Lucía Travieso’s adventures as audiovisual professional

Last January 24, young producer Lucía Travieso and her staff uploaded to their Youtube Channel Aventuras Baobabs, the last episode of Lucía's debut series entitled Adolescentes. With this project, the artist —born in Mayabeque province— owns now 15 audiovisual works written, directed, and starred by herself.

At 12, she has no time to waste: “I barely have time to rest because of my studies, my duty to copy classes when I am attending events in Guines, Santa Clara, or La Habana…,” she states.

Lucía excels as a tireless audiovisual professional. In fact, Adolescentes is no longer the most recent season premiere of Aventuras Baobabs, but DeForman, a denunciation to street harrasment and the influence of certain songs in fueling such behavior.

Aventuras Baobabs has been a sort of umbrella to shelter the artistic aspirations that Lucía shares with other boys and girls: "It is an audiovisual project in which we make short films, radio projects and series. It is a project made by children and for children with the purpose of conveying values to young people that can be useful in their daily life."

At home, Lucía has the best work team. Her father is the experienced filmmaker Juan Carlos Travieso, which is, the young girl acknowledges, a great advantage, while setting the bar high on her. Her father lets her do her work with a lot of freedom, but later he offers her tips to improve the final product: "he is always there to tell me: fix this, you can make this better here and there, here we can change something. And hence, the work turns hard since there is always room to improve the project.

"And the opinions, well, they don't usually revise the scripts. They must be 100% mine. If the final result is something average, well so be it. They do suggest me to edit a video, colors pick; that sort of things…"

Lucía speaks in plural because not only her father is ready to assist her when there is filming: "family teamwork is... total. Everyone has a role there," she says, explaining that her mother takes on the production and that includes everything from guaranteeing a snack to calming the nerves when the filming process gets more tense.

Since she was 9, Lucía Travieso has been in close relation to audiovisual production. She also likes music; she has thought about giving her voice to some of the material that will come in the future. She dreams a lot: a big sold out concert, the filmmaking... In the future, she wants to study at ENA and ISA, but right now, she is already thinking about a few scripts that she wrote while she was filming Adolescentes.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff