{"id":15281,"date":"2024-10-30T12:57:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T12:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/?p=15281"},"modified":"2024-10-30T13:00:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T13:00:16","slug":"el-festival-de-cine-instar-alienta-un-dialogo-entre-cuba-y-otros-paises-bajo-regimenes-autoritarios-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/notas\/el-festival-de-cine-instar-alienta-un-dialogo-entre-cuba-y-otros-paises-bajo-regimenes-autoritarios-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"El festival de cine INSTAR alienta un di\u00e1logo entre Cuba y otros pa\u00edses bajo reg\u00edmenes autoritarios 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
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INSTAR film festival encourages dialogue between Cuba and other countries under authoritarian regimes<\/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 CARLA G. COLOM\u00c9 - October 29th, 2024<\/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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EL PA\u00cdS<\/b><\/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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Still from the film Fito\u2019s Havana<\/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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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 ago. before for \u201cthe promotion of civic literacy and social justice in Cuba.\u201d But there was no audience, no one occupied the seats in the small movie theater, except the directors themselves or the Institute's work team. \u201cThere was almost no one, at that time people were very afraid to go to INSTAR,\u201d says Bruguera, one of the most prominent Cuban artists who once had the dream of being a film director. Today, the festival that was born to support and accompany young and independent Cuban cinema has become cross-border and received more than 3,000 film proposals willing to compete in its fifth edition.<\/span><\/p>

Bruguera calls it \u201cbeing persistent.\u201d In the second edition of the event - which is held every year and has been in the crosshairs of the Cuban political police - the film exhibition was held online, due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the summer of 2022, its headquarters was Documenta15 in Kassel, one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in the world, where the INSTAR Film Festival participated with the screening of more than 160 films, to date the largest retrospective of alternative Cuban cinema. In the midst of the political and economic crisis in Cuba, and the harassment by the Government that activists, artists or filmmakers have faced, creators have not been left out of the historic exodus that is taking place in the country. Since then, the festival, which continues to highlight the independent production of Cuban filmmakers, has opted to be an \u201cincreasingly inclusive and international\u201d event, according to Jos\u00e9 Luis Aparicio, filmmaker and artistic director of the festival.<\/span><\/p>

In this fifth edition, which will run from October 28 to November 3, 21 of the 37 films in the program are works produced by Cuban filmmakers, emigrants or residents on the island. The festival - which awards the Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n prize to the work that best covers a taboo topic in its society and the P. M. Fund for independent Cuban audiovisuals - did not stop being a Cuban space, but rather began to be \u201citinerant and transnational\u201d, in the words of its director.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIt seemed essential to us to establish a dialogue between independent Cuban cinema and the cinematography of regions also plagued by dictatorships and authoritarianism, where the production of free and alternative cinema is difficult, since artists face reprisals similar to those we face in Cuba. : censorship, repression and forced exile,\u201d says Aparicio. Today the festival features works from countries such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, Haiti, China, Hong Kong, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Haiti, Croatia, Guinea-Bissau, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.<\/span><\/p>

For Bruguera, this opening means that \u201cCuba began to dialogue with its peers.\u201d \u201cWe Cubans have to understand that solidarity is two-sided. You can't ask for solidarity if you are not supportive. One thing that I am very interested in at INSTAR is creating dialogues between different but similar situations, to see if once and for all Cuba can enter that list of international dictatorships. And to understand what other solutions other places have, how they handle it,\u201d the artist insists.<\/span><\/p>

This year the festival will have physical screenings in Barcelona, \u200b\u200bBerkeley, Madrid, Munich and Paris. In Cuba, the public will be able to access it from the Festhome online platform, a possibility that is accompanied by uncertainty about how many people will be able to participate or use such an expensive Internet service to have a presence at the festival.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIt is surprising when access from Cuba exceeds expectations,\u201d says Aparicio. \u201cLast year there were more than a hundred views, which do not seem like many at first glance, but we know how difficult it is, not only because of economic and technological issues, but also because of what it means to set aside time in the middle of the tortuous \u201cisland reality, plagued by power outages and endless lines to buy food or take the bus or get medicine, to see independent or auteur films, like the one we propose at the festival.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

The director, however, considers that on the Island \u201cthere is an audience very avid for cinema, always willing to reflect and aesthetic experience. Viewers who want to encounter images and sounds of their country and the world, even if it is on the screens of their mobile phones or computers. As long as there is a viewer in Cuba who wants to see the films of our festival, or the debates and conservatories that we organize online, this gesture will make sense for us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

As part of the novelties of this fifth edition is the launch of the first issue of the annual magazine Fantasma Material, in collaboration with the Rialta Ediciones label, which will take place on October 26 at the Cineteca Madrid. \u201cFor a long time, in conversations with filmmakers and critics friends, we felt the absence of a film magazine conceived by those people who were collectively making and thinking about the new cinema of the island,\u201d explains Aparicio. \u201cLike the festival itself, we are interested in reflecting on cinema that is produced in authoritarian or dictatorial contexts, in areas where freedom of expression is restricted. Also those cinematographies from the global south that are now in full development and exploration of their creative possibilities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

There are other spaces to support and make Cuban independent cinema visible, such as the Cuban Diaspora Film Archive, organized from Miami by Eliecer Jim\u00e9nez Almeida and Santiago Juan Navarro. Exhibitions, talks and events are also frequently held with Cuban film production as a central theme. From state institutions there are spaces such as the Havana International Film Festival and the Gibara Festival that have historically been criticized for the censorship of their programs and the restrictions on admitting certain works or filmmakers. In 2020, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry suspended the Young Show, a space that hosted the works of filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, and which fueled the debate in a country and an institution with notorious cases of censorship.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWithin the Island the panorama is more bleak,\u201d says Aparicio. \u201cAlthough some independent films are shown at state festivals, these are spaces where censorship of the most frontal artistic and political visions prevails.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

He also says that \u201cthere are few pockets of freedom in alternative spaces\u201d and these \u201cusually have a short life due to government pressure and precariousness.\u201d However, \u201call these spaces, those that existed before and those that will emerge in the future, are fundamental,\u201d says the director of the INSTAR Film Festival. \u201cThe only way to resist and, eventually, overcome the onslaught of Cuban censorship, repression and institutional apathy is to create our own platforms, with filmmakers, critics, curators and cultural managers inside and outside the island. Weave networks, forge alliances, break the centralized and monolithic logic of the cultural ecosystem in which we grew up. For this reason, there should not be a single festival, nor a single film magazine, nor a single fund to promote production, nor a single way of producing, thinking, imagining our films.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Today Cuban cinema goes beyond the limits of the Island. It is diasporic, like its audience. Beyond the economic crisis in the country, many filmmakers have decided to choose the path of emigration due to excessive censorship by cultural authorities. \u201cWhen independent Cuban cinema reached a stage of aesthetic maturity and greater productive independence, it was forced to disband and rethink itself in the open air of exile,\u201d says Aparicio.<\/span><\/p>

But filmmakers avoid making separations between cinema made inside or outside the Island, because these processes are nothing more than the natural result that Cuban society goes through transversally. Filmmakers like Aparicio prefer to call it \u201ca cinema of Greater Cuba,\u201d appropriating the term from the Cuban-American thinker Ana L\u00f3pez.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cCuban cinema is increasingly transnational, both in its productive logic and in its thematic and aesthetic searches,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is true that, especially in the last five years, a large number of Cuban filmmakers have emigrated, among them some of the most significant voices in recent Cuban audiovisuals, but films continue to be produced on the island as worthy of attention as those that are done outside. What I do consider very stimulating are the new expressive paths that this dispersion, that these processes of personal and artistic reinvention that the migrant goes through, open up for the Cuban cinema of the future.\u201d<\/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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El festival de cine INSTAR alienta un di\u00e1logo entre Cuba y otros pa\u00edses bajo reg\u00edmenes autoritarios Por CARLA G. COLOM\u00c9 – 29 de octubre de 2024 EL PA\u00cdS Still de la pel\u00edcula La Habana de Fito Era diciembre del a\u00f1o 2019 y la artista Tania Bruguera abr\u00eda su casa de La Habana Vieja para recibir […]<\/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-15281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15281"}],"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=15281"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15288,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15281\/revisions\/15288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}