Havana Film Festival Opens Tuesday

Irina Echarry

HAVANA TIMES — The 34th Havana Film Festival opens on Tuesday, December 4, at over a dozen theaters in the Cuban capital with 566 full length fiction movies, shorts and documentary and animated films showing from 46 countries.

This year’s 11-day moviegoers’ marathon is dedicated to young filmmakers in general and Puerto Rico, with a showing of 20 full length fiction films, plus shorts, animated films and documentaries from that Caribbean island nation made over the last three decades.   

The event, known in Spanish as the New Latin American Cinema Festival, referring to the competing works, has as usual the most entries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Cuba.

Cuba has three full-length films competing for the top prize in fiction: “Irremediablemente Juntos” by Jorge Luis Sánchez, a musical about the issue of racism in Cuba shown locally a few months ago; “Se Vende” by Jorge Perugorría and “La película de Ana” by Daniel Díaz Torres.

Animated Cuban works will be represented by a short inspired in the book “La luna en el jardín” by Dulce María Loynaz, co-directed by Adanoe Lima and Yemilí Cruz; and “Lavando calzoncillos,” by Victor Alfonso, a monologue of a housewife with doubts about her marriage.

Among the twenty short fiction films in the competition are the Cuban works: “Lavadora”, by Yoel Infante, “Los anfitriones”, by Miguel Angel Moulet and “Camionero”, by Sebastian Milo, a highly applauded short in the Young Filmmakers Showing earlier this year and which has been widely passed around on memory sticks.

The Cuban public has had a chance to see “Penumbras” by Charlie Medina, a story that highlights the life in the posadas of Cuba, now extinct and unknown to the latest generations.

The other Cuban Opera Prima is “Melaza” by Carlos Lechuga, who previously gave an advance of the film to come with his sort “Los bañistas” with which he won a prize at last year’s festival.

The competing Cuban documentaries are “De agua dulce” (Damian Sainz), “La certeza” (Armando Capo), “El Evangelio según Ramiro” (Juan Carlos Sáenz Calahorra) and “Awairy” (Valeria Ariñez).

This year’s Havana Film Festival also includes tributes to well known filmmakers Chris Marker (France), Kenji Misumi (Japan), Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy) in his centennial and Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic), a great exponent of animated film.

Painting will also have a prominent place in the festival with a tribute to Mariano Rodríguez, one of Cuba’s most recognized artists, in his centennial; as well as the collective show “Latinoamerica: imagenes de una colección” and the individual showing by individual artists, Antonio Martorell (Puerto Rico), Daniel Lima and Fernando Pimenta, both from Brazil.

The festival is an event that attracts a large public wanting to enjoy the images, new forms of expression, different perspectives and above all, bringing us closer to directors from around the continent and the globe.

This year the movie fiesta will also including showings at different universities around the island.

Don’t miss the dark theaters full of light, the light that’s lit by the passion for cinema.