Radio commentator Max Lesnik: 'Man of Two Havanas'.

Attendees at the recent Tribeca Film Festival in New York were pleasantly surprised by the screening of a moving documentary, "Man of Two Havanas."

The film portrays Cuban-born Miami radio commentator Max Lesnik, whose life takes various twists and turns from his years as a student activist in Havana during the early 1950s, to taking up arms with Fidel Castro, to his latter years in Miami in the city's Cuban exile community.

All of it is vividly captured by Max's daughter, first-time documentary maker Vivien Lesnik Weisman, Max's daughter.

At the late April screening in New York, the documentary received a standing ovation from Tribeca audience members--which included Sen. Maria Cantwell (R-WA), singer and activist Harry Belafonte, and Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations.

"Man of Two Havanas" will also be shown Wednesday, Jun. 20, at Landmark's E Street Cinema in Washington, in the presence of various lawmakers, journalists and activists.

MAX'S OBSESSION WITH CUBA

The premise of Vivien's film is that of a young Americanized Miami Cuban resident who for years knew or cared little about Cuba, mainly as a backlash against her father's obsession with Cuban politics, and how in more recent years, she decided to visit Cuba to see first-hand the source of her father's passion for his country.

Vivien's documentary covers her father's years as a student activist who later joined up with former classmate Fidel Castro. During that time, the young Jewish revolutionary was in charge of the movement's clandestine radio broadcasts against the Batista dictatorship; at one point, he protected Fidel during a student uprising by sheltering him in his house.

However, after Castro took power, Lesnik had a falling-out with his old university friend, because of Castro's alignment with the Soviet Union by the early 1960s. That forced Lesnik and his family to flee to Miami in 1961.

During a recent phone interview with CubaNews, Lesnik, an ultra-nationalist, explained that he was far more upset with seeing Cuba turn into a Soviet satellite than he was with Castro's socialist agenda.

"This was the main problem, not the social advance of the revolution," says Lesnik, 76. "I realized at the time that my exile would be for a long time."

Lesnik, his wife and two daughters had a rough time settling in Miami, because they were associated with Castro, in a community of what he called "batistianos"--former members and associates of the ousted Batista regime. What made living in Miami harder for Lesnik and his family was his vocal support for dialogue with Castro and the Cuban government, something unacceptable to many Cuban exiles at the time.

RASH OF BOMBINGS COULDN'T SHUT HIM UP

Lesnik went into the publishing business in the late 1960s, launching a Spanish-language variety magazine, Replica. However, Lesnik's use of the magazine as his political soapbox cost him dearly. Local news reports and even CBS's "60 Minutes" documented a relentless bombing campaign against Lesnik, which started in 1974.

"There were 11 bombings," Lesnik told us. "The last time was around 1989, by Omega 7, the last terrorist group operating in Miami."

Lesnik, who miraculously escaped those explosions, finally left the magazine business. "I retired, since it was impossible for me to start a new business," he said.

These days, Lesnik is a political commentator on WOCN--also known as Radio Miami--broadcasting at 1450 on the AM dial.

Lesnik's daughter uses her father's run-ins with Cuban-American extremists to detail the rise of fanatics like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles, who were implicated in the 1976 explosion of a Cubana Airlines commercial jet, which killed 73 passengers, including the Cuban Olympic fencing team.

Vivien also interviews former New York Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach, who played an audiotape of her 1998 interview with Posada in which he revealed his ties with the Cuban American National Foundation and a wave of 1997 hotel bombings in Havana.

Posada later recanted his statements to the Times.

THE 'DIALOGUE OF 75'

Mentioning Posada in this film couldn't have been timelier. Last month, federal authorities failed to prosecute the 79-year-old Posada on immigration fraud charges, freeing him to live in Miami with his wife.

Vivien later recalled that during the Carter administration in the late 1970s, her father--along with another prominent moderate Miami Cuban exile, Bernardo Benes--were approached by Castro to start talks between Havana and the Miami exile community.

This series of meetings known as the "Dialogue of 75" resulted in the freeing of numerous political prisoners and the easing of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans wishing to visit their relatives on the island.

Lesnik's insistence on maintaining his friendship with Fidel led to another visit to Cuba again in the 1990s. One of those visits turned into a face-to-face meeting with Castro, who asked Lesnik: "Why did you leave Cuba?"

During the late 1990s, Lesnik's connections with Vatican diplomats helped lead to Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba in 1998.

FINALLY UNDERSTANDING DAD

This rich layer of contemporary Cuban history in the film is still told within the context of Vivien's bumpy relationship with her father, which remains the driving force behind this documentary.

"I realized that I couldn't understand him unless I went to Cuba. That's how we connected--me getting to know my country, and what being Cuban is all about," she told us.

Vivien refers to a trip to Havana that she took with her father in 2005, which helped her understand why he put Cuban politics before his family. This included their personal safety, when their Little Havana home fell victim to a number of drive-by shootings by presumed right-wing extremists.

The film is capped off by a scathing critique of the Bush administration's draconian travel restrictions against Cuban-Americans wishing to visit their relatives on the island.

The film also breaks down the antagonism between Fidel and Cuban-American lawmakers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart as a family feud that got out of hand, given that Castro was once married to Mirta Diaz-Balart back in 1948, which makes Lincoln and Mario his nephews by marriage.

"I'm taking the film on the film festival route," says Vivien. "What I'm looking for is obviously national and worldwide distribution, and it will not be playing in Miami until it opens in theaters."

She adds: "We're not planning any public screenings before the movie opens in theaters. I'm really, really anxious to take it to Miami, though, because there are a lot of Cuban-Americans like me that want to have their voice represented by my generation, a kind of a silent majority, if you will."