Dispatch from Cuba and the Havana Film Festival, December 2016
Could there be a more perfect moment than this? Sitting in the garden behind the Hotel Nacional, looking at the Cuban flag so proudly waving over the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The same site where the defense was built during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this moment of time marks a particularly precarious balance between peaceful coexistence and military aggression as we contemplate the recent death of Castro and election of Trump, wondering how it will play out in 2017.
Cuba, ten days after the death of Fidel Castro, head of state for 52 years,may be a bit more subdued, but life here goes on, even with the influx of American tourists (other tourists have always been here); there is a sense of harmony. And in spite of the scarcity of luxuries for its people, the people seem to be part of a larger supportive community which is empowering to observe. If they can keep their sense of purpose and of camaraderie and community, then we who are fearful of our future should take them as examples of how life does go on even when all is not as we might want.
This year’s annual pilgrimage to Cuba has been marked by four notable events:
- Sundance Institute in Havana
Paul Federbush, the International Director of Feature Programming of the Sundance Institute brought Sundance Institute Labs here last year for the first time when they worked with the international school (EICTV) on Nuevas Miradas. This year their mini writers lab was complemented by their having two distinctive and inspiring panels — one on the offerings of Sundance Institute for Cinema and the other on Writing for Features and Television — and bringing “La La Land” and “Jackie” to the festival where they played to sold out crowds of about 1,000 a sitting at the large single-screen vintage 1950s theater, Yara Cinema. The best part of seeing “Jackie” in Havana was witnessing the audience reaction to Robert Kennedy’s regretful line to Jackie, “Maybe I pushed Jack too hard on Castro”.
Kicking off this year with the Sundance party at La Fabrica, a very special multi arts space opened opened three years ago by the renowned couple whose group Síntesis later played at the Plaza de Cathedral during the Festival Síntesis and their son X Alfonso, Paul invited me with my friends and colleagues including Efuru Flowers, here representing Flourishing Films, her fledgling Afro-Diaspora distribution, representative and international sales company, our friend from three years ago — the young cineaste Amilcar Ortiz Cardenas who is polishing up his film treatise on racism in Cuba, a no longer quite taboo subject, but one most importantly needing elucidation today in the world at large. He has been encouraged by Harvard University’s Hutchins Center’s Afro-Latin American Research Institute. He was off to see Ava du Vernay’s “13th” which is playing at the festival…to learn how slavery still exists in North America in the form of incarceration, a basic white supremist ploy to keep systemic racism alive, a ploy which embraces the poor whites who never understand how enslaved their own minds are by the same system they are championing.
La Fabrica is an amazing space the size of a warehouse, made of storage containers, in a former factory with avant garde art and performances. The Sundance party was in its own VIP space, a congenial and embracing venue.
What a surprise it was to see entering the party Indiewire founders Eugene Hernandez, now Deputy Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center along with Deadline Hollywood’s Brian who has also set up a very unique TV Series Festival in Denver Colorado with the Denver Film Society. Even more surprising to see was Locarno Film Festival’s Nadia Dresti who is here for a few days on her way to Costa Rica Film Festival as the guest of Nicole Guillemet. She will also visit the international film school EICTV in Los Banos, Cuba.
Paul’s bringing the Institute and its ideals here to Cuba is an inspiration as we contemplate new directions in this business of ours, called international independent cinema. Keri Putnam, the executive director of Sundance Institute credits the Festival with being the vanguard for so many years, not just of international cinema but of contemporary art across many disciplines. Visual arts, dance and music have been brilliantly interpreted on the world stage. She stated, “We are emotionally moved to be a part of the creative dialogue being reestablished between Cuban and North American artists.”
More reportage on the Sundance Lab Master Panels are in my two following blogs, but for now, back to other personal highlights of the 38th Havana Film Festival of New Latin American Cinema which took place December 7 to 18.
2. The presentation of my book, Cine Iberoamericano: Industria y financiemiento por pais which had been published in Spanish this past March by Guadalajara University Press and the Festival Internacional Cine en Guadalajara.
An interviewer for Cuban Radio asked me what I thought about the state of Cuban film today and I reiterated that while it was great that the Cuban constitution itself stipulates that a cinema of the country will be established and run by ICAIC, there needs to be a cinema law that filmmakers can follow in order to qualify for funding, distribution and even shooting within Cuba. Up to now, ICAIC is a closed and opaque organization and filmmakers are not privy to how it makes decisions. Three years ago, it seemed like this would change but since then, little has happened.
Read the chapter in my book on Cuba here.
3. Special Films I’ve Seen. For a festival which seems so laid back and non-eventful, a festival in which no film schedules are published until the day before the film shows, and no events are ever announced in advance, and any parties are strictly private even for industry who is not informed; and for newcomers there is no roadmap on how to navigate the festival, still sudden onslaughts of events suddenly make us run to catch all we want to see and hear.
“El ciudadano ilustre”/ “The Distinguished Citizen”
I saw a few extraordinary films. Opening night premiered Argentina’s submission for Best Foreign Language Oscar Nomination, “El ciudadano ilustre”/ “The Distinguished Citizen”, co-directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat and whose screenwriter, Andres Duprat, won for Havana’s Coral Award for Best Screenplay. The story is about a Nobel Prize winner for Literature who, after refusing big and prestigious awards all over the world, accepts an invitation to visit his hometown in Argentina, which has been the inspiration for all of his books. Since he has written about everyone in the town, and not in the most flattering ways, this trip proves to be fateful in many ways, and not so happy. The film’s intelligence and dark humor were gratifying; there was no condescension of the people he depicted as so often happens in American movies which take a look at small towns and its citizens’ provincialism; in fact, any condescension he might have felt is quickly disabused. The literary underpinnings of the film are illuminating, especially as events feed into the author’s creativity. In some ways the story is reminiscent of the Turkish docudrama “Don’t Tell Orhan Pamuk ‘Snow’ is mentioned in Kars”, which I recently saw at the Antalya Film Festival in the Turkish Competition. There too, the people of the town of Kars, one of Turkey’s most remote and poverty-stricken towns, comment on the Nobel Prize winning author’s veracity in his use of the townspeople to make a famous work of fiction.
“Cuba Libre”
My colleague, in Havana for the first time, Efuru Flowers of Flourishing Films, and I were invited by filmmaker Catherine Murphy (“Maestra”) to a very special screening of a film we loved and hope to bring to the USA, “Cuba Libre”, about two boys in 1890’s Cuba, pupils in a school run by corrupt Catholic Spain for poor orphans. Their rivalry turns to friendship as they find ways, beginning with boyish pranks and evolving to bearing arms, to act against Spain, sometimes with and sometimes against the interventionist USA who also finds a way to cast its influence with the slogan “Remember the Maine” (Do you remember what that saying was about? It was a pretext for US to invade Cuba to protect its interests).
The film’s director, Jorge Luis Sánchez whose film “El Benny” depicted a beloved epoch of Cuba’s history when Benny Moré captured the world with his voice while fame and fortune destroyed him personally, has created a perfect piece to bring to the USA for families, schools and special venue screenings to learn in a very entertaining way about Cuba and its independence first from Spain and then from the US from 1890 to 1902.
“Últimos días en La Habana”/ “The Last Days in Havana”
Multi-prize winner of this festival, writer-director Fernando Pérez (winner of the Special Jury Prize and for Best Sound Design for “Últimos días en La Habana”/ “The Last Days in Havana”), in 2003 directed the documentary “Havana Suite” one of my four all-time favorite Cuban films. “Últimos días en La Habana”/ “The Last Days in Havana” is complemented by that film. As quiet as “Suite Havana” was, so “The Last Days in Havana” is noisy and tumultuous as it brings to life the noise, grit, people and spirit of Cuba in a raucous loving (and exhausting) way never seen before as it tells the story of two aging men, friends forever, as one lays dying of AIDS and is visited by family and friends. Done with Perez’s superb collaborator DP Raúl Pérez Ureta (who also did the Audience Award winning, very Cuban film “Ya no es antes”), it captures the spirit of the people of Havana.
Just FYI, the other two of my four all-time favorite films of Cuba are the classic “Memories of Underdevelopment” which has been lovingly restored on 4K this year in preparation for its 50th anniversary, and “Soy Cuba”/ “I Am Cuba” a Soviet-Cuban coproduction directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and written by Evgeniy Evtushenko and Enrique Pineda Barnet, who himself was honored for his great work in Cuban cinema at the Closing Night of the Festival. The fourth film is the 1993 Oscar nominated “Fresa y Chocolate”/ “Strawberry and Chocolate”, a very funny satire on Cuba and two men who are opposites, one gay, the other straight, one a fierce communist, the other a fierce individualist, one suspicious, the other accepting, and how they come to love each other.
Granted Cuban films are not always to the taste of everyone outside of the appreciative film-loving Cuban public; they are not as easy for Westerners to appreciate as Argentinian, Mexican, Chilean or Colombian cinema; they often lean too far toward melodrama, but for connoisseurs of “Cubana”, “Last Days in Havana””film is satisfying on so many levels and its finale crowns it as a near perfect film. The talent of Fernando Pérez is undeniable and the actors playing ensemble are endearing and engaging.
“Cercas y lejos”/ “So Near…So Far”
Los Angeles activist, David Sandoval has put in years on the documentary called “So Near…So Far”/ “Cercas y lejos”, the life of Pablo Menendez, founder and director of the music group Mezcla. Growing up in Oakland, Pablo was accustomed to houseguests such as bluesmen Jesse Fuller, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and folk singer Pete Seeger. “My mother was interested in other cultures and she booked several concerts in Havana,” Menendez says: “She was prime time news there. Everybody in Cuba knew about her.”
Pablo was dedicated, in much the way Samuel of the Bible was dedicated, by his mother, Bay Area folk singer Barbara Dane, to the Cuban Revolution and in 1966, at 14 he moved there. He enrolled in the Escuela National de Arte. Living in the dormitory, his tuition, rent, medical care, laundry were all taken care of. He studied music and learned Spanish well enough to acquire a Cuban accent. One year later, at the age of 15, he married Andria Santana, a drama student, who became an internationally known Spanish-language actress. He has become “part of the local scenery”, an indelible part of many Cuban music scenes over the past decades: the Nueva Trova movement (Grupo de Experimentación Sonora with Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés), the jazz world (Sonido Contemporaneo at the old Club Rio with Gonzalo Rubalcaba and others), Afro-rock group Síntesis (with Carlos and Ele Alfonso) and more.
Pablo founded Mezcla in 1989 and has led the band since on countless gigs in Cuba, many international tours to Europe and the U.S., and on several critically acclaimed recordings. Pablo also opened the way, in the mid ’90s, for other Cuban musicians to tour the United States. When Mezcla’s visas were denied in 1993, U.S. public opinion and various members of Congress mobilized to protest. Among the protesters was the legendary guitarist Carlos Santana, the spearhead of Latin Rock, who stated in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner that Mezcla was his favorite band from Cuba.
Mezcla is a multigenerational ensemble bringing together several veteran masters with some the best of young jazz players on the scene today. To watch this doc in an audience of friends and fans of Pablo, whom we had visited at his home two years ago, was a special treat of the festival. Seeing him later around town, especially at the Jazz Festival and at the Sentesis Concert given in the Cathedral Plaza of Old Havana resonated deeply with my feelings for Cuba as a familiar and yet mysterious place.
“Tempestad”/ “Tempest”
One other extraordinary film at the festival was “Tempestad” by Salvadorian filmmaker Tatiana Huezo whose Ariel Award (among others) winning doc “The Tiniest Place”/ “El lugar más pequeño” shook us out of our usual perception of Latin America. That took place in El Salvador, and this takes place in the Mexican-US border town of Matamoros. This Berlinale 2016 premiering doc deservedly won Costa Rica Film Festival’s top prize and an honorable mention in Havana.
“Tempestad” is a quietly told story accompanied by poetic visuals of anonymous young women on endless journeys on trains and buses through destitute and rainy landscapes, stopping in different towns between the prison where Miriam — a woman we never see but who is narrating her story which forms the narrative of the film — has served seven years and is released with no explanation and no money, to her arrival at her home town 4,000 kilometers away.
Accompanied by a melancholic string score the base structure is sometimes broken to show another woman, Adele who works in a circus, and whose initially unrelated story is told as we are taken on a trip through Mexico’s systemic injustice to discovering the relationship between two women who are both victims of the government, the cartels and sex-trafficking collusion. Both are broken by the state of the world they find themselves in; the heartbreaking sadness in this world drives me toward going into an inner exile myself. “Tempestad” premiered at the Berlinale 2016 and was produced by Jim Stark, Nicolás Celis, Sebastian Celis, José Cohen, Øyvind Stiauren, Joakim Ziegler. It is a work of love for them all.
“Aquarius”
The film which played in Cannes may be old news to some, but for the Cubans and for me it was new and Sonja Braga, its star, was feted and celebrated her for her strong female roles and for her strong female self.
“Aquarius” was the Brazilian non-contender for Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Its filmmakers were excluded from the race by the Brazilian government when they public ally protested in Cannes where the film premiered, opposing the impeachment of Brazilian then-President Dima Roussof.
4. Special People
At the numerous new restaurants opened since Raul Castro allowed some limited entrepreneurial enterprises here and since President Obama extended a hand toward Cuba two years ago, we hung out and ate meals with new and old friends like the Brown University educated Panamanian writer-director Enrique Castro Rios.
His work-in-progress, “Diciembes”, which under the name “Sultán” won the Works-in-Progress Prize in Panama last April is in post. Alexander Albrecht, actor and writer whom I met two years ago at the Mexican Film Residency was with his producer partner Edher Campos (“La Jaula de Oro”/ “The Golden Dream”) who is soon to be in pre-production for Alejandro Springall’s next film. Also Mario Diaz whose “Brothers in Exile” showed here a couple of years ago was here as were Toronto-based Cuban brothers Sebastian Barriuso, Rodrigo Barriuso whom I had met at the Coproduction Market at the Guadalajara Film Festival.
They were participating with Lindsay Gossling as one of the three writing teams in the Sundance mini-lab here. During the FICG Coproduction Market, “1989” had already stood out as one of the best projects. “1989” takes place at the onset of Cuba’s Special Period where a young Russian literature professor’s life is upended when he is sent to a hospital to work as a translator for Russian children from Chernobyl suffering from radiation poisoning. In reality, the work is about their father, and it will start production in 2017. Another new friend is Amilar Ortiz, a Cuban filmmaker working with Harvard…on a documentary about racism in Cuba.
Attorney Michael Donaldsonof Donaldson & Califf from Los Angeles also presented on Fair Use, Comparing Copyright Law in Cuba and USA.
For me this year in Cuba was marked by a lack of sleep and a lack of energy and a lack of dancing. It may in part be due to the restrained post-Castro mood of the country, though with the Jazz Festival following the Film Festival, I did get plenty of music. After last month in Tallinn, Estonia and the month before in Antalya, Turkey, what with Cuba itself recovering from the time of mourning for Fidel, exhaustion seemed to be my normal state. Though I needed a nap after every single endeavor, I still was able to discover a new depth to Cuba, something that amazes me every year. The lack of internet and of constantly writing forced me to rely on my own experience and observation of the people who, though guaranteed a home, food, education and medical care, admit to a failed government and in the face of that, support of one another in such a natural communal way of life. Contrast our individualistic life styles and [some of] our anguish at the upcoming political scene in the US, we could profit from emulating the Cuban sense of life in spite of the many negative aspects of its nation which still never negate all the positive energy and positive aspects one feels here.
