The guarded party  takes its name from the novel of the same name by Cuban writer Antonio José Ponte. Following in the footsteps of such solid referents as PMa documentary filmed in 1961 by Sabá Cabrea Infante (younger brother of Guillermo Cabrera Infante) and Orlando Jiménez Leal which reflects the Havana nightlife of the early years of the revolution in just thirteen minutes, Feal's party has something in common with the party of PMBoth ceased to exist, the danger and provocation that the party itself represented for the island authorities demanded its end. There is no innocent party, they must have thought.

At Leandro's nightly party there is a continuous parade, at times frenetic, of established artists, aspiring artists, artists without work, musicians, sensitive men addicted to sex, celibates, desperate young people who do not seem to be so, of celebrities locals, art critics, entrepreneurs, heroes and villains. On this plural army that in itself is a miracle, there are four voices with more presence than the rest of the mortals of his great night: Tania Bruguera, Hamlet Lavastida, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Carlos Manuel Álvarez.

In its last minutes the party ceases to be a party, the party ends and an empty and deserted city appears announcing the end and Carlos Manuel's voice-over reveals that he was kidnapped and interrogated after leaving the party on any given Saturday and taken, against his will, to his provincial city.

Just like the PM night, the night of  The guarded party It hardly exists anymore, it was almost an optical illusion, a mirage, a place we remember, but to which we cannot return. The party succumbed to pessimism and fragmentation, the party was dynamited because the improvised mixture of its protagonists was the germ of a society that frightened the authorities and the vast majority of its protagonists decided to take a voluntary exile or suffered a forced exile. The portal that represented the party was extinguished, it remains to reinvent it unattended.

Osbel Suarez