“Painful loss for Cuba’s audiovisual universe: Daniel Diez Castrillo, a journalist, documentary filmmaker, television director, teacher of several generations of moviemakers, has died,” he published on his Facebook profile.

The official described Diez Castrillo as a thorough man, committed to his time and his culture, and extended his deepest condolences to his family and friends on behalf of the institution.

Until recently, already very ill, he taught film courses to students from the Journalism program at the University of Havana, and participated in other teaching tasks organized by the Santiago Alvarez Office, Cuban filmmaker, screenwriter and poet Jorge Fuentes wrote on Facebook.

In January 1993, Diez Castrillo founded Televisión Serrana in the town of San Pablo de Yao, in Buey Arriba municipality, in eastern Granma province, a project that made the life of the inhabitants of the Sierra Maestra visible to Cuba and the world.

He had a 16 years’ experience as a sound engineer for Noticiero Icaic Latinoamericano (Latin American Newsreel), alongside award-winning Cuban documentary filmmaker Santiago Alvarez, with whom he toured Cuba and who made him understand the need that these people have to be known, “because only then they would perceive how important they are to the nation’s identity.

Diez Castrillo participated, along with other filmmakers, in about 20 works for Cuban cinema and television and some other 30 were signed by him during his stay at Televisión Serrana, a project to which he dedicated a large part of his life and which, due to its relevance, received support from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Respected and admired among Cuban intellectuals and artists, for his merits as a film and television director, sound and music recorder, teacher and writer, Daniel Diez Castrillo was awarded with the Distinction for National Culture (1996) and the National Television Prize for the work of a lifetime (2015).

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