FESTIVAL ROUNDUP



 

International Havana Film Festival

Standing before a capacity crowd in Havana’s cavernous Karl Marx Theater, festival Director Alfredo Guevara officially kicked off the opening ceremony for the 19th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema with a long, lyrical welcoming speech laced with references to history, ideology, politics, religion, the arts and, of course, film. The breadth of Guevara’s speech set the tone for a festival that would not only provide a showcase for Latin American film and related initiatives, but would also prove itself to be a journey through Cuba.

Just moments before the ceremony I had been transfixed by the vintage American cars, specimens of a bygone era, that were negotiating their way through the great crowd of waiting people who had amassed in front of the theater. A screenwriter might have conceived this scene as: "Ext. 1950s Hollywood Movie Set – Evening." But the ‘55 Buicks and Hudson Hornets were mostly beat-up relics and they were interspersed with clunky Soviet-made Ladas; the anxious onlookers wore modest clothes, nothing that resembled period costumes; and with a theater named after Karl Marx... this was at least one economic system removed from the orbit of Hollywood.

And yet there was this feeling of being on a movie set, like an extra in one of the world’s longer works-in-progress, the 39-year-old brainchild of that renowned first-time director, Fidel Castro. This was, after all, Castro’s revolutionary Cuba, an experiment in socialism that desperately needs finishing funds to surmount a growing economic crisis – a crisis brought on by the combined effects of the loss of Eastern Bloc patronage, a long-standing U.S. embargo, and the inability of Cuba’s creaky economic system to adapt and prosper.

I couldn’t help but wonder why, during these worst of times, Cuba had decided to go to the trouble and expense of rolling out the red carpet for ten days (December 2-12) as host of a cultural event that not only featured film, but also showcased concerts, plays, exhibits and book readings. Were there not more pressing issues to tackle? But as the festival unfolded, I began to understand that hosting this event was more than mere indulgence.

Cuba founded the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in 1979, when its film industry was prospering, and in so doing it had established itself as a beacon for Latin American film; now, faced with an economic crisis, Cuba felt that it was important to show its resilience by continuing to host the event. Besides, what better way to get positive publicity than to hold a film festival? And now, more than ever, Cuba was relying on its image as a fun-loving, balmy, beautiful (though run-down) and foreigner-friendly country to attract tourists, who would provide Cuban coffers with valuable hard currency.

And there were other reasons for Cuba to hold the festival. In addition to drawing the media and tourists, the aim was to lure potential outside investors who might give a shot in the arm to the cash-starved Cuban film industry. Nor was the festival audience limited to foreign tourists or film industry types, as attested by the thousands of Cubans who attended the opening ceremony. Cuban people have a genuine knowledge and love of film and there would have been much grumbling if the government had nixed the show. When Fidel came to power in 1959 he declared that cinema was the most important form of artistic expression. Prior to 1959 Cuba was an important market for foreign films (seven million Cubans produced a weekly average of one and a half million moviegoers), but it lacked a homegrown film industry. This changed on March 24, 1959, with the first cultural decree of the revolutionary government which created the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) under the leadership of none other than Alfredo Guevara, a former classmate of Castro in his student days. Guevara stated that his mission was to use ICAIC "to demystify cinema for the entire population; to work, in a way, against our own power; to reveal all the tricks, all the recourses of language; to dismantle all the mechanisms of cinematic hypnosis." This mission has been facilitated by the virtual monopoly ICAIC has had on Cuban filmmaking since its inception, allowing it to manage the country’s production of animated cartoons, features, documentaries and newsreels, as well as run the Festival of Latin American Cinema.

Festival Vice-Director, Ivan Giroud, describes the Festival of Latin American Cinema as being "a festival for Cubans. The Cuban public is film educated, so this is a festival which puts them in the center." He adds that it’s the only festival in the world that has half a million viewers in 10 days, the average capacity of each theater being 700-1500 seats.

As Cuban moviegoers are generally accustomed to seeing a wide range of films in theatres and on television (often accompanied by television programs about film history, language and technique), they form a discerning audience and have come to expect a diverse program. This is one of the reasons festival programmers make an effort to include films from all over the world through retrospectives, sections dedicated to films from particular countries, and special screenings of recent or classic Cuban and non-Cuban films. The programmers even took a broad view as to what constitutes Latin American cinema by selecting three films from the United States to be included among the 100 films in competition. Men With Guns, the latest effort by John Sayles, for instance, qualified because it was shot entirely in Mexico with mostly Spanish dialogue and was based on a novel by Francisco Goldman.

Although there was not an empty seat during the screening of Sayles’ latest film, it received a mixed reaction. The film follows the story of a sheltered Mexican doctor who goes searching for the idealistic former students he sent out to work as medics in remote areas inhabited by destitute and oppressed indigenous tribes. What the doctor finds is a hard dose of Mexican social reality: military brutality and co-option, civilian apathy and ineffectual priests. While the film set out to be a kind of mystery with a social conscience, it came across as being overly pedantic and consequently drew a number of laughs in the wrong places by the mostly Cuban audience.

In order to make the most of my time, I often relied upon the recommendations of the extremely helpful festival staffers to determine which films were a must-see. The rule of thumb I was given is that Argentina, Brazil and Mexico usually have the best film crops, probably because these are the three biggest countries in Latin America and so they tend to produce the most films.

One of the Argentinian films I saw, Martin (Hache), was being touted as the best feature produced in that country in the last ten years. Directed by Adolfo Aristarain, Martin (Hache) is about a solipsistic director who refuses to take responsibility for his estranged teenage son ("Hache" stands for junior) or for the commitment-seeking, substance-abusing girlfriend who is some 20 years younger than he is. Although the cast was solid, the characters generally came across as static and self-absorbed and did not elicit empathy. Still, the film took first prize in the festival, it won the third most votes from the audience (surveys were passed out at each screening), and eventually made it to the World Cinema program at Sundance.

Another audience favorite and winner of the prize for best screenplay, was the thriller Ceneizas del Paraiso (The Ashes of Paradise). Also from Argentina, this thriller by Marcel Pinero revolves around the investigation of the mysterious assassination of a beautiful woman which implicates three brothers, each of whom confesses to the crime and claims sole responsibility. While Ceneizas del Paraiso was reminiscent of The Usual Suspects and L.A. Confidential in its effective use of suspense and mystery, the essence of the film was firmly rooted in Argentina and its characters, places and themes.

From Mexico there came a powerful and entertaining film that crossed the line between fiction and documentary. Carlos Marcovitch’s Quien Diablos Es Juliette is about how a Cuban prostitute, a Mexican model and a director came to meet during the shooting of a music video in Cuba, and the profound influence this meeting had on all their lives. Marcovitch’s film left me with a vivid impression that lingered on and fully impacted me when I was later shown the Malecon, a coastal road on Havana’s north side, where prostitutes in their teens and twenties stand like cones at ten-yard intervals along a five-mile stretch, struggling to earn U.S. dollars by selling themselves to cruising tourists, while their boyfriends hang out in the background, freelancing as pimps.

One of the Brazilian films in competition was a compelling low-budget feature entitled Un Ceu De Estrelas (A Starry Sky), which garnered four awards, including the prize for best first film. Un Ceu De Estrelas is about a woman whose ex-fiancee refuses to let her go and traps her in a physical and emotional cage. Amaral said that she made the movie trying to avoid the classic, Syd Field screenplay structure, where the protagonist must have an arc, because that does not reflect the way Brazilians are. In her view, Brazilian protagonists are not so much agents of change, as characters who react to circumstances and inescapable situations. Amaral effectively relays this point of view by having her principal female character stare straight into the camera at the end of the film with the hard, helpless look of a person who has nowhere to go.

The economic crisis has hampered ICAIC’s efforts to boost domestic film production, and consequently only three feature films were produced by Cuban directors in the last year. Among these was Amor Vertical by Arturo Soto, a pleasing and uncomplicated story about a young couple looking for a place to make love. "In making Cuban films," reasons Soto, "one must create something with universal appeal and look at international markets because there is no option, there is no market here." To his credit, Soto is one of the few Cuban directors who have succeeded in attracting foreign capital, and it was after he obtained financing from French and Brazilian companies that ICAIC agreed to provide the balance of his budget. ICAIC’s shortage of funds to make movies has forced both novice and veteran Cuban directors to learn how to pitch their projects. This has also caused some rivalry between the older and younger Cuban directors. Soto explained the situation: "Old directors are used to working on state subsidized films, through ICAIC. There was a certainty of getting a film made if you wrote the script. There was no need to look for money. Now, with the crisis, the rules have changed. Directors have to knock on doors. Young directors were not accustomed to doing this either, but they adapted more easily. And we feel less humiliated asking for money."

For Cuban documentarians the situation is at once more promising and more desperate. Melchior Casals, an experienced documentary filmmaker who has worked with ICAIC for many years, described the contradiction: "Young people, because they work freelance, do their documentaries without state controls, they have more freedom of expression. They shoot mostly on Hi-8, not broadcast quality, working on weekends, nights, when they have time off their jobs. And I think these filmmakers have done some great work.

Casals then went on to explain the downside: "The ICAIC, the state film industry in Cuba offered something unique in Latin America, with perhaps the exception of Brazil and Argentina. It offered the possibility of working all year round. I used to make four documentaries a year, some very critical of Cuba, dealing with the problems of socialism. They have been shown in all of Cuba, were approved by the government and had no censorship problems. Since 1992, the beginning of the crisis, I haven’t made any documentaries. With the embargo it is impossible to do this kind of documentary. To get financing now, one has to do a film with guaranteed distribution, or a documentary that has a guaranteed sale."

ICAIC is trying to address the hardships confronting the Cuban film industry by making do with less resources and taking advantage of new technology. During the festival Guevara announced the creation of a video department at ICAIC, where documentary film can be made. ICAIC is also trying to extend its international reach, perhaps in the hope of drawing more foreign investment. Ivan Giroud explained that ICAIC was studying how to re-introduce MECLA (the market component of the festival, which was not held this year). "We want to redesign the market. We want to convert it into a market for projects, works-in-progress, scripts. It’s a model that’s based on the Rotterdam film festival, but geared toward Latin American film festivals."

There were a number of non-ICAIC initiatives at the festival. News of the creation of a $15 million dollar fund for Latin American film was received enthusiastically. A newly formed Association of Latin American Documentarians (ADAL), based in Venezuela, distributed its founding charter and held a meeting to discuss ways for the organization to link Latin American documentary filmmakers, and to help them produce and distribute their works. Sundance Programming Director Geoffrey Gilmore attended the festival, and brought along a number of directors and producers to participate in panels that discussed ways to promote cultural exchanges between film communities and to support independent filmmaking around the world. And there were dozens of producers and directors scouting Cuba for their next project, inquiring into the cast, crew and facilities available for production and post-production. How many of these projects will materialize into coproductions with Cuba is anybody’s guess, but it may be Cuba’s only hope for keeping its film industry afloat, at least in the near future.

Pastor Vega, a veteran Cuban director who has spent the last two years searching for funds in Europe and Latin America to make his next movie, offered an apt comment regarding the Cuban work-in-progress: "This is a society trying to keep alive the most important values of the socialist system using the capitalist system. And that is very experimental. It is difficult to see what the result will be in the near future." Whatever the near future holds, the festival certainly deserves its place in the sun.



 
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