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INSTAR Film Festival closes with the Landrián Award for...
The fifth edition of the INSTAR Film Festival came to a close this Sunday, November 3, with the presentation of the Nicolás Guillén Landrián Award to the documentary short film La historia se escribir de noche (2023), by Cuban Alejandro Alonso, and a special mention to the film Dreams about Putin, by filmmakers Nastia Korkia...
INSTAR aims for universality without leaving behind the...
The 5th INSTAR Film Festival closed its doors last Sunday with the consolidation of a perspective that transcends Cubanness to be more inclusive and international. “If I had to think of achievements, I would say that the internationalization of the event was consolidated with the participation of films...
Dreams and nightmares from Cuba and Russia win awards...
The 5th INSTAR Film Festival awarded its Nicolás Guillén Landrián Prize to the Cuban short film La historia se escribir de noche (2023), by Alejandro Alonso, and decided to give a special mention to Dreams about Putin (2023), by the Russian Nastia Korkia and the Ukrainian Vlad Fishez. The jury of the event, made up of the...
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2024
07 Noviembre 2024
INSTAR Film Festival closes with the Landrián Award for…
The fifth edition of the INSTAR Film Festival came to a close this Sunday, November 3, with the presentation of the Nicolás Guillén Landrián Award to the documentary short film La historia se escribir de noche (2023), by Cuban Alejandro Alonso, and a special mention to the film Dreams about Putin, by...
November 03, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival: The Guide (episode 6).
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
November 03, 2024
Dreams and nightmares from Cuba and Russia, awarded at the V…
The 5th INSTAR Film Festival awarded its Nicolás Guillén Landrián Prize to the Cuban short film La historia se escribir de noche (2023), by Alejandro Alonso, and decided to give a special mention to Dreams about Putin (2023), by Russian director Nastia Korkia and Ukrainian director Vlad Fishez...
November 06, 2024
Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism aims at universality without leaving the Cuban behind
The 5th INSTAR Film Festival closed its doors last Sunday with the consolidation of a perspective that transcends Cubanness to be more inclusive and international. “If I had to think of achievements, I would say that the internationalization of the event was consolidated with the participation of...
November 01, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): The Guide (episode 4)
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
November 02, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): The Guide (episode 5)
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
November 02, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival edition 2024: Putin invades dreams
Nastia Korkia and Vlad Fishez become psychoanalysts in Dreams about Putin, a film of their authorship hosted by the INSTAR Film Festival, whose fifth edition ends this Sunday. In the film – an excellent contribution to the exclusive domain of the animated documentary – both directors perform before…
October 31, 2024
The city and the words. Regarding 'Parole', a film by Lázaro...
As the opening credits of Parole (Lázaro J. González, 2024) roll, a woman's voice is heard screaming against black. It sounds like the voice of a Cuban woman. When the image breaks, a fixed shot frames the director, in a frontal angle and from a prudent distance. He is sitting on a bench in some space…
October 31, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): Among the ruins, wild flowers
Croatian filmmaker Karla Crnčević's short and beautiful film essay, Wild Flowers, grew out of some home video tapes recorded by her father thirty years ago. Wild Flowers is, therefore, a film that operates with/from that archive and completes a sensitive and hopeful rehabilitation of its values. Especially...
October 31, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): The Guide (episode 3)
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
October 30, 2024
The Chinese independent cinema in the spotlight ...
Films from countries where freedom of expression and creativity are threatened are the focus of the Instar Film Festival, which this year takes place over three days at the Interim in the Villa Stuck on Goethestrasse, with a special focus on Munich. Instar is organised by the Institute for Artivism…
October 31, 2024
V INSTAR Festival: New Cuban cinema overflows the island
It is still October 2024 and Cuban cinema has left the circuit in which it was contained for decades. The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), the state organization created to promote and monopolize the production and distribution of cinema on the island is no longer…
October 30, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): The Guide (episode 2)
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
October 29, 2024
The V Film Festival: “Resistance Cinema at INSTAR”…
The INSTAR Film Festival, organized by the Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism, will celebrate its fifth edition in Barcelona from October 29 to November 3, but will also take place in other cities such as Berkeley, Madrid, Munich and Paris. This film show, committed to the production of films, will be held in Barcelona from...
October 29, 2024
The film ‘Still Free’, or the shadows that summer hides…
The summer light on the Zeya River floods the image, scorching the bodies of the characters. This summer luminosity, which gradually fades away as the twilight hours pass, immerses the entire Still Free – a film by Russian director Vadim Kostrov that is competing in this fifth edition of the INSTAR Festival…
October 30, 2024
Censorship and resistance. The cinematic dialogue of…
On Monday, October 28, 2024, the V Independent Film Festival Instar was inaugurated, with physical venues in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Berkeley, and Munich. In Cuba, as has been the case in recent editions, the programming will be available through the digital platform Festhome.
October 29, 2024
DDC Zoom | Dean Luis Reyes: ‘Cuban cinema is in a difficult…
Film critic Dean Luis Reyes, one of the editors of ‘Fantasma Material’ and a member of the DIARIO DE CUBA team, talks about the publication of the magazine ‘Fantasma Material’, which accompanies the INSTAR Film Festival, in a space entitled: The DDC Zoom | Dean Luis Reyes: ‘Cuban cinema is in a…
October 29, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival (2024): The Guide (episode 1)
Rialta offers a daily critical approach to several of the Cuban films present in the official section of the V INSTAR Film Festival, which takes place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. Led by critic Dean Luis Reyes, these evaluations are a contribution to the task of choosing which…
October 29, 2024
‘Material Ghost’ (2024) is not a Cuban film magazine
“It is not a magazine about Cuban cinema, although the subject is very present in this issue, perhaps more than we would like. It will address the problems of contemporary audiovisuals, with which many of the problems of Cuban filmmakers who produce independent films today are linked”…
October 29, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival: The edge of freedom By Nils Longueira Borrego
I would like to call this brief presentation of the first issue of Fantasma Material –which will rather take the perhaps chaotic form of comments and glosses of an avid and enthusiastic readership such as I have not had for quite some time, and which I was scribbling in the messy notebook in which I comment on that group…
October 29, 2024
The INSTAR film festival encourages dialogue between Cuba…
It was December 2019 and the artist Tania Bruguera opened her house in Old Havana to welcome the public at the first edition of the INSTAR film festival, organized by the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR), which Bruguera herself founded four years earlier to “promote civic literacy…
October 29, 2024
Cinematographic dialogue in authoritarian regimes
The Instar Film Festival has established itself as a significant space for dialogue between Cuba and other countries facing authoritarian regimes, reflecting the vital intersection between art and politics. In a context where freedom of expression is often restricted, the festival emerges as a...
October 28, 2024
10 non-Cuban films to watch at the V INSTAR Film Festival
The fifth edition of the INSTAR Film Festival, scheduled for October 28 to November 3 this year 2024, is once again ubiquitous in nature, as a result of the impossibility of being held in Cuban theaters, despite being thought and executed mostly by nationals. It is an event spread across the globe, with venues...
26 Octubre 2024
Notable independent productions from China and Cuba in...
Two collateral exhibitions accompany the “In Competition” program of the V INSTAR Film Festival. Along with the films competing for the Nicolás Guillén Landrián Award, there will be a “Panorama of Cuban Cinema” and a “Retrospective of Chinese Independent Cinema” from October 28 to November 3…
27 Octubre 2024
The film ‘Tartessös Dune’ and the enigma of the archives (2024)
I want to read Tartessös Dune (Josué G. Gómez, 2023), which is now part of a selection of Cuban films programmed by the INSTAR Film Festival in its fifth edition, as a film about the archive. Or, to be more precise, about its destruction. Although, in reality, Tartessös Dune is an expressive essay…
October 24, 2024
Personal archives, war conflicts, emigration and political violence...
The protagonist of Nome (Sana Na N'Hada, 2023) returns to the village where he grew up after fighting for the independence of his land. But his lust for power and social advancement pushes him to betray the ideals he once fought for. The young people of Republic (Jin Jiang, 2023) try to escape the capitalist...
October 22, 2024
V INSTAR Film Festival, for a Cuban cinema without borders
Cuba is currently facing its worst economic crisis in modern history. Frequent and severe power outages, including a total blackout this week, along with shortages of food, water, and medicine, and increased political repression, have forced many Cubans to seek a future beyond national borders.
October 23, 2024
Dean Luis Reyes talks about 'Material Ghost', a new magazine...
One of the novelties of the 5th edition of the INSTAR Film Festival is the launching of the first issue of the magazine Fantasma Material, a project undertaken between the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR) and Rialta Ediciones. This was announced by the organizers of the event -which this year will take place from...
October 22, 2024
The other Cuban cinema disembarks at the University of...
“Cuban Cinema Without Borders “ is the film exhibition that the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), a cultural institution belonging to the University of California, will host in the United States from October 23 to November 16. Sponsored by the INSTAR Film Festival and the Hannah Arendt...
October 15, 2024
These are the Cuban films brought to us by INSTAR Film Festival
The INSTAR Film Festival has established itself as one of the most important spaces for the screening of international independent cinema, with a special emphasis on works that challenge authoritarian contexts or come from diasporas. Organized by the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR)...
October 22, 2024
V INSTAR Cuban Film Festival at BAMPFA (October 2024)
What does a country’s national cinema look like when many of its most vital filmmakers no longer live there? In Cuba, a nation wracked by poverty, political repression, and international disinvestment, hundreds of thousands of citizens have emigrated over the past decade, including a disproportionate...
13 Octubre 2024
Announcing the fifth edition of the INSTAR Film Festival
The Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR) announced the 5th edition of the INSTAR Film Festival that will take place the week of October 28th to November 3rd. This year, the Festival will have physical screenings in Barcelona, Berkeley, Madrid, Munich and Paris. From Cuba, the works that make up the official selection...
September 25th, 2024
“Cuba: visions of a fragmented island” in Madrid: filmmakers...
Casa America, in Madrid, Spain, opens space to Cuban independent cinema. “They are different cinematographic poetics that, together, make up the panorama of today's Cuban experience,” says filmmaker Jose Luis Aparicio, curator of the exhibition. The exhibition included four short films by filmmakers Heidi...
October 10th, 2024
INSTAR Film Festival kicks off at the end of October in several...
The INSTAR Film Festival, organized by the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR), will have its V edition starting next October 28, with physical screenings in several cities around the world. This event will run until November 3, with film presentations in Barcelona, Berkeley, Madrid, Munich and Paris. José Luis...
September 18th, 2024
Cuban stories of longing, uprooting and darkness at the...
The official selection in competition of the V INSTAR Film Festival, to be held from October 28 to November 3, includes a quartet of short films that become an appreciable sample of the vigorous discursive and aesthetic directions taken by the Cuban audiovisual, at a healthy distance from the sterile filmic...
September 17th, 2024
Exhibition 'Cuba: Visions of a Fragmented Island'
As part of Casa de America's programming cycle, No por corto menos cine, the exhibition Cuba: visiones de una isla fragmentada, which presents a selection of recent films by Cuban filmmakers based in Spain, will be presented starting tomorrow, Wednesday at 6:30 pm. The short films Souvenir...
September 12th, 2024
Fifth edition of the Film Festival sponsored by the Hannah...
The fifth edition of the Film Festival sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (Instar) will take place from October 28 to November 3, 2024, with physical screenings in Barcelona, Berkeley, Madrid, Munich and Paris. In addition to 15 international works -which make up the program...
September 10th, 2024
Cuban films compete for INSTAR award, including a film on...
Among the Cuban-made films, “La historia se escribe de noche” by Alejandro Alonso; “Parole” by Lázaro J. González; “Petricor” by Violena Ampudia and “Souvenir” by Heidi Hassan were finalists. The INSTAR Film Festival has just published the selection of films that will be in competition for the “Nicolás Guillén...
September 10th, 2024
Films from eleven countries will compete in the fifth edition of...
Fifteen films make up the “In Competition” program of the fifth edition of the INSTAR Film Festival, which will take place in several cities around the world between October 28 and November 3. The Nicolás Guillén Landrián Award is being contested this year by films from Cuba, Hong Kong, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Palestine...
September 11th, 2024
INSTAR Festival announces the official selection for its fifth...
The INSTAR Film Festival, a film event of growing international relevance, presented on Tuesday the official selection of films that will compete in its fifth edition, scheduled to take place between October 28 and November 3, 2024. This year, 15 films make up the “In Competition” program, with works...
September 3rd, 2024
“Visions of a fragmented island”: independent Cuban...
This September 18 at Casa de América (Madrid), the Cuban short films Souvenir (Heidi Hassan), La historia se escribe de noche (Alejandro Alonso), El espacio roto (Gabriel Alemán, Eduardo Eimil) and Cuatro hoyos (Daniela Muñoz) will be screened, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.
September 8th, 2024
An exhibition of Cuban independent cinema to present “visions of a...
Four Cuban films will be screened at Casa de America, Madrid, on September 18 under the title “Cuba: Visions of a Fragmented Island. The program invites to discover “a country hidden beyond its geographical limits”, according to its curator, filmmaker Jose Luis Aparicio. The selected films are...
September 10th, 2024
INSTAR Film Festival returns in October with more films and a film...
The Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (INSTAR), directed by Cuban artivist Tania Bruguera, presented the official selection of films in competition of its V Film Festival, which will take place between October 28 and November 3 next on screens in Europe and America, and includes collateral shows and the...
September 3rd, 2024
“Cuba: Visions of a Fragmented Island": Cuban independent...
On September 18, Casa de América in Madrid will host the exhibition “Cuba: visions of a fragmented island,” a selection of short films of contemporary independent Cuban cinema. This event is part of the cycle “No por corto menos cine” (No less cinema for short films), organized by the institution belonging...
September 3rd, 2024
Independent Cuban cinema returns to Casa de América in Madrid
“Cuba: visions of a fragmented island” is the title of a showcase of independent Cuban cinema that will be exhibited at Casa de America, Madrid, on September 18, and is composed of four short films produced between 2023 and 2024. The selection includes films by Cuban filmmakers based in Spain: Souvenir...
August 26th, 2024
Pass the Remote: Intriguing BAMPFA programs celebrate...
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive takes audiences on a cinematic joy ride with stops in Los Angeles, Cuba, Hong Kong and China. Buckle up, grab some tickets and ride along to these five series in months ahead. “Cities & Cinema: Los Angeles” (Sept. 6-Oct. 3): The city where dreams happen, or get dashed...
August 09, 2024
Cuban film series arrives on the west coast of the United States
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), in California, United States, will host the event “Cuban Cinema without Borders” from October 23 to November 16 of this year, according to the institution's own website. According to the presentation note of the exhibition, written by Cuban journalist and...
August 09, 2024
An ambitious Cuban film festival underway in California this 2024
“Cuban Cinema Without Borders” will feature around 25 Cuban films. The organizer says this is the first time such a large Cuban film event has been held in California. The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will host the event “Cuban Cinema Without Borders” from the 23rd…
August 07, 2024
Cuban Cinema without Borders (V INSTAR Film Festival)
As Cuba experiences a historic wave of emigration, its transnational and independent cinema has gained worldwide recognition despite a lack of institutional support. Many contemporary filmmakers are facing the same fate as pioneer Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003)…
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