HAVANA FILM FESTIVAL NEW YORK

A blockade has two victims in a sense, both the actual targets of that particular blatant cruelty and the perpetrators of denial of those essentials for human survival. It is the aggressors themselves who suffer in a more transcendent manner, from imposed self-deprivation of that cultural connection to the designated and demonized Other and their creative riches.
How much we've been lacking when denied the vibrant fruits of another country's artistic labors became strikingly evident at this April's Havana Film Festival in New York. A sampling of Cuban and other award winning Latin American films from the past decade at the Festival in Havana, as well as live imported Cuban musical performances, the Havana Film Festival in New York served up tempting morsels and whetted sensory appetites for much more.
Just as with the enthusiastic devouring of the isolated and distinctly Iranian cinema by audiences here, we crave in the midst of plenty, a uniquely so to speak fundamentalist cinema unblemished by the homogenizing commercial influences of globally dominating American film product infiltration. Cuban film, both classic and contemporary, and to a lesser extent the still very ethnically expressive Latin American cinema, satisfied that craving, in particular for something more than the vacant glut of movies here, whose mind boggling quantity cannot mask its absence of quality or variety.
A testament to the recognition of that American cultural hunger combined with a support of Cuba and the very valid principle of tolerance toward global political diversity are the sponsors of this year's Havana Film Festival in New York. They include not exactly unconventional institutions like The NY Times, Delta Airlines, Kodak, Johnnie Walker, and Disney's Miramax Films.
There are a number of anecdotes circulating as to how this Festival, now in its second year, first came to mind and now thrives, even in, and despite the current hostile climate around the blockade, and U.S. government attitudes and actions against Cuba. Some trace its origins to the enormous success of the Cuban documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, in traversing the blockade to thrill and delight American audiences, gleaning numerous awards here, and even an Academy Award nomination. Others trace the birth of the Festival to informal, spontaneous cross-cultural powwows between U.S. and Cuban film and music producers in the hallways of the Festival in Havana, between screenings.
Perhaps the truth is a mixture of these various gatherings and initiatives, and the optimistic thrust and conciliatory atmosphere of the music in general and Buena Vista Social Club in particular. But I would venture to add to that, the tremendous impact of the Elian Gonzalez affair, and along with it the surprise discovery that, not only do the majority of Americans bear no ill will towards Cuba despite the most concerted efforts of their government to ensure that they do, but neither do Cubans themselves, as exemplified by the Gonzalez family's own determination to return to their own homeland. But it was in particular the enormous outpouring of sympathy by Americans for Elian and his family that broadcast the clear message that the time was ripe for positive cultural reconciliation.
The stage was set for this gala mid-April celebration of film and music with the Festival's striking, comically irreverent theme poster, Eduardo Munoz Bachs' reinvented Latin Liberty in NY Harbor. The Statue of Liberty was thus reborn as Charlie Chaplin, with cigar and movie clapboard in tow, his torch an explosion of bright, tropical colored streamers. And reflecting that mood were the latest films from Cuba: flavorful, outspoken, provocative, brimming with distinctly Cuban, Latino-centric attitude and emotion, and wielding humor as a tool for enduring and surviving the prolonged, much cinematically commented upon austerity measures instituted to deal with the U.S. blockade.
Opening the Festival was It Happened In Havana (Hacerse El Sueco) by Daniel Diaz Torres (Little Tropicana). A wry reversal of gringo expectations in movies where white tourists become criminal prey in Third World countries, It Happened In Havana relates how the arrival of a cunning German bandit disguised as a visiting Swedish professor precipitates a one man crime wave on the island. The film is a determined commentary as well on the negative side effects of tourism and Western commercial intrusion during this emergency special period imposed upon the socialist economy.
Torres commented about his film, "For years Cuba has been opened up to foreigners, and that's had an impact on people's lives and way of thinking. And my film is concerned with how to open up people's mindsets without totally losing those socialist, community values worth preserving."
Also tuned in to the ideologically based contradictions of daily life, but always armed with that very Cuban sense of comic revelry as a survival mechanism, is Amanda's Prophecies (Las Profecias de Amanda), by Pastor Vega. Casting his wife Daisy Granados as an eccentric Havana fortune teller, Vega continues his fascination with the historical significance of Cuba through the stories of its women, that follows a trajectory from his classic Portrait Of Teresa (Retrato De Teresa). Vega's hearty visual potion fuses traditional African-derived mysticism with Cubanized Marxism, contradictions and all.
Special programs at the Festival were New World Cinema; New Generation Of Latin American Filmmakers (including Amores Perros, the top award winner at Havana this year, and current U.S. hit by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, along with Venezuela's own version of Traffic through stereotype-free Latino eyes, Jose Ramon Novoa's Assassin For Hire (Sicario) ); Classic Cuban Cinema; Contemporary And Classic Cuban Documentaries; and Award Winning Latin American Shorts And Documentaries.
Interspersed were Cuban musical events staged at local nightspots, highlighting the soaring Afro-Latin rhythms of Isaac Delgado, X-Alfonso & Sintesis, Pan Con Timba, Roberto Carcasses, Son Mondano, and Maraca. A Tribute To Latin Jazz also enlivened the Festival, with a special appearance by Chucho Valdez.
Of particular significance was a sidebar Video Program. Due to austerity under the U.S. blockade, many filmmakers must either resort to the cheaper video productions, or take their chances with the commercial imperatives of European co-productions. Consequently, some of the most dedicated and distinctive cinematic voices in Cuba thrive through video. Especially outstanding as part of the Festival Video Program were: Oracion by Marisol Trujillo (and based on a poem by Ernesto Cardenal), which mixed Marilyn Monroe mythology with everyday poverty and carnage in Latin America. Una Vida Para Dos by Girardo Chijona focused on a militant elderly couple, whose marriage survived and their bond deepened by their shared political struggles dating from the Spanish Civil War. And in a country where even the most mundane aspects of life can be tinged with whimsical ideological reflections, Jau by Enrique Colina, considers dogs with a very affectionate kind of canine humanism, as servile creatures potentially "exploited by man."
A central figure in Latin American as well as Cuban film, Argentine director Fernando Birri (My Son, Che) was on hand for a retrospective of his militant, groundbreaking documentaries. Birri, dubbed the father of Latin American Cinema and a central figure in the birth and development of post-Revolutionary Cuban film production, considers his home to be wherever his shoes touch the earth, a reminder of the profound Pan-American cultural connection that exists side by side with potent national cinemas across the hemisphere.
Birri, who is 76 years old but still a vigorous and defiant filmmaker, perceives his mission as enlightening and re-radicalizing the passive youth of the planet. He decisively proclaimed at the screening of his documentary "Che: Death Of Utopia?" that for him, Latin American cinema continues to be "one of resistance. In a world where everything seems to be so difficult and people seem to believe less and less each day, we as filmmakers try to believe in ourselves more and more." Birri elaborated that principled Latin American filmmaking endures because of two essential ingredients, "national identity in defiance of stereotypes, and the dignity of every human being."
In "Che: Death Of Utopia?" Birri roams the world with his camera, interrogating an often clueless European population in the vicinity of that corporate pseudo-utopia known as Euro-Disneyland, as to who Che was, and what the meaning of Utopia is for them. Only in Cuba, and among the Bolivian peasants where Che was murdered by the military, do even the least educated profoundly comprehend Che's significance.
One man poses the question, 'Why does Che, who was born more than anyone else, keep having the dangerous habit of being born?' A Cuban recalls how children in his country rise every day to proclaim, 'I will be like Che.' And Che's cousin in Argentina remembers 'his asthma and his tenderness, and how always danced with the ugliest girl because he felt sorry for her.'
Birri finally, as if speaking for himself and all struggling filmmakers of the Third World in his search for Che and the meaning of Utopia through this film journey, ends with a refreshingly indecisive yet boundless optimism, 'When I began this search, I was reaching for the sky, the stars.' Then shifting his perspective downward towards the earth, he concludes that he has found the ultimate meaning of Utopia. It is 'where you walk towards, always. Utopia is for walking.' Perhaps he had also located the compass and direction for future Cuban film, a cinema of astonishing joy and insight mixed with pain, which reveals itself through its own distinct, sustained passion and euphoria.
Prairie Miller