[NYTr] Circles Robinson: Films on Cuba Stir Past and Present

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Circles Robinson blog - Dec 17, 2007
http://circlesonline.blogspot.com/2007/12/films-on-cuba-stir-past-and-present.html

Films on Cuba Stir Past and Present

By Circles Robinson

Two films by foreign based directors with special ties to Cuba won
significant awards at the 29th Havana Film Festival, which closed its
curtains over the weekend after two weeks of well-attended screenings.

“The Man of Two Havanas” by Vivian Lesnik Weisman (Cuban-American) and
“The Sugar Curtain” by Camila Guzman (Chile) examine events in Cuba
over the last 50 years with a strong personal and critical touch. They
both strike an emotional cord for locals and reach out to foreigners
who want to understand more about the Cuban revolution and its
complexities.

Both films were heavily applauded by audiences that, in the case of The
Man of Two Havanas, included Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban
parliament, popular TV commentator and program host Reynaldo Taladrid
and other personalities.

IF YOU HAD BEEN IN MY SHOES

The Man of Two Havanas is a biographical sketch of Vivian’s father
journalist Max Lesnik (http://www.radio-miami.com/). It shared the
award for best film about Latin America by a non-Latin American
director.

The 96-minute documentary allows you to retrace the steps of Lesnik
from his university anti-Batista activism to his exile in the United
States in 1961, followed by his decades long battle as a journalist
bucking the violent extremism of the old guard of the Miami
Cuban-American community and opposing the US blockade on the island.

Max Lesnik returns to visit Cuba in the 1990s in a rapprochement
promoted by the Cuban government with exiles not connected to the
violent Miami Mafia. When he is welcomed by Fidel Castro, his old
friend from the years of the student protests against Batista, the
Cuban leader asks him: “Max, Why did you leave?” Lesnik responds with
what Castro already knew, about his differences over Cuba’s
relationship with the Soviet Union. Castro then tells the journalist
that if he would have been in his place he would have done the same
thing in order to save the revolution.

CUBA IN THE GOLDEN YEARS

After a screening of “The Sugar Curtain,” a Cuban doctor approached
36-year-old Camila Guzman to thank her for the accurate portrayal of
his student years and also for putting forth what he considers
important issues and problems facing today’s Cuba.

In her soft spoken narration that won the award for best documentary,
Guzman, who lived in Cuba from 1973-1991, presents the dilemma of a
generation of happy, carefree children and teenagers of the 1970s and
80s, supposedly predestined to create their own future and build a more
fair and just society.

Instead, they saw the rug suddenly pulled out from under them after the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of what is known as The
Special Period, which put survival ahead of dreams and saw inequalities
and contradictions grow.

Guzman recalls Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Cuba and seeing the Soviet
“perestroika” as a possibility for less bureaucracy and more tolerance
in Cuba, a revolution within the revolution she called it. Like her
friends, she had no idea what was unfolding.

The director states that the degree of Cuba’s dependence on the Soviet
Union hadn’t really concerned her generation because nobody thought the
70 year revolution was going to disappear.

“The Sugar Curtain” notes the slow reaction of the Cuban media to the
whirlwind of events that swept Europe at the end of the Cold War. For
example, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, The Island’s leading
newspaper reported it as a minor news item saying simply that East
Germany had decided to open up its borders.

Several of Guzman’s school friends reflect on what’s left of their
collective dream and how they feel about the current situation in their
country. Other contemporaries look at Cuba as she, after having living
for years abroad.

AN EVENT THAT CAPTIVATES HAVANA

Living on a blockaded island gives added desire to see what other
filmmakers are doing from other latitudes. The Havana Film Festival,
which is totally non-commercial, offers the chance. Many movie lovers
try to take part of their one month yearly vacation time to catch as
many flicks as possible.

Before the festival began a “passport” was sold allowing the holder to
go to 15 films at all the 20 participating cinemas for 20 pesos, the
equivalent of US $0.80 or just over 5 cents a movie.

A daily tabloid is published with programs and film reviews which costs
1 peso. Cuban TV runs nightly festival news real, with information on
collateral events, visiting movie industry personalities and highlights
some of the films.

The landmark Hotel Nacional, pre-revolution hang out of the US Mafia,
is the festival headquarters where press conferences are held and film
buffs and students mingle with the visiting and local film industry
personalities.

The current edition just concluded and most agree it was a good
harvest. The best fiction film and three other awards went to “Silent
Light” by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. Julio Chavez (Argentina)
won the best actor award for his role in "El otro" (The other) and
Roxana Blanco (Uruguay) best actress in “Matar a todos” (Kill them
all). The audience popularity award went to “The Black Pimpernel”, a
Swedish-Danish-Mexican co-production.

“Who Am I”, the story of hundreds of Argentineans discovering who their
real parents were and what the US backed dictatorship did to them in
the 1970s and 80s, by acclaimed US director Estela Bravo, shared the
award for best film on Latin America by a non-Latin America based
filmmaker with “The Sugar Curtain.”

>From Cuba, “Madrigal” by Fernando Perez won a Special Jury Award and
another for best Art Direction, “Personal Belongings” by Alejandro
Brugues finished third in the fiction category. A Colombian-Cuban short
“Pucha Vida” finished second in the documentary category, and
"Siberia," by Renata Duque Lasio, received a special mention in the
short film category.

Festival President Alfredo Guevara gave the closing speech at the
awards ceremony. He officially opened invitations to submit films for
the 30th Havana Film Festival, to take place next December, only weeks
before a major celebration expected for the 50th anniversary of the
Cuban revolution.