Sutherland native wins academy award
By Kristina Jergensen, The North Platte Telegraph
06/26/2004

Sutherland native Lindsey Kealy, 23, has already accomplished a dream
of many filmmakers - winning an Academy Award.

Kealy and graduate student David Pittock won a bronze Student Academy
Award June 13 for their documentary "Cuba: Illogical Temple," after
visiting Cuba as part of a class at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.

Two years ago, Kealy, a college senior, jumped at the chance to visit
Cuba, a closed country, with the journalism class "Depth Reporting."

In summer and fall of 2002, she and Pittock, a fellow broadcasting
student, studied "anything and everything" about Cuba, preparing for
their upcoming adventure and the resulting documentary, which was to
air on Nebraska Public Television.

She and Pittock, along with other journalism students, spent three
days in Miami, meeting with Cubans, before boarding a chartered plane
for an eight-day stay in Havana, the country's capital city.

Their plane also carried Cuban dissidents, who are rarely allowed to
visit their homeland, Kealy said.

"As we taxied down (into Havana), they started clapping, with tears in
their eyes. They hadn't been home to see their families in years,"
Kealy said.

"We were looking for the truth about Cuba," Kealy said of the wide
range of people she and Pittock interviewed on videotape, including
taxi drivers, people on the street and a top Cuban official.

"We took his words with a grain of salt. He naturally stood up for the
Cuban government, saying there were no problems, while there were
people on the streets trying to find enough food to survive," Kealy
said.

She said Cubans under President Fidel Castro's communist regime face a
weird situation.

"The government pays for medical care and education, and Cubans have
one of the highest literacy rates around. But there's a lot of
poverty, and the government food rations aren't enough," she
explained, noting that most Cubans earn $5 to $10 per day.

Kealy was moved by the attitude of many Cuban residents.

"People there have a great outlook on life. They have such energy and
are so giving and warm, despite what they are trying to overcome. I
was amazed by that," she said.

"I came back thinking they have something we don't - that
spirit. Their zest for life is something that I don't know if we could
ever have," she said.

Kealy and Pittock brought back 300 hours of video from Cuba, much of
it in Spanish, to edit down for the 55-minute documentary.

Cuban music, such as salsa - an upbeat style featuring drums and
trumpets - added flavor to the film, while Hispanic friends provided
voice-overs for the Spanish quotes, Kealy said.

A Cuban's comment in the film provided its title, "Cuba: Illogical
Temple," Kealy explained.

"He was saying that it doesn't make sense that when the people are so
poor they could love (Cuba) so much; it's illogical. We thought that
was fitting," Kealy explained.

In September, the 55-minute documentary was complete and aired on
Nebraska Public Television soon afterward. Kealy said that on a whim,
she and Pittock took a long shot and entered the film for the Student
Academy Awards.

"We were blown away," she said of the film's ranking in the top three
nationally in its category. She and Pittock then received an
all-expenses-paid trip in mid-June to Los Angeles to meet
cinematographers, directors, composers and others in the film
industry.

Kealy vividly remembers the June 13 awards ceremony in the Academy's
Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

"It was like the Academy Awards. They showed clips, and we gave
speeches. We got to thank the academy, which is something every
filmmaker wants to do," she said.

Kealy, who graduated from UNL in May 2003 and now works as an
associate producer for an Omaha news station, said making the
documentary was eye-opening.

This spring, the news magazine "Cuba: An Elusive Truth," which was
written and designed by student print journalists on the Cuba trip,
was nominated for a Pulitzer.

North Platte Telegraph