Festival de cine INSTAR

Conditions for Thinking about Cuban Cinema

By Ángel Pérez

Still from Four Holes

More than categories, I would like to talk about processes. In fact, I would even prefer to describe states. Alfonso Reyes used to say that names are transcendental. What are we talking about when we say “Cuban cinema?” Is there an ontological distinction between “Cuban cinema” and “Cuban audiovisual media?” Now this is not about video art, or television, or music videos, or YouTube content… It is not about the origin of images. This is about cinema, whose institutional structure (production models, dynamics of consumption and exhibition…) is abysmally abnormal in present-day Cuba.
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Cuban cinema is an aesthetic pursuit (in this sense, it is currently having one of its best moments, if we consider its inventive attempts to redefine the Cuban imaginary) as well as an industry ecosystem. When it comes to the latter, it is in a near-death state, flanked by withering networks of production, circulation, exhibition, and consumption. Battered by intense censorship that only grows as the material quality of life worsens and the State becomes even more authoritarian. The unraveling, in recent years, of the former (apparent) autonomy of the Cuban film institute (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos – ICAIC), the subsequent increase in censorship, and the inability of the ICAIC to update its technology systems, twiddling its thumbs in the midst of an uncertain economy, weigh too heavily on the current conditions of Cuban cinema. We are still without an updated law on filmmaking (Ley de Cine). And the fund to promote cinema (Fondo de Fomento) has yet to come to be, and every day that passes it is subject to more government meddling. The Island’s film institute is obsolete and both politically and artistically powerless. Its crisis is also an engineering problem, as it is incapable of adapting to new forms of consumption or relevant supports. This can be clearly seen in current discourse.
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At the same time, the ICAIC is currently being confronted, necessarily, by civil society, which engages in producing critical discourse in films and contributes to shaking up Cuban totalitarianism. The role of the Cuban filmmakers association (Asamblea de Cineastas Cubanos – ACC) is stirring up confrontations between the government agency and the artists guild. While the artivist organization Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR), for example, is developing new institutional models, the ACC is trying to reform the existing institution.
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A likeness of Cuban cinema was sketched in “Palabras del Cardumen” (“Words from the School of Fish”), an open letter published online by young Cuban filmmakers in 2018. The letter was a political gesture specific to a generation. Their manifesto recognized the coercive nature of the film institute, its identity as a disciplinary/regulatory body to support the government’s legitimacy; subsequently, it validated the will to reinvent the film scene, which requires standardization, in legal terms, of production and exhibition for the public as well as reform of the educational institution for film studies, which has also been subject to government meddling. The description of the film industry in “Palabras del Cardumen” is still accurate, except the situation is even worse now. This justifies the need for a concept of “independent cinema.”
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The massive exodus of Cubans leaving the Island in recent years is forcing us to reconsider a series of discussions that have been latent, at least since the end of the last century, in debates about cinema. The decentering of the Island as the essential locus of Cuban cinema is old news; the presence of voices from the diaspora in public debate on the Island reveals the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime. Now, when it comes to these diasporic filmmakers, how are their films consumed, not in Cuba, but internationally? How are these creators integrated into production dynamics in their respective receiving countries? Does setting down roots outside the Island affect the aesthetic quality of their films’ images and content? A film like Cuatro hoyos (Four Holes) (Daniela Muñoz) invites reflection on this point. In this sense, we need a concept of “diasporic cinema,” pushed toward embracing the specific characteristics of these productions in contrast with those created on the Island.
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Of course, as Cuban cinema is disseminated farther and wider around the globe, it has become more necessary than ever to include Cuban cinema in international dynamics of production and exhibition; this environment demands affirmation of a single voice and, subsequently, the use of the “national cinema” label (one that finds itself expanding, in geopolitical and cultural terms, to embrace productions both inside and outside the Island; the two feed into a single identity that is struggling in the global landscape).
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Our cinema is transnational. But not just because of the growth of the diaspora. The willingness of filmmakers to cannibalistically consume and attune themselves to international artistic trends is a common factor leading to transnationality—not just in Cuba, but also in the contemporary global landscape. Our cinema is transnational, additionally, given the production dynamics that make its existence possible during these times. Facing not the institutional obsolescence of the ICAIC, but rather the economic disaster that the country is experiencing, the existence of international funds, development projects, and support from the film industry through festivals is what sustains many current Cuban films.
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The ICAIC still sponsors its own films as a production company. At least in terms of current discourse, how do these films view reality on the Island? They differ, undoubtedly, from “independent cinema,” which is more than just a political term. Today, this label denotes a determination to negotiate a narrative that the technologies of power are unable to seize upon in their attempts to capitalize on Cuban reality to bolster their legitimacy.
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The Revolution (as a historical process, ideological discourse, and institutional structure that controls social thought…) is still a significant teacher (a term taken from Fredric Jameson) that has compiled a considerable volume of readings about film. The theme of dystopia is categorized as an expressive code in so far as it represents, ideologically, a physical and spiritual state of the Island; it can be seen in Tundra (José Luis Aparicio), Abisal (Abyssal) (Alejandro Alonso), Corazón azul (Blue Heart) (Miguel Coyula)… A more stylized realism is tested out, in tune with international modern trends, but with a clear allegorical intent when it comes to the historical results of the Revolution in the present; I am thinking of Vicenta B (Carlos Lechuga) or La mujer salvaje (Wild Woman) (Alán González). It is common to work with archival footage as remains that enable new readings of the past or as an entry point to an irrefutable truth about the present; see El caso Padilla (The Padilla Affair) (Pavel Giroud) or La opción cero (Option Zero) (Marcel Beltrán).
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Two other motifs that can pull back the curtain on processes of meaning-making and that interest me are memory and models of subjects. This can be illustrated with a couple of examples. Historical films—like La primera carga al machete (The First Charge of the Machete) (Manuel Octavio Gómez) or Lucía (Humberto Solás)—worked more with the notion of History. They mobilized a truth about the revolution that had to be corroborated by images. Present-day filmmakers, at least those working independently, tend to work more with the concept of memory, linked to personal negotiations with the past; they discuss the past from their personal narrative perspective and structure a truth that is differentiated from the official truth. Then, in Asamblea General (General Assembly) (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), for example, during the initial years of the ICAIC, a political model of the individual is created. The subject is the people (the masses) gathered in dialogue with the leader, cut off from their identification with the political project that the latter represents. Meanwhile, Mujeres que sueñan un país (Women Dreaming a Nation) (Fernando Fraguela) takes a series of images created by the same individuals depicted in the documentary (they are not images generated by/from the government institution), and it represents an idea of the people based on individuals that are distinguishable and, above all, detached from the official narrative.

Ángel Pérez has published Las malas palabras. Acercamientos a la poesía cubana de los Años Cero (Bad Words: Approaches to Cuban Poetry during the Zero Years) (2021) and Burlar el cerco. Conflictos estéticos y negociaciones históricas en el cine cubano (Jumping the Fence: Aesthetic Conflicts and Historical Negotiations in Cuban Cinema) (2022). He received the National Prize for Film Criticism in 2022 for the book Cabezas borradoras. Itinerarios políticos del cine cubano (Eraserheads: Political Itineraries of Cuban Cinema) (forthcoming). In 2019, he received the International Essay Prize from Temas magazine, and the Pinos Nuevos Prize for essay in 2020.