Jacobo Morales agrees with Bad Bunny on combining art with “social commitment”.
San Juan, Jan 19 (EFE)
Veteran Puerto Rican actor and director Jacobo Morales, who starred in Bad Bunny’s short film ‘Debí tirar más fotos’ (I Should Have Taken More Photos), told EFE that he accepted the role because he agrees with the singer in prioritizing “social commitment and humanism” in art over strictly ideological dogma.
“Combining my profession as an artist with social commitment, with doing something that goes beyond entertainment, that moves reflection, analysis, giving thought to what you have just seen. That has always excited me and Benito (Bad Bunny) has that characteristic,” explains Morales, who was honored along with his wife Blanca Silvia Eró this past weekend at the San Sebastián Street Festival, in his native archipelago.
At 91 years old, the filmmaker, performer, poet and entertainer from Lajas, in the southwest of Puerto Rico, who began his career as an actor in radio and theater at the age of 14, and is considered the most influential film director in the history of Puerto Rico, points out that he appreciates a general trend, especially among young people, of “not confining themselves to strictly ideological dogma”.
“The aim is to foster humanism, brotherhood, something that transcends mere economic interest or pure entertainment, which is temporary and fades away. But I noticed in Benito’s work that it aligned with this trend I’ve been observing for some time,” explains Morales, who believes that the search for this point of unity is what “captivates people.”
“Art in service of the best interests of the country”
On the other hand, the Puerto Rican icon of the seventh art liked his role in the Bad Bunny documentary because it captures “the old man’s nostalgia for the fundamental things in life, those things he enjoyed so much” and had something that for him “is fundamental, and that is that what is explicit, what you expose, is as important as what is implicit, what you suggest.”
“The toad was the old man’s imagination grappling with that past, that’s why I liked it so much and was very attracted to the short film,” said Morales, director of ‘Linda Sara’ (1994), the most successful Puerto Rican film of all time.
For the filmmaker, this work with Bad Bunny is “a very important moment” in his career, and he confesses that he admires the artist’s way of “moving forward” and putting “art at the service of the best interests of the country,” giving voice to social problems such as gentrification or to endangered species such as the crested toad.
“I like it so much that this doesn’t feel like work.”
Morales says that dedicating himself to art, culture, theater, film and writing “is so enjoyable that it doesn’t feel like work” and proof of this is that he has several projects in the works.
“I have a new play, satirical, but in the form of what I want to do and show, called ‘Reality Show’, I have a new book of poems that will be an audiobook with unpublished poems and I have three scripts to see which one I decide on,” details the only Puerto Rican director who has been nominated for an Oscar for his film ‘What Happened to Santiago’ (1989).
Morales was also a co-founder of the satirical group ‘Los Rayos Gamma’, which holds the record for the most performances at the Luis A. Ferré Fine Arts Center in San Juan and is currently rehearsing to present a new show to the public.
His passion for literature, influenced in part by his father who was a writer, led him to publish two poetry collections, ‘100 X 35’ in 1973 and ‘409 meters of solar and cyclone fence’ in 1978, and he mentioned that he is now working on the third.
His first major film as a screenwriter and director, ‘Dios los cría’ (1980), marked an era in Puerto Rican cinema, received international awards, was part of the official program of the Cannes Film Festival (1981) and was selected as one of the 25 most significant films in Latin America.
The illustrious filmmaker has played leading roles in more than 40 works throughout his career, such as in ‘El tragaluz’ by Antonio Buero Vallejo, with which he won the National Acting Award, and as a playwright he has written nine plays and directed eight.
“I have nothing around me that can excite and attract me as much as what I continue to do,” concludes Morales, with more than 75 years of experience.
