In Cuba, state supported arts and sports afford little reward and glory, making it tempting for 17-year-old Olympic boxing hopeful, Yordenis and 19-year-old company ballerina, Annia to defect, leading to deflating government crack-downs on travel abroad.

In Cuban expat capital Miami, the prize is big but the support is non-existent, leaving 20-year-old boxer, Sergio and Twenty-one-year-old ballerina, Paula torn between abandoning dreams for the urgent need of cash.

The documentary “Boxers and Ballerinas”, follows these four protagonists through a beautiful exploration of age-old cultural tension and its effect on individual hopes, dreams and realities. But its not just the protagonists who provide an inspiring story. The film’s directors, Brit Marling and Mike Cahill shared a little bit with ADB about their views, experiences, struggles and triumphs in making this inspiring film.

The film is being released through Cinequest film festival/ distribution program and stores/netflix/amazon etc July 15

ADB: I saw that you were an economics major at Georgetown, at what point did you start to question your career path?

Brit: I double majored in economics and studio art, I didn’t think making short films and photography were viable career options so I followed everyone else into investment banking. During a summer internship I spoke with a senior staffer in bank who had moved quickly through the ranks and I asked him how he did it, to what he attributed his success. When he spoke, it was obvious he really loved what he did to become so successful, so not sharing the same passion I felt I was in the wrong place. I didn’t feel I could go back into school without knowing why, and continue blindly following the trajectory… It is a generational thing, following the trajectory on some level that our parents, the baby boomers, laid out. I didn’t feel like I was learning from the corporation, I saw the next 100 years of my life mapped out, and it was not stirring my insides.

ADB –The Project, the Practicalities: We love dreams, but without an action plan, so many dreams lay unrealized. How was the dream born and what were the steps to make it a reality? How was the dream for Boxers and Ballerinas born?

MIKE CAHILL: A friend of ours, Charlie Johnstone, is a photographer. He travels the world taking photos. One day he showed us some photos he took in Cuba with these young boxers – they were incredibly charismatic photos. These little six year old kids wearing enormous boxing gloves, slugging it out in the ring. It seemed a very aggressive sport to pair up with kids that still had their babyfat. So we were intrigued. We went down there and shot at that very boxing ring called Trejo in Old Havana. Later that night we saw a ballet in Havana and were moved by how similar the dancing was to the boxing. The best boxers are very good dancers. The film was born out of this juxtaposition and wanting to explore the nature of the Cuba-US conflict through the eyes of our generation – these young artists and athletes.

ADB: How did the project come on your radar? How did you assemble the team?
MIKE CAHILL: We all met at Georgetown — Nick Shumaker, who produced the film, and Brit and I. It was really just the three of us down there. We were lucky to make our first film in a time when making a truly handmade film was possible. Digital technology allows for that. The three of us went down to Havana with two cameras, two laptops and a few hard-drives and just started making this movie, following our instincts.

Brit: Mike Cahill, also an economics major, was working with National Geographic, saw a short film I had made, and he liked it. He wanted to make a film in Cuba, and asked “do you want to go with me?” I had been working at an investment bank at the time and was not very happy with what I was doing, so I jumped at the chance to go on an adventure.

ADB: How did Cuba illuminate the struggle to be young and to have dreams? Or What are the decisions, the givens facing the youth in Cuba that makes their experience unique?
Brit: There is no FREEDOM of movement to travel in CUBA, so these kids are traveling for first time by boxing and ballet dancing. That’s why the investment, the training is so intense and focused, these kids are not just training to be great athletes, they are training to have the freedom to know the world they live in.

ADB: So there are two sets of kids in your film on different sides of the Florida Straits.
Brit: Miami kids had defected, which became an interesting meditation on how much does where you live inform who you are and dictate your dreams. How much of what you want is American, structured by the capitalist mindset. Very early level we started to ask these questions.

MIKE: The film is exploring how these two different countries inform and shape the aspirations of young people growing up within them. For example, Paula talks about how when you come to the US, you are overwhelmed with choices – cell phones, cars, things – being overwhelmed by these choices can make you lose track of your dream. You get your car, your cellphone, you’re comfortable, and then you are sort of done. Where as in Cuba, someone like Yordenis, when we asked him what he would do with a million dollars he said he would get “a new TV and a new fan” — the only two things in his small concrete abode. He’s the number one boxer in Cuba in his weight class and was completely unaware of the possibilities of mass consumerism and was seemingly content in this innocence.
ADB: Did they question their decision to come over? *can you fill in some holes?*
Brit: That’s a good question. It’s complicated. There is this term “reverse balseros” – balseros being the name for Cubans who leave Cuba on rafts for Miami. Reverse Balseros is a recent term for the people who have risked their lives to come to Miami and then, after a few years in America, have decided it’s not what they dreamed it would be and actually go back to Cuba. So definitely, there are Cubans who question the decision to leave their homeland behind. But also, there are Cubans like Sergio. Sergio left Havana when he was 10 with his family. In Havana he was an honor roll student, a great athlete. When he got to Miami, his family moved into Hialeah – a tough neighborhood. Sergio talks in the film about how he had to give up on school, join a gang, that these things were just part of the culture he was absorbed into and it was a matter of survival. But even Sergio, for all that he lost, including friends of his who were killed in gang fights, would never leave America. Sergio has been bitten by the bug – he always believes, no matter what the present circumstance is for him, that he could be a millionare tomorrow. That in America, that kind of rags to riches story is possible for anyone. The potential for some extraordinary greatness is just in reach. I think it’s this deeply ingrained mythology that keeps the engine of “progress” running.

ADB: So you could almost say three sets of “young people’s” with dreams in the film if you include yourselves… How did this affect the film?
Brit: We got really close with them. Age as a factor, they let us in a way I think would have been difficult on different sides of the generation line.
ADB: Lets talk more about the American DREAM and being young …
This is a film about young people, by young people. Despite the obvious discrepancies in life circumstance, how did you connect with your characters as young people trying to believe, daring to dream? What was a stronger force (in terms of bringing you together or apart, uniting vs dividing): being young or being from opposite ends of economic/social spectrum?
Brit: It was about the energy with which we were pursuing that film. There was no money, just a whisper of an idea. There is an opportunity cost because life moves so quickly. We were all just jumping in to it (with our different passions). This was the first feature we ever made. They recognized we were throwing ourselves in to it with same fervor that they were pursuing their dreams. Passion is contagious whether it was boxing, dancing or filmmaking. Passion cuts through everything – nationality, race, class, gender.
ADB: Do you believe the American-style freedom to realize one’s dreams depends on socio-economic situation? What does it take to realize a dream?

MIKE: One might say that realizing one’s dream is a mix of one’s situation, drive and luck. The worse your situation the more drive and luck you need. The better your situation, the less drive and luck you need. But, of course, just being able to dream is a luxury, and not everyone is afforded this luxury. If your situation is like the 3 million homeless kids in this country, it’s nearly impossible to even dream at all.

BRIT: Dreaming means you are already surviving. If just attaining your survival needs is an all consuming effort, there is little room to dream.
ADB: Your journey: What gave you the confidence to believe that you could switch directions and become a filmmaker?

Brit: There was Nothing to lose. We were Not attached to anything. For our generation, it is surprisingly true in all parts of world. Gen Y kids are not quite like their parents. We are not going to stay in same place for 10 years. If a Gen Y kid doesn’t like their job, they are more likely to move, leave, or go home even than their parents were. We are not as enchanted by the big corporations as our parents may have been. Working in one company for life, slowly working your way up, retiring at a certain age. There is a Different energy to our generation, we subscribe more to the mentality: “well there is no reason not to do this.” I think we kind of looked at the babyboomers and thought to ourselves – the ladder model of success seems inherently broken… toward what are you climbing exactly? What is at the end of the ladder?

We were HUNGRY to create, and the TOOLs were there. Two DV cam cameras, two macs, lacie hard drives. We could touch it, do it all ourselves. We started cutting in Havana… even though electricity is cutting gout every day. Technology has brought us to an amazing point, you can really jump in a plan and go for it.

ADB: Was it difficult getting permission to film in Cuba?

Brit: We didn’t tell Cuban officials there was a Miami component to story. We told them it was a puff piece on Cuban boxing and ballet in Havana; celebrating Cuban pride points. We were assigned two press attaches, which are on some level spies for the government. But they are humans too and were put in a human situation. Their job was meant to hinder but a couple months in, passion is contagious, they were bitten by the film bug too. Suddenly those meant to halt progress were helping us arrange all the things we were not supposed to do. If you take a human out of the system, we found they just want to connect with people.

ADB: I know many people can get discouraged about all of the hoops one has to jump through, how did you keep the dream and passion alive, what were the biggest technical hurdles in making this film a reality?

Brit: We were capturing a world class athlete in shoebox house … Cuban authorities got wind of it, and obviously … woah,

We were sneaking in tapes, wrapping up traveling on journalist visas. When Bush started throwing weight behind the Miami hardliners, traveling back and forth became more difficult, there were more questions, we had more problems getting back into states. US officials wanted to know where you have been, what have you been doing.

ADB: The reward?

Brit: After making the film, the response was overwhelming. We had no idea we could make something that could affect anything.

When the Cuban officials got translation of the film, they canceled the Havana festival, but because of people’s response they couldn’t cancel it out right. So they had to let us screen but on the actual day, they changed time of the movie. It was supposed to screen at 7, they changed it to 4; they tried to have film screened quietly so people wouldn’t see it. But Cuban word of mouth is amazing … news spread through Havana and we ended up with lines wrapping around block to see film. People were sitting on each other laps, on the isle, the whole movie screened in dead silence. Mike and I were sitting in balcony not breathing just holding on to one another. … When it was over, lights came up, and the audience ERUPTED: crying laughing… It was amazing, we could never have anticipated that response. The film spoke to the Cuban people. That response is life changing. It is a Difficult road to undertake a creative endeavor. But the reward; to make something that moves people, was an incredible feeling.

ADB: How were you changed? When you went back to Georgetown, how did your major, your aspirations, your perceptions or vision of life alter?

Brit: We were really living in CUBA traveling to Miami better part of year. It was amazing to get out of America and look at it through foreign lens. It changed perspective completely. Going to international trade class in Georgetown in sweat pants with a cup of coffee you can model out what an embargo means in graphs on the chalkboard, but go to another part of world and it is a life changing experience. Going back to class after the experience, I had developed a more critical eye on the source of my information. Who is telling me this? That means something. What is agenda of the economics department? Crunching out kids in suits to go to wall street? And then what is wall street’s agenda?
ADB: And now?

Brit: I guess that the current ideology that really has a grip on the world is not “freedom” or even “democracy” it is “success.” And in America, this obsession with success is particularly all pervasive. And we are exporting that brand of success all over the world. Cuba gave me an interesting perspective on America. Cuba asks: what is success? What are the qualities and characteristics of a life well lived? I think Boxers and Ballerinas raises questions like this, and leaves it in the viewer’s hands to answer.

MIKE: ditto.