IV INSTAR Film Festival awards the documentaries ‘Mafifa’ and ‘Option Zero’.
The Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR) denounced, in a press release, the discredit to which this edition of the Festival was subjected.
CiberCuba Staff - 12/12/2023 - 6:06pm (GMT-5)
CIBERCUBA
The independent documentary 'Mafifa' (2021), by Daniela Muñoz Barroso, was awarded along with 'Option Zero' (2020), by Marcel Beltrán, at the IV edition of the INSTAR Film Festival, which took place last week in seven cities on two continents, and virtually in Cuba.
'Mafifa', which takes a surprising and interesting trip to Santiago de Cuba through its most autochthonous and popular culture, was awarded the Nicolás Guillén Landrián prize, corresponding to 3,000 dollars. Meanwhile, the documentary 'Option Zero', which narrates the passage of a group of Cuban migrants through the Darien jungle, received a special mention, consisting of 1,500 dollars.
The members of the jury, composed of Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, Brazilian critic and historian, and one of the authorities on Latin American cinema; Dunja Fehimović, academic specialized in Caribbean cinema and university professor in the United Kingdom, and Cuban screenwriter Alejandro Hernández, winner of the Goya Award in 2013, recognized both feature films for reflecting a taboo subject in a conception where "the conceptual and artistic quality of the works in relation to their thematic proposals" stands out.
The awards and closing ceremony held online praised "the quality and diversity of the selected films", in a space that opens "the opportunity to approach different cinematographies of the global south, which do not always have the presence they deserve in the traditional circuits of exhibition and audiovisual distribution".
They also had words of celebration for the filmmakers who managed to "overcome their adverse production circumstances and deliver films that profoundly question their respective socio-political contexts”.
This edition of the Festival sought to explore "the transnational character of Cuban independent cinema, as well as its growing dialogue with other cinematographies, especially those from areas also ruled by authoritarian governments," said the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR), founded and directed by visual artist and activist Tania Bruguera.
NUESTROS PREMIADOS en el IV Festival de Cine INSTAR 2023
🏆PROYECTO GANADOR
“Mafifa”
Dir: Daniela Muñoz Barroso
Documental/ 77’/ 2021/ Cuba
MUCHAS FELICIDADES a los realizadores y a todos quienes participaron en la creación y difusión de estos filmes.@estudiost.habana… pic.twitter.com/hRkCvhkLVU— Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR) (@instar_cuba) December 10, 2023
The call caused discomfort in the state spheres of Cuban culture. The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) described it, in a statement, as "a new attack on Cuban culture". According to the pro-government entity, the participants intended to "rewrite history and falsify the realities of the nation”.
Also, the "non-first lady" of Cuba, Lis Cuesta, said on X that "Homeland is the Culture of its People, then, it is very predictable that the enemies attack it, more of the same, they are so uncreative, the miserable ones. We will defend the revolutionary Culture as our independence", in clear reference to the Festival.
La Patria es la Cultura de su Pueblo, entonces, es muy predecible que los enemigos la ataquen, más de lo mismo, son tan pocos creativos los muy infelices. La Cultura revolucionaria la vamos a defender como nuestra independencia. #CubaEsCultura https://t.co/K23RbJ7lWc
— Lis Cuesta (@liscuestacuba) November 30, 2023
For its part, a statement by Bruguera, published on INSTAR's Facebook profile, denounced the maneuvers of the regime to make this event unsuccessful.”
"The discrediting attempts, the harassment and persecution towards our festival, and the artists and collaborators who participated in it, on the part of Cuban public officials, as well as entities influenced by the Cuban party-state, demonstrate once again the totalitarian nature of the regime that reigns on the island," she said in the statement.
At the same time, she criticized "the public use of the term cultural terrorism by State officials is not casual, it is part of a coordinated coup, that they believe is definitive, on artists who question their reality. Bureaucrats miscalculate".
In an issue that linked the support and solidarity of Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), PEN International, and 29 civil society organizations and PEN centers, which "remind us that we are not alone in this struggle for freedom of thought and artistic expression in Cuba."
"Together, we can always resist censorship and create a space for art and freedom of thought to flourish," he concluded.
You can read the original note here