Havana Times

Cuba’s New Filmmakers Festival is Nearing

Irina Echarry

The Young Filmmakers Festival takes place in Havana from March 31 to Abril 5.

HAVANA TIMES — Cuba’s 14th New Filmmakers Festivals is nearing. This year, the festival will pay tribute to documentary filmmaker Nicolas Guillen Landrian with a debate panel debate on his works. The paintings of the director of Ociel del Toa, Coffea Arabiga and Rita Montaner will also be on display at the Chaplin Cinema gallery.

Films made by young and emerging filmmakers will flood Havana’s 23 street from March 31 to April 5. Screenings will take place at the habitual venues: the Chaplin Cinema, 23 y 12 theater, Fresa y Chocolate Cultural and Center and Cinematheque and the Charlot and Titon screening rooms. Most will be independent films, though a number of pieces produced at the Faculty for Audiovisual Communications (FAMCA), the San Antonio de los Baños Film and Television School and other institutions will also be screened.

The 95 films will compete for different awards, in the categories of Drama, Documentary and Animation. A special jury award and a best film poster prize will also be granted participants.

The New Filmmakers Festival offers audiences an opportunity to know what is taking place in Cuba’s film world – what concerns and moves young people and what contributions they make to the field.

From “La obra del siglo” (The Work of the Century)

It has become customary for the festival to open with an unfinished or recently completed film. On this occasion, the festival will open with the national premiere of Carlos M. Quintela’s second film La obra del siglo (“The Work of the Century”), which reaches Cuban audiences after receiving an award at the Rotterdam Festival.

Quintela chose Cienfuegos’ nuclear city – a Cuban-Soviet project that sought to build the first nuclear reactor in the Caribbean – as the setting for his film. Three solitary men from different generations weave stories enriches by archival footage and current testimonies. La obra del siglo will screen at the Chaplin on Tuesday, March 31 at 2 pm.