Early life and education

Leon Ichaso was born in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

 August 3, 1948, into a family of well-known writers, journalists and artists. His father, Justo Rodríguez Santos, was one of Cuba's most respected poets and a pioneer in broadcast TV and radio -and his mother Antonia Ichaso had a radio magazine show in the 1940s.

Ichaso left the island for exile in Mexico and the United States, with his mother Antonia Ichaso and sister Mari Rodriguez Ichaso

Mari Rodriguez Ichaso

Mari Rodríguez Ichaso is a Cuban American magazine editor, author, filmmaker and producer.-Early life and education:Mari Rodriguez Ichaso was born in Havana, Cuba, the daughter of Justo Rodriguez Santos, one of Cuba's leading poets, and Antonia Ichaso, a pioneer writer of Cuban radio...

, at age 14. His father stayed behind to continue his unwavering support for the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

. Five years later he joined his family in New York.

Career

Leon Ichaso is known as a director who specializes in gritty urban realism. He first made his mark with the independently made Spanish-language feature, El Super

El Super

El Súper is a 1979 Spanish-language comedy-drama film directed by Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal, based on a stage play by Iván Acosta. The film is a look at life in the U.S. from the perspective of frustrated Cuban exiles.-Plot summary:...

(1979), based on an Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 play about an immigrant building superintendent trying to make his way in New York City. It took six years for the filmmaker to follow up on this study, but Crossover Dreams

Crossover Dreams

Crossover Dreams is a 1985 film. The film follows singer Rudy Veloz on his rise to fame.The film has moments of pathos but it is anything but melancholy. "Its heart has the ebullient salsa beat. Like Rudy Veloz, it appreciates the irony of the sometimes humiliating situations he lands in, but it...

(1985), was a fine first shot at a somewhat more mainstream film. The film was a hard-hitting look at different but mixed US Latino communities, life in the barrio

Barrio

Barrio is a Spanish word meaning district or neighborhood.-Usage:In its formal usage in English, barrios are generally considered cohesive places, sharing, for example, a church and traditions such as feast days...

 and the potent drive of salsa music

Salsa music

Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...

.

Imported into the Hollywood scene, Ichaso found his talent for telling tough stories of the big city slotted into action series on TV (e.g., Miami Vice, Crime Story, The Equalizer) and TV movies as The Fear Inside, The Take, A Table at Ciro's and A Kiss to Die For. Ichaso later directed Wesley Snipes's Sugar Hill

Sugar Hill (1994 film)

Sugar Hill is a 1994 American crime film starring Wesley Snipes and Michael Wright as brothers Roemello and Raynathan Skuggs. The film focuses on the two brothers, who are major drug dealers in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.-Plot:...

(1994), a character study wedded to a violent crime drama of a New York drug empire.

In the Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

 and Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 in 1995, Ichaso made Azúcar amarga (Bitter Sugar), a Spanish language film about a disillusioned Cuban Communist.

For the next several years, Ichaso worked in several TV-movies, some of which were adaptations of acclaimed plays. Zooman (Showtime, 1995) was an adaptation of an Off-Broadway play dealing with a family coping with the murder of child. Execution of Justice (Showtime, 1999) was also derived from a Broadway play that detailed the events behind the murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone

George Moscone

George Richard Moscone was an American attorney and Democratic politician. He was the 37th mayor of San Francisco, California, US from January 1976 until his assassination in November 1978. Moscone served in the California State Senate from 1967 until becoming Mayor. In the Senate, he served as...

 and supervisor Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk

Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...

. While told from the point of view of the assassin, Dan White

Dan White

Daniel James "Dan" White was a San Francisco supervisor who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, on Monday, November 27, 1978, at City Hall...

, Ichaso's film remained neutral and demonstrated that the questions surrounding a highly charged event could not be reduced to simple answers.

Ichaso next tackled a pair of small screen biographies Ali: An American Hero (Fox, 2000) and Hendrix (Showtime, 2000). He later wrote and directed the highly acclaimed biographical feature Piñero

Piñero

Piñero is a 2001 biopic about the troubled life of Nuyorican poet and playwright Miguel Piñero, starring Benjamin Bratt as the titular character. It was written and directed by the Cuban filmmaker, Leon Ichaso. It premiered at the Montreal Film Festival on 31 August 2001...

(2001), about the life of Puerto Rican author Miguel Piñero

Miguel Piñero

Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican playwright, actor, and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement.-Early years:...

, who had the soul of a poet but lived the life of a thief. Ichaso employed a collage-like approach to the author's life, including flashbacks, drug-induced dreams and scenes from stage performances to create a portrait of an intriguing, if difficult, person.

After working again for Showtime (Sleeper Cell

Sleeper Cell (TV series)

Sleeper Cell is a one-hour drama on the Showtime network that began airing on December 4, 2005. The tagline for the first season was "Friends. Neighbors. Husbands. Terrorists." and the tagline for the second season was "Cities. Suburbs. Airports. Targets." The series was nominated for an Emmy award...

, 2005), Cane, The Cleaner

The Cleaner (TV series)

The Cleaner was an A&E television series starring Benjamin Bratt. It debuted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 10:00 pm EST and the last episode aired on September 15, 2009, when the show was officially cancelled....

(A&E), Persons Unknown (Fox/Televisa 2008 and 2009), developing his own future projects ("Monk"), and teaching movie directing in France, in 2004, Ichaso started working on the screenplay of salsa singer Héctor Lavoe

Héctor Lavoe

Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez , better known as Héctor Lavoe, was a Puerto Rican salsa singer. Lavoe was born and raised in the Machuelito sector of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Early in his life, he attended a local music school and developed an interest inspired by Jesús Sánchez Erazo. He moved to New York...

's biography, El Cantante

El Cantante

El Cantante is a 2006 American film released in the United States on August 3, 2007. The biopic stars singer Marc Anthony and actress-singer Jennifer Lopez . The film is based on the life story of salsa legend Héctor Lavoe...

. This was shot in 2006 and stars Jennifer López

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lynn Lopez is an American actress, singer, record producer, dancer, television personality, and fashion designer. Lopez began her career as a dancer on the television comedy program In Living Color. Subsequently venturing into acting, she gained recognition in the 1995 action-thriller...

 and Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony is an American singer-songwriter, actor and producer. Anthony is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. The two-time Grammy and three-time Latin Grammy–winner has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. He is best known for his Latin salsa numbers and ballads...

.

His last movie Paraiso, filmed in Miami in 2008, opened during the 2009 Miami International Film Festival in March 2009.

External links