{"id":10406,"date":"2024-08-15T16:18:37","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T16:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/?p=10406"},"modified":"2024-08-15T16:33:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T16:33:03","slug":"una-muestra-de-cine-cubano-en-alemania-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/notas\/una-muestra-de-cine-cubano-en-alemania-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Una muestra de cine cubano en Alemania 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A showcase of Cuban cinema in Germany (2022)<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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By DEAN LUIS REYES \u2013 25 july, 2022<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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RIALTA<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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'Land Without Images. The Absent in Cuban Cinema', a retrospective of independent alternative Cuban cinema<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Among the most inexplicable realities of the past decade in Cuba is the inexistence of places to watch Cuban cinema. Since the beginning of the 21st century, almost in every intellectual polemic on the island, the little or no interest of the media and state institutions in promoting Cuban audiovisual productions, either by reporting their productions, presence in festivals and awards, as well as the minimal presence of films produced on the island on television and in theaters, became a recurrent complaint.<\/span><\/p>

As movie theaters were disappearing in Cuban cities, so was the exhibition of local films. Apart from the premieres of recent titles, with only a few days in a few theaters, the public circulation of national films was restricted to the brief days of the New Latin American Film Festival in Havana and the ICAIC Youth Exhibition. After the extinction of the latter, less than that, except for the INSTAR Film Festival, with only two edition<\/span><\/p>

Today, when my foreign students ask me where to see the films I write about or show them in class, I can only suggest that they go to the tennis court of the Norwegian Embassy in Havana, where the Cinema under the Stars program is held every month, or to the headquarters of the theater group El Ciervo Encantado, which also programs films. Those are the spaces that exist in the capital, while in a few provinces something similar happens.<\/span><\/p>

The best qualifier for such a panorama is crime. A crime committed not against the industry (there never was one) or the artists (who in general know how to get ahead), but against the people. Cuba's venerable film culture is dying out. Few Cubans know the names of active local filmmakers. Apart from Fernando Perez, whose career and public presence is remarkable, cinema in Cuba as a mass phenomenon is already a thing of the past.<\/span><\/p>

Paradoxically, this is happening at an unprecedented moment for that culture: almost fifty Cuban filmmakers have debuted in feature films in the past 20 years, generally moving away from the \"ICAIC authorship\" and promoting a cinema that wants to give less account of the obsession of an intellectual elite to offer an idea of nation, and instead dedicated to produce personal poetics, small films, but with an intense vocation of self-expression and desire to experiment with language. Numerous academic texts, books and courses on Cuban cinema are taught in universities around the world, while interest is growing in international festivals for what some qualify as New Cuban Cinema.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Test screening of \u2018Land Without Images: The Absent in Cuban Cinema\u2019, a retrospective of independent alternative Cuban cinema<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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If such an entity actually existed, its circumstance would be completely unprecedented. Because we are talking about a transnational, delocalized and diverse cinema, without stylistic prescriptions or office editorialisms like those of the old ICAIC. The Cuban filmmakers of the present, who work with the same difficulties as most of the independent creators of the world, are in fact a completely new species because they are not formatted from the duty to be that prevailed until a few years ago. The project of a national cinema is reformulated with them in the direction of a transhumant condition from the referential point of view and, it must be said, also ideologically. We are more than two decades away from the family conflict and the claim for a common homeland that Video de familia (Humberto Padr\u00f3n, 2000) narrates, with the children of that community aging in a diaspora that produces its own imaginary through the desires and memories, the images and sounds of a possible Cuba, as in A media voz (Heidi Hassan, Patricia P\u00e9rez Fern\u00e1ndez, 2019).<\/p>

Such pretensions are summed up in the 175 pieces of Land Without Images, the show curated by Cuban filmmaker and critic Jose Luis Aparicio for Documenta 15, which during July were exhibited in an improvised hall of the documenta-Halle museum in Kassel, Germany, in daily programs lasting more than ten hours. This, thanks to the invitation of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism, directed by Tania Bruguera, one of the projects invited to the art fair.<\/span><\/p>

The curator is only 28 years old and that is not a minor fact. When the last generation of Cuban filmmakers who claimed their adoption by the ICAIC made the AHS Young Film Exhibitions in the late 1980s, in its Ojo: pinta section, they curated their referents in the same way, but those were very different.<\/span><\/p>

Aparicio begins his particular catalog of Cuban cinema presented in Kassel with PM (Orlando Jim\u00e9nez Leal & Sab\u00e1 Cabrera Infante, 1961), the original sin of film censorship in Cuba under the spell of Fidel Castro. And he closes it with an elegy for the unleashed vices of extreme cinema that have their peak in the work of Jorge Molina, but includes a growing repertoire of adherents, which in Land Without Images are embodied by Miguel Coyula, Juan de los muertos, Terence Piard, the Magdiel Aspillaga of El regreso de la mujer de On\u00e1n (2006), Marcos D\u00edaz and the curator of the show himself, who is inscribed in that current with El secadero (2019) and Tundra (2021).<\/p>

In between, the selection gathers from seminal pieces by filmmakers like Nestor Almendros, Fausto Canel, Fernando Villaverde and Mi\u00f1uca Villaverde, some of them produced within the ICAIC of the early 1960s, the one with less narrow dogmas and where Nicolas Guillen Landrian was still tolerated -this, before they were all kept in a discreet trunk-, to a very tight selection of creators who in the 1980s and 1990s experimented outside the narrow frameworks of institutional cinema: Tom\u00e1s Piard, Manuel Marzel, Ricardo Vega, Marco Antonio Abad, Manuel Rodr\u00edguez, Juan Carlos Cremata, plus a fragment of exile cinema: from N\u00e9stor D\u00edaz de Villegas and Jim\u00e9nez Leal to Orlando Rojas and the Landri\u00e1n of Inside Downtown (with Jos\u00e9 Eguzquiza, 2001), passing through an essential piece such as El S\u00faper (Orlando Jim\u00e9nez Leal & Le\u00f3n Ichaso, 1978), until reaching the work of Eli\u00e9cer Jim\u00e9nez Almeida.<\/p>

I cannot resist the ironic question: what would Alfredo Guevara have thought of this collection of \"deviant\" cinema, often without illuminist ambition or teleological yearning, very often seduced by the cinematographic genre, and openly anti-totalitarian? What would he have said about the \"repudiatory\" return to the center of Land Without Images of all the dissidence that he and so many others wanted to extirpate from the cinema made in Cuba? Precisely the land without images that this exhibition invokes is a strange zone for that \"virtuous\" idea that, by means of impositions and decrees to administer freedom, they wanted to impose on us as the only possible territory in which to exist. In any case, what is left of it today? Besides an ICAIC that cannot reinvent itself and is torn between the pressure of the censor apparatus and the demands of the creators, what is left of Cuban cinema today?<\/span><\/p>

Land Without Images suggests that the idea of national cinema will necessarily have to be divergent from the official one, without hegemonies imposed by rhetoric with hardly any seat in day-to-day practice. And it makes it clear that the chauvinistic nationalism that invoked the Homeland believing that only in it was the Nation legitimate was the most unhealthy feature of institutional cinema. Because it turned the resulting art into a derivative of normative practices alien to the free flight of imagination.<\/span><\/p>

In order to make that idea coherent, so that historiography, critics and anthologists to come can trace a path that forces to rewrite the syllabus of the leftist-sick professors of the American and European academy who teach Cuban cinema, this exhibition devotes its main emphasis to telling how the dissidence of yesteryear has a firm ground in the practices of current Cuban cinema, which competes on equal terms with the most daring productions of the present and wins awards at Locarno, the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) or Rotterdam.<\/span><\/p>

Aparicio has already produced a referential body that accounts for that formidable outburst in Cine Cubano en Cuarentena (CCC), the island's largest audiovisual repository of all times available on the web, born after the ICAIC signed the death certificate of the Muestra Joven in 2020. Conceived as a necessity and under the sinister design of the Covid-19 pandemic, what began as a sort of personal vade mecum ended up becoming one, two, three, a thousand samples, which naturally exploded the limits of those other selections administered from above, where obscure officials review everything from what a character says about Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed to the political trajectory of the registered filmmaker.<\/span><\/p>

From my perspective, that vade mecum is in itself a declaration of principles. There are not much more selection criteria than the availability of the works on the web or the willingness of the creators to show them. And there is room for everything from \"ICAIC authorship\", so well defined by Michael Chanan, to post-national cinema. This selective criterion is exemplary for Cubans, trained as we are to decant, purify, divide into camps. On the other hand, the capital impurity that governs CCC puts the notion of fragment before that of unity.<\/span><\/p>

Imagining the Nation therefore supposes that in Land Without Images there are, apart from what has been said above, the border creations, the video-creation, in exemplary pieces of the last 20 years, such as Bojeo (Celia and Yunior, 2006), Reconstruyendo al h\u00e9roe (Javier Castro, 2007), Habana Solo (Juan Carlos Alom, 2000), Sucedi\u00f3 en La Habana (Henry Eric Hernandez, 2001) and Sucedi\u00f3 en La Habana II (Henry Eric Hernandez & Dull Janiell, 2003), Causa No.1, 1989. Nosotros los acusados aqu\u00ed... (Hamlet Lavastida, 2019), or a cinema halfway between several traditions, but which in my opinion represents wonderfully the non-metropolitan Cuban amateur audiovisual, such as En el igl\u00fa (Emmanuel Mart\u00edn & L\u00e9ster Romero, 2008).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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From left to right (standing): Rafael Ramirez, Jose Luis Aparicio, Mi\u00f1uca Villaverde, Fernando Villaverde, Leila Montero, Maria Perez, Tania Bruguera and Manuel Marzel. Below: Gabriel Aleman, Alejandro Alonso, Carlos Quintela, Heidi Hassan, Daniela Munoz, Juan Carlos Calahorra and Mikhail Rodriguez, in Kassel<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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A self-respecting dissident show of the present must embrace the nightmare zone of the institutional model of Cuban cinema, which responds to the totalitarian practice of denying the word to those who demand the scrutiny of the established power and its hegemony. And this serves for titles like 8-A (Orlando Jimenez, 1993), La imagen rota (Sergio Giral, 1995), El Informe (Ricardo Vega, 1990), Veritas (Eliecer Jimenez Almeida, 2022), Nadie (Miguel Coyula, 2017), Entrop\u00eda (Eliecer Jimenez Almeida, 2013), and even La reina de los jueves (Orlando Rojas, 2016).<\/p>

I can't help but mention that Land Without Images is subtitled The Absent in Cuban Cinema. Now we see that that \"absent\" is huge. And it includes today's filmmakers, with hardly any thematic or stylistic links between them, who draw the richest landscape Cuban cinema has ever seen in its history. What do Rafael Ramirez, Heidi Hassan, Alejandro Alonso, Fernando Fraguela, Katherine T. Gavil\u00e1n, Lisandra L\u00f3pez Fab\u00e9, Miguel Coyula, Carlos Meli\u00e1n, Marcelo Mart\u00edn, Fabi\u00e1n Su\u00e1rez, Dami\u00e1n Saiz, Carla Vald\u00e9s, Eli\u00e9cer Jim\u00e9nez Almeida, Ricardo Figueredo, Raydel Araoz, Carlos Lechuga, Carlos Quintela, Marcel Beltr\u00e1n, Ana Alp\u00edzar, Marta Mar\u00eda Borr\u00e1s, Daniel Santoyo, Susana Barriga, Al\u00e1n Gonz\u00e1lez, Yimit Ram\u00edrez, Daniela Mu\u00f1oz...? I dare to venture only one trait: that they are not State officials nor do they speak on behalf of the State as members of an institution.<\/span><\/p>

And a final detail: many of these filmmakers break down their praxis into pedagogical didactic exercises. Therefore, as part of the exhibition, Alonso and Ramirez gave workshops from Documenta 15 that explain their working methods. As intellectual subjects, several of today's Cuban filmmakers are by choice producers of theoretical models and hermeneuts of their own representation mechanism. This is another degree of freedom, similar to that exercised by an exhibition that puts together the necessary images for a land that has lost its own.<\/span><\/p>

In any case, we are not discovering something new, for we are still condemned to reinvent the narrative of these murky days. When what is about to happen happens, we will need to sit back and look, to meditate. And we will discover that the above picture was narrow, insufficient. Then we will re-imagine where we are coming from. And the curators of tomorrow will weave their own fabric. Hopefully, the audiovisual exhibition of the future will be in Havana. And that no one will have to approve works and creators. Hopefully.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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You can read the original note here<\/span>
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Una muestra de cine cubano en Alemania Por DEAN LUIS REYES – 25 julio, 2022 RIALTA ‘Land Without Images. The Absent in Cuban Cinema’, retrospectiva de cine cubano alternativo independiente Entre las realidades m\u00e1s inexplicables de la pasada d\u00e9cada en Cuba est\u00e1 la inexistencia de espacios donde ver cine cubano. Desde inicios del siglo XXI, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10406"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10412,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions\/10412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}