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Leon Ichaso

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Leon Ichaso
Publicity Photo of Leon Ichaso
Born(1948-08-03)August 3, 1948
Havana, Cuba
DiedMay 21, 2023(2023-05-21) (aged 74)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.

Leon Ichaso (August 3, 1948 – May 21, 2023) was a Cuban-born American writer and film director. Some of his prominent works included El Super, Crossover Dreams, Bitter Sugar, Piñero, and El Cantante.[1][2][3][4]

Biography

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Early life

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Leon Ichaso was born in Havana, Cuba on August 3, 1948.[5] Ichaso migrated to Mexico at the age of 14, then to the United States with his mother Antonia Ichaso and sister Mari Rodriguez Ichaso. His father, poet and journalist Justo Rodriguez Santos, who had affiliations with the Orígenes literary group, initially stayed behind in Cuba to support the Cuban Revolution.[1][3][6] Five years later, Ichaso's father joined his family in New York City.[7]

Career

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As a director, Leon Ichaso's first movie was the Spanish-language feature El Super (1979), based on an Off-Broadway play about an immigrant building superintendent trying to make his way in New York, which he co-directed with Orlando Jiménez Leal.[8]

When entering the Hollywood scene, Ichaso told stories of the big city slotted into action series on TV (e.g., Miami Vice, Crime Story, The Equalizer) and TV movies such as The Fear Inside, The Take, A Table at Ciro's and A Kiss to Die For. Ichaso later directed Wesley Snipes's Sugar Hill (1994), a character study wedded to a violent crime drama of a New York drug empire.[9]

Ichaso made Azúcar Amarga (Bitter Sugar), a Spanish language film about a disillusioned Cuban Communist, in the Dominican Republic and Cuba in 1996.[10][11] According to César A. Salgado, "the film registers the impact, at the human level, of neoliberal globalization on a Cuba made harrowingly vulnerable after losing the Soviet subsidies that had made its brand of socialism more or less sustainable for thirty years."[12]

For the next several years, Ichaso worked on several TV movies, some of which were adaptations of plays. Zooman (Showtime, 1995) was an adaptation of an Off-Broadway play dealing with a family coping with the murder of a child.[13] Execution of Justice (Showtime, 1999) was also derived from a play of the same name by Emily Mann which detailed the events behind the murders of San Francisco mayor, George Moscone, and supervisor, Harvey Milk.[14]

Ichaso next directed small screen biographies Ali: An American Hero (Fox, 2000) and Hendrix (Showtime, 2000). He later wrote and directed Piñero (2001), a biographical movie about the life of Nuyorican author Miguel Piñero.[5]

After working for Showtime (Sleeper Cell, 2005), Cane, The Cleaner (A&E), Persons Unknown (Fox/Televisa 2008 and 2009), developing his own future projects ("Monk"), and teaching movie directing in France, Ichaso started working on the screenplay of salsa singer, Héctor Lavoe's, biography, El Cantante in 2004. This movie was shot in 2006 and stars Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.[15]

His last movie Paraiso, was filmed in Miami in 2008 and opened during the 2009 Miami International Film Festival in March 2009.[16]

Death

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Ichaso died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California, on May 21, 2023.[3] He had successfully beaten cancer two years prior.[17]

Filmography

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León Ichaso directed numerous full-length films, including films made for television. This is a partial list.

Directed features
Year Title Distributor
1979 El Super (unknown)
1985 Crossover Dreams New Yorker Films
1992 The Fear Inside Viacom Productions
1994 Sugar Hill 20th Century Fox
1996 Azúcar Amarga (unknown)
2000 Ali: An American Hero Fox Television Studios
2000 Hendrix MGM Television
2001 Piñero Miramax Films
2006 El Cantante Picturehouse

References

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  1. ^ a b Ojito, Mirta (2007-07-29). "The Scorsese of Salseros in New York". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
  2. ^ "Leon Ichaso - Rotten Tomatoes". www.rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved 2022-08-19.
  3. ^ a b c Genzlinger, Neil (2023-05-24). "Leon Ichaso, Whose Films Explored Latino Identity, Dies at 74". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  4. ^ Baugh, Scott L. "Ichaso, Leon (1948–)." Latino American Cinema: An Encyclopedia of Movies, Stars, Concepts, and Trends. Greenwood, 2012, pp. 134-135. ISBN 0313380368
  5. ^ a b "Leon Ichaso". IMDb. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  6. ^ Fernández de Cano, J. R. "Rodríguez Santos, Justo (1915-1999)." MCNBiografias.com. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  7. ^ Ojito, Mirta (2007-07-30). "Leon Ichaso captures the poetry of Latin New York in new film". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  8. ^ ctosadmin (1970-01-01). "Ichaso, Leon". Cubans in America (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  9. ^ "Leon Ichaso". www.tcm.com. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  10. ^ Gonzalez, David. "Filmmaker Won't Weep for the Cuba He Left Behind." New York Times, 16 Mar. 2015, p. A16(L). Retrieved 2023-07-04.
  11. ^ "Disillusioned And Defiant; Fidel Castro & Company, Inc.: Communist Tyranny in Cuba. By Manuel Urrutia Lléo. 217 pp. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. $5.95". The New York Times. 1964-03-08. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  12. ^ Salgado, César A. "Why We Should Watch Bitter Sugar Again Today." Cuba Counterpoints, 10 September 2015. Retrieved 2023-07-04.
  13. ^ "Leon Ichaso". www.tcm.com. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  14. ^ Henry, Carmel. "A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States". library.law.howard.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  15. ^ "Jennifer Lopez reveals what she really thinks of ex Marc Anthony amid Ben Affleck wedding". HELLO!. 2022-08-03. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  16. ^ Ichaso, Leon (2009-03-11), Paraiso (Thriller), Camino Verde Films, retrieved 2023-02-17
  17. ^ "Muere el cineasta León Ichaso a los 74 años". People en Español (in Spanish). 22 May 2023. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
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