Teofilo Stevenson and Guillermo Rigondeaux Short Films

Right after Guillermo Rigondeaux's pummeling of ESPN 2012 Fighter of the Year Nonito Donaire, two offers came in for short films based Teofilo Stevenson and another on Rigondeaux himself. While the Miami Herald ran a front page feature on my work with Stevenson, accompanied by a brief clip from Split Decision, I have never publicly aired any footage from the last formal interview (albeit illegal) Stevenson ever granted. By far in my nearly 4 year journey exploring Cuba through the prism of Cuban boxers rejecting or accepting money to cross the Florida Straights, Stevenson's interview is the most explosive and moving thing I've ever captured. The short will explore his reasons for rejecting millions to fight Ali and the consequences, for better or worse, of that decision. The short will also explore Ali's fascinating relationship with Stevenson, including visiting the island twice and donating millions to Cuba in opposition to the embargo.

The Rigondeaux short will be a little different. While Rigondeaux's certainly achieved the dream he had back in Havana of defeating professional boxing's best, I've never been able to shake the feeling of viewing him as a kind of Orpheus-like figure: never able to look back. My aim to is to make an attempt at doing that for him, and an audience, and look at the cost of leaving.

An exciting and complicated element of these two shorts is the obvious sense that to quantify the costs of staying or going in Cuba, as an athlete or an ordinary citizen, exposes an impossibly obscene choice to impose upon any human being.

The sour truth you discover meeting the extraordinary Cuban people is that Faustian bargain is in either decision. Which goes a long way to explaining why no Cuban family on the island or off it has been spared the damage of fracture.