{"id":7454,"date":"2023-11-29T05:52:35","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T05:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/?p=7454"},"modified":"2023-11-29T07:04:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T07:04:39","slug":"tres-miradas-a-la-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/notas\/tres-miradas-a-la-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Tres miradas a la crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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IV INSTAR Film Festival: Three Perspectives on the Cuban Migratory Crisis<\/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 \u00c1NGEL P\u00c9REZ \u2013 November 28th, 2023<\/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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Still from 'The Zero Option' (2020); Marcel Beltr\u00e1n (IMAGE YouTube \/ AFISilverTheatre - Trailer).<\/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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At the doorstep of the <\/span>IV Festival de Cine INSTAR,<\/span><\/a> I would like to draw attention to some of the perspectives that its program offers on emigration. Whether due to disagreements with political power or economic reasons, Cuba has experienced successive waves of migration from 1959 to the present. Given the volume of people who left at each moment and its immediate impact on the country, three migratory incidents are particularly addressed by those who ponder (researchers, artists, politicians...) the evolution of the Revolution: the so-called \"historical exile\" between 1959 and the early 1960s; the Mariel exodus in 1980, and the rafters' crisis between 1994 and 1995. To this chronology, we can now add the migratory crisis unleashed around 2015, which, with various peaks, extends to the present, conditioned both by the worsening of the already precarious daily life and by the awakening of a consciousness - and a civil society - that increasingly disagrees with the government. Towards this last chapter, three of <\/span>the films in competition<\/span><\/a> in the upcoming INSTAR festival direct their gaze: the documentaries <\/span>La opci\u00f3n cero<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Marcel Beltr\u00e1n, 2020) and <\/span>Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa<\/span><\/i><\/a> (<\/span>Luis Alejandro Yero<\/span><\/a>, 2023), and the fiction <\/span>Un homme sous son influence<\/span><\/i><\/a> (<\/span>Emmanuel Mart\u00edn<\/span><\/a>, 2023).<\/span><\/p>

Cuban cinema has dealt with all these events, in one way or another, in its systematic vocation to take stock of the imprint of the Revolution on the island's life. Both ICAIC productions and those from the diaspora have shown their perspectives. Of course, filmic inquiries into the migratory issue have been considerably enriched in recent years, thanks, for example, to the emergence of independent cinema and the development of its transnational condition, the decentralization of the ICAIC, as well as the active dialogue between creations made inside and outside the island. The latter has been favored, among other reasons, by the traffic of contents through the Internet and, more specifically, by the emergence of events such as the <\/span>Festival de Cine INSTAR<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i> itself.<\/p>

La opci\u00f3n cero, Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa and Un homme sous son influence deal, from the specificity of their plots, with emigration as an index of the state of suspension in which Cubans live today on the island, as a testimony of the failure of the project of society promised by the revolutionary discourse, and -ultimately- as evidence of a humanitarian crisis. And they achieve all this without their authors renouncing the purpose of consummating authentic cinematographic works; each of the visions of reality or the reflections contained in these films result from the aesthetic choices of Beltr\u00e1n, Mart\u00edn and Yero.<\/p>

La opci\u00f3n cero delves into a camp of Cuban refugees in Panama City who, after crossing the Darien jungle, find themselves in a migratory limbo, hoping to reach the United States at some point. Calls from Moscow explores the experience of a group of young people stranded in the wintry Russian capital, just as war with Ukraine is about to break out. Un homme sous son influence looks at the daily life of a Cuban settled in Canada, who moves from one place to another, between different jobs, in dialogue with other immigrants, unable to consummate a love affair.<\/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 \u201b'A Man under his Influence''; Emmanuel Mart\u00edn (IMAGE Courtesy of the filmmaker).<\/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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The three films have the greatest virtue in conceiving their plots as immersions in the emotional and rational universe of migrant individuals. Before escaping into the time of history - an aspect of particular concern to the filmmakers, themselves inscribed in their narratives - these films deal with the singular experiences of their characters. The crisis of the nation is experienced from the individual body (the very idea of nation is questioned\/reformulated by these works). That is why Beltr\u00e1n lets the videos taken by the people with their cell phones during the journey exhibit the pain and violence of those hours: their imperfections, their poor visual quality, are the aesthetic testimony of violent misfortunes. The erratic, wayward words of the protagonist of Un homme sous son influence, who tries to express ideas in very precarious English and French, are a metaphor of the impossibility of finding a complete version of himself in the midst of a cultural fracture. Yero's poetic approach to staging is the ideal way to apprehend, through the recording of the successive states of the body, the sensitive vibrations of his characters.<\/p>

Yero rented an apartment in Moscow in order to explore the shaken subjectivities of Dariel D\u00edaz, Daryl Acu\u00f1a, Eldis Botta, Juan Carlos Calder\u00f3n; there he staged their daily routines. In the documentary, each character seems to inhabit the place alone, and we see them sometimes lying on an armchair, sometimes in the kitchen talking on the phone, or lying in bed, sometimes working online, and sometimes recording reels for Instagram in the bathroom... This principle of realization somehow assumes the state of suspension in which the characters find themselves and favors their cuir identities to contaminate the form. The planned visual design, the static nature of the image, its pronounced plasticity, reinforce the sense of failure, encirclement, loneliness and uncertainty about the future. The complex gaze of Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa reveals in the subjectivity of its characters the departure from Cuba as success and the experience of immigration as failure; as it also happens in Un homme sous son influence.<\/p>

For the young people in Calls from Moscow, the climate, the linguistic difference, the homophobic Russian laws and the illegal status make integration into the new reality complex, not to mention the health situation unleashed by the coronavirus and the symbolic gravitation of the war. For the eponymous protagonist of Emmanuel Martin's film - played by himself - the constant flight of a possible partner, played in each intervention by a different actress, is a mirror of his difficulties in consolidating ties with the country of destination; always surrounded by other migrants, always moving on the margins, he experiences a tension between the place of origin and the new context that subjects him to a vicious flight from himself.<\/p>

Just as Mart\u00edn assumes his protagonist, in an autofictional wink, Beltr\u00e1n and Yero enter the scene in their documentaries, they let their voices be heard when they conduct interviews. This need to make transparent the instance that cuts out reality makes it clear that these films -especially documentaries, generically afflicted by a stubborn demand for objectivity- specifically convey the perspectives of the phenomenon that interest their authors.<\/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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Still from 'Calls from Moscow' (2023); Luis Alejandro Yero. Film included in the Forum section of the 73rd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival (February 16-26, 2023) (IMAGE www.berlinale.de)<\/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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From this underlining of the directorial self, La opci\u00f3n cero and Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa ask why someone chooses to emigrate and remain outside Cuba under such conditions. Un homme sous son influence also offers an answer to that question; the main character is shown between the jaws of labor and capitalist power, yet returning to his country is not an option for him. At one point, he tells some colleagues who are considering whether to visit the island on their vacation: \"Cuba is really fucked up right now\". When one of the guys informs Yero that he works in construction, the latter comments: \"Working in construction is a pretty tough job, isn't it?\", and the other immediately replies: \"Yes, obviously, normally; but it was tougher to live in Cuba, unfortunately. I am not happy. But, to live in Cuba and live the needs that are being seen in the country, I prefer to be here\". The same idea is revealed by one of the refugees in The Zero Option when he says to the camera: \"Even if I have to go there, in that place, in that mountain, for a year, for however long... But I'm not going there, not even if I'm crazy. Forget about it. Are you crazy? I've spent a lot of work in Cuba\".<\/p>

Such is the existential drift of the Cuban as shown in these three films. Leaving the country is for each of these people the only way to take control of their destiny. They all seem convinced - no matter how fateful the journey to leave Cuba behind, or the circumstances in the host country - to \"move on\", to \"wait\", as they say in Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa.<\/p>

Beltr\u00e1n, Yero and Mart\u00edn weave eloquent testimonies of the violence inherent to the migratory experience, as well as of the radical shock that the Cuban regime and the harshness of life on the island leave on individual sensibilities. In The Zero Option there is, I believe, a moment capable of condensing the political vision shared by the three films, the directors' views on the singular experiences of their respective characters. It is the sequence in which recordings of a celebration of the Armed Forces Day alternate with videos from social networks about the crossing of the Darien. In addition to marking the false triumphalism of the Cuban political discourse, it points to the historical responsibility of this ideological drift on the fate of the emigrants. In their explorations\/testimonies on Cuban emigration today, La opci\u00f3n cero, Llamadas desde Mosc\u00fa and Un homme sous son influence lay bare the despotism of the Cuban government, as the institutional body into which the 1959 Revolution has drifted.<\/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 Zero Option' (2020); Marcel Beltr\u00e1n<\/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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Between the difficulties involved in leaving a country and making a life in another, and the sensation of triumph (perhaps temporary) experienced after leaving, Cuba is expressed in these films as trauma, condemnation, historical fatality... The island expels the Cuban, as much as the place of destination resists welcoming him or her.<\/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\n here\n<\/a>\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\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IV Festival de Cine INSTAR: Tres miradas a la crisis migratoria cubana Por \u00c1NGEL P\u00c9REZ – 28 noviembre, 2023 RIALTA Fotograma de \u2018La opci\u00f3n cero\u2019 (2020); Marcel Beltr\u00e1n (IMAGEN YouTube \/ AFISilverTheatre – Trailer) A las puertas del IV Festival de Cine INSTAR, quisiera llamar la atenci\u00f3n sobre algunas de las miradas que su programa […]<\/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-7454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454"}],"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=7454"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7571,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454\/revisions\/7571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaldecineinstar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}