Cuba’s Cultural Commissars Censor International Film School
The cancellation of the presentation of the students’ graduation short films marks the end of a free space for artistic creation.
HAVANA TIMES – What was supposed to be a celebration of young art and creative freedom ended with a slammed door, disguised as a “technical problem.” On Saturday, July 12, the students of the 30th Generation of the International School of Film and Television (EICTV), based in San Antonio de los Baños, showed up at the Acapulco Cinema in Havana with their graduation short films in hand, ready to share with the public the fruits of their talent, effort, and training. But the screen never lit up, the doors never opened, and no one gave a clear answer.
For more than three decades, the screening of graduates’ class projects has been a tradition that not only marks the end of the academic year but also allows new filmmakers to showcase their vision to the world from a public venue. This year, however, this right was denied without official justification, without visible interlocutors, and, above all, without transparency.
The students denounced the incident in a statement circulating on social media and supported by members of the national film industry, including the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers. The cancellation, they said, was “an unprecedented event in the history of our school.” Two buses packed with students, family members, technicians, and teachers arrived at the Havana movie theater only to find closed doors, missing signs, and an institutional silence indicative of censorship.
Barely twenty minutes after the scheduled start time, a school official briefly announced that everything was canceled due to “supposed technical problems.” But the students, and anyone who has lived in Cuba long enough, recognized the strategy. There was no schedule, no projection equipment, and no will to resolve or reschedule. There was only one familiar maneuver: passing it off as censorship ‘by accident’.
This authoritarian gesture is not an isolated incident. As the Filmmakers’ Assembly rightly recalled, similar “technical failures” prevented the screening of films during the last Havana Film Festival, with none of them subsequently rescheduled. It is also not new that the Ministry of Culture—through its network of institutions—maintains absolute control over the country’s theaters, determining what is and isn’t shown, preventing many filmmakers works from ever reaching their audiences.
But what this case reveals with particular starkness is the level of institutional intervention and manipulation that EICTV, once a symbol of plurality and creative independence, has reached. Founded in 1986 by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Birri, and Julio Garcia Espinosa—with the “protection” of Fidel Castro himself—the school was born with a Latin American and international vocation, open to dialogue between cultures and critical thinking through cinema. Today, its leadership seems to subordinate itself unquestioningly to the Communist Party and its mechanisms of control, relegating its founding principles to the archives.
EICTV’s current director, Susana Molina, did not even offer an explanation to the students. She hung up the phone on a student representative when asked for an answer. Her silence, according to multiple voices in the Cuban film world, is neither coincidental nor new. Her administration has been criticized as opaque, repressive, and serving political power. For many, she represents the face of an institution that, instead of defending its students, prefers to align itself with the bureaucrats who decide which films are worth seeing and which are not.
The students, far from passively accepting the situation, publicly demanded “explanations from the Ministry of Culture and the management of the EICTV; guarantees that the theses will be screened without restrictions; and respect for the school’s academic and artistic autonomy.” Their statement was clear and courageous: “We will not allow our cinema to be silenced.”
Since June, students have been expressing their discontent over the deteriorating basic services and the school’s appalling infrastructure. The protests forced Fernando Rojas, former Deputy Minister of Culture and current direct advisor to the minister, Alpidio Alonso, to intervene. His presence on campus, and not that of representatives from the New Latin American Cinema Foundation—the entity that historically mediated the management of the EICTV—exposed a truth that had already been suspected: the school has come under the direct control of the Ministry of Culture. Today, far from being an autonomous space for artistic creation, the EICTV operates under the watchful eye of the government’s cultural commissioners.
In a country where public theaters are under state control and where the annual Youth Film Showcase (Muestra Joven) has disappeared without explanation, censorship is not the exception, but the norm. EICTV’s Generation 30, made up of 42 young people from more than a dozen countries, is not only demanding their right to show what they have created. They are demanding respect for a promise: that school be, as the official press proclaims, “the school of all worlds,” and not just another cog in the machinery of silence.
Translated by Translating Cuba.
Here’s the problem: the Castro dictatorship suffers no consequences for their censorship. What I don’t understand is why no one steps up to offer an alternative venue. I realize that the brick and mortar theaters are all owned by the Castros. But why don’t students sew a handful of white sheets together and create a public theater for a public showing of their work? 60+ years of the failed Castro dictatorship has evolved into a dependency on the state that petrifies even the most creative brains. However overused the term, it certainly applies here: THINK outside the box! Or, in this case, outside the theater.