angeles angeles i'm tavis smiley it's been nearly a year since the death of long-time cuban leader, fidel castro tonight a conversation with producer and filmmaker, john alpert who had unprecedented access to fidel castro his new documentary "cuba and the cameraman" premiers on netflix later this month. we're glad you joined us a conversation with filmmaker and producer john alpert in just a moment. ♪

>> announcer: and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you. ♪ john alpert was often the first reporter last reporter out while documents war around the global but perhaps his magnum opu is the documentary "cuba and the cameraman" which is 45 years in the making, featuring unprecedented access to the cuban leader, fidel castro. film premiers november 24th near a a year after castro's death.

now a clip from "cuba and the cameraman." >> fidel, i broke the blockade, brought you the best beer in the united states. i'm bricking the blockade. there you go. very strong >> [ speaking foreign language ] [ laughter ] >> he wants us to solve the social and economic problems in the united states. he wishes us success with that. >> que? >> i'm translating. you used to speak english remember. [ speaking foreign language ]. >> how >> how did you develop that rapport with castro? >> i guess i broke all the rules. >> yeah. >> you know there's normal protocol for dealing with him.

you've met him. >> uh-huh. >> you sit in a chair and you wait and wait and wait. i sat in a chair and said hey fidel, where do you live, can i go to the bedroom, let me see where you sleep, bhwhat's in th refrigerator. his staff was horrified. come on john let's go. i think he liked that. >> give me your impressions of him after covering him so many times. >> he's extraordinarily charismatic. >> uh-huh. >> you feel like he's actually interested new. i don't know if you found that but i wants to know about you. >> uh-huh, he does. >> then wants to talk about the things that triggers in his mind. he finds out you grew up in pennsylvania and your family he wants to talk about that. very, very cure joious man. >> what was it about you that you think got him to be comfortable with you? >> well, i think initially he was just curious because he saw

know and my wife and her 'cause pushing our commitment in a baby carriage it was so heavy that's the only way we could carry it. he came over and i was terrified. he was talking to me and i can't answer. next time i saw him ilmost tackled him because i knew i missed my chance and i felt like i was a failure but he knew what we were doing in new york. we have a community meeting center. we train lots of young people, try to get better housing and health care these are things he tried to fight that revolution for. he liked that and also was in war zones all over the world and i think he was intrigued like a shlub like me would be on a mountain top in nicaragua, i think he liked that. >> how much of your work did he want to know about. >> he was very curious. he was watching reports from the

central americas or fill phoenixs aphoeni philpines and he would talk about that with us. >> when did you know he was aware of who you were? you spent so much time with him when did you know you struck up, if not a friendship that he knew who you were? >> when he took pickles from my plate. we were on a airplane and he put his arm around me and saw i had a pickle on my tv dinner he took that and ate my pickle it showed a level of comaradeship and friendship after that we were off to the races and i could ask him questions and he would tell me stories never told anybody else. >> yeah. what did you make of his openness. trying to find a better word but as you said i spent a little bit time with him and it's so nerve racking and so dpisappointing

quite frankly when you talk to u.s. politicians everybody wants to stay on message and you never feel you get an earnest in-depth response to the questions you're asking so when a politician finally does open up it makes real news because they stay on message so much. with castro it was fascinating for me at least that you felt like this guy was giving you earnest answers to the questions you asked. did you focus that way. >> i did as a director one ting is to separate phonyness from fact. >> sure. >> so bill clinton was really good at acting and make you think, he would look at you like this and his aides would take him away you know the james brown routine. >> i did that with bill clinton few times. >> so he is looking at you like, don't make me go but you know he wants to go. you know it's an act. he's good at it. but he's not perfect. >> right.

>> and fidel, i don't think was an act. i think he was genuinely interested in you. how many hours did he talk to you? >> about fi or six. >> right he starts at 2:00 in the morning and goes to breakfast, i literally ran out of tape talking to him. how did you process how loquacious this guy was. >> you know he had good answers but you could contend an answer. i disagreed with him on lots of things and he accepted that. and i also had firsthand knowledge of what was happening to the people. that's the other part of this film i followed a peasant family from the country side and watched what happened as the economics of the revolution began to fall apart and how the people suffered so i had this knowledge. wasn't like i'm flying in from new york and don't know anything. i have a lost friends in cuba

who have to live the daily life in cuba and i could talk to fidel about that. >> and he receives that critique in what way? >> well he explained from his point of view why the cuban economy basically was out of gas. but he blamed it on the soviet union the blockade those are two really important factors but they have also sort of been singing the same song for the past 50 years without much improvisation and doing the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, sometimes it didn't work. >> yeah. because he was such a in this country, other parts of the world, even in cuba there were people who had issue with hmm. >> sure. >> how did you -- how did you process your relationship with him knowing there were people who despised this man castro.

>> it's my job to capture something something nobody has seen and let you make your own decision. many have cried and wept because they felt we captured the cuban experience. >> i could have started with this question but take me back to when you first became fascinated enamored enough to talk wh him. >> i was fascinated with cuba first. >> yeah. >> i'm growing up in the late 0 60s early 70s we're fighting for better housing and with cops in the streets and fighting the vietnam war and in the distance is a placerying to have better health care and better schools. so i wanted to see that. i didn't want to take anybody's world for it.

i wanted to see for myself. i'm an onry person i wanted to see for myself. so that's what attracted me. i was there ough so many times eventually i bumped into fidel and it was happenstance that he seemed to like me and i seemed to get along well with him. waen wasn't planned. >> the other times you spent with him you reached out? >> well,you know, mario bait ball lift when about 100,000 cubans came on boats and came to the united states. they had "scarface" on tv last night. >> sure i watch it all the time. >> and they wouldn't let any foreign reporters to go to mario bay to see what's happening.

jimmy carter said freedom fighter won't take you all and fidel opened the mental hospitalities and packed all of the guys on to the boat but there wasn't any proof and we went there and filmed this and we reported this. it was nightly news. 15 minutes later jimmy carter goes on tv stops the boat lift. i didn't know they had 300,000 people who were still waiting to leave who got stuck. when you renounce a revolution your job is threatened, your house something threatened, you're an enemy of the people of the neighborhood, it was a terrible social problem and i was blamed for stopping the boat lift so my access to fidel and things in cuba narrowed down because i told the truth about what i seen that day. that's sort of when i began thinking about this movie because one thing they couldn't stop me from filming in cuba was

my friends, the peasants and street hustler on the street, the little girl, i began film that and had to sneak in to see fidel. i was with italian journalist who said hey come with us, we're going to see fidel tonight that's the time he wrote the note to excuse my daughter from her absence in high school. sometimes fidel invite med sometimes i sort of came through the back door. >> over the years of not just coveringfidel but also cuba how have you viewed the way that island has changed, the people on that island? >> well the thing i sort of like to comment about is our foreign policy towards cuba, you know, if you got in your car every day and wanted to go to grandmas house and the car doesn't start and you get in the next day and

next day and never get from your house to grandma's house and do this for 50 years? not a good plan. and the isolation of cuba, the block a blockading of cuba, trying to separate certainly didn't change the government at all it just helped to kpounld t ed ted to cg of the people. the things that worked people like you and me could easily go down and talk to cubans all of a sudden things began changing in the country that's the real trajectory eldy. trajectorge tragedy. another thing is. why not have haven't experiment. cheer them from the side line instead of kicking them in the shin for 50 years maybe we would have learned something instead of picking on the little guys. >> one of the reason for kicking

in the shins is the miami cubans want you to kick them in the shins. >> absolutely. >> because of what he did to them and the human rights violations people say he engaged in. >> for sure. what really worked in terms of formanting dissent in the country, free speech, is when americans went in and interacted. our culture and people are our best apon. it's not this. we're very, very attractive as a people. and that's when the greatest change happened in cuba. not when we separated but when we were together. >> how concerned are you that now thanks to obama at least there was this opening. >> right. >> there have always been those who are afraid what american enterprise will do to the island. are you one of those colonncern about american commerce one day?

>> yeah i think our economic power is substantial and who knows what will happen. raul has basically term limited himself. ease only in power six more months and he's gone. i think it's a provocative mystery what will happen in cuba. i'm curious how people in miami will react to this film. i know the cuban-americans who have seen this cry through the film and feel it captures the experience on the island. it's the film they want to show to their kids to explain what happened in cuba for the past 50 years. >> how do you do that? how do you produce a film that get that's kind of reaction from american cubans and yet is fair or tells the true story about castro, how do you balance that? >> took me 45 years to figure out how to do it. >> yeah. >> i always wanted to be in the

guinness book of records i'm not fast enough or smart enough or handsome enough but i think i'm the world's slowest filmmaker and i want to tell the story right and i'm thrilled after 45 years netflix gave me the opportunity to do it. they're the only pple that said wow 45 years sign us up. >> what did it take you 45 years to figure out. >> i needed to balance the story, the promise of cuba,he charisma of castro with the reality of the policies and the way it effected the people. and i needed time to be able to tell it. because things changed in the middle of the film in the 90s when the economy falls out there's literally no electricity down there, no food, to see how the people rebound from that, it's astonishing. it's a testimony to something that's really, when you went to cuba there's something about

their culture about the way in which they live their lives, something about their happiness that is infectionous and helps them deal with difficult situations that's part of this film too. >>ly come to the resiliency of the cuban people in a second but you went where i wanted to go which was the culture. what do you find most fascinating about the cun culture? >> the cuban culture is a culture that has infected the world with their enthusiasm. you can go anywhere in the world and peole aren't dancing to music from chile. there's something that cuba has produced that's unique in the world. their food, their culture, their drinks, the way their people react to you, no place like it. i hope if people haven't gone to

cuba that they will go before it changes, everything changes but right now cuba is fascinating place, with the remnants of the socialist economy, it's got -- they should just go. >> what say you then about that other issue the resiliency of the cuban people. >> if you look at our peasants. so we follow three men, never got married, basically married to the land. they were my best friends in cuba. first time i went to cuba i was locked up and told not to leave this place and the guy in charge of us never came to get us. and we were told if we leave this camp where they isolated us that they would put us on a plane back to new york. and i sat there for like a week waiting for this guy to come. he had basically taken our car, in those days nobody had cars or

gas and he was using it to visit his girlfriends all over the island. he would never come to get us. it was a good lesson because i realized not everybody was a nice guy. they have bad selfish people there just like in l.a. one day i just started walking down the road and they're screaming you can't go, we're all going to be in trouble i said that's too bad and i get to the bottom of the road and hear clunk clunk clunk, and it's this little guy lifting ses like this. he's got two huge oxen i felt like the pioneer days in the united states, that's how we farmed here 200 years ago and he became my best friend and to watch him and his brothers deal with these unbelievable di difficulties, there was time in the nighttime they would kill the animals, at one point the brothers were left with nothing all of the animals had been killed and to come back five years later and they got more

oxen. can't even explain it. i wouldn't have been able to do it. it would have crushed me. i don't have the spirit these guys have that got them through these difficulties, and with a laugh, next time they saw me we're drinking rum, dancing, arm wrestling. it's magic. >> because you travelled not just extensively in cuba but around the world could you top of mind what you think castro's legacy ed around the world. we'll talk about the u.s. in a second how's he regarded around the world. >> it really depends where you are. there's place that's place him sort of in a holy trinity with jesus. and the story of the revolution is really romantic. if we took all of the people here from the tv studio and stuck them on a little boat and landed down in what, santa

monica, okay, and went up into the hollywood hills that's what fidel did, and made a revolution out of that. and he began to really try to employ things that when i was a young guy we were dreaming of trying to have here in the united states. and so there's place that's still venerate him for his accomplishments. but the cuba revolution doesn't succeed in many, many areas and so that is what has really brought about a mixed evaluation and itdepends on your own priorities where you rank fidel. >> how much of that admiration for him around the globe has to do with his success in 50 years thumbing his nose at the american empire. >> a lot. i liked it too. >> yeah, yeah. >> because i would go places the united states was doing things shouldn't do. we supported a horrible dictator in the philippines and people would ask why are you doing

this. >> and in chile. >> and cambodia. >> all around the world, yeah. >> yeah, yeah. so, he didn't buckle. >> yeah. >> you know, and i think this -- this earned him respect. but on some levels it also hurt the cuban revolution because it created a certain inflexibility. and his defense has always had to be ready, so strong, that it took away a tension from fixing things in the country that needed to be fixed. >> uh-huh. he was bright. >> oh, yeah a lot smaert than me. >> where did that come from? >> he was well educated living west 81st street in the city one year and trying to decide go to

columbia or harvard law and he was smart enough to get into both was leaning to harvard law and decided to go back and make the revolution but he was a smart man. the peasants were smart in their own way. it was a time it hadn't rained for weeks and weeks and the beans were drying up and the soil was like ccrete. and i was filming and he said listen you better bring some rain protection tomorrow. iaid it hasn't rained in three weeks, everything's dieing, he goes no 4:00 tomorrow it's going to rain. he wasn't predicting rain only the weatherman. 4:00 like a minute to 4:00 the sky turns black and like, it was like a gong at 4:00. >> yeah. >> and so there's all sorts of

wisdom in this documentary. it's also the wisdom of sur advise al. louis is a street hustler. he figured out how to survive. i don't think he graduated high school. his job pays $7 a month but he fixed his house pretty good and he's working the black market. this is also a documentary about survival. >> you may have answered it in part what do you hope the take away is from the documentary. >> i think first of all american people, cuban people have been arbitrarily separated for half a century. that's crazy. i think if this could help people understand cuban people better, understand what's happened there, start them thinking about the way in which we interact with other people all over the world, i think it's useful. you know, there's so many barriers and walls that get

built between us and we got to, that's your job with your show to knockat down and i hope this documentary does it's share too. >> it's "cuba and the cameraman" on netflix in limited release this month. grat project. >> thank you sir appreciate it. >> that's our show tonight. thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. ♪ >> announcer: for more information on turdoday's show visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi i'm tavis smiley we'll take a deep dive what's happening around the country. that's next time, we'll see you then. ♪

>>nn >> announcer: and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you.

g good evening from los angeles i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with writer and activist khary lazarre-white , he joins us to discuss his work helping young people throughout his organization, the brotherhood sister soul with his debut novel"passage" glad you have joined us a conversation with khary lazarre-white comg up right now. ♪