In Havana, a Fiery Connection That Couldn’t Be Ignored

Patricia Ellen Gillespie and Alvaro Pérez Abrahantes agree their first meeting was strictly business. It was March 2019, and both were professors at New York University’s documentary program in Havana, Cuba.

“It wasn’t like we locked eyes and got hit by electricity, like people tell you it should be,” Ms. Gillespie said of the moment in Mr. Pérez Abrahantes’s office. “He was a nice guy.”

That zap came later, when Mr. Pérez Abrahantes shared his interest in making a documentary about Cuba’s underground internet network. Ms. Gillespie agreed to go to lunch together to discuss the project, and the meal lasted over six hours. As they walked back to work, Mr. Pérez Abrahantes had to restrain himself from kissing her. “From that day, I knew I was crazy about her,” he said.

Ms. Gillespie, 35, was born in Yonkers, N.Y. and raised mostly in New Milford, Conn. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who’s worked on such films as “Whose Streets?”, about the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, which was nominated for a Peabody Award. She received a bachelor’s of fine arts from N.Y.U.

Mr. Pérez Abrahantes, 38, was born in Matanzas, Cuba. Though he now also works as a producer and post-professional in documentary films, he was formerly the head of audio visual operations at the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba in Havana, a nonprofit promoting Cuban artists. He received his bachelor’s in computer science from Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas, also in Havana.

After their long lunch, Ms. Gillespie was interested as well. “We were both trying to be professional, but as time wound on, it became impossible to deny that there was a genuine connection,” she said. “An intellectual, spiritual connection.”