Production Team

The Batista Syndrome

The Batista Syndrome, a memory disorder caused by the trauma suffered under the Batista dictatorship, is an eight-episode mini-series composed across the genres of musical, vaudeville, verité, drama, dream and soliloquy that engages Havana in the 1950s. Yes, there are many stories and even motifs across the series, but no single plot. In the tradition of the cabaret stories in their infinite rhetorical variety are perceived as the essence of life, plots, on the on the other hand, are those things reenacted by cadavers taking a respite from their coffins.

The inspiration of our Cabaret mini-series stretches from Cabrera Infante’s Three Trapped Tiger through Oliver Sacks’, The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat .Yes, we do have the stars to guide us, just no particular destination.

We seek no Golden Fleece in our journey nor fear any Pandora’s Box being opened due to our curiosity, but only wish to share the careless thought of Lewis Carroll’s heroine. 

“She tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing” 

Publicity

Video Interview

Steve Fagin Biography

Steve Fagin is an American artist and former professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He has produced a series of feature length videos including The Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert and Raymond Roussel, The Machine That Killed Bad People and TropiCola (the latter produced in collaboration with some of the most important theatre actors and producers in Havana.)

These films have been featured prominently at museums, international film festivals, art biennials and have been screened on Bravo International in Latin America, Canal + in Europe and PBS in the United States. His work has had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and is the subject of a book from Duke University Press, "Talkin’ With Your Mouth Full": Conversations with the Videos of Steve Fagin. The work has been presented in the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in many contexts including both of their summary shows of the essential art of the twentieth century.

From 2005-2009 he worked as Creative Consultant for the haudenschild Garage and Commissioning Editor of the hG, Spare Parts project. The Last Book, an hG, Spare Parts project, was conceived and directed by him. He also completed a series of “smart phone pieces”, Cell Phone Stories, both as Commissioning Editor and as one of the artists for LACMA,Los Angeles. After directing Ideal Glass' production of Vestiphobia at Fábrica de Arte Cubano in Havana in early 2017 he wrote and directed the feature, Who the F*** is Clifford Odets completed in 2018. Steve Fagin has just completed the 8-episode Web Cabaret series, The Batista Syndrome, shot in Havana, is now available for distribution.