The Cuban alternative film cycle being shown at the international art fair Documenta Fifteen in the German city of Kassel is “a marathon of all kinds of films that intends to create a sort of counter-canon, an alternative vision of Cuban reality,” filmmaker José Luis Aparicio told Radio Martí.

“It is like the reverse of official Cuban cinema and I think it is necessary to broaden, complicate, and deepen the imaginary about the island and what can be understood as Cuban cinema,” explained the director of Tundra and Sueños al pairo.

Organized by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, director of INSTAR, this cycle includes about 150 to 170 films, approximately 100 hours of alternative Cuban cinema.

Aparicio uses the word “alternative” and not independent “because it is not always about independent production… I say alternative because there is also earlier production that was not always classified that way, and emerged on the periphery of institutions, in film clubs, made by people who worked at ICAIC or ICRT, and managed to produce films with a different perspective."

“I also refer to films produced within the institution, but that were censored, renegade, and orphaned, banned for years, sometimes with no way to be shown, and that in recent years have been rescued. So I am interested in the notion of cinema alternative to the official, hegemonic, canonical vision of Cuban cinema,” he said.