tables are
the ones that appear in those two movies.

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Today, they are kept by the film school

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that uses them as props.

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I don\'t know for certain

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what had prompted them to leave Havana
with the two incomplete films,

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but I do know that they took advantage
of that chaos to break into the labs.

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They took the film that had already
been exposed and hid it inside a coffin

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which was sent out of Cuba,
using a forged death certificate.

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We will never know for certain whether
Fidel Castro\'s entry into Havana

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facilitated or compromised
the making of those films.

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How to process all this?

00:22:54.750 --> 00:22:56.833
How to process all this?

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This story is incomplete.

00:23:06.583 --> 00:23:11.750
How could I explain why
the greatest idol of Mexican wrestling

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filmed his first movies in Cuba,
in the midst of a revolution,

00:23:16.500 --> 00:23:20.291
when most foreigners were fleeing
the island?

00:24:12.333 --> 00:24:14.958
The reason why my grandfather came
to film in Havana

00:24:15.875 --> 00:24:18.708
is the same reason why
I saw so little of him.

00:24:25.708 --> 00:24:27.416
The state of this house

00:24:28.500 --> 00:24:32.541
is a metaphor for my family\'s rejection
of my grandfather\'s story.

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My grandmother\'s family was a powerful
force within the Mexican film industry.

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In fact, they were the ones

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who enabled my grandfather
to become a film producer.

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A role which he loved,

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because it made him very attractive
to aspiring actresses

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and to many established actresses
of the time, too.

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When my grandmother
eventually divorced him,

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after so many scandals linked
to his infidelities,

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the family banned him
from the industry.

00:25:35.958 --> 00:25:41.333
He lost his family, his status
and his job overnight.

00:25:45.166 --> 00:25:47.833
My grandfather was banned
from filming in Mexico,

00:25:48.416 --> 00:25:50.375
which depressed him deeply.

00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.125
That is why they risked
everything to make those films.

00:25:57.333 --> 00:26:00.083
This is why his friends
convinced him to go to Cuba.

00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:04.500
That is why a wrestler wrote the scripts
for those movies.

00:26:05.333 --> 00:26:08.208
That is why we had to come to Cuba,

00:26:08.458 --> 00:26:10.541
to finally uncover this story.

00:26:11.625 --> 00:26:13.250
Here they are!
Here they are!

00:26:14.458 --> 00:26:18.083
It could be here.
Yes, here it is.

00:26:19.750 --> 00:26:21.375
This. Here it is.

00:26:24.833 --> 00:26:27.000
There are two of those.
Here\'s one.

00:26:32.375 --> 00:26:34.250
He went up this ladder.
That\'s right.

00:26:36.916 --> 00:26:38.958
I can\'t believe it!

00:26:44.416 --> 00:26:46.458
Thanks to the connection I have
with my grandfather,

00:26:47.458 --> 00:26:49.791
and everyone who accompanied me
on this mission,

00:26:50.666 --> 00:26:52.750
we were able to
identify the locations

00:26:52.791 --> 00:26:57.791
where El Santo once helped
my grandfather to recover his career,

00:26:58.166 --> 00:27:01.166
while consolidating
the still-emerging wrestling-film genre.

00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:04.916
One of the most important sagas
in Mexican cinema.

00:27:07.208 --> 00:27:10.791
Santo vs. Evil Brain
and Santo vs. Infernal Men

00:27:11.166 --> 00:27:12.958
were never screened in Cuba.

00:27:15.208 --> 00:27:17.958
My grandfather took them away,
never to return them.

00:27:21.666 --> 00:27:23.375
It’s a very emotional moment.

00:27:28.708 --> 00:27:32.041
We depart with the great sadness
of leaving our Cuban friends,

00:27:32.125 --> 00:27:35.583
knowing we owe them for those films.